Chapter Text
Shouta exhaled and eased himself up into a sitting position, ran a hand down his tired face, and answered the call before the third ring. He didn’t need this to get worse by making them wait. His heartbeat has ramped up to a familiar pace with the first ring, and now it pounded in his head.
“Report.”
He forced his teeth to unclench so that he could actually answer. Once upon a time, these calls began with something more rounded. Not quite a “how are you” but definitely not a cold one-word instruction.
“From the beginning?”
“What do you think?” Clipped, terse, like the speaker thought his question had been intentionally ruffling. He hadn’t meant it to be.
“I missed one and that’s what brought the roof down.”
“You missed one.”
“Mm.”
“A better answer, please.”
“I missed one.”
“You pressed your emergency beacon.”
“I did. It was unavoidable. A hero found me first.”
“So, you missed a target, delayed in activating your beacon, and both of these failures led to a hero removing you from the premises.
“You’re slipping. It’s a trend we’re seeing a lot from you lately.”
He hated the enormous lump he felt expanding in his throat, feeling like a child in the way his body wanted to react to a scolding. He was a f*cking thirty-two year old, and despite the sh*t he’d been churned through, he shouldn’t feel like hiding in a dark room the second someone on the end of this line spoke to him this way. Shouta forced the lump down with a heavy swallow, grimacing as though the expression would chase the child away. His voice felt thin.
“It was a one-time—“
“Last month you had to reactivate Erasure three times before our target was taken down. Two agents were hospitalized in critical condition because the Quirk was not secured.” There had been debris and dust in the air, not to mention a target that had a Quirk that allowed them to become a wisp of literal smoke. But they didn’t care about that, so he swallowed the argument.
“The week before that we pulled you from a hospital again for a gunshot wound. Five years ago this would have never happened. Three years, even.”
Shouta sat forward on his ratty old couch, removing the phone from his ear long enough to rub at the bridge of his nose.
“Your Quirk is most useful if it’s invisible. Don’t forget that you are not supposed to exist.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“Do not make me do any more medical extraction paperwork.”
The sentence might have been humorous coming from anyone other than his handler, but the teenager in him recognized the threat. His stupid voice was stupid rough and stupid quiet when he answered. “Yes, ma’am.”
“We pulled records from the hospital before they were destroyed. A note was made that said you had a visitor. Keigo Takami; Hawks.”
“Yes. He was suspicious of the circ*mstances.”
“Was he the one that found you?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t given that information.”
“Do you believe he’ll be a problem?”
He wanted to lie, to put some confidence in reassuring them that he had things under control. The problem was that he had no idea just yet. The bird had stuck his beak in, twice, and then simply walked out. He considered the question seriously, then banked on honesty. “I don’t know.” Then, “I’ll keep an eye on it.”
“How is your arm?”
Shouta clenched and unclenched his slung hand, feeling it twinge painfully all the way up to his elbow, where the pain gradually diminished by the shoulder. In addition to that, the whole limb burned where the capture weapon had twisted and dug into it.
It wasn’t fine. But she wasn’t asking because she cared.
“It’s fine. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”
“Good. We have something new for you in forty-eight hours.”
The call ended, and Shouta remained in place, slightly hunched, letting the hand that held his phone go limp on the cushion before him. The call had jolted him from the pre-sleep daze he’d been desperate to sink into, and it would take more time to find it again. His apartment felt empty and far too hollow, which was its usual state, but the loneliness was brimming after that conversation. He wondered at the prospect of finding some stranger to spend the night just to have a warm body by his side.
Not worth it. They’d be after something a lot less restful, and his body wasn’t interested in anything but rest for at least the next ten hours.
Reluctantly, he pushed himself up and hopped to his bed in the next room over, ignoring the slight lingering smell of sewage that temporarily permeated surrounding units whenever a certain apartment flushed their toilet. After twenty months of being ghosted, they’d all long given up trying to get repaired by the landlords.
He finally tore off the t-shirt and pants he’d worn to and from the hospital, grateful that the unassuming outfit was suitable for much of his work. He didn’t need nosy heroes getting even more antsy about a strange uniform. His capture weapon was a lost cause, but the loss of that was less of a frustration to his handlers than his checking into a hospital was. They’d probably deliver a replacement before the forty-eight hour period was up.
It was all discarded messily in the corner of the bedroom, though as he yanked his belt out of the loops of his pants, something nudged his finger. It only caught his attention because of the odd, unexpected texture, soft and light where it was tucked flat against the inside of the belt.
A tiny red feather.
The hammering was back, but this was the sort he recognized as a warning, an instinct. He didn’t undergo excruciatingly strict training for over fifteen years not to have a good one. That bird had left a feather under his arm at the hospital, too. He’d had no idea how long it was there, what its purpose was. But it had had a purpose, or else Hawks wouldn’t have recalled it as he was leaving.
His survival alarms were going off in full now. There was no way he was falling back to sleep.
The feather had been tucked under his wrist, not just a random spot on his arm. Where his pulse was.
Did the hero really have some way to track a heartbeat? He knew the basics of the winged hero’s Quirk; he could control the feathers on an individual level, and they had some strength and flexibility to them. But could they be used for other purposes? What else had that been there for? What else was this one here for?
He said nothing, banking on caution, and left it clinging to the underside of his belt, draped in one hand, as he rose again and used the other to hop down the wall to his sh*tty little kitchen. In a blink of an eye the feather was a tiny burst of ashes in the confines of the sink, his lighter set back aside after its work was done.
Maybe this was going to be a problem after all.
“Uh huh, yeah, kid, that’s awesome.”
The winged hero sat kicked-back on the couch at the 2-A dorms, feet planted up on the coffee table.
Kaminari sat to one side in a drawn-up folding chair, pausing in what had been an animated description of his training session with his classmate. Keigo had put all of his 2-A kiddos into pairs and had them chase one another all over campus in a big game of hide and seek. No rules, just don’t hurt anyone not in your own class. And no property damage. Whoever lost from each pair had to find him in the dorms before curfew and report on why they lost.
He was so distracted that didn’t even notice the kid stop talking and proceed to stare at him curiously. His own posture had changed a minute or so after Kaminari had sat down, eyes fading out into the middle-ground and fingertips tapping on the cushion beside him, a playful smirk sweeping onto his face. It was like he was sharing a personal moment with someone that wasn’t there.
“Mr. Keigo, should I come back later?” The sparky kid asked tentatively, drawing his attention back without losing the slightly-lidded expression. Suddenly the kid narrowed his eyes. “That’s the look Jirou says I get when I think about her.”
Hawks blinked, lightly surprised, then snorted and shook his wings, the feathers rustling with the movement. “Is that right?” The teasing tone in his redirection was one he used frequently when it came to this stuff. He was an eligible young hero; of course his kids would speculate about his dating life. Maybe it was because they were after some kind of pseudo-celebrity drama, or because they wanted him to be happy. Either way, it made him grin. He’d be a liar if he sometimes didn’t find it fun to fan those flames.
He focused long enough to let Kaminari finish his report, though once or twice his attention drifted off when caught by something no one else could hear. “Don’t forget that your electricity can be released in small amounts if you focus enough, Chargebolt. You don’t have to K-O every opponent you face. A tiny amount of electricity locks a body’s muscles and can provide you time to escape a bad situation.”
“Yes, sir.” The kid didn’t take his loss too badly, and hopped up to head to his room.
“Good work today, kid!” Was all he needed to offer before the blond’s gait was pulled from a trudge into something more cheered.
Keigo watched him go, holding onto the grin until Kaminari vanished up the stairs. Then, the bird stretched out and leaned back against the couch, throwing his arms over his shoulders as he resumed staring into space. The window was across from him, but there was really nothing to see, and he wasn’t looking for anything, either. It was dark out, the clock creeping past ten o’-clock, and what had had his attention so on-and-off again had slowed into a lull. He wondered if the world he was listening in on was sleeping now. But there was rustling, and a tired, muffled sigh.
Keigo couldn’t blame him. That phone call sounded like it’d been something else. Pretty exhausting, having someone breathing down your neck. He’d only been privy to half the conversation and he still wanted to buy the guy a drink.
More silence, more rustling.
Then, a breathless curse, so quiet he nearly missed it.
More silence. Then came the sudden sense of a lost connection, the equivalent of his ears snapping back to his head instead of lingering out in the distant world where vibrations were his only sense.
Keigo sighed, smirked, then shrugged.
“Aww, buddy. Don’t like an audience?”
Shouta wasn’t sure when the light started blaring through his windows. There were a slim few minutes in the morning where the sun was in just the right place to bless his dark bedroom. The buildings in this part of town were squished so close together that alleyways sometimes didn’t exist, and his own unit’s window was basically butting up against the next building over. He and that tenant had front-row seats to one another’s lives; he was just lucky they were private enough to always have the curtains drawn.
The man sat up, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He’d fallen asleep after all, though he wasn’t sure when that had happened, either. But no hero with big red wings had crashed in through his door, so at least there was that.
He set about preparing for the day, mostly just tossing on some once-worn clothes and grabbing a cheap coffee pouch from the cabinet. A bowl of cereal for breakfast. He was still a bit on edge, saying nearly nothing the entire time; not that there was anyone to speak to. The presence of the red feather was in mind, and he’d been a bit overzealous in checking himself and his clothing over for the existence of any more.
He came up empty, but that hardly put him at ease.
He had around forty hours until he’d hear back about his next mission. He spent the day resting, dozing on the couch where his arm could be kept still, between regular checks on a few loads of laundry at the communal machines. Articles often went missing, so he was up and down regularly to prevent that. He ran into few others, and those he did pass ignored him. In this area, it was a quiet understanding that you didn’t nose into someone’s business or day unless you had to.
Most of the people that lived in the building and those nearby were private, secretive, and he was sure some of them could be labeled villains based on society’s rules. But a lot more of them were just down on their luck. Alone, unable to find a way out of their crappy lives. Unable to find good jobs. Ex-convicts whose pasts wouldn’t allow them to move up in the world, despite the desire to do better and live better.
It was a dangerous place to live, sure. But mostly it was just sad.
They all knew him, or at least recognized him. He was the neighbor that would stick his nose in if looked like someone was going to get hurt, or needed immediate help. Not quite a hero. Not a villain. But the scruffy Quirkless guy on the street who was good enough of a person that they knew they could knock on his door if they needed somewhere to hide from a violent partner, or needed help to kick an addiction and couldn’t be trusted on their own. The guy who would step in when the gleam of a blade flashed in a narrow alley. He wasn’t always nice, or shaven, or welcoming, but when you were at your worst, he wouldn’t turn you away.
It felt good to live here. Not because in many ways he was set-up better than the vast majority; everything he had was paid for, after all. He just liked to be able to give attention to the population the loud and proud heroes ignored. Not only were these people down on their luck— they didn’t have a hero to keep them safe like the rest of the city did.
If it meant getting a knife to the bicep to protect a man’s last twenty yuans from robbery or stopping a drunken assault, he didn’t mind.
The day went by quickly, much to his regret. By the time he was hungry for something to eat it was growing into evening, growing dark, and he didn’t feel up to keeping his sharpest wits about him by waiting too long. He locked up behind himself and descended the apartment steps, walking like he had a place to be. In dangerous parts of the city, the way you walked was what kept you alive.
His ensemble for the day was a dark shirt and black pants, a ratty hole in the left knee. He wore a warm-ish brown-and-grey jacket atop it all, the hood down about his shoulders. He was exceptionally unimpressive in the looks department unless you were searching for “scruffy man with long messy hair that dressed in baggy clothes and glowered ninety-percent of the time”. Which, in his dubious experience, was actually considered quite the catch to some. Looking at him as he was, it was impossible to tell that his right leg was a prosthesis, and the glass eye was only obvious if you forced a conversation in the right lighting.
All in all, a ghost. An unimportant non-blip in the radar of the city, down with the rest of the helpless. Just the way it was meant to be.
Though he would never truly hurt for money like those around him, he was still kept on a tight financial leash. It was a question of security, of maintaining the status quo. If for some reason his financial records were looked into, and some authority wanted to know why he had an enormous bit of money and yet lived in a sh*t-hole apartment in the worst part of town, questions would be asked. He had to play the part down to the wire which, after so many years of this, was essentially the literal wire.
Shouta still had to pace his spending with the paltry paycheck of his “office job” like any other person. At the same time, he had a safety blanket that promised him security should anything truly awful happen. He was an asset, after all, someone they wanted alive or else he wasn’t of any use. So far, in over fifteen years, though he’d been through circ*mstances that he would think should qualify, nothing ever had. He couldn’t argue with the medical bill coverage, though.
He made his way down the street to the corner a few blocks over, where a small convenience store would be closing soon. Grabbing something cheap and quick had been tempting, but he’d noticed the night before that there wasn’t even any bottled water in his apartment, so he figured he should grab a couple of essentials. No one bothered him as he arrived, paid for his things in cash, and departed.
Half a block back towards home, as he was passing a narrow alleyway, a woman heading towards him in the opposite direction paused just before they met. Ever-cautious, Shouta was already slightly tensed, as he was anytime he passed someone on the street. But he stopped all the same, eyeing the woman’s face.
She had tracks of tears marking each cheek, her eyes finding his but darting away quickly as though ashamed. Another rule of the bad spots was to keep on walking when certain brands of trouble tried to stop you; not everyone was primed for violence when ignored, after all. But there was something in her expression that caused him to hesitate, a flicker of pity burdening his heart.
“S-sorry, I—“ She stammered, fingers curling in on a tattered old coat that sat on thin shoulders.
“What?”
“Do you have any change? I just want to grab a burrito at the corner store.” Her voice was halting, and it sounded to him as though she was trying not to break down into tears that had already been plaguing her for a while that day.
Shouta clenched and unclenched his teeth, gauging, but exhaled through his nose and turned to bury his good hand into his jacket pocket. A few coins jingled and he began fishing for a grip on them when a block of air crashed into him from the direction of the street.
He would have sprawled if the alley he was knocked into had been wider than three feet. Instead he toppled into the tight space, unable to catch himself with one functional hand stuck in his jacket pocket and the other slung about his neck. He ripped his hand out of the pocket clumsily as he fell and a few coins scattered on the pavement.
Shouta immediately started to move, grasping for a grip on the capture weapon he kept looped about his neck disguised as a scarf. His fingers only closed on air.
That was right. He lost it in the building fire.
In the half-moment he had to remember the missing weapon a weight settled roughly on his hips, the bulky body of a man taking up even more space in the narrow alley than he did. There was no room to struggle and throw him off. The man leaned forward and placed the length of his arm across Shouta’s chest, the action putting pressure on his slung arm as well, and lay his other hand loosely at Shouta’s throat.
For some reason, he didn’t bother closing the grip.
“Give us everything you have. Car keys, wallet, cash, jewelry, everything.”
The man’s breath was in his face and it smelled like rot. His eyes were wild, constricted, a sign of some high or another.
f*cking bleeding heart.
“I don’t have anything.” Shouta grunted, sucking in a breath beneath the man’s weight. “Just— just the coins on the ground.” The sound of metal scraping concrete suggested that the woman was gathering said coins, but the man pinning him didn’t seem satisfied with that. Following those sounds came the rustle of a bag; his purchases from the convenience store.
Even stuck in the spot he was, Shouta still had options. He was flexible, could twist and writhe his way out of many tight spaces. He could focus on the man’s groin or his eyes, any number of other sensitive spots. Even pressed close together there were still ways to fight off an assault. But he had to be cautious. Had been taught to think. Most people couldn’t fight like they’d been trained for fifteen odd years.
He was a ghost. He wasn’t supposed to stand out. He was a helpless man just trying to survive a sh*tty life.
When he didn’t flounder to offer some other trade in exchange for his wellbeing, the man above him grit his teeth in a wide smirk, running a thumb over the side of Shouta’s neck. Then, slowly, small points of pressure began to build beneath the weight of the man’s arm as he held it across Shouta’s torso. The pressure built and built, becoming sharp points that dug into his skin, and Shouta’s eye roved to see that thick, straight thorns were growing from the man’s flesh. Some of the ones sprouting from his arms were already an eighth of an inch in diameter at their base and still growing; Shouta could feel smaller, finer ones threatening to pierce his throat. As the man pressed down, he could tell the moment they started puncturing his skin.
Shouta grit his teeth over a pained sound and blinked in a frustration that was carefully reined in. “I told you I don’t have anything!” The man shifted his weight to get more comfortable, his expression practiced. As though this was the familiar point where his victim started to really get scared.
He fought to think of something he could offer, even just a believable lie, to free him from his predicament. Nothing came to mind; he hardly owned anything, his apartment bare and empty of personal possessions. “I—I have a laptop—” He offered after a fleeting moment. It was mostly just something he kept for cover, an innocent and clean source of evidence he was given to prove his “day job” existed. They would cover a new one if he lost it.
The man was squinting into his face as though trying to gauge the honesty of the claim, but seemed entirely too happy to continue to let the thorns grow. They were so thickly coating his arm now that the man was almost glaring at his victim through a forest, and Shouta found himself panting for breath as they continued to puncture into him. His torso was a sharp series of pains now, and if the length of the thorns in sight were any indication of the ones digging into his body, this was a lot more serious than just a passing opportunistic mugging.
He could end this in seconds if he used Erasure. Quirks like this man’s thorns that didn’t seem like mutations on the surface and were instead summoned at will were generally a toss-up. Some emitter Quirks were easy to recognize while others were a bit more dubious as to their genetic makeup. He usually had his superiors to feed him data before going into danger against specific targets. And, besides, if he did break character, erase this man’s Quirk, he would only be showing two unknowns that his power existed.
If he thought his superiors were unhappy with him now, he couldn’t imagine what that leak would cause.
But at the same time, he couldn’t just die here. His attacker wasn’t pulling back. Whatever had addled his mind was making it difficult for the man to make a decision, and he seemed to be on autopilot now. Shouta grit his teeth over a groan and squinted, preparing the mental trigger that would activate Erasure—
The man’s weight vanished suddenly and silently, his thorns retreating out of Shouta with him. It left him feeling cold and suddenly lightheaded. Someone had intervened. Whether it was another passerby or a rare hero patrolling the area, he didn’t really care. As quiet sounds of pain reached him from the street, Shouta was content to simply lie where he was and just breathe. Then his thoughts caught up, and he groaned again, using his right hand to check his throat. A small smear of blood came away, but it seemed that the man’s thorns hadn’t reached any dangerous length there.
More importantly, every inhale was painful. He’d experienced a punctured lung before; this wasn’t that. It just felt like there were small finger-sized holes punched through him, and his shirt felt wet.
f*ck. He’d literally just gotten out of the hospital yesterday. The reaming he’d gotten from his handler was still fresh in his mind. He had a new operation to take part in soon, and he was already planning on being reckless with his healing arm. He’d been stupid. How on earth had he been so stupid?
“Hey, it’s my buddy, Kaoru!” An unfortunately familiar voice dragged Shouta’s eye open, and he peered reluctantly towards his feet to see a man lit from above by a nearby street lamp.
f*ck. f*ck f*ck f*ck. Shouta closed his eyes and exhaled shakily, allowing a string of curses to fill his brain rather than the actual air. This was beyond bad luck. It was impossible for it to be a coincidence.
Hawks leaned his elbow against the wall, smirking down at him.
“Man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Quirkless guy get in as much trouble as you do!”
