Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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Filius couldn’t bring himself to sleep. He paced around his room at the facility, his mind filled with everything that happened that day. He saw the way in which Alekai’s body laid there, lifeless. And she saw all of it.

He brought Kaori over to his place, she was against the idea at first since she despises his father – she is the leader of the rebellion so it’s not surprising, but eventually she agreed. He didn’t think that today was the day that father decided to punish him. She saw what father did to Alekai, she probably thought that Filius also does similar things, he didn’t. He would never harm someone. The kid was only 4 for god’s sake. Filius wondered what he felt in his final moments. He saw the bite mark on his father’s arm, he tried to escape. This wasn’t fair, the kid did nothing wrong, and yet he got killed. Just cause Filius tried to save him. Maybe he should’ve just let them do the experiments, maybe they wouldn’t do much to the kid, maybe they would’ve just done a quick blood sample. Maybe if Filius let them do their tests then the kid wouldn’t have died.

Filius stops pacing around his room, even though it didn’t feel like his room anymore. He needed some fresh air – as fresh as it can be in an underground facility.

As a nice surprise though, the facility wasn’t how it sounds to be, it didn’t have the hospital white walls or crazy torture machines everywhere. No it looked actually quite beautiful. It was huge, basically the size of a small town. It had streets, shops, houses and everything. Maybe it was a small town. Though everything always lead to the castle, or well that’s what everyone called it. The building was beige, with big stained glass windows, all of them telling ‘his’ story, ‘his’ prophecy. He was going to be the savior of his people, but Filius didn’t feel like one. He felt like a fraud, like he was hiding behind a mask. The people loved him, they worshipped him, yet it all felt wrong. Filius wasn’t god, he wasn’t gods son, he was just a human. At least he used to be one. Now, he doesn’t know what to call himself. The building’s roof was a glass dome, it looked amazing both from the inside and the outside.

In front of the castle though there was a small town square, though it was shaped like a circle. There was a statue in the middle. A statue of him, a statue of Filius. It was standing one arm reached forward, Filius liked to sit on that arm and look below at the people just going about in their days, and the other was placed on his chest. The people believed the statue shows that no matter what god will always hold them dear to his heart. Filius hated how they thought that of everything he did. Why did they believe him to be god’s son, why did everything he did had to be something that came from god? His father was no god – even if he wanted to be one.

And sure, at first he liked the fame, he liked the way everyone respected him. But now it’s just… too much.

He walked through the town, going far behind the buildings. The facility made sure that the people had a decent amount of nature inside, to distract them from ever trying to get out. Filius remembers back when it was just a couple of rooms, back when the town didn’t exist. It was just the throne room, the experiment room, the lounge and the sleeping quarters. People were unhappy then, they wanted to leave. But now, everything seems to be well. Filius walks through a forest before he reaches a small waterfall that led to a pond. The pond was going all around the facility, it’s how Father decided to show to the people that there’s a wall there, that there’s no need to go there.

“Why did you have to come here fil?”  He hears, his head immediately snapping to his right to see who’s talking to him. It was his sister,

“Astris? I couldn’t sleep. Today was… messed up” Filius answers, tucking a strand of light purple hair behind his ear, his hair was starting to annoy him. It was high maintenance and always covering his vision, he needed to cut them soon. He doesn’t know how Astris managed to live with having long hair.

“you’re saying that?” She quipped, her tone cold. And Filius knew why.

“do you… blame me? Astris I couldn’t do anything about it! the kid was four! You can’t blame me for trying to keep him away from getting experimented on!” He says defensively.

“yeah well where is he now!?” Astris snapped back

Fil didn’t know why he chose to come to this place in particular, he knew that he’d probably meet someone here, it’s only been a couple of hours after all so it’s no wonder that there’s somebody at his grave.

“look, I know that you’re angry I understand! But I can’t just watch them mutilate a toddler! I didn’t want to see him get turned into…” he waves his hand in the air as he speaks, stopping and then pointing at himself “ into this.” He adds

“he’s fucking dead now. So who cares?! At least then he would’ve been alive! I don’t care what you wanted to do. He died just because you wanted to play hero.” She yelled back, Filius couldn’t bring himself to answer. Maybe she was right, maybe if he just didn’t intervene Alekai would still be alive

“I- sorry, it’s not your fault… just, leave. I need some time” She stuttered looking back down onto the grave in front of her.

Filius decided to not press further and just go back, maybe he can force himself to sleep in some way.

When he finally went back to sleep he was unfortunately greeted by the same sight he sees every night. It was him, or his other “Me”. Filius decided to call him ‘Max’ he looks like him with minor differences, His sclera’s were black, his irises red and his pupils were yellow and doubled, one circle on top of a circle. Under his eyes there were black stripes, which go over his neck onto his arms – it’s how his quirk works, “potentia dei” the power of god in Latin. His father loved naming everything in Latin. He named his power. The black stripes only show up if he allows them to, his power is based on his blood. It wasn’t supposed to be a power, they just needed a way to keep him alive through the experiments they were doing. So they made Max. every time Filius goes to sleep, he meets Max, his entire existence is just there to make sure Fil wakes up, and the way he does that – is.. painful to put it nicely. They replaced his blood with some sort of black liquid, and somehow his body now makes that. If he loses blood it’ll regenerate as this black liquid, he has the ability to change it to red in case of anyone being near him, but most of the time he just keeps it black. The liquid is able to regenerate his body to crazy extends, he could get sliced in half and his body would just glue itself together. He can also change his appearance at his will. He wants a third arm? He has a third arm. He wants to have wings? He has wings. However he wants to look like, he theoretically can.

His image is wide spread inside the cult. He can’t just decide he wants to look completely different and expect father to be okay with that.

So he never did change his appearance after father build the city.

Although there have been past versions of Filius. Ones he made when his ‘power’ wasn’t yet implemented.

His other me stands before him, this time he doesn’t show his horns – which is unusual for Max since he is extremely edgy. But his tail is still there, the beige tail, similar to a lions. It’s always there - Fil knows why. He loves the tail, Max loves it too. Hell, Fil would have a tail if his father allowed it.

“you’re uh.. awfully patient today” Filius says as he realizes he’s been monologuing for some time now. It doesn’t matter if he was actually saying the stuff out loud since Max already hears his thoughts anyway.

Just then, Max attacks, not responding, he usually doesn’t. There have been some situations in which he has, but Fil doesn’t expect him to respond anymore.

Max creates a knife in his palm and stabs at where Filius was standing, he ducks and kicks Max’ side. They fought before, they fight every night. Filius knows he’ll never win. Still he tries. Filius won once, he managed to rip a knife out of max’ skin, but when he stabbed him, his own chest ripped open. And he lost anyway.

Max recovers from the kick quickly, and he swipes at filius again. This time slicing through his eye. It hurt like hell, Filiuses vision now restricted. Decides to just fall back onto his butt. He sits there when Max prepares for another attack. Fil is too tired to fight back right now.

“…you’re giving up?” Max says suddenly “you were always weak, but you always tried. What will become of you if you quit?”

“wha-“  Filius didn’t get to finish before he woke up. Except Max didn’t hit him again. How did he woke up? His question is quickly answers as he feels his head being pushed back by an explosion. He hears glass shattering – his sleep tank, Probably. Fil didn’t know why he still slept in that tank. At first he slept in it cause his power wasn’t implemented yet, so they made Max only appear when he’s inside that tank. But now? There’s no reason for him to sleep inside, and yet he still does.

The tank shatters, his eyes open, everything blurry, he hears voices but can’t register whose, he probably got hurt from the explosion, it’s fine it’ll heal in a second, and just like that everything returns to normal. He’s sitting on the floor, his back against the wall of his room. When he looks up he can see Astris, and Renna they looked worried, and scared? Wait what? Why would they be scared. Filius rubs his eyes, and then he hears it.. the alarm, how could he not heard it before? Every few seconds the room flashes red and he can hear an alarm.

“Filius get up.” Astris says, her tone still cold, but there’s a slight shake in it.

What’s the alarm for? Filius hasn’t heard the alarm ever. And he’s been in here for like what? 6 years now? He stands up his head aching, probably from the explosion.

“What’s going on?” He asks, his voice quiet and uncertain. He walks forward to the window of his room, it was what he always did when he woke up. He looked over at the city, the window was huge and the view was incredible. Well, usually it was, today though all he saw was something horrifying.

Shit! – has the rebellion began? Why today? Why now? It wasn’t planned for today! They’re not ready!

Below him all he could see was fighting, blood, death. Civilians were losing their lives. And for what? The rebellion wasn’t meant to start today. If they do it today there’s no chances of anyone surviving. They’re just fighting a pointless battle.

Filius looked over to Astris, who looked like she knew exactly what he was thinking.

“we need to go. Now.” Filius adds walking over to them. “Where are they? Are they safe? We need to get them to the safe room” He says, talking about their siblings. Seoung, Nea, Bea and Haru, they weren’t there. they could be out there. fighting. They’re not ready, they’re too young.

“We already gathered them into the safe room” Renna confirmed looking over inside the room.

“Then leave, go to the safe room. Don’t get out. This isn’t a fight you two can win. Hide.” He shouted, not loud, but not quiet either. He wasn’t mad, not at them.

Renna opened her mouth as if to say something in protest but Astris stopped her

“Don’t. He’s right.” She stated before continuing. “Will you be fine? I think Kaori is still out there.”

“I’ll be okay, I always am. Go hide, keep the others safe. See ya after this is all over okay?” Filius answered smiling lightly, but they both knew it was fake. They were too close to not notice these things. But Astris didn’t protest. She just took Rennas hand and left.

Filius had to be fast, he needed to find Kaori. She had to survive, she had to be safe. He couldn’t let her die. He wouldn’t. He ran though the castle, it was too large to go down to the town quickly. His outfit making it hard for him to run, but he managed. All the days he spent during training led up to this moment, all the deaths, all the fights, everything he did was just so that he could save everyone. Even if he already failed, even if people already died while fighting he didn’t care. He could at least save Kaori.

When he reached the town the smell of blood overwhelmed him, bodies were everywhere. The peace keepers were ruthless people. If you can even call them that anymore. Anyone who willingly gives their lives to serve father cannot be considered human.

Some peace keepers tried to attack him but they were easy to take out. They didn’t have training. They were just humans, too caught up in their own image to even notice that other people exist. Too self-righteous to begin thinking that they need combat training. So they were weak. They lacked form, lacked speed.

He soon found Kaori, she was in the middle of it all. Of course she was. She was the one leading the rebellion after all. Filius attacked anyone trying to get near her. They weren’t going to touch her. She was the only one worth saving. The only one who was brave enough to even think of starting a rebellion. And he loved her bravery, he loved her confidence, her voice, her eyes, god. He loved her.

The fight felt like it lasted forever, maybe it did. The details starting to get blurry, he couldn’t remember much. All he knew was the feeling of everything becoming silent. The feeling of relief, the ending of the fight and then.

blood, her blood. She fell onto the ground. No longer moving, her eyes lifeless. Her chest bloody, her blood mixed with someone else’s.  

Filius looks back and he faces her killer.

Filius stares at him - eyes wide even though he knew who he would see, he knew who killed her the moment he saw the blood hit the floor.

Father stared right back at him. Smiling, he always was. He planned this.

“guess she didn’t stick huh?” he asked. Voice dripping with poison.

the rest he couldn’t quite make out. He attacked father. His power getting activated. Letting Max fight alongside – making one of his eyes look like his. He bit, slashed, kicked, and punched. Whatever. As long as it hurt him as long as he wasn’t able to hurt anyone else. At one point he was on top of father, and immediately he transformed his arm into an ax and cut off fathers leg. Before he could do anything else father knocked him off and – wait what happened next? His arm got cut off but how? Did father have a knife? Did he have the same quirk as Fil? Did he just rip it off? – no the scar was too straight. Doesn’t matter. Now father was on one knee his other leg already regenerating, Filius was glaring at Him, arm also regenerating but way slower. In his right hand he held a sword he created somewhere during the battle. It was his usual sword. White handle, black blade with roses carved into it.

“this isn’t going anywhere. You are made to be me after all.” Father says, voice calm. Too calm. Rehearsed almost. Maybe it was. “give up, Filius. Calm down. If we fight it’ll just go on for eternity.”  He paused, but Fil knew he wasn’t done. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll let you leave, and when you realize that the world outside is far worse then what’s In here you’ll return to me. Go back to being the perfect prophet. Until he comes for you.”

Filius didn’t know what that meant, who ‘he’ was but he didn’t care. All he cared about was fighting father.

“And what if I don’t take that deal? What if I want to fight you for all of eternity just to make sure you won’t harm another human being?”

“your… ‘siblings’ are still alive are they not? We could change that if you feel like it.”

Filius’ eyes widened. He looked over at Kaori’s limp body. He had no choice. He had to leave.

“ why won’t you just let us leave? Replace us. I’m sure your faithful followers would be more than happy to step in!” Filius shouts, anger filling his voice

“your siblings are expandable. You, my dear are not. He still needs you, he still has a use for you.” Filius didn’t respond, he didn’t knew how. Never around father, he always stayed quiet. Why would you answer when nothing he says is a question. “Right, well then you should take your leave. I think that boy toy of yours is still fighting in the lounge, maybe go save the day.” He directed, telling Filius what to do without outright stating it. He always did that. Always controlling him, always making him do what he was told. “also, your regeneration is slow. You need to eat more meat”

The words struck him, his father already walking away and teleporting off somewhere, black smoke was all that remained of him. Filius knew what the meat in this place was. He never ate it. They rarely had meat for dinner anyway so it wasn’t hard. He didn’t know when he realized what the meat was but he already knew when he was first served it. He didn’t eat it then, and they didn’t have any meat for a long ‘long’ time after that, the next time they had meat, mother went missing. He worked hard to convince his siblings not to eat it, but he managed. The implications of father’s words clung to him, making his stomach ache.

He pushed those thoughts away when he looked back onto the ground. Kaori was still laying there, he failed. He failed again. He couldn’t save her. Never smart enough, never fast enough. But Raine was still out there, still fighting. Maybe one, just one person. Raine and Fil had their… misunderstandings. And bad moments… if that can be used to describe it. But Filius doesn’t care right now, Raine just.. didn’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t himself back then, they’re still friends. And now Raine needs him. And god  he was going to get help.

When Filius reached the main lounge it was covered in blood, just like the entire building, the white walls now stained red, bodies laying on the floor, fuck, filius recognized most of these people. They were only trying to live a normal live, they didn’t deserve this.

He’s carrying Kaori’s body, it’s heavy but nothing he can’t handle. She’s still warm. Blood staining his outfit, though if it’s her blood he doesn’t care. she could do anything she wanted and he still wouldn’t care. She is was an amazing friend.

Then he gets hit by a power, a purple ball of energy sending him across the room hitting his neck on an exposed brick. Its oddly cold here something is making his costume sway, he hears a crack when he hits the wall but doesn’t realize what it was. He looks forward seeing one of the peace keepers.

“I never really trusted you, I knew from the beginning that making a brat the successor of god would be a bad idea, and now look what you did. I will do the god’s bidding. You have sinned and now you shall be punished.”

The peace keeper said, the white hood on their head nearly off revealing a white drama mask, one side smiling one frowning. Fil always thought the costumes were so edgy but honestly everything about this place was.

And then, he sees him.

Raine hitting the peace keeper from behind, his head bleeding slightly. His many eyes only focused on the peace keeper. With four arms Raine was really strong, even though he doesn’t look like it… maybe if Filius didn’t underestimate him it wouldn’t have happened? – no that’s not important right now.

Filius tries to get up but the hit must’ve been stronger than he first thought. And his arm still aching from having it ripped off – the regeneration can only do so much.

And before he can react, the peace keeper is being choked by Raine. Fuck, he’s going to kill them.

“no- wait” but his voice too quiet, too unsure to be heard over the alarm still playing.

If he kills them, father is going to kill him. Fuck no. he can’t let everyone die. His siblings are safe but his friends – his lovers. They’re sacrificing themselves one after another. Why is he so weak? He needs to do something. He needs to somehow stop Raine.

You’re too slow.

He hears Max, he always hated how he just sometimes spoke inside his head. Commenting on everything he did.

You could’ve avoided this. Yet you gave up before even trying.

What? – no, no he couldn’t! the hit made everything shaky- he couldn’t feel his legs, his arm ached. He- fuck it he was scared. He couldn’t do anything

Yes you could’ve, your excuses don’t mean anything. Well whatever it’s too late now

Before Filius can process those words he sees it. the peace keeper, with their last breath hit Raine with their power. Half his face now blown off – blood splattering everywhere. His body falls limp onto the floor, locking eyes with Filius for a second before everything went silent – at least for Filius it did. Nobody was fighting anymore. The alarm still sounding loud, but he couldn’t hear it. the peace keeper also dead laying somewhere off to the side.

Then the alarm stopped.

Fuck he needed to get up. He needed to leave, he couldn’t stay here. His siblings would leave the safe room soon, he needs to leave now.

He stands up. And his collar, it fell off, the click he heard. It was of the tracking collar breaking. He could leave, he actually could leave.

He makes a choice, he takes Kaori’s body up onto his shoulder, and Raine’s on the other. He looks behind himself and notices that the coldness he felt was from the outside, the fighting must’ve somehow escalated to the point of breaking one of the walls. He walks outside, the sun rising, he’s on top of a cliff, inside what looks like a forest. It’s beautiful here, the outside. He missed this feeling, he missed the air, the sun, the grass and everything. He missed it so much and he didn’t even realize it until he got out.

He walks a bit into the forest, reaching a small clearing in the trees, the sun shining down in the middle of it. that’s the place – he thinks. Uses his power, making a shovel and so he digs, deep before burying them, right in the middle. The sun now shining onto the ground under which they’re laying.

He stares down, his thoughts no longer his. He doesn’t think anything. he just stares, eventually his legs give out and he falls onto his knees.

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And just like that, he’s back in reality. He got too distracted, he doesn’t know what time it is anymore. Should he continue his patrol? Or is it morning time already? Fuck why did he let himself get distracted? He should be protecting civilians from getting hurt but no, he had to start thinking about the facility again

‘The facility’ huh? Still won’t call it what it is?

“Max shut up right now.” He said out loud. Even though he didn’t need to. Max could hear his thoughts, he usually spoke to him just by thinking. Why would he say it this time? He can’t do that. If he does it in public he’ll seem like he’s crazy. He already looks homeless – which like okay good guess but still. He doesn’t need to be dealing with people hearing him talk to nobody essentially.

He stands up, feeling a couple of quirks nearby, he didn’t know why he could. One day after he got given his power uh quirk, they call it here. He could feel other po- quirks around him. He could feel the energy flowing through them and he could feel this deep ache inside his chest. His own quirk was subtly activating every time he felt any powerful quirks near him, he didn’t know why.

He walks over to the quirks – two mutation ones and one an emitter. Should be easy, he dropped down onto the alleyway they were in taking one of them out, the emitter – a woman in her twenties it seemed like. Being cornered and scared, she was the one getting attacked by them. Before Filius can react he stops feeling the second mutation quirk – well he still feels it, but they’re unconscious.

He looks back and he notices someone else. Why couldn’t he feel them? Fuck who are they?! Are they a hero? Crap he needs to run!

The other person stared at him, also surprised to see him there. Filius couldn’t make out what their quirk is, why can’t he feel it? it’s something that never happened before, he can always feel the quirks of others, why is he different?!

Filius quickly composed himself scaling the building again and running. Now that he ran he realized, he can feel the others quirk. It’s faint but it’s there. and something else has changed. Max isn’t there. normally he feels Max in the back of his head but right now he’s gone. He has to focus to feel how far behind him the other one is.

Crap! He’s being chased. Of course he runs into a pro right when he gets distracted. he can’t let himself get caught, if they do, they’re going to put him behind bars. He’s far but then he feels something wrapping around his ankle pulling him back. He untangles himself and reaches out for his bo-staff and uses it to ricochet himself into the air, jumping to the other side of the street and reaching another rooftop. He can feel the same capture weapon going after him, the guy is fast, he has to give him that. But he won’t get caught. He’s trained for this. In the facility he’s trained a lot. Probably more than any hero ever could. He was going to escape.

He's using his scarf to try to catch you, it’s reinforced and can’t be broken by the knife in your bo-staff, but the knife in your boot could work.

Max is back. Hm? Maybe it’s his quirk that’s hiding him. Max sometimes decided to help during fights, he knows it’s best for the both of us. Filius doesn’t know his exact reasonings for it. He acts as if he knows more than Fil. Which he shouldn’t.

And then Max is gone again. Whatever he got some good info that Filius wouldn’t have been able to get on his own. Well maybe he would but he didn’t have the time for it.

The hero is still chasing him, they must’ve ran a good 3.5 km by now. And Filius is faster than the regular human, and he has more stamina. The hero must be getting worn out by now right? Maybe he can try to tire him out? Filius knows he had more training, he can remember being dead many, many times before so whatever training this pro had wasn’t even comparable to his.

He will run then, he will run like he always did. – No, stop trying to distract me - Even though Max was gone, he still had a small voice in his head. One that always tried to put him down. He never listened. He cannot listen, if he did he would lose time. And he doesn’t have time. Filius was chased by many pro heroes before. He is considered a criminal, so he doesn’t blame them if they see him like one. He knows he’s doing good. He’s trying to help people. And just cause he doesn’t have a license doesn’t mean he can’t help. He can’t get his license this year anyway. He’s only 15, middle school age. He already completed middle school at the facility. When he got out it took him a few weeks to do a course online and get a diploma. He has to wait about a year more until U.A starts admissions. He heard it was a good school.

They ran about 8 km now. For Fil this was nothing, but the hero was getting tired. Slowing down. He was barely keeping up. Maybe it was cowardly to run but who cares?

The sun was rising now and Filius knows that he definitely passed his usual patrol hours. He had to lose the hero quickly. Before any daytime heroes find him. He won’t be able to run from them then.

Filius runs into an alleyway, this was the way going to the lounge. That’s where he got his vigilante jobs from. They gave him some spare money so that he wouldn’t starve, but they didn’t pay much.

The alleyway was small, it would be hard to run in it but since Fil is pretty small he can make do. The hero however starts struggling even more.

His eyes are red. Probably from overuse of his quirk. I cannot figure out what it is though. I can’t get too close or else I disappear. Nothing seems to be happening though. Maybe mind reading?

What? – no that can’t be it. if it was mind reading that would mean he heard everything. He heard Max. usually people give at least a small reaction at the fact that there’s a second person is Filius’ head.

But if he was overusing his quirk what else could it be? Filius didn’t feel anything change? Except for Max disappearing there’s nothing wrong.

Whatever no time.

Filius starts going into even smaller parts of the alleyway, going in twists and turns. Jumping over miscellaneous pipes coming from the buildings next to them.

And then eventually. Filius can’t feel him anymore. Max seems to be back for good. He keeps on running though. Having to run through most of the town - unnoticed since it was daytime now and people were actually on the streets, just to reach his ‘house’

Can you even call it that?

‘I live there so yeah.’

When he’s finally home he takes off his vigilante outfit. The entire costume dripping with sweat – he was going to have to take it to the laundromat. That’s what he gets for trying to run a marathon in an hour.

It was dangerous to wash his costume. If anybody saw it they would know who Filius is. So he usually tried to keep it as clean as possible and only clean it when needed, which from his point of view wasn’t a lot.

When’s the last time you washed that thing? I mean it practically has a stink cloud following it.

‘Shut up max’ he would clean it more if he could but he just can’t risk it. and he doesn’t have the money to go to the laundromat everyday just to wash his costume. Or well those were the excuses he used. But yeah anyone could admit that the costume needed to be washed. Even the beanie was drenched in sweat. How is that possible? Does hair sweat?

He stood nearly naked in front of his costume. He needed to shower before putting something else on but his apartment didn’t have running water

It is an abandoned building. What did you expect?

As much as everybody hates to admit it. Max was right. The building was abandoned. He was on the 8^th floor, its inaccessible from the ground cause the stairs have long since collapsed, the only way to get in is by a hole in the roof on the 13^th floor. And then trying to somehow parkour your way down.

It’s a small apartment but he doesn’t need a big space. It would be way too hard to manage a bigger place. He chose the only room without any holes in the walls. It didn’t have a door so he found a tarp somewhere and covered the entrance. There was a window, the only actual source of light in the building. But he was fine. Usually he spends the entire night outside anyway so it doesn’t matter.

The bathroom situation was complicated. He usually just goes to the ones at the library, or at the stores near him. He doesn’t stay in much, so he usually is near a public bathroom.

He runs his hand through his – now slightly wet overgrown hair. He needed to cut them again.

Back when he escaped he basically shaved all of his hair off. It was a sudden decision but it didn’t matter. It then grew out into a mullet and now it’s starting to grow way too long again. He used his quirk to alter his hair as well. Now being slightly curly, and a light shade of blue. He made them grow out that way, so he didn’t need to dye them.

He got his piercings and put them back into his ears and nose. He had a bridge piercing, an eyebrow one on his right side, his left ear had a lobe and two helix piercings. His right ear had two lobe and one helix. All black except for the left lobe piercing, that one was a longer hanging piercing. He used to wear it at the facility. Bea and Nea made it during arts and crafts at their elementary school. It was basically just a string with a few accessories tied to it but it was his. And he loved it.

He couldn’t wear his piercings during vigilante work because they could be used to identify him, or they could be pulled and even if it would heal almost immediately losing the piercing to his attacker wasn’t something he was keen on doing.

 He took his busted up headphones – which he tried to make himself out of some scrap he found. And they worked.. fairly well.

Dressed in a tank shirt and some shorts, took some of his dirty clothes and his costume and decided to go to the laundromat. He probably smelled so bad. But the laundromat had showers so he could take one and not feel so dirty anymore.

He normally went during the night but this was a special occasion.

Everything is a special occasion to you isn’t it?

Filius – no - he was Haruki right now. Filius is his vigilante name now. His false legal papers say Haruki Nomine. That’s who he is. That’s who he always have been in this city. That’s who he will be now.

He turns the music in his headphones up to shut Max out. Maybe the people around it can hear it but who cares.

Haruki walks into the laundromat he steps closer to one of the machines. Theres a lot of people in here at this time. He hopes nobody sees his costume. He walks to one of the machines and starts to wash his clothes. During the time he decides to go take a shower. The cold water hitting his face, his headphones aren’t water-proof so he couldn’t listen to music during this. The shower made him feel so much fresher, he got dressed again holding a towel on his shoulders so that his tank top doesn’t get wet.

His clothes were about to be done washing, after he put them in the drier he waited and checked some of his jobs on his phone. – it took so long to save up for it. and it’s a shitty phone but that doesn’t matter. It was used when he got it. it was really cheap for a phone, so he got lucky.

He keeps his clients info in there and uses his notes app to plan out any future plans whenever he forgets to bring his notebook with him – which is pretty often but who’s counting.

He could feel the eyes of others on him. It was understandable. He did look homeless, and his scars were all visible. The ones on his neck were the most visible. There were eight marks, four on each side. He remembers vividly how father looked while he was essentially digging his throat out. His mother tried to bandage them so they would heal faster and not leave scars but they were too deep for that.

And the scar going around his arm from when father ripped it off was sure to turn some heads. There were some other miscellaneous scars on his body but those were less notable. Or he just didn’t remember how exactly he got them.

He turned his attention back to his phone and realized that in a few days he has a pretty big mission. A human trafficking ring. The client wanted the one who’s in charge arrested. From what Haruki remembers about the job description their sibling was forced into said ring. And recently discovered dead. Haruki knew the job would be dangerous for just him. But he needed the money. It was one of the more high paying jobs, - that’s the only reason yeah.

He likes helping people. He doesn’t like to admit it. but he does. And the people need help that the hero commission is too stupid to provide.

When his clothes were done drying he stuffed them back into his backpack, making sure his vigilante outfit was hidden and then went back home.

When he got home he unpacked his bag and put the clothes back onto the makeshift dresser he had (it was just a few plants bolted together with screws somehow working as hangers)

He decided to just stay in this outfit, and just go to the library. He took his notebook, some pencils and a bottle of water he could refill on the way.

When he reached the library he greeted the librarian, today it was the nice one. Haruki knew them, they helped him make a library card so that he could take the books home if he ever needed to. He never has, he’s too scared of accidentally ruining them. He goes to the computers to try and search some things up about the hero that attacked him

‘scary hobo hero man’

No results

‘hero guy in all black’

No results

‘hero with scarf’

Oh! That one worked. – oddly

“Eraserhead? He does look homeless…”

You’re one to talk

“oh! Haruki! Didn’t know you’d be here today!”

A certain cheerful freckled boy comes up to the computer Haruki is sitting at.

He should’ve expected this, he can’t feel him since he’s quirkless so he always pops up at the most unexpected times.

“hi ‘Zuku”

Haruki met Midoriya about a month into his ‘escape’ they met in this library. The boy was reading up on heroes and at that time Haruki didn’t knew much about them so he just listened to the boy rant about different heroes and power- quirks he saw, it was quite fascinating to see how the world has evolved ever since he got into the cult.

“whatcha’ up to? Oh! Is that Eraserhead? I know a bit about him. He’s pretty underground but he had some public appearances.”

Now that’s interesting. Haruki had known that underground heroes existed, he just never really thought he’d meet one. They’re underground for a reason. The boy’s analysis might be helpful to figure out what happened that night.

“What do you know about him? He uh… seems cool” Haruki asks, hoping his words don’t sound too fake. But what other reason could he have made up on the spot?

The green-haired boys face lit up. He always looked like that when asked about his knowledge on some hero.

Haruki listened to the boys rant, starting to note some interesting things about the hero. That’s also something they had in common. Haruki also liked to gather information on quirks, not to the extend that Midoriya did but he still had a couple of notebooks filled with some interesting quirks and their usages.

Haruki learned some interesting things about the hero whom he chased through the whole city. His quirk – erasure. Thank god that it wasn’t anything as crazy as mind reading.

God huh? I’m sure he’d love to hear about what you’re up to.

‘shut up Max’

But at least that would explain why he didn’t feel anything changing. ‘He was erasing Max, it could also explain why he didn’t sense his quirk. Maybe it hides itself subconsciously? He might’ve thought that my quirk was speed? I am pretty fast.’

His scarf being a reinforced capture weapon. That he already knew but still good to know his theory was right. He would have to improve the hidden blade inside his bo-staff so that he’s able to cut through reinforced material. Never know when he might run into him again.

“yeah so that’s about it. He is underground so there’s not a lot of info available for him” Izuku finishes his rant and it snaps Haruki back to the present.

“thanks. That helps a lot. He does have an unique fighting style, and quite a lot of stamina” Haruki answers, starting to mumble himself. A habit he picked up from the other.

“huh? Stamina? I didn’t say anything about that?” Midoriya says confused “how did you know about that?”

“OH! Uh..”

Busteddddd~

‘shut up Max’

“i- uh I just searched some stuff up about him back home. Some reddit thread told me he chased after a villain for like 7 km without stopping haha” He replied stuttering, hoping his response was good enough

“that makes sense! He’s super devout to taking down villains! He’s pretty creepy as well” The freckled boy adds

“anyway I gotta go study. I have to get a good score to get into U.a”

Haruki waved as a ‘bye’ to the boy. He didn’t enjoy speaking – okay maybe he loved speaking but he couldn’t let himself start ranting to everyone he meets. And they were both busy. Midoriya had gotten used to Haru’s way of speaking, or lack thereof. He had learned to pick up on the small gestures that maybe to others seemed rude, but to him? That was just the way that Haruki spoke.

Haruki admired Izukus dream. The boy didn’t have a quirk and yet he still wanted to become a hero. And fuck it Haruki was cheering him on. If he wants to fight evil with his own two hands then he sure as hell can.

He turned back to the computer, still looking over the links that google was showing him, none seem to give more info than Midoriya already did. And then he sees it

‘Teacher at U.A expelled an entire class on day 1”

…

He’s a teacher at U.A.

Of fucking course he’s a teacher. That’s just Haruki’s luck. He might get him as a homeroom teacher next year if he expelled his whole class.

Fuck that’s even worse. Okay so now along-side studying for the entrance test, training, patrols, vigilante jobs and taking care of himself Haruki now has to prepare to possibly have the guy who was trying to arrest him today as his teacher. That’s a lot… he’s going to have to make a schedule for himself. That will be hell. He’s always been terrible with following and sticking to schedules.

But it has to be done, he can’t just juggle all of these things without having a set schedule.

So he moved a couple pages in his notebook and he made one he will work out  Monday-Friday before patrol. Which he will cut down to every other day. And on the days in which he isn’t patrolling he will come to the library and study. Since this Friday he has the big job he will skip out on everything to focus on it. and he will take on jobs every Sunday to complete in the following week.

That should be good, he also made things like meal plans and an actual work out routine. He hoped this would be enough to make him strong enough to get into U.A.

Okay but according to this plan he still has to sleep and train today. And then go on patrol… okay that’s going to be exhausting.

Maybe he can actually get a book from the library? One specifically made for U.A entrance exams. He saw one of those at ‘Zuku’s place.

He walks around the library searching for it

‘how to pass the U.A entrance exam’ not a very creative name but at least you know what the book is about immediately. He walks up to the librarian who looks surprised to see him actually renting a book.

“oh Haruki, you wanna get into U.A? that’s so cool. Didn’t know you wanted to be a hero!” She says, her voice was soft. Just like it always was, she was one of the only people that didn’t judge Haruki for how he looked. The other one being Midoriya… and yeah that’s it.

“y-yeah. I’m hoping to get in next year and since I’ve already finished middle school I thought I’d get a head start on studying and training” He answers quietly. His voice always gave up on him around the people he didn’t really know. And the librarian was someone he met quite often, yet he still always forgot her name. Thank god for name tags. “Ollie” oh right.

“well then I hope you can get in! I’ll be rooting for ya’ champ!” She adds giving him an energetic thumbs up.

“thanks. S-see you” Haruki answers heading out

When he’s out he realizes how absolutely stupid he sounds. Why does he keep stuttering? He hates it. whenever he’s Filius he’s confident. Filius doesn’t stutter, so why does Haruki do?

He goes to refill his water bottle – public water fountains are saving his life.

And then he sees someone throwing out a bunch of electronic parts

“woah! What are you doing? T-those things are literally so useful!” he blurts out, his lips moving on their own,

The person looks at them like he’s crazy, maybe he is. He did just tell someone to not throw out a destroyed … okay he can’t even tell what that was.

“you can have it then, if you want it.” They say throwing the bag at him, he quickly catches it. it’s practically full of old parts! Jackpot! He could make so much with this!

Sure maybe he looks even more homeless – if that’s possible. – cheerfully carrying a bag full of trash back home but he doesn’t care. his costume was begging for some upgrades. And he also has wanted to make a radio. He barely has any internet on his phone, since he’s kind of stealing it from the store right next to his apartment. But hey, their fault for not putting a password on it! if he can make a radio maybe he’d be able to listen to music, or hack into some government line. If governments still do that kind of thing. They probably don’t… well he can still try.

When he climbed back into his bedroom he puts the bag onto the floor, next to his hammock. He takes out his vigilante outfit – which he puts behind a broken wall in case someone finds his house. He covers the hole with a random tapestry he found in a dumpster.

Maybe his house isn’t the most clean one but he tries to at least sweep the floors. He takes his mask and some of the parts he gathered, realizing he could make a retractable part in the middle. This would allow eating and drinking without revealing his identity. His mask was black with blue accents. It was similar to a gas mask, in fact it had the ability to be a gas mask if needed. It also had a voice changer, it made his voice more monotone and robotic. Giving it static. Most of the time people can’t even tell what gender he is when he’s in his outfit. Which is the goal.

The less the public knows about his identity the better.

He starts working on the mask, finishing in about 30 minutes. Record time. He’s getting better, the fact that Astris was a scientist and sometimes taught him the basics of robotics was currently saving his ass.

He tried the mask on, playing with some buttons on the side of it, the mask had a bunch of hidden buttons in it, the filters on the sides of the mask having buttons that control his voice changer. Truth be told he could adjust his voice using his quirk but he didn’t want to use it too much. And it was easier to make the mask change his voice.

He looked at the pile of parts he still had left and he started picking apart anything that could help him build a radio.

“shit. Not enough. Missing a couple of important parts”

Haruki mumbles.

Be honest, you love digging in trash don’t you?

‘Max… why don’t you ever listen when I tell you to shut up?’

Because, I live to annoy you

The smirk on Max’ face can be heard from a mile away. But that doesn’t matter now since Haruki can see him now.

Max is standing right in front of him. Staring down onto the pile of trash  parts laying on the floor.

‘why did you show up?’

So that you can see my beautiful face

‘…your face is- was my face. I know what you look like dude.’

Well then I’m just reminding you of what you’ve lost.

‘…’

Heeeyyyy don’t you dare ignore me!

Max’ existence hurt Haruki. It made his head throb, his eyesight getting a bit blurry. And Max is doing that on purpose, he knows he is. Cause during fights whenever Max appears Haruki feels completely fine. Which means that Max chooses to give him a headache.

“that’s a dick move”

He says, out loud again. Why does he keep doing that recently? He needs to keep it under control. He has to get rid of that habit before it gets too out of hand.

He sighs and moves the parts he has that would help him in building the radio to the side, maybe he can find the other parts somewhere. Or he might also buy them if he completes this job, it does have decent pay. He was planning on saving it up so that he could start an “buy an actual apartment” fund. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he has to put an address down for the U.A application.

Maybe he could ask Midoriya if he can put his address? Izuku would understand right?

What if he calls the police on you?

What if he reports you to child services?

Are you ready to run? Are you sure he can be trusted?

I don’t …know actually.

Can he? Maybe he could try to talk to him more? To see what kind of person he is. It wouldn’t hurt would it? but that would take some time.

He opens up his notebook and makes a scheduled “Midoriya” time. He decided to text him every day, and he added a note to ask him to hang out at least once a week. This should help him get to know him.

Well should probably get started on that now.

He picks up his phone and looks at izuku’s number. Which he had saved for a long time but he never texted him anything.

“yo, ‘zuku”

Is that good? Is it too awkward? How do teenagers talk?!

“Hey Haruki! What is it? did you need anything?”

The text comes almost instantly. Woah he’s a quick typer.

“no, just wondering what you were doing tomorrow. Wanna meet up?”

“sure! What time? We can go to my place if you want to!”

Oh okay, well that saves the trouble of coming up with where to go. Saying “to the park” doesn’t really seem like something a regular 15 year old would do.

“maybe at 4pm? Since you still have school”

“alright! See you then!”

That was intense

You’re such a loser…

‘hey shut up! I haven’t texted people in 570 years!’

Those 570 years felt like six years back at the cult. You can’t use that excuse.

‘I think my point stands’

Right, so tomorrow I’m going over to Midoriya’s house.

OH MY GOD IM GOING OVER TO MIDORIYA’S HOUSE.

What if his mom won’t like me? What if I’ll act like a complete moron?! What if there’s some Japanese tradition about this that I don’t know?!

You’re pathetic….

Max says, his tone extremely judgmental.

What will I wear?

…you say that as if you two are going on a date…

‘what? No. Why do you say that about everyone I meet?’

Cause you act like you have a crush on everyone.

‘Oh’

Haruki then takes out his phone and googles ‘Japanese traditions for coming over to someone’s house for the first time’

Chapter Text

Shouta’s opinion on vigilante’s was mixed. Sure they were technically considered criminals, but the law is often wrong about many things. It was made by people who think a person can be either good or bad. By people who can only see black and white. So obviously it couldn’t be correct all the time. It was still there to protect people, Aizawa knew that, but deep down whenever he saw some reckless teenager being betrayed by the system and thrown out on the streets he can’t stop himself from trying to help them.

It’s never something too big, just giving them some spare food, patching up a bloody wound, or taking them to a hospital when they themselves are too injured to. It wasn’t much, definitely not enough to change their lives, but it was something.

Most vigilantes are nice people, who just didn’t have any other ways to get by. Many of them are children, same age as his students, getting into battles every night. It was a hard thought, but that was reality. Some people just didn’t have the privilege of being a teenager. And that was the worst part of it all. That every time he saw a child putting themselves in danger, he couldn’t see the same people as his students. The vigilantes were usually more mature, which they shouldn’t be. And the thought alone hurt Shouta.

They  shouldn’t be getting arrested after getting caught, they shouldn’t have been out there in the first place, they shouldn’t be treated like villains. Because they simply aren’t.

But that was just Shouta’s opinion. One he can’t be too vocal with. People don’t take kindly to those who say that the law is wrong. Especially when said so by a hero.

He was on the end of his patrol, he went out a little bit early than usual but that’s fine, that just meant that any villains didn’t knew what was going to hit them – not that they usually did. – He was taking down some criminals, a simple mugging, easy work. Most of these kinds of people didn’t even know how to hold a knife. He handcuffed one of them, just so that they can’t attack anyone, as they have been proving to be less than… cooperative. And then just as he turned to the other guy, he was taken out. Someone dropped on him from the rooftop of the building next to him. The villain seemed to be unconscious, and probably wouldn’t wake up any time soon. When his surprise passed he looked at who attacked the guy, and – hey isn’t that the vigilante that he read an article on last week? – well shit.

The vigilante looked at him, Their deep red eyes too fake of a color to be real, clearly as surprised as he was. And then they just ran off. Climbing the building next to them with an extraordinary speed no random vigilante should ever have. And so Shouta used some restraining tape on the other criminal, quickly made sure the woman who was being robbed was alright and then he chased after the runaway.

He didn’t exactly know why, he wasn’t planning on arresting them. He never did. They seemed to be a bit shorted than him. Well maybe a bit more than a little. Could they be a child? That would be some very ironic timing, but Aizawa wasn’t going to question whether the universe was just making a joke out of him.

He quickly caught up to the vigilante, trying to capture them using his scarf, but they managed to get out fairly quickly. They were fast, oddly fast. Maybe that was their quirk? Aizawa tried to erase it but nothing seemed to be happening, whatever. If that wasn’t their quirk then it might be something more dangerous. Something that he might not want to be activated. Although the person was running for their lives – maybe to them it felt like that was the case. – if they had a powerful quirk they probably would’ve used it to at least hit Shouta and get away faster.

That just proved his beliefs, vigilantes didn’t want to cause harm. Any normal villain would’ve attacked him immediately, but they didn’t. they ran instead, they probably didn’t notice him there and were trying to help the woman. That meant they weren’t bad people, even if the article he read tried to paint them out to be. - And hey, he needs to revisit that article. - Then he would maybe know anything about this new vigilante. Are they new though? Could this be their regular patrol time? It’s nearly sunrise. What kind of vigilante patrols during the day?

He could feel his eyes hurting, but he felt that if he stopped for even a second the vigilante would disappear, so he ran. Maybe if he caught up to the vigilante he could give them a jelly pack? They seem pretty malnourished. He doesn’t have any food on him so the jelly pack would have to do.

Many vigilantes didn’t eat for days on end, and he can tell that this one is probably one of them. He was  trying to capture them using his scarf but they somehow managed to dodge every time. They ran for a long time now. The sun shining. Shouta was getting tired, too tired. It’s been a while since someone was able to outrun him. Hell it’s been a while since someone escaped him. But somehow this vigilante will do it. He will be bested by a scared child in a mask.

The kid then grabbed the staff from their back and leaped over the street, they can jump pretty high under pressure. Shouta had to climb up a lamppost and climb up the building they were now at, putting some distance between them. Distance that he would not be able to close again.

He still was able to catch up a bit, but not enough to catch them with just his scarf. And from that point they seemed to be able to dodge it even better. Did they see who he was when he was climbing the building? It didn’t take him a long time to climb but who knew what the vigilante was doing then.

How did they not get tired of running yet? They were trained, probably for a long time. Who trained them? If they had an adult in their life then how could’ve they been able to sneak out for multiple nights straight without getting caught?

Why are they running as if their life will end if Shouta catches them?

How long have they both run for? Must be a lot. Shouta can feel his legs giving out. His eyes now in unbearable pain. He hasn’t been using his quirk that much since he realized the kid wouldn’t activate their quirk – if they had one - but he still had no access to his eyedrops until the chase was over

They run into a small alleyway. Smart choice, he can’t follow them in there without slowing down.

Then the kid flinched. It was small. But Aizawa, after his years of work as an underground hero, has learned to pick up on things like that. Why did they flinch? Did they realize something? Did they think he was going to hurt them? They probably did. Not many heroes treat vigilantes with respect.

When the kid starts to go into even smaller points of the alleyway Shouta has to stop. He got stuck in a few pipes the vigilante was able to pass through without any problems.

They look back at him for a second, just a small second but it tells so much. And just by their eyes he can tell. They felt relieved, he still saw fear, but it subsided. And then just as the chase started, it ended. The only was that Aizawa could go was backwards. His own patrol over now he decided to just return home. On the way he went back to the criminals he caught earlier and dropped them off at the police station. Leaving any paperwork he’s going to have to fill out for later. The sun already up, either the vigilante lived very close to the area they ran into or they now had to struggle going back home without anyone noticing them. ‘Did they even have a home?’ the thought was there. but Aizawa didn’t entertain it. As homeless as many vigilantes looked, most of them still had a house. Sure a dysfunctional one but a house nonetheless. ‘most’

Yet something was still screaming inside him that there’s more to this vigilante than he first thought. When he got home he greeted his husband, the blond sitting in front of the tv watching some English show he always watched while eating breakfast

“welcome home Sho’” Mic said smiling, it was always difficult for the both of them when the other was out the entire night. But if he was worried sick then he didn’t let it show.

Aizawa took off his boots, walked forward to Hizashi, set aside his bowl of all might themed cereal and hugged him. Kissing his cheek as he pulled away “Morning Hun’ you’re already ready for work?” He asks. It was around 6am wasn’t it? Mic usually wasn’t ready until 7, his hair takes a long time to style in his defense.

“It’s 7.30?” His husband looks at him confused,

7.30? Crap, that chase must’ve took longer than he thought it did. He has to start heading out now, even if he doesn’t have a homeroom class this year Mic does. Maybe he can still get some coffee? Mic is eating right now so he still has a few minutes.

He takes out a dark grey mug with various different cats on it and pours some coffee into it, thank god that his husband had the bright idea to brew him some. It’s a little bit cold but he can just warm it up. He sits next to Hizashi looking onto the tv. He isn’t fluent in English so he doesn’t understand most of the things that are happening but that just means he has an excuse to hear his husband rant about some stupid drama in the show.

When Mic finishes his cereal and Shouta his coffee it’s already 7.50am. Okay maybe Hizashi had a bit too much fun explaining why Amerie was mad at Harper because she made out with her crush.

They rushed to the car, Mic driving, as Shouta is a terrible driver. Their car was pretty fancy, too fancy for Aizawa’s liking but his husband wanted a pretty car so he got a pretty car. They could afford it so why not? While Hizashi was singing some pop song that played on the radio Shouta decided to re-read the article he found a couple of days before about the vigilante he met.

After meeting them he realized just how wrong the article was, it said they were 190cm? (6’2) the kid was 180cm (5’9) max, with platform boots. The article also said that they were quick to attack anyone and that their battle style was reckless, untrained and ‘childish?’ What does that even mean?

How can a fighting style be childish? From what Shouta saw the article wasn’t really a place where any good information could be found. Except, he got a name.

“Filius? Huh”

“Hm? Who’s that darling?” Shouta hadn’t even realized he said that out loud. Oh right he forgot to tell Mic about the chase he had that night, he will whenever he gets the time to. – he was going to do it now but they had just arrived at U.A

“Oh I’ll tell you when we’re back home” Aizawa responded, his voice the same monotone it always have been. Mic just nodded, he liked to store his energy before classes. Mic was naturally extroverted, but his hero persona was still an exaggeration of that. Usually on Wednesdays he had the most classes, which meant that it took the most amount of energy to keep up the loud way of speaking. So whenever he could, he just responded with small nods or grunts.

The School day was long, way too long. It got annoying. The students didn’t want to cooperate, they were reckless. And honestly now he understood what ‘childish fighting style’ meant. Still it was something that couldn’t be used to describe the vigilan- Filius. Even if the two of them didn’t fight, Aizawa still saw their running ability. And someone who was able to escape him definitely is good at fighting.

Aizawa was sitting in the teacher’s lounge for his free period. Grading some tests. It was rare he had tests to grade for this school year, since he taught heroics, and his own class got expelled. But whatever he would just get this over with as fast as he could.

He also tried to find more info about the vigilante but besides a few statements of the people they helped and some shadowy pictures of them there was nothing.

When Aizawa and Mic got home they both just decided to watch some movies before he had to go out to patrol again. (he really needed to cut down the patrol times, or else he really wouldn’t be getting any sleep other than his naps). He was half paying attention to the movie of mic’s selection. Some rom-com. It was a decent movie. But Aizawa didn’t really care for movies.

If he went out early again would he see the ki- Filius?

Shouta had told his husband about the vigilante on the car ride over, Hizashi was worried – obviously – it’s not every day that you get into a chase around the whole city. Maybe he really should go out early. Fuck it he decided.

The kid actually looked as if they would starve any second, that was definitely not anywhere near the healthy weight a person their height should have. Maybe they became a vigilante cause they couldn’t afford food? Maybe they’re somehow doing jobs for clients? It was those types of vigilantes that hurt Shouta the most. The ones that had no other choices. The ones in situations in which many others would’ve just became villains. The ones that chose to do good no matter what.

When the time for his patrol came he packed some nutrition bars – it wasn’t good food or anything but if he even managed to at least throw them at the kid then he would be happy. – convincing his husband to let him off the couch was pretty easy. Mic knew that the earlier he went out meant that he’d come back sooner, and that was enough to convince him to go.

His patrol was boring, not many villains out. And if there were any it was the usual drunken guys who had too much self-confidence. But just as it was nearing 1am, Eraser was walking around the city again, just as he did most nights. And just like that, he saw them. Standing on top of a rooftop, looking down onto the civilians talking in front of him.

‘Were they really civilians?’

He ducked into an alley and climbed the building slowly, making sure to not make any noise. He doesn’t know if Filius saw him, if they did then they’re probably already gone from the rooftop. When he was on top he found a pleasant surprise.

“Filius” He said calmly, keeping his distance as if to not startle the vigilante. They didn’t look back. In fact they didn’t even look surprised. ‘Did they saw him?’ ‘Why didn’t they run then?’

“Eraserhead.” They answered. Their voice robotic, obviously changed by the mask. It concealed any type of identification method. Eraserhead had been calling them ‘they’ simply cause he just cannot tell their gender by the way that they act, sound or look. And he had a feeling that, that was the exact point of making the voice as robotic as it is. How did they even know who he is? Probably the same way Shouta knew who they were. Aizawa tries to keep his identity a secret as well. He just doesn’t like popularity. It seemed like a pain to have constant reporters knocking on your door, trying to find out every little detail about you.

“You patrol these parts of town?” Filius asked. Turning around. Their deep red eyes piercing through him. An emotion he couldn’t quite read. He assumed that just like with the mask, the eye contacts weren’t meant to look realistic. They were meant to be a challenge. A way to say ‘yeah, they’re fake. So what?’. “Doesn’t matter. If you’re going to attack me please get on with it. I’m busy.”

Oh? ‘Busy with what?’ Aizawa took a step closer. Making sure the kid wouldn’t run. He crouched on the rooftop, a few feet away from Filius. Looking down he still noticed the two people talking. He couldn’t pick up on what they were saying, yet the kid seemed to be able to.

The two people seemed to get into an argument, and just as the guy on the right took out a gun Filius jumped right down onto him. ‘some kind of signature move?’ Eraserhead would’ve stepped in but he wanted to see how the kid fought. ‘Was it really reckless?’ The answer he got? A very simple no. Their moves were quick, almost too quick to register, they made easy work of the one other guy standing. Shouta didn’t know why he attacked the other one too. Were they in on it? His question is quickly answered as the kid takes something out of the man’s pocket. A clear zip-lock bag. And god damn it, that’s drugs.

Shouta drops down. Holds out his hand

“Give that to me” He says, his voice stern, commanding. He didn’t know whether Filius was doing that to stop the man from getting drugs or if he was mugging the guy attempting to get them for himself. And this was some strong shit. He saw it before used for kidnappings. It would be dangerous to leave to a random Kid.

They looked up at him, expression still something that Aizawa didn’t know how to describe. It just seemed like boredom. “you know what it is?” They ask raising the bag next to their head.

“Yeah, it’s a sleep inducing drug. Used commonly in kidnappings but if you really tried you could get pretty high because of it. the effects last long though, and using it, no matter what dosage can be extremely dangerous.” He answers raising a brow. Did he just willingly give info to a criminal?

They throw the bag to him. “…” they stay silent for a moment just… staring at him. “Thanks.” They then muttered. It was quiet but Shouta heard it.

He knew that he now had limited time before Filius was going to leave. He dug out the nutrition bar from his utility belt and walking past the vigilante he forcibly shoved it into the kid’s chest. They stared at the bar in their hands for a second. Before a muttered “what?” But Eraser didn’t answer. He was already walking away, knowing that his time was up. They wouldn’t starve today and that was what mattered to him right now. He took the two unconscious criminals with him. Dragging them to a police station, when he got there though he managed to get some info. Apparently these two were part of an organization, and may provide some important intel. A human trafficking ring. The thought made Eraserhead feel disgusted. How can someone think of doing that? It was inhumane. – wait was the kid gathering information on them? – that’s dumb. Obviously not. Why would they? Vigilantes usually keep to small crimes, they don’t do busts like these. And they were young, that was something Aizawa knew for sure. No one their age should even begin thinking about putting themselves in so much danger.

Just then Detective Tsukauchi walked into the room Shouta was in.

“Oh Eraserhead. I was just about to call you” The detective says, walking towards him in a hurry. “could we talk? I think I might need your help in this case I’m working on.”

That meant more paperwork, and more paperwork equaled more headaches but fine. Tsukauchi didn’t ask much of Aizawa, so he could help him once in a while. Aizawa didn’t Expect the case to be about the vigilante he saw. Apparently Naomasa noticed that their patrols overlapped. Accepting the offer would mean that Shouta was officially trying to arrest the kid. Which he had no intention of – at least not for now. He hasn’t actually seen much of how the vigilante operates. If they are just a cold hearted killer then he’ll have no problem arresting them on the spot.

“Would the kid be thrown into Tartarus?” Aizawa asked, it was an important fact that he needed to know. Shouta didn’t know whether the detective shared his views on vigilantes, but he knew that he wasn’t heartless. There’s no way that Tsukauchi can look at someone actually helping where many heroes failed and think that they’re a villain right? But many times before Aizawa was proven wrong on that conviction, so he’d rather not assume things like that

“So far they haven’t done anything as bad that would get them into Tartarus, but they have been seen meddling with recent cases, or fighting bigger villains. So we can’t be sure about whether they will or not be thrown into Tartarus” The detective says again, tilting his head “you saw that they’re young right? That’s the reason for that question”

He asked but they both knew it really wasn’t a question.

“They have potential. They’re most likely a minor.” Shouta pointed out,

“They’re a criminal Eraser. They need to be detained and stopped.”

Eraserhead didn’t argue anymore. He wasn’t going to try and convince the detective to change his viewpoint. Maybe if he ever saw the vigilante? Maybe if he heard them speak, or fight? Maybe then he’d know that they don’t deserve to rot away in some prison cell. But Aizawa just accepted the case and went on with his day.

***

It was Thursday, Haruki was standing outside of Midoriya’s house. He decided to dress in one of his better clothing, since he would be meeting the boy’s mom. He couldn’t look homeless this time. It was difficult to cover his whole body during spring, May was a warm month. And he usually didn’t like showing his scars to any friends. Random strangers were fine. Midoriya already saw them of course, but his mother would probably start asking questions. And so far saying that he was experimented on by his own father and sometimes the experiments went a little overboard leaving scars wasn’t something he thought that people would accept as an answer.

So he put on a black turtleneck – specifically thrifted to cover his neck – a light blue Best Jeanist shirt, some black jean pants, his black leather gloves obviously and brown boots. All of his clothes were thrifted. Except for his costume, he made that himself. He hoped that he didn’t look too bad. He really tried today. The eyebags under his eyes still showing but there was nothing he could do about those.

He read online that it’s common to bring a gift over, he wanted to maybe buy some macaroons but they were out of his budget.

Do things ‘in your budget’ exist?

Max was back again. He had grown used to him being gone after talking with the eraser hero for a little bit longer. He doesn’t know why he didn’t run. He should have. He really should have. That could’ve ended horribly, it could’ve ended with him being arrested. Though honestly what happened was by far the best case scenario, like it was so good that he wouldn’t be able to even think of it. Max was gone, he got some info about what kind of drugs they used for his next mission and got a ‘present mic’ themed nutrition bar. Who’s present mic? He didn’t peg Aizawa to be a fanboy of any pro heroes. But still it was nice to eat something. His food situation wasn’t terrible. He wouldn’t starve but he wasn’t really ‘full’ either.

He knocked onto the door to Midoriya’s house, hoping he won’t make a bad impression.

“Oh hi Haruki! Come in! come in!” Izuku says smiling. Haruki walks into his house and takes off his shoes. (as the internet told him is something he’s supposed to do.)

“Hi ‘Zuku. Oh! Good Evening Ms. Midoriya!” Haruki answered quickly as Izuku’s mother walked into the hallway.

“Hello there! it’s nice to finally meet you! I’ve heard a lot about you! I’m so glad my Izuku has found some new friends!” She exclaimed walking into the living room. The two boys following behind

“mom don’t say that!” Izuku says with embarrassment, well Haruki knew that Midoriya probably didn’t have many friends, but he didn’t either so he wasn’t about to start judging.

They went into ‘Zuku’s room, it was pretty clean. With all might posters and figurines everywhere. To be expected. Haruki didn’t know what to do. Should he sit? Should he stand? What do teenagers do?!

Fil, I’m… disappointed in you.

“Do you uh.. want to watch a movie?” Midoriya says, the atmosphere in the room obviously awkward. “T-there’s this new one about underground heroes! And the general impact on which their help has on society! Even though most people don’t realize it! Can you believe it? People not even realizing that they’re being saved by a hero?” He starts rambling, which seems to somehow life the awkwardness, it was good to at least have one topic they could both talk about.

“hm? Sure.” Haruki answers smiling softly, sitting beside Izuku on his bed. The boy pulls up a laptop and leans against the wall putting the laptop between our laps.

The movie was interesting, it had a couple of heroes from Musutafu, some Haruki seen himself. There was quite a long part about Eraserhead, maybe that’s why Midoriya chose to watch this movie? ‘Did he think I would be interested in that?’ There was a bit of info that neither Haruki nor Izuku knew, and some past cases Eraser was in. He’s impressive, ‘how does the scarf work?’ it can’t be a part of his quirk right? His quirk is Erasure, why would it include controlling a scarf?

“how do you think the scarf works?” Haruki asks, looking over to the already mumbling boy sitting next to him

“well I’ve heard a theory about it being made with his hair so that whenever he uses his quirk it floats, yet that still doesn’t explain why he can control it since his hair simply lifts up while he can use his scarf as a capture weapon. He has also stated that it took him a long time to learn how to use it so it’s probably something that everyone can master if they train long enough. So there really isn’t an explanation for it.” Midoriya keeps mumbling but honestly the second Haruki heard that there’s no confirmed way that the scarf works he just zoned out. Maybe if he knew how it worked he could make a better plan to defeat him in case they meet again. Maybe he didn’t attack him that time but he’s still a pro, he still has to arrest him. And he doesn’t trust any pro hero. They’re all just frauds, pretending that they’re trying to help but the second their quirks aren’t compatible with the danger they just leave the scene for someone else to save.

It's dumb, the whole system is just plain stupid. And heroes that are only in it for the popularity do more harm than good.

When the movie ends they just… Talk, about heroes, about villains, about quirks, about everything they could. It was nice. Izuku was an interesting person. But damn was he weak. Haruki could pick him up with one hand if he wanted to. In fact they decided to arm wrestle and Izuku didn’t even last a second. It was a bit funny. Seeing him try so hard. He could get stronger if he tried.

After a couple of hours Midoriya’s mom called them to eat dinner, and woah it was 7pm already? Has Haruki really been here for 3 hours? But he’s quickly taken out of his thoughts by the sight of the dinner, Christ, it was like a whole buffet. Was Midoriya rich? Did he really eat this much every day?

The food looked absolutely amazing, and it tasted that way as well, Haruki hasn’t eaten this well for a while. He hoped it wasn’t too rude of him to refuse the fish, he still had a hard time eating meat. He really has to get over that fear, how can he get stronger if he’s defeated by a dead animal?

Izuku’s mom is a lovely lady, incredibly nice. He knows who ‘Zuku got it from now. They talked for a bit during dinner, she told some embarrassing stories from Midoriya’s past – to which the boy begged his mom to stop but in normal mom fashion she didn’t. – it was nice. It felt safe. He almost felt jealous for the boy. But he shot that feeling down quickly. He shouldn’t be jealous. He doesn’t need a family. He never needed one.

But when he looks at how warm it is here, how happy Izuku looks, he can’t help but think about what could’ve been if his father wasn’t an asshole.

Do you think that mother wanted to have a life like this with you?

Max asks, the usual sarcasm gone from his tone. his question hits hard. Too hard. And it hit even harder when he realized that no, she wouldn’t. She was an amazing woman. But, she still chose father. She still knew who he was and what he did, she may have been nice and caring but she knew what she was getting into.

Fuck he got lost in thought again. Why does he keep doing that?

When they finish dinner, Haruki helps out with the washing up, even if Ms. Midoriya said he didn’t need to. He didn’t mind cleaning after himself, in fact he liked it. It helped him feel like he wasn’t a burden, as if he could somehow repay for the food he has eaten. Even though nobody asked him to.

And then for some reason, he and Izuku just… study? That’s something he didn’t expect, but apparently Midoriya has a test he needs to prepare for and Haruki decided to study with him, since it was in the material he’s going to have to learn anyway. It was around 9pm that he realized he should probably leave. He has been there for 5 hours, and as nice as the Midoriya household was, he didn’t want to overstay his welcome. So he said his goodbyes, and went back home

‘Maybe Midoriya can be trusted?’

You can’t be sure

‘He’s really nice, and I don’t think that he’s the kind of person to report me to the police after learning my identity or something’

Oh? You’re thinking of telling him about Filius? Here I thought you had at least 10 IQ.

‘Max. I’m just saying. If it comes to it, he might be the one person that should know? And even if not, I could at least trust him to let him know about my living situation?’

… Do what you want, but when you’re being taken by child services don’t blame me.

‘you’re overreacting.’

And Max didn’t respond. He never did, he always thought he was above Haruki. He wasn’t. He’s just some stupid false person that was implanted into his brain. He doesn’t know anything. Haruki walked back to his apartment, since he already studied the material for today with Izuku he doesn’t have to worry about it.

He jumped onto his floor and entered his room. Laying on the DIY hammock he made out of some blanket he saw laying outside of someone’s yard in a box titled “take what you need :)” and well he needed something to sleep on so he took it. It actually was pretty cozy, a really good blanket. He didn’t know why someone would want to give it away.

He still had some time before his patrol. He usually went out around 11pm. It was early, sure but he didn’t had many more things to do.

He stared at the celling, not doing anything and not thinking anything. It worked for a minute but then his feelings caught up with him again. The memories of his siblings, his old friends. He lost them. Some for good. Some, he would have to save later on in his life, when he’s strong enough to defeat father.

Astris was always with him. They were basically inseparable, even if they had a fight about Alekai they were still siblings. They were still friends.

He remembers when he couldn’t sleep, he’d walk out onto the balcony of the castle, Astris was usually there. She smoked quite a lot so it was common to find her outside. He walked up to the railing and they’d just… talk. For so long the sun was starting to rise when they were finished. It was relaxing, it was safe. He misses those nights.

He couldn’t sit still anymore, he sat up on the hammock and walked to a convenience store. It was a shitty store, basically falling apart. In the bad part of town. But that’s why he went there. nobody would ID him. He looked at the cigarette options, they were a bit pricey but he’d manage. The job he was going to do tomorrow would pay him enough, he might not eat dinner tonight but when does he ever eat dinner?

Marlboro, the classical one, with the red package and all. It looked the most cigarette looking cigarettes.

That sentence only makes sense to you

‘So? I’m the only one that’s supposed to hear it.’

He buys the cigarettes, without getting ID’d the shop keep didn’t care as long as he got the money. He returns to his building, stopping on the rooftop. He looks at the cigarettes, he shouldn’t smoke. What if he gets addicted? Is it true that it’s incredibly easy to get addicted?

He puts the box up to his nose to just smell it, that familiar scent. It wasn’t the exact same as his sister but it was close enough.

You are genuinely so pathetic.

I don’t care – Haruki thinks, but this time, not in response to Max. Even if Max heard it.

 He puts the box into his pocket and he goes into his room. Realizing the time he gets dressed into his vigilante costume and goes out.

The streets are always littered with criminals at this time. He’s doing the heroes work for them, and doing it faster too. If he’s fast enough maybe he can go check if the electronic shop thrown out any messed up things, he could get a lot of spare parts from that. So what if it’s technically digging in trash? He needs those things. And he still wants that radio. The only way he can get a radio is if he finds the parts he’s missing. He walks around the town, on the rooftops, in alleyways, sometimes just straight up on the sidewalk. It’s quiet. Unusually quiet.

And then he sees it, he’s inside some dark alley when a bunch of, collage students by the looks of it suddenly they inject something into their necks and their quirks start going crazy, and one of those quirks was a huge transformation quirk, the persons skin started to almost leak, and the liquid seemed to be acidic, as it left the street destroyed.

Filius quickly took his bo-staff in hand and the capture tape he kept in his utility belt. He quickly rushed to the couple of students, the others also attacking but their quirks seem to be something weak. Filius kicks the villains stomach from the side. Sending him to hit a dumpster in the alley across the street. He heard about the drug before ‘Trigger’ apparently a few years ago some vigilantes did a whole bust on the operation, but the drug is still one of the most popular ones on the market. The effects will only last a couple of minutes if the drug was made in Asia. But if the one this person used was imported from America it might be a few hours before he calms down.

Still just because their quirks were enhanced doesn’t mean that they can suddenly fight. In fact they’re all kind of weak. He quickly runs toward the dumpster, which is now completely melted, why couldn’t he meet Eraserhead today? The Erasure hero would’ve been much help in this fight. And if he was going to annoy Filius on his patrols he could’ve at least done it when he could have been useful.

Filius sighs internally as the villains attacks him before he could tie him up in the capture tape. He hopes his bo-staff is strong enough to withstand his quirk. He does not need to pay for it to be replaced. It’s expensive equipment. Maybe the bo-staff could but no other part of his costume could. And he cannot afford to lose any part of his costume today. Not before tomorrow. On Saturday they can melt his costume as much as they can, but not today. He has to dodge when the villain somehow throws the acid at him. How did he even pick up a liquid? Filius climbs up a window on the building next to them and plunges down onto the villain. The guy was obviously drunk before turning to this. And trigger did not help that. He’s still laying down when the bo-staff hits him. Filius leaps off of him as to not hurt him too much. He holds himself up on the pipes going over the side of the building. The villain seemed to get affected by the hit a little bit too much then Fil intended as the guy just doubles over and pukes.

‘oof- must’ve hit the stomach’

He can hear Max laughing loudly in his head.

Take care of this guy quickly. No more time.

Filius gets a bit confused at what this meant when he starts to feel another quirk entering the scene. Behind him there’s a strong transformation quirk, and the others students quirk lightly fade, meaning they are now unconscious. And then, police sirens can be heard from the distance. Fuck, these guys started too big of a commotion. Filius looks back at who is fighting the villains. ‘IS THAT KAMUI WOODS?! What the hell is he doing out patrolling at midnight?’

Fil quickly regained his composure, Kamui woods now spotted him. He had to be quick, before the villain stood up. He quickly took out the capture tape and loosely tied the villain up before kicking him toward Kamui. The police cars have caught up with him then, and he was spotted. He knew that it meant that Kamui had to go after him now. Maybe if the police wasn’t there he wouldn’t have started the chase.

The entire situation was way too familiar. He was being chased through Musutafu by a pro hero. The hero in question though, was currently in the top 10. Which made this situation even worse, and he couldn’t even avoid him like he did with Eraser as Kamui was shorter than him. Police cars driving next to the buildings they were running on. He saw Kamui start his final move, the same move he saw Midoriya rant about at some point in their ‘friendship?’ Thanks to that he now knew how to get away from it. He jumped into the air, going pretty high in average human standards. Wood going everywhere. Filius lands beside the huge wood prison, which Kamui was already starting to retract into his body. And he rapidly jumped onto the next building, running fast. He had a thought whether he should run as fast as he can, then the police would probably add “super speed” to the list of his possible quirks. But he decided against it, it would have been funny, but his legs would’ve hurt so much the next day. And once again, he had the important mission.

So he settled for the regular – still oddly fast for a human – speed.  He quickly out run him, Kamui seeming to have given up on chasing him. But the police cars haven’t. It was way easier for him to avoid them though. Cars cannot follow him on rooftops, cars cannot go into alleyways, and cars certainly cannot go into a hidden lounge for … less than legal individuals.

He wasn’t reckless though, he wasn’t going to enter it without knowing that the police can’t see where he’s going. There weren’t any cameras here, all the police cars were a few streets behind and there currently were no civilians or heroes on the street. He still used the back entrance, just to be safe, using a sewer, it wasn’t the most clean entrance, but Filius has learned to not be picky.

When he reaches the lounge it is filled with members. It was nice, familiar. He was respected here. By most at least, he had the highest success rate on missions and he’s the one that takes the most missions out of every member. So he quickly gained some reputation when he became a member. Which wasn’t easy by the way. He was a vigilante for a few weeks at the time, finding this place because of some villains he caught. They were fighting, and after some ‘questioning’ he managed to get the info about the lounge. One of the villains apparently broke an important rule and betrayed the lounge. So the other one was trying to murder him…

Childish behaviour by Filius’ standards, so he just caught both of them and they’re currently rotting away in prison because many other crimes have been found on their record when he anonymously dropped them off at the police station. Funny.

Fil decided to check the lounge out, and when he walked in he was immediately attacked. Making sure not to hurt anyone too much he took the people out, the remaining members deciding to question him, and after that he was given a mission as a “test of loyalty” the mission was extremely easy, just stalking someone that was a convicted abuser. Which he really did turn out to be and it only took Fil literally 30 minutes of watching them through the windows of his house.

So he is now officially a member. Some of the people he originally beat up still hold a grudge against him, saying that he shouldn’t be here as usually they were more strict with who can be a member and who cannot. But many people respect him, he considers them acquaintances at best. Sometimes helping them with missions, and putting them in contact with some of his own connections.

It turns out that when you’re doing less than legal jobs for others, they’re very likely to help you with other, less than legal things. Which can be a very big help whenever he needs info on something, his clients have a lot of connections. More than he does. Makes sense though, if they’re ready to pay vigilantes and the occasional underground hero just to do a simple job then they probably do have a shit ton of illegal connections.

He heads up to the bar, the bartender today was one of the ones that didn’t like him

“What are you doing here Lil’ guy?” He asks in a mocking tone, making sure to be as loud as he can trying to embarrass Filius.

“I’d say your mom, but I doubt that you ever had one.” He answers coldly as he walks up to the mirrors on the wall.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Filius smirked, they both knew he couldn’t kill him, not inside the lounge at least, he would immediately get attacked by everyone in the lounge.

“Why? you gonna miss me” He teases. Looking back at the bar from the mirrors.

The bartender sighs running a hand over his face “Kid, don’t push your luck.” He adds.

Fil just rolls his eyes and walks over to the job board. Seeing if there were some easy ones to do. He wasn’t supposed to accept a job until Sunday but since he’s already here he might as well do something. He picks up a few easy jobs, they’d pay decent all add up.

The first one was a regular spy job on some asshole millionaire in the area, the second one, would take a bit more time, he would need to locate someone and bring them to the client, who was an underground hero working on a case about the run away, it must be a difficult investigation if the hero is willing to work with criminals. And the third job, was the biggest one, he decided it would be the one for next week. It paid the most but it would mean he had to break into a police station.

He took the papers from the cork board, and took pictures of the job with his phone, he was going to contact the clients when he got home.

Now though? He stuck the paper into his pants pockets and went back to patrol.

He made sure that the police had given up on trying to find him, and they did. He walked back to the place where he detained the trigger user and there as he got closer, he felt many quirks. One of them familiar.

Eraserhead.

“Kamui said that it was indeed Filius who defeated the villain, the criminals quirk explaining the damages done to the dumpster and the street.” A detective says, Filius hasn’t seen him before, is he the detective that’s working on his case? Theres also a police officer with a cat head assessing the damages and any possible evidence.

“If Kamui was here why wasn’t the kid arrested”

‘Eraserhead you traitor’ Filius thought, but it was half serious. He knew that Eraser was just trying to arrest him. Fil was stupid for thinking, even for a second that maybe the hero wouldn’t arrest him. But of course he wanted to, the nutrition bar was probably just a bribe. And he took it. Christ he was so dumb.

He watched from behind a building, spying.

“The vigilante managed to escape Kamui’s special attack and then ran away before he could go after them.” The detective adds. Picking something off the ground. His knife. The pocket knife Filius kept in his boot. He had other knives on him but losing one meant needing to replace it. And those were special knives, they were made with metal that could cut through reinforced materials like Eraserhead’s scarf, they – just like every other piece of equipment Filius had – were expensive to replace.

He knew that what he was doing was stupid, but he had an idea, he took another knife out of his utility belt. Pulled back his shirt and just slit the side of his stomach. It hurt, it hurt like hell. But it was one of the easier ways he could activate his quirk. The black liquid starting to spill from him, careful to not let it touch the ground he activated his quirk, and gave himself his wings back. They were incredibly defensive, a bullet wouldn’t be able to pass them, and he could easily control the feathers even if they weren’t connected to his body. so he took a couple of feathers and put them onto his chest under his shirt.

Filius hated his wings, they weren’t his, they never was. They were fathers, they used to be permanent, but he cut them off. He could still remember the feeling of blood spilling, of the wings disconnecting from his body, of the way the knife felt cold at first but warmed up as he went on. It hurt, he wasn’t going to lie and say that it didn’t. It was incredibly painful, but hey, no pain no gain right? Father was mad when he saw what he did. The punishment hurt even more than the action. But that’s how punishments work.

The scars were always going to be there, too big to heal properly, and father made sure that they wouldn’t. He wanted the scars to stay, to remind Filius what he did. He hated having to use his wings again. But there were around 5 police officers there, all of which had guns on them. So he had to.

It was really a good idea that he made his shirt with elastic material as if he didn’t, he knew that it would be torn from the wings by now. He retracted his wings. The cut already stopped its bleeding. He kept the knife in his gloved hand, readjusted his beanie and mask, and walked forwards to the detective.

“Nice weather isn’t it?” He says, his tone cheerful, hoping that It went through the voice changer. “I actually think that that is mine. Would be great to get it back”

The detective, Eraserhead and the couple of other police officers looked at him immediately, Eraser already activating his quirk, his scarf floating.

“Didn’t think that you’d be so dumb as to show up back here” the tired looking detective answers.

“well 80% of criminals come back to the scene of the crime” Filius walks closer to them, the police officers he passed moving away from him - Guess he has a reputation even with the police -  he stood a couple of feet from the detective “And 94% of statistics are made up” He winks.

“You’re obviously young, why don’t you just give in. You might only get a year with good behaviour. If the judge is nice they might let you go with some community service. But you have to cooperate”

“Look Detective “I’m-better-than-anyone-younger” You don’t know my age, you don’t know my identity, you don’t know my quirk, hell you don’t even know my gender. So why don’t you just give me my knife back and I can return to doing your job for you, so you have less paperwork?” Fil replied, holding out his hand.

“Tsukauchi. And what’s stopping me from arresting you right here?” The detective questioned with a smile, he knew that if Filius decided to show off that knife he’s holding that would be taken as a threat and he would have every right and more to attack him right then and there.

“Do I still have to prove that you won’t be able to arrest me? I’ve already escaped your heroes twice. And now I know more about you, and you still know nothing about me.”

Silence falls for a second, Filius knows that the detective knows that he’s right.

“My knife.” He says extending his hand further “There’s no prints on it. I don’t want to go through the trouble of getting another one.”

After a moment of consideration Tsukauchi gave him his knife back. Filius quickly puts it inside his pants pocket, taking out his bo-staff and extending it so it boosts him up, he jumps between the sides of the two buildings between them and he leaves.

***

“I told you that they were a kid” Aizawa says to Naomasa, his scarf falling back down onto his shoulders.

“Doesn’t change the fact that they’re a criminal Eraserhead.” The detective sighs. “Do you think I want to arrest them? If I don’t have any leads on this case the hero commission will take care of it themselves”

Aizawa looks at him shocked, the hero commission is something not to be messed with, if they want to catch someone, they will.

***

He successfully got his knife back, his heart racing. He was 80% sure he was going to have to run from the police twice in the same day because of that. But to his surprise, detective “Tsukauchi” actually did give him his knife back. He looked over the knife, noting If there were any trackers on it, he even had Max check it out. It was clean. Filius went back to his house and immediately took off his costume and just went to sleep, meeting Max in is sleep as usual. Recently he realized that he could use his dreams to train even more and so he actually started trying his best to defeat Max. He hasn’t succeeded.

When Haruki woke up he felt terrible, he looked terrible too. It was one of those days where whenever he looked at himself, he didn’t recognize the thing he saw as ‘him’. He sometimes had those days, the days where he can’t help but notice the distance between him and humanity.

He went outside in some random outfit, this time more covering. Most of his scars were covered so at least any dirty looks he got was from concern. He went to a nearby water fountain and refilled his water bottles, when he went back he thanked himself for deciding to drop workouts, patrol and studying for today. He had hours until he was going to go out on the mission. He could go scout for additional information or supplies. Which reminds him that he didn’t have time to dig around for parts of the radio. He put on some black tracksuit pants. His worn out brown combat boots, the usual black turtleneck compression shirt. He loves turtlenecks they cover his neck scars. He also puts on his black and white hoodie. He found some ripped shirt he couldn’t wear anymore because of the holes and wrapped it up around his face to cover it.

He couldn’t wear his vigilante outfit during the day. That’s just asking to be caught. Haruki liked going to the local electronics shop. Well to its dumpsters at least. It was clean, because there was never any food or trash to throw out, and sometimes he found some spare parts.

This day seemed to be his lucky day, he found 4 out of the 8 parts that he needed for the radio. And some other parts he could use if any parts of his costume broke.

‘holy shit score!’ He nearly says out loud when he finds a nearly new laptop. It was only a little bit busted up. He could 100% fix it. and then he’d have a laptop! That would be great for his job.

He decides that he’s content with his findings and he returns to his apartment, having to be extra careful about jumping onto the floor he lives on, to not break the laptop he’s carrying even more. He wanted to start repairing it now but then he got a text

“Filius. I heard from a friend that you are interested in this operation”

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It was one of his past clients, the woman was nice, she was sort of a motherly figure, she worked at the family ran diner in the city. She had a family member gone missing, and after months of the hero commission doing nothing she posted a job at the lounge and Fil picked it up.

The pictures she sent were simple ones, one of two people talking, a newspaper, and some powder in a clear baggie, the same one that Filius confiscated on his patrol, same one he gave to Eraser. Well not like he had any use for it anyway, he usually turns this stuff to the police himself if he finds it so he was glad that he could get the drugs disposed of legally and get some more info about them.

The newspaper was talking about some kidnapping, the victim apparently escaped and went to the police, seemed simple at first but the drug they used for the kidnapping. Same one. This drug was pretty expensive, and not found often, in this area the mention of this drug meant that it was connected to the mission.

He then realized that all of the workers in the trafficking ring were all seen around the same area, the ones he got the baggie from, the ones on the newspaper, the ones in the picture. They were all different people, working in the same place, completely away from said place. That was odd. There was something there.

‘Max, you want to be useful for a change?’

… fine, I’ll search for any secret rooms. Come on.

Max answered sighing. It was nice to have a ghost/hallucination/alter-ego/whatever-the-fuck by his side. And besides both Haruki and Max knew that if he wanted to defeat father, they both had to get stronger. So without saying anything, Max started helping a lot more.

Haruki walked over to the place where the villains were seen, this time. Surprisingly not an alleyway. It feels like everything in this town is done inside alleyways so this is a nice change of pace. It’s not a prettier place though, an abandoned hospital. It was in the middle of all the sighting spots. Literally in the middle.

When Haruki entered – still in his DIY delinquent outfit – he noticed that the hospital looked quite beautiful, it was abandoned for a long time so grass and vines started growing inside it. Any holes in the roof now making light shine through onto the concrete below helping yellow flowers bloom.

Haruki had to focus on the task at hand though, but not before taking a couple of pictures. He always took pictures of nature recently. He was stripped of it for 570 years (rounded up), so he has every right to appreciate it now. He had a bunch of folders saved on his phone of different types of nature pics ranging from “forests” to “Yellow-greenish vibe” only he could understand them, but he was the only one that should understand them.

He then hid his phone back into his pocket, hoping that he will be able to sort the pictures to a folder when he gets a moment of peace. He walks around the hospital, trying to not make any noise – which he was good at, thanks to Father’s mandatory training. And other things Haruki had to do because of Father.

‘anything?’

We just got in, I’d tell you if I saw anything.

Haruki didn’t know how Max scouted the area, how he saw things. He kind of imagined it to be similar to spectator mode in Minecraft. And forgive the childish comparison but it was the only game Haruki remembers from his childhood. He didn’t have an Xbox in the cult. So memories from when he was playing Minecraft as a little 8 year old are one of the few things he remembers from those times.

Haruki finds stairs to the basement of the hospital. Probably used to be some kind of operation room, though a weird one. It had a single bed like structure in the middle. And it was surrounded by now broken machinery, here. The natural light flowing in now stopping, leaving him relying just on his eyesight. His vision is only slightly better than average, slightly. He and father didn’t think it was important enough to enhance it. So he can’t actually see very well. He walks around the busted up medical equipment and the only thing he can think of is that maybe there’s some spare parts there that he could still salvage. That’s all he can ever think about whenever he sees not working electronics. Though is medical equipment considered electronics? He didn’t know, neither did he care. He’s only missing 4 pieces for the radio. He’s sure that he can find them somewhere around here.

Well, he says 4 pieces but honestly it's much more than that. 4 pieces needed for it to be functional. He can make it not fall apart by using some random scrap. And that’s laying around everywhere.

There’s a hidden basement, the room next to us has a hatch down. It is filled with people, though if you’re sneaky enough you might be able to go through.

That – was a lot of useful info. Filius went into the next room, very similar to the one he was in right now. He crouched when he spotted the hatch. He could feel faint quirks, most of them weak. Almost quirkless. He knew that it was safe to go down as the quirks were at least a few rooms away.

He opened the hatch as quietly as possible, and dropped down. Making sure to not make any noises that were avoidable. If he eavesdrops on any conversation maybe he could find out what this place is. It’s definitely connected to the trafficking ring, but how? And just as he entered the next room he realized what this place was.

A fucking lab. And holy shit that’s a lot of illegal drugs.

All drugs are illegal.

‘medicine is also considered drugs. And that’s very legal’ he stated in a very snarky tone inside his mind. He could feel Max’ scoff.

The room he was in was empty, crap he couldn’t do a bust on this place, if he did it now, the hostages would be moved from the location he knows they’re in, and then he wouldn’t be able to complete his mission, but he couldn’t do it after either because as soon as the main building sends the info that they’ve been infiltrated then the people here would run, and take as much of these things with them as they could. He got an idea

A terrible idea, but he had learned that the best ideas are the worst ones.

You are begging to be caught

He didn’t respond.  He takes out his phone and snaps pictures of the lab, and the drugs. He left the room and got closer to the quirks he felt earlier, who have now moved even farther. When he was just a wall behind them their conversation became clear to him.

“So, apparently there’s a new toy coming today.” Voice 1 says, the sound very ragged and rough. Probably in his 50’s.

“Hahah! Oh dude you should have seen ‘er! She’s beautiful! This’ll be so fun!” Voice two speaks up, younger, more cheerful, with a bit of an American accent. Possibly a foreigner.

“Focus on the job you morons, you can think about your fucked up fantasies when you’re off the clock” Voice 3 scolds, this one seemed to be in his 30’s, his tone cold. Filius could hear the atmosphere changing in that room.

It sickened him how they talked about their victims. It was disgusting. Purely evil. The entrance to the room they were talking in was just an archway. If Fil tried he could get a photo of them.

They were turned, it wouldn’t help that much but it would be something. So he did. Took out his phone and snapped a picture of the 3 as fast as he could. Feeling satisfied with his findings he decided to leave. The place seemed to be just for the drug making anyway. Max didn’t speak up about anything interesting he should check out so that was basically a confirmation that there’s nothing else in here.

When he climbed up the hatch he carefully closed it, heading over to the electronics in the rooms he’s in. Trying to make it look as if nothing was touched. While in reality he was taking pretty vital things from inside the machinery. If he was correct. The things he found could actually let him build the radio. Which made him ecstatic. He finally would have something. He also took some other parts that he thought would be useful for the laptop he found.

He left the abandoned hospital with a feeling of determination flowing through him. The sun was still shining brightly. He still had a long time ‘till he went to do the bust. Enough to fix up the laptop.

Chapter Text

Haruki was confident, maybe too confident sometimes. But hey, he used to be worshipped since he was 8. So he has every right to feel a bit over-confident. He still took a huge hit to his ego, multiple times…straight.

But the fact that he managed to repair a whole laptop on his own, while being homeless with none of the necessary equipment definitely was boosting that ego right back up.

He was sitting on his hammock, laptop on his lap, the setting sun from the window shining onto the screen, making it slightly hard to read. he was lucky that it was thrown away with its charger. He was setting it up, making sure it’s untraceable. This would be so good for studying, and vigilante work, and everything. The laptop wasn’t very good. It was an old model, by a company he didn’t recognize. Though he didn’t recognize most companies from after the phenomenon. It was surprising not seeing any fruit-themed phones or laptops in all his time of being outside. The company probably bankrupted, or maybe it just wasn’t popular in Japan? The latter made more sense but because of his own feelings he decided to believe the first one.

He was scrolling through some incognito tabs on a special browser made for people who wanted to stay under the radar. It wasn’t well known, which was the point. If it was than it wouldn’t be safe. He found it one day when he was at the library researching Vigilantes, back when he was just starting out. he was trying to get as much information on the mission as he could. Which wasn’t much more than he already knew . But he did manage to find a blog on a sketchy website. A blog detailing every single victim that was in that facility. Turns out that’s how they get their customers. Appearance, age, quirk and other ‘stats’ displayed. Seeing it made Haruki want to puke. Though only mentally, he’s seen worse things. His father made sure he wouldn’t puke over disturbing things.

After he couldn’t find anything else worth noting. He got up, still in the clothes he was wearing. He had no reason to change yet. He would when he was heading out, but so far the clothes he was wearing weren’t dirty nor sweaty, so he just didn’t bother.

He walks over to the corner of the room, the place where he put the parts needed for the radio. He really needed a desk huh? Well he could try to either find or make one. Wouldn’t need to be anything excellent. Just 3 pieces of scrap put together. But if he could find one, maybe it will have some drawers as well? It was a thought. An unlikely one, but recently his luck seemed to be getting slightly better. So it was the best time to start pushing it.

It was only 9pm, He had a couple of hours, He got started on the radio, sitting on the floor. After about 2hours he was finished. The eyebags he had, seemed to have multiplied by at least 5x. His fingers now had many cuts and scrapes on them, making a radio was way more difficult than he thought, and so his ego was once again struck back onto the level it was the day before. But he did it. It worked, he had started giving up on the idea of having a radio but he finally did it. The radio in question was many different colors. Black from the stuff he found behind the electronics store, grey – already turning to green and orange from rust. From miscellaneous scrap he used to make the thing actually fit together. And white from the parts he found inside the medical equipment. It looked like shit. But he didn’t care, he had a way to change channels, he had decent quality noise and he had the access to music inside his apartment now. Even when stealing internet from the buildings nearby, it’s kind of shit. He lives on the edge of the bad part of Musutafu so it’s surprising he has any internet. But when he did it usually wouldn’t be enough for music until he at least left his room. Now he had music whenever he wanted.

He had about half an hour left ‘till the bust. He looked down onto his phone, opening the SMS app he had. And he just stared at the “Seen” he got.

“The room he was in was empty, crap he couldn’t do a bust on this place, if he did it now, the hostages would be moved from the location he knows they’re in, and then he wouldn’t be able to complete his mission, but he couldn’t do it after either because as soon as the main building sends the info that they’ve been infiltrated then the people here would run, and take as much of these things with them as they could. He got an idea

A terrible idea, but he had learned that the best ideas are the worst ones.

You are begging to be caught,

After that, when he left the hospital he went to the lounge, he needed some favors.

To be precise he needed someone’s number. It took him a while. And he said and did some things he was not very proud of, but he got it. He managed to get his number. Confirming it was the right one and that it was an active number that the guy used, was now in debt to the person who gave it to him. Cause of course that the only person who had his number was someone who Filius hasn’t done a job for before.

It was expected for the “informant?” to have his number, they were both underground heroes in the end. Working in the same area, probably exchanged it just to have some emergency back up just in case.

Filius was staring at the text he sent “District 5 Block 4, Abandoned hospital. Hatch found in the basement. Tonight 30 minutes after midnight. Have someone be there. there’s no alternative exists other than the hatch as far as I’m aware but I might be wrong.”

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The two images were the ones he took inside the hospital. The ones of the 3 people and the drugs of course, not the nature one. Would Eraserhead enjoy those types of photos though?

“seen” “Seen” “Seen” “Seen”

‘the fuck does that mean?’ ‘why is there no answer?’ ‘will he not do it?’ ‘will he sent someone over there?’ ‘fucking hell Eraserhead’ ‘It was such a bother to get your number and you don’t even reply?!’

Maybe he was starting to spiral. But if Eraserhead wouldn’t help him with this then he would have to recruit some of his vigilante friends from the lounge. Which would put him in even more debt because the people there don’t work for free. He looked at the time again

23:30

It changed and the second it did he got a text back, like he was waiting for it.

“Who’s this?”

Huh? Is the hobo man joking? Who the fuck could it be? Obviously it’s us!

“Guess :)”

He was playing with fire. He should’ve gotten to the point and asked Eraser whether he would help him or not. Because if the hero decided he didn’t want to respond for another 3 hours then he would have to take a risk and possibly endanger the members of the lounge by sending them to the same place where a hero may or may not be.

“How did you get my number?”

‘Cold’

“I have my ways.” And before Eraserhead’s quick typing skills could catch up Haruki sent another text “Are you going to do it?”

“I still have an hour, correct?”

“Estimated, preferably I’d like it if you were there at midnight, but do not reveal your location unless you hear commotion, or see someone trying to run away”

It was true, he didn’t know whether the lab would get notified immediately if Haruki attacked the people over at the main building. If they did then it would be obligatory for some pro hero to be there.

The texts stopped for a minute, was he typing? Was he thinking? Or did he just decide not to respond again. Haruki knew that the hero was probably at the police station with the detective, looking over all of his texts, trying to track his location. He knew that this would happen, he modified his phone so it cannot be traced. No matter if they have the newest technology. They won’t know where he’s texting from.

“Alone?”

“If you’re confident enough. I have other things to take care of so I will not be there. (Sorry Tsukauchi you won’t be able to arrest me today)”

He laughed at his own idiocy, he knew that the detective was reading those texts. Well it would be the most logical things to do in Eraser’s place. Bring the phone to the police, especially since Eraserhead is working with the police to arrest Filius. But if he was wrong and the hero was in fact reading all of this inside his house, it would be so embarrassing.

“Other things? Kid, if you take at least a single milligram of those drugs I will hunt you down for sport.”

“damn, calm down. I don’t do drugs. Meant that I just had a different mission.”

Well that wasn’t fully a lie, he did have something else to do. It just wasn’t a different mission. It was exactly the same mission in a different location.

“Need backup?”

“No. but if you get there around 1am, you can come pick up the criminals.”

He gave himself a deadline for completing the mission now. He hoped he could do it as stealthily as possible and maybe it would go by fast. He needs to take out the main guy. Well just send a photo of him to the client. He doesn’t know if the client wants him dead. If they do, they’re going to have to do it themselves. Filius doesn’t kill. He’s not like his father. And he will be the only person who will lose their life to by his hands.

“Where”

Fuck, right. He was going to have to tell him where he is. They definitely knew that he was on the trafficking case. Eraser literally gave him info about the drugs that they used. But they didn’t know that he was doing it today. If they knew would they try to stop him? It’s too risky.

“I’ll tell you when I’ll get there.”

By the time he texted that it was around 23:46. He needed to get ready. And to start going there. Lucky that Eraserhead did not respond. He did get the info he needed and vice-versa.

He puts on his costume, making sure to conceal his hair into the beanie, this was a dangerous mission so he couldn’t have loose strands of hair falling into his eyes.

He hides twice the amount of knives into his costume as he usually does, one in each shoe, 1 in every pocket of his pants, summing up to 6. 2 in his utility belt. Another 2 in the waistband of his pants, he made sure they had leather sheets on them to not get cut accidentally. Under his shirt the feathers from before still holding up. He kept them just for the extra protection. A knife in each sleeve as well. A bit less hidden but it was more of a warning in case he did get spotted.

Most of these knives he made using his own quirk, they weren’t able to cut through reinforced materials. He doesn’t know how to make knives that strong. He’s sure he’s able to. Maybe he just needs to study how they’re made and the materials used for them? Maybe they need more blood? Or more concentration? He will research it later.

In total he had 14 knives on him. Was it overboard? Maybe. Did he care? Still no.

When he got out the sun was long since gone. The full moon lighting up the streets of Musutafu. No stars were seen, except for one. It was always the brightest one. The one that appeared first. Would more of them be visible when after time passed? Hopefully. He got to the facility at 23:54 a few minutes early. It was an abandoned school. On the upper right side of town, it was deep into the forest so nobody saw it anymore. All the windows boarded up. The school looked like it was falling apart, but surprisingly, no sunken walls or rooftops. It was clear that the villains were inside. He snuck through the trees to the back of the school, looking at the entrance to the basement. ‘Always the basements.’ Filius rolled his eyes, he understood why villains chose to have their bases inside basements but for once he’d like to be pleasantly surprised and see a cool villain base.

He breaks into the lock, quietly opening the hatch and dropping inside. Immediately as he dropped he had to be sneaky and take out two guards. His quirk detecting tens of quirks nearby, he took out the first guard while the other was turned, and before he could see that something happened to his partner he punched him unconscious as well.

He was in a long hallway, it was dirty. Red lights illuminating the room from the ceiling. There were two more guards at the other side of the hallway, turned back. That was the main room. The lobby to put it in common terms. As he pushed the bodies of the guards to the outside, tying them up to a tree he realized that there were many more guards in the lobby.

5? No 6. He couldn’t take them all out silently. Someone would notice and notify the main guy. So he had to sneak past. By how far away he feels them standing he could tell that the room had an octagonal shape, there’s a room on the right, a room on the left, and the room connected to the entrance. 2 guards per room. They’re standing a bit far from the wall. Maybe he could sneak behind them? He didn’t see any other way. But the ceiling was tall. That was probably going to be a safer way in.

He got back in, crouching behind the guards he needed a way for them to look away, if he climbed the wall now he would surely get spotted. He could try to use his quirk so that it looks as if something spilled from the column of wires in the middle of the room. That would require a ton of blood though. That’s fine, he needs to boost the limits of his quirk anyway.

But the scar wouldn’t heal immediately like the other ones do, since he would consciously make it spill out as much as possible. He didn’t have to worry about passing out from blood loss, his body could make blood so quick that it would get regenerated almost instantly. It’s why he’s able to get so many weapons.

So he has to choose a good place to get the blood from, going back to the hallway as it would be safer from there he crouched down right beside the archway to the room, hiding behind a thin wall. He took the knife from his sleeve and  cut through his entire midaxillary line. Cutting through the defensive feathers he had on. But they stayed put anyway, one cut line wasn’t going to make them obsolete. It probably should’ve phased him more, but he used his quirk so much that it was like a second nature. Sure he had a better way of activating it. if he only let the black marks appear on his body he would be able to use it whenever he wanted to, but they’re really recognizable, and they go from his eyes to his fingers, so he doesn’t let them appear.

He focused on the blood, trying to make it move where he wanted it. he could move it in between the tiles on the floor to make it impossible to spot unless you're looking. When he was 80% sure that the blood was right under the wires he let it spill out onto the floor. Alerting all the guards. He took the knife back into his sleeve and he jumped onto the ceiling. Holding himself up by some pipes. He sees a platform like trim to the room and he quickly hides in there, crouching down. He can still hear some of the things the guards are saying

“what the fuck is this crap?”

“was there a leak?”

“did someone break in?”

“the stupid wires probably are just too old to function properly”

“whatever, I’ll call the boss”

Crap. Right he should’ve predicted it. of course they would call the target when something like this would happen. Whatever, they’ll just say it was because the wires cut through some pipe. He’ll be fine. But he needed to be more careful.

He then remembered.

‘I FORGOT TO TEXT ERASERHEAD MY LOCATION’ And so Filius took out his phone, made sure it was muted turned his location on and sent a google maps screenshot to the hero. In doing so he noticed that it was already 00:27. He had 33 minutes until the police get here to arrest these guys.

He can fight them when his job is over. He focuses on his quirk, feeling where the most people were. The entrance on the right. There wasn’t anyone there. Maybe someone quirkless? He didn’t know if the target had a quirk, there was nothing about him that Fil could find.

While on the left, he could feel many quirks. That’s where they kept the victims. That’s who he needed to free.

His client gave him pictures of the person who was kidnapped, and a slight description. They said that they were aware that the woman is most likely dead but just in case Filius finds her, he will have to bring her to her family – he wasn’t told by the client to do that. It was just common sense, he would bring all of the victims to the police, all of the villains to the police and the target was still to be decided. ‘RIGHT FUCK THAT TOO’  seriously there was something wrong with his memory. How did he forget to text both of the people he was supposed to text.

He takes his phone out again, seeing a text from Eraserhead.

“Noone’s tried to escape yet. You sure you don’t need back up over there?” and then another text came “I won’t arrest you today.” And then the text got deleted. So Eraser is trying to work with Filius without the detectives knowledge? Or was it something the both of them decided to do to make Fil think that he is.

Filius looks back at the room all of the guards are in. He didn’t need backup. Right? He can save everyone. He leaves Eraserhead on “seen” just the hero did to him that day and instead texts the client.

“What should I do with the target once he’s caught” This client was also the type to respond quickly. Though probably only because this case was an important one to them.

“just make sure he’s arrested. And doesn’t escape the police.”

He shut off his phone “00:36” 24 more minutes.  If he’s not quick enough then he won’t make it in time. He had to be faster. He crawled on the trim, his mostly black costume concealing him perfectly. When he was on top of the door to the holding area he heard

“Hey so didn’t the boss said that there’s people figuring out this whole operation?”

And before he could hear anything else he was already on the other side of those metal doors, He’s surprised to be in yet another room. This one without any people in it. His Quirk was off. With his power he felt all of the victims quirks in the room he’s currently standing in, but the room was empty. Spare for a shit ton of drugs, ropes, and other items which were obviously used frequently. There was a wall in the middle of the room, making one half not visible to him. But he knew that no one was there, he felt no quirk. And even if the placement was off, Filius could always feel when there was another quirk in the same room. Sure Eraserhead was an exception but that was only because his quirk was quiet. Nearly unrecognizable in the moment.

This time he was focused. Even if Eraser himself was behind that wall he would feel him. He noticed two doors on the side of the room. The one on the right, that was the holding cells, that was sure this time. He could hear soft sobs coming from inside. He felt so much pity for the people in there, but he had to first defeat the target.

He went into the door on the left and immediately got hit with a nearly unbearable smell of blood. The metallic and copper-like scent got through his mask, which was designed to keep smells out. Filtering the air he inhaled. This amount of blood would probably be too much for a regular human. But once again, Filius’ father made sure he was immune.

The bodies he saw in front of him disgusted him, and made him feel terrible for not getting here faster. He knew that they were laying there for weeks maybe even months. Some of them already starting to rot. Maggots eating away at their skin. He scanned around the room, there were many corpses he could not make out. But he realized one thing. Electrocution marks, almost on all of the corpses. ‘the collars’ Every single person in that room was wearing a collar. It most likely had some sort of shock mechanism inside it. remote controlled. The target probably has the remote. Of course he would. That’s the kind of things that the sick fuckers controlling these facilities always do. Filius knew that it was just to give them the power trip. It enraged him, this whole place, the idea behind it, its existence. It’s just sick. It’s inhuman. The people who even once thought about making this are fucked up in the head.

Filius hated those kinds of people, the ones who thought that the bad they’re doing is nothing. The ones that don’t care about causing suffering to others. The ones that think that they get to decide anything about someone else’s life.

He looked around the corpses one more time, ‘none of these match the description or the photo the client provided’ maybe it was wishful thinking, maybe she was just one of the corpses that Fil could not make out. It was highly possible. But still, maybe she was still alive? Maybe she was in that room. The one from which he could feel the absurd amount of quirks. Some of those quirks were powerful, they could’ve became heroes, they can still become heroes, they all had lives, they all had families. And to those families they will return. Every single one of them. Filius will make sure of it.

He realized that it was a dead end, and walked right out of that room. When he was about to open the doors to the holding room he stopped

He was spotted.

***

Eraserhead was having a peaceful evening, Fridays are usually the calmer days at U.A. With most kids being exhausted from training all week. Or just saving their energies for whatever plans they have for the weekend. He didn’t even have to stop any fights today, which was a rare occurrence. But of course his day had to be spoiled. He was sitting on the couch at his apartment, Hizashi away at his radio job. He was sitting and scrolling through Facebook – which was entirely filled with cat photos.

He suddenly got a cryptid notification. He pressed it and didn’t recognize the number. But he knew who it was from, how did the kid even get his number? He read through the message and already felt a future headache. He stood up from the couch, his cat walking in between his legs, he didn’t bother putting on his capture scarf, he then called the detective and drove over to the station that they usually met at.

He gave his phone to Naomasa to try and track it. He knew that they wouldn’t be able to, the kid obviously wouldn’t be as dumb as to let a pro hero – who they know is working with the police against them – track their phone. And he was correct. They weren’t able to locate the phone.

So he was supposed to text them and try to find out as much as possible. He thinks he did pretty well.

He decided to help the moment he got the notification, whether the police was going to help him was not his decision to make. To his surprise they did help him.

Which meant, that in case the kid needed reinforcement on whatever mission they were on, he could help.

He was sitting right behind the hatch to the lab. Filius told him to wait until something happens. And he got there at midnight. Technically 30 minutes early. Nothing was happening. Was Filius late? No way… were they?  They were supposed to text Aizawa when they reached the location of the mission. But they didn’t. it was entirely possible that they were just late.

Eraserhead was looking at the “private number” on his phone, deciding to save the contact. Knowing that the kid will definitely text him again.

“The kid”

‘yeah, fitting’ it was practically a second name for Filius in Aizawa’s head at that point. And just as he looked back on the chat, he got a text.

[Screenshot.9735183.]

Of course he’s inside the goddamned trafficking ring. Aizawa sighed internally.

“Noone’s tried to escape yet. You sure you don’t need back up over there?” He typed, and then quickly added “I won’t arrest you today.” When he saw the “seen” pop up he deleted his message. He did get told by Tsukauchi to try and gain the kid’s trust, but he was serious. He wasn’t planning on arresting them today.

When he doesn’t get an answer after a few minutes he just turns off his phone. ‘Touché’ he didn’t mean to leave the kid on “seen” for a few hours before, but the detective tried everything to track their phone. So it took a while. Guess that’s their revenge.

Then Naomasa comes up to him “Eraser, are you sure that it wouldn’t be better to just storm in there, arrest everyone and call it a day?” He didn’t yet tell Tsukauchi that the kid was probably at the trafficking ring. And then he didn’t yet tell him that they’re definitely at the trafficking ring now.

“yes. This place is connected to the one that Filius currently has a mission in. you saw the texts. You said it yourself that he was starting to mess with ongoing cases, and he just texted me that he’s at the facility.” Eraserhead responded, his voice as monotone as usual “And this place is obviously connected. If we attack the people here, they will notify the facility and then the kid might get killed if they find them.”

The detective just sighs shaking his head as he walks away.

After another 10 minutes of waiting, something happened.

There was a sound of an alarm from below the hatch. Aizawa knew that that’s his cue. He quickly signaled to the people in the room with him to prepare for a fight as he opened the hatch and went down. There were a lot of villains. He wonders how Filius managed to infiltrate this place up to the point of being able to take a picture of 3 members.

The fight started, even if Aizawa had more people the villains had access to drugs. And it seemed like not only did they produce that sleep drug, but Trigger too.

***

Filius felt the gun press against his head. He could survive it, his quirk allowed him to. But it would take a minute to heal, which would put the people in the room in front of him in danger.

‘quirkless.’  He thinks, when he realizes why he hasn’t felt this person before entering the room. He should’ve predicted that. That was stupid of him. To forget about 20% of the population just like that?

“W-who are you?”

A man, in his 20’s wearing a lab coat. Probably just here for the drugs. Doesn’t look like he approves of what’s happening in here either, seeing by how shaky he is.

“look man, you don’t have to do this. I just want to help you, and the people in that room.” Filius says, hoping his calm tone can go through the voice changer.

“Yeah?! Save me?? I don’t wanna go to jail!” He waved the gun around, he was clearly not used to holding one

“I’m not with the police. I’m not a hero. I’m a vigilante. I just want to free the people here. I’ll be quick. No one will even know you saw me. Nobody else has. You can just pretend to not have seen me.” He tries to reason.

“N-no. they already know… I already told them! And the lab got stormed by heroes! You expect me to believe that?!”

Okay this guy is hopeless. He wasn’t going to let him go, he was just trying to convince him not to shoot him. But fuck it. if he’s going to get shot then he’s going to get shot.

Filius turns swiftly, kicking the attacker to his side in the process. He fires the gun, yet the sudden hit making him miss, shooting Filius’ shoulder instead, Filius walked over to the wall the man hit and quickly knocked him out, tying him up with his capture tape. He was going to take the gun but it was empty. An alarm started ringing. He knew he had limited time. The six guards from before running into the room he’s in.

‘yeah I don’t care right now’

They all had some form of mutation quirk, making them physically stronger. But that was nothing. Fil was still stronger. He took his bo-staff and speedily defeated them. They were always going to be easy enemies.

He had to find the target. Now.

He opened the door to the holding room, scanning over it quickly. Nothing. Only one other room he could be in. Filius runs back to the octagonal room and to the door on the right side. The door swung open revealing an office. The person sitting in the middle of the room looked up at him from the desk they were sitting at.

“Took you long enough.” The man says standing up.

“Just give up. Make this easier for me.” Filius points his bo-staff at the enemy. They both knew that he was the one Fil was searching for. Also quirkless. He could’ve been done with this 30 minutes ago…

Remote.

Before he could process the words the man shows off what he’s holding.

“You know what this is right? You’ve already seen the recycling room.” He waves a white remote with two buttons on it in the air.

Filius reached his hand into his pocket, trying to make it seem as if he’s attempting to convince the villain to step down

“Look. You don’t have to do this. Just let me save them and I’ll be gone.” Fil says, but in reality he was distracting him. He unlocked his phone in his pocket, and tried to somehow navigate it to the chat box with Eraserhead. He typed a random keyboard smash before sending it. he did this many times already. He liked taking notes during his patrol so he knows where everything is laid out with muscle memory at that point. He hoped that Eraser would get the hint and get his ass over here.

He then send another text. “in” “victims” trying to show to go save the victims

“You really expect me to believe that? I’m sure that you’re here specifically to defeat me!” he wasn’t wrong. But he doesn’t need to know that.

“you’re quirkless aren’t you? I’m too! that’s why I always use my bo-staff. You don’t have to be a villain because of that.”

“How did you?!-“ The villains eyes widen, obviously confused. Maybe trying to get him to give up would work?

 “It’s hard to not have a quirk, people treat you like trash” Filius takes a step forward. “they think that they’re better than you, even if their quirk is something that they can hardly use”

“I don’t need to hear this from you!” he takes out a gun. ‘for fucks sake another one?’ Fil’s shoulder was still not fully healed. Not bleeding but it still ached and it was hard to move.

“look, I won’t be telling you that what you’re doing here is wrong.” Filius hated the words that he was saying. He hated the guy in front of him. He thought that all he ever deserved was a cold and dark cell “You don’t want to be a villain do you? You can still choose the right path.” He added. Bullshitting his way through this.

“I- You’re only saying this to get this!” He shouts, holding the remote higher.

“I’m here because I want to help people. And you’re also a person.” He wasn’t. “just cooperate, when the heroes get here, you’ll get a shorter sentence. If you press that button you will still get caught. Forever this time.” He was going to make sure he gets put behind bars for his entire lifetime

The villain puts his hand slightly down, the other hand – still holding the gun – now shaking uncontrollably. Tears appearing in his eyes

“you don’t know the half of it” he answers, his voice faint. And just as Filius feels other quirks moving above ground, above them, the villain drops the remote.

Fil quickly grabs the remote. “I lied.” He says, the villains eyes widen for a second before Filius kicks him into the wall behind, knocking him out. Yet, there’s another shot sound. Hitting his upper thigh.

When he sees Eraserhead enter the octagonal room he snaps a picture of the villain and then runs up –limping – to him.

“don’t go into the room on the left” they say walking past the 6 guards still unconscious on the floor. The guy wearing a lab coat already woken up.

“you got shot.” Eraserhead stated, Filius focusing on making his blood stay inside his body, modifying small parts of his body that are covered to do that. If eraser sees his blood he’s fucked.

“I’ll be fine.” They walk through the cells. Filius scanning the people inside while Eraserhead works on unlocking the cells with some lockpicks he had in his utility belt. ’gotta get some for myself as well’

As Fil passes the cages his hopes die down, he looks at the last one speaks out loud. “Holy shit you’re alive.” Eraser looks at him confused, after a second seeming to connect the dots on his own. “can you uh. Move to the side?” The woman does as Fil says, fear in her eyes. After she’s far enough Filius kicks the cage door down, making Eraser turn his head again and sigh.

“come on, your family has been looking for you.” He reaches out his hand, the woman’s eyes sparkle for just a second, she grabs his hand, when she stands up he has to hold her up, her legs wobbly.

“Eraser. Take her up.” He looks back at the woman “Are you alright? Uhh… how do people do this. What year is it?”

She looks at him confused before speaking “2587” she answers, her voice raspy. Okay so she’s conscious. That’s good

Eraserhead walks up and lets the woman lean on him when he takes her back to the top, probably to the police. Who will now start raiding this place

“Eraser!” Filius calls out. The hero turning to look at him, clearly annoyed at the nickname. “The man in that room-” Fil points to the room where the target is laying, before Filius can finish Eraserhead cuts him off

“I know, get out of here before the police comes in. I’ll handle the rest”

With that he walks away. Fil notices how some other people in the cells turned away from the doors

“Alright! Come on, you’re all going home! move away from the door if you haven’t already!” He says cheerfully before quickly going through every single door and kicking it open “right, now wait here until the hero and police get here. I gotta go!” He says before running out. Bolting to the hatch, when the police sees him they shout after him, but don’t chase him. When he decided he ran far enough he gets back. Sitting on the rooftop of the school. Taking a picture as the police arrests the target.

He sends the two pictures to his client and then a text.

“She’s safe.” He got an immediate call in response. He questioned whether he should pick up, before pressing the green button.

“DID YOU FIND HER?! WHERE IS SHE?!” The client shouts, their voice already breaking.

“The police have her, once they’re finished arresting the villains, they will return to the station and probably call the families of every victim they found.” Filius answers to the phone as he watches the police try to move every single villain up the ladder. Eraserhead already nowhere to be seen.

“thank you! thank you so much!” their voice teary, Filius smiled under his mask at the fact that he helped reunite family. “I-il get you the money tomorrow at the lounge” they add quickly.

“alright. I’ll be there at 11pm.”

“yes, o-okay. See you then, and thank you again” Filius hanged up. He didn’t have a time to think about what happened as he hears a familiar voice from behind him

“Show me the scar.” When he turns back the man is already holding bandages. Filius is about to say something but Eraser cuts him off again “don’t bullshit me saying that it’s fine.” He walks forward ands sits next to Fil “Leg”

The vigilante decides not to argue and just show him his leg. The injury already starting to heal. But because he was making his blood stay inside his body to not show eraser the oddly colored liquid it didn’t get to cover itself up like the other one already did.

Filius could change the color of his blood, from the regular black to the socially acceptable red. But then all of his blood would change. Alongside the one that’s now drying underneath the wires. Hey right he should get rid of that, when filius pulls his pants up just enough for Eraser to be able to patch the scar up. He focuses on moving the blood. Turning the color to red – so that Eraser doesn’t get suspicious of the way too dark color on his leg – and then he makes the blood go back into the cracks of the tiles on the floor. Hoping that the detective won’t notice it.

In this whole situation he doesn’t realize that he showed eraser his legs. Like it should’ve been obvious. And it kind of was. But he had scars on his legs, ones that weren’t at all similar to the regular fighting scars. They looked surgical, and that’s cause they were.

Eraserhead bandaged up the wound, the bullet now laying beside them, Fil didn’t even notice that he was taking it out.

“high pain tolerance?” The hero asks, raising an eyebrow.

“uh… yeah, I got… lost in thought.” He answers looking onto the police cars, which are now driving away.

“You shouldn’t be putting yourself in danger like this.” He packs up his medical supplies

“Okay?” Filius has heard those words before. People always say that to him. He never knows what he should respond. Just cause someone said it, won’t mean that he’ll stop. He likes helping people.

Eraserhead sighs. He stands up and stretches. “you did good in there though. I’m sure you helped a lot of families.”

Fil turns his head to look at the hero “I know.” He tries to keep his voice monotone, but he fails miserably. He’s really grateful for the voice changer, still Eraser picks up on the faint fondness, his lips twitching slightly upwards.

Fil stands up, his leg still hurting, but now that he’s actually letting the wound heal it’s fine. “see you on your patrol Eraser”

“See you”

And just like that, Filius jumped down, and then ran into the forest. Eraserhead took a deep breath and headed back as well. He couldn’t wait to hug his husband and cat, and then watch some shitty American movie before falling asleep.

Haruki was back home, laying in his hammock. He already took his costume off. He was researching knives, and creation quirks. Like he said he would. He was also simultaneously remaking his schedule so that he has it on his laptop, and looking over the material he’s going to study next. He went to take a sip of his water when he realized that he has ran out. He sighed and stood up. Putting on his shoes and a brown, bulky leather jacket he thrifted. It was comfortable, maybe a bit dirty but nice. He went out with the empty water bottles, when he was returning he heard something from behind a dumpster

“meow!”

Oh. It’s a cat.

Haruki loved cats. He loved how smug the little creatures are, he loved how they can be as annoying as they want to be and not get in trouble, he loved how their fur felt. He loved them.

So when he sees the random stray he obviously has to pet it. He puts the water beside him and he starts petting the cat, surprised that it’s not scared at all, it’s fully white fur shining under the street lamp.

And then he felt him again. Eraserhead, he felt his quirk. He’s gotten better at picking up on it. especially since Max always disappeared. It was nice, not having him there for a few minutes. Always more peaceful.

When Eraser walked closer he noticed how he was wearing casual clothes. The hero looked at the boy, he had stopped petting the cat when he saw the man. He wasn’t expecting casual clothing.

Eraserhead looked at the cat before looking back at Haruki and saying. “that’s my cat.”

Haruki’s eyes widened, Eraser didn’t recognize him. In hindsight it’s obvious that he wouldn’t but it was still surprising.

“ah! Y-yeah sorry!” He blurts out, choosing to ignore the way that his voice cracked. He stands up, the cat now walking around his legs.

Eraserhead walks forwards, which makes Haruki instinctively take a step back. The hero tilts an eyebrow before shrugging. Yeah makes sense, they both do look homeless right now. Eraser picks up the cat and hold them close to his chest.

“Go home. It’s past curfew.” He says in a stern voice. He’s obviously said that to other teens before.

“Y-yes! I-I was just getting some water!” Haruki picks up the water bottles from the ground, starting to walk back to his apartment.

“you live that way?” The man asked, his tone sounded as if he didn’t believe the direction Haruki is walking.

“yeah?” Haruki looks around nervous. Hoping that the hero won’t ask to walk back with him. If he does he’ll just go to Midoriya’s house. He doesn’t care that it’s 4am, he will do it.

“Alright.” He starts walking backwards, the cat meowing in his arms.

Haruki wonders why the cat was outside in the first place. He shrugs and just walks back to his apartment. Resuming his multi-tasking. He turns on the radio, switching through different channels. Annoyed at how radio’s never play rock music. Only pop. He was about to switch the radio off before hearing a familiar tune.

---

It was warm outside. Too warm for Filius, usually when winter ended and the city was starting to get more warm the amounts of people swarming him begging to be “blessed” or “forgiven” for pointless reasons increased drastically. So one day he was hiding from the crowd of people when he entered the music room.

Seong was sitting in front of the piano, playing some up-beat pop song. As much as the kid denied it, he only listened to pop. Filius knew that his younger brother liked playing instruments, but he didn’t expect it to be so good.

“that’s a cool song” he says walking up behind the boy.

Seong flinched when he heard his older brothers voice. “uh- it’s not what you think. B-Bea just likes this song and wanted me to play it to her so I’m practicing!” he says waving his hands around in the air.

“mhm sure thing.” Fil Scoffs, sitting down on the piano. “Play me your favorite song. I won’t judge if it’s pop.”

Seong looked at him for a minute before starting to play.

---

The song, that’s the first time he’s heard the original. But he doesn’t care about that. To him Seong’s version is the original. It’s the only version that actually matters.

The song ends and the overly-energetic for this time of night, radio host talks about the next song. Haruki decides to leave this channel turned on.

He wakes up, not even realizing that he fell asleep. He looked at the laptop still in his lap, and the radio still playing on his windowsill. He looks at his phone,

“17:52”

It was so late, he’s surprised he managed to sleep that long, he could feel the eyebags disappearing from his eyes. His dream, he doesn’t remember much of it. in fact, he only remembers fighting Max at the end. He couldn’t have fought him for that long, but he didn’t care that much. Today was laundry day, the laundromat should be more cleared out by this hour. He packs his clothes into his backpack and goes to the laundromat.

When he’s there he decides to take a shower again. The cold water feels relieving on his skin, he’s still overwhelmed by the amount of things that happened the day before. He remembers checking the hospital and seeing that the place was now covered in police tape, he felt glad that they managed to deal with the criminals. He leaves the shower and when he returns he moves his laundry to the dryer. Theres only one other person at the laundromat. A young looking boy with an emitter quirk. A decently strong one at that. His lilac hair damp, probably also just finished his shower.

He was reading a book “quirkless combat for beginners” … quirkless? Why would he need to read that. Truth be told that title brought out the hidden Midoriya inside Haruki, he didn’t mean to do it, but he walked up to the boy and asked him about the book. Haruki liked working out and getting stronger, so he had a little bit of experience in this, he starts to ramble to the boy about different tactics and types of fighting styles.

The boy listens intently. Seeming to be taking mental notes. The dryer ringing interrupts the rambling.

“oh that’s my laundry. Alright gotta go then!” Haruki says standing up and walking back over to the dryer, taking out his clothes, being careful to not show his vigilante costume to him as he packs it into his bag.

“wait. Uh, can I get your number?” This surprised Haruki. The boy seemed like the distant type. ‘Not one to make friends and such.’ But Haruki didn’t mind. If he was allowed to ramble to someone about combat he was going to take that opportunity.

They exchanged numbers, Haruki learning that the boy’s name is “Hitoshi Shinso”. But he saved him as “laundromat boy” in his phone anyway.

When he gets back to his house, he just changes into his vigilante costume and decides to get out on patrol a little bit early. He picks up the money from yesterdays mission. The client deciding to pay him more than they settled on since he did also find the woman, freed her and everyone else there and brought her back to the police. Normally the people at the lounge don’t pay more for additional things done during the jobs but this client seemed a bit ashamed for technically hiring a criminal to do something for them. Filius didn’t mind though, more money means more food, and the client seemed more than wealthy enough to afford it.

This day though, his luck seemed to have ran out. He kept getting flashbacks, the villain attacks seemed to not stop. When he’s done he just sits on top of his house’s rooftop, he takes out the cigarette pack, he raises the middle part of his mask, thankful that he installed that upgrade. He puts the cigarette into his mouth, pulling out a lighter covered in stickers – he remember back when Astris gave it to him, saying that ‘you never know when you need an emergency smoke’ – back then he didn’t understand what she meant, but now, he gets it. this is going to be an emergency smoke.

His costume is going to smell. But he didn’t care, he needed this, the whole patrol he has been remembering things he didn’t want to remember.

He lit the cigarette, when the smoke first hits his lungs he coughs, a lot, way more then he’d ever admit. He closes his eyes as the familiar smell fills his nostrils. the warmth from the cigarette a nice change from the cold night air. He was used to the smoke, hanging out with Astris when she smoked during the night ensured that. But it still hit differently when he is the one smoking. He feels lightheaded his throat hurts, still he needs this right now.

He looks upon the city, which is lit up by just the street lights. It’s peaceful, he likes it that way.

When he finishes smoking he puts the cigarette out and decides to throw it out in the ashtray put out on one of the apartment buildings. Filius always hated people who littered. He gets back to his room, lies down on his bed. Not bothering to take off his costume. Knowing that he would have to now wash his hammock to get rid of the stench. He liked the smell of cigarettes but if the people he knew smelled it he doesn’t know how they’d react. Eraserhead might murder him for smelling but he isn’t about to go wash his costume twice. He probably should invest in some form of doing laundry by hand. Could be his next project.

The 13^th floor of his building was basically fully destroyed, the building technically had 14 floors, but that floor was now just two walls and a half-wall going around what Haruki actually called ‘the roof’, one of the sides was completely empty, he liked to sit on that side. With his feet off the ledge, it was nice, the breeze hitting his face left a feeling of content inside him.

He could probably assemble some kind of drying rack there, it would be hidden enough. He knew that Eraser sometimes patrolled around his house, if there were any signs of life inside the building he sure would be caught. Actually now it might be more likely for Haruki to see Eraserhead around here since he literally walked to this part of town in front of the hero and confirmed that he did in fact live there.

Haruki was stupid, he was extremely, extremely stupid.

Okay so now a hero, the same hero that is actively trying to arrest him knows that someone lives in the same area that he does,

Okay so this was bad, but maybe if the drying rack was something that could be extended and set up instead of always being out it would make the chances of getting caught smaller?

Haruki was too tired to be thinking of this. He laid on the hammock, the radio still playing. He didn’t bother turning it off, he probably should have. If anyone heard it they could’ve tried to break into his house to see what it was. He listens to the radio host, by listening to him he has actually learned that its actually Present Mic, the hero. He remembers the nutrition bar Eraserhead gave to him. ‘does he listen to his radio as well?’

It was an odd thought, he didn’t peg Aizawa to be the type that listens to the radio. Honestly he looked like the type of man who listened to black metal on headphones that were way too loud while he worked.

It was an odd thought but he could clearly imagine Aizawa doing that. He wondered how far off his guess really was. He would have to somehow ask.

You’re planning on asking a fucking pro hero if he listens to death metal? In your vigilante costume? While his job is to arrest you? … good luck.

And when Haruki heard his plan repeated to him, he just decided that it was time for bed. He rolled over to his side the music tuning out his thoughts when his consciousness slipped away.

He was inside some sort of black void, he recognized this place. He was there many times before. It was a nightmare, well he only got nightmares now. Ever since Max appeared that’s all that he could ever get. Unless max was gone he wasn’t getting a good dream. But there were levels to his nightmares.

The basic one was just fighting Max in the white room straight off

The nice one was when he knew that he dreamed for longer before meeting Max but couldn’t remember the things that happened before

And the shitty one was this. When he could remember everything

He walked around the void, eventually beginning to light up with stars, ones that shined a deep red then a dark blue and only then turned into a blinding white light. As he walked forward more things appeared. Dark red grass, puddles of blood scattered around in it, a couple of his memories showing up beside him when he walked, none bad. They were all bittersweet now. He saw himself hanging out with the rebellion, taking care of his siblings, training with Haru watching him with awe.

He missed them.

He always did.

Then, he reached a pond. The water black, just like everything in this place. He walked right next to it and only then he saw a person sitting there.

He was on his knees, face in his hands. Haruki knew why, he saw him before.

“It’s not me” The boy cried. “This isn’t my face!”

He looked up at Haruki, his face a black liquid falling off. His eyes just white circles, as if scribbled on.

“I know” Haruki said petting the boy.

And just like that he walked forward into the pond. He never stuck around the boy too long, there was no point. He did not remember how he looked like before, he will never remember. Whining about it now won’t make it better.

He felt the water around him, tentacle like liquid pulled him lower in, and he did not argue. He was used to that, it was what always happened, it was starting to get boring if he’s being honest. Sometimes it was different, a lot happened then, since he didn’t know where to go it took him way longer to actually walk the right way. And then everything that happened was different as well. When he reached Max he didn’t have a lot of time he could fight in since then he would oversleep.

He always hated these dreams, not only did he sleep for way longer than usual but he also had to go through the nightmarish places.

When the pond pulled him to the bottom he fell into a different place.

Red walls, something dripping off them. The ground wet with water from the pond above them. Different black plants littered around, there were also roses everywhere, their thorns on full display. The vivid red almost painful to look at, when he accidentally stepped at one it wrapped around his entire leg and covered it in cut marks before returning into the ground. After that he made sure to look at what he was stepping into, which is why he did not notice the surroundings changing into a school hallway, dimly lit, the only light was from the outside window by his right side, shining with the night sky the moon only faintly illuminating all the cracks in the walls of the school.

He only noticed that he was someplace else when the roses stopped trying to cut his legs. He looked in front of him and saw the same boy, his light brown hair overgrown, he looked slightly older than the one by the pond. his face still unknown. He was on the end of the hallway, just looking at him. He was holding a football. Haruki always loved sports, he loved everything as a child, it all interested him. So he did it all.

The boy looked disappointed, almost angry. Haruki could pick up on it, even if he didn’t really see his expression. He knew that he was angry at him. After all, he always hated criminals.

He thought that the policemen were so cool for detaining dangerous criminals, and he always wondered why anyone would choose to break the law. ‘even if they had no money, surely there’s something else they could be doing!’ he always said. And look at him now.

Exactly the thing that he used to hate.

Knowing that the ‘he’ which he was would despise him for it. He would’ve tried anything to not end up like Haruki. But it would all be futile anyway. Haruki walked forward, when reaching the boy he pushed him away before going through an archway. He fell again, there was no floor under him for a while. He fell on his face when the floor finally came up. This time the scenery he was in was quite beautiful. He always liked this part of the nightmare the most. His mother’s garden. His actual mothers. Not the person who was his mother in the cult.

She was only pretending to be his mother, trying to play house with actual people.

This garden, it was the same one he always hid inside when he was a kid, he loved the different flowers that grew there. they were all so beautiful. They reflected his mother really well, she was always so nice, caring and colorful. He loved her.

He loved her soft hands, he loved how she would always try to play with him, even if she didn’t have time. He loved how he could smell vanilla on his clothes after hugging her.

Haruki sat in the garden, on a swing his dad installed for him when his mom asked for it. it was a regular wooden swing. Not really comfortable but it was nice, it was his.

He looked at the now red-stained flowers, the red skies. Even in his nightmares this place was beautiful.

Even covered in blood, he knew that his mom was going to be okay. He knew that this is what she wanted, this was her safe haven, it would make sense why she wanted to do it here. He didn’t understand why the nightmare showed the flowers in blood, the death was quite bloodless. His mother, still beautiful when she laid there.

The boy appearing again, crouched in front of her, tying the rope off of her neck hoping that it would somehow bring her back to him, he was crying, not being able to stop the tears  falling onto his mom’s white floral dress, her long brown hair falling over her eyes and face, covering it.

But no matter how hard he tried, she didn’t come back, she never did. And after that, he got put in the cult.

His dad’s doing.

He understood that that was the reason his mom died. She found out what father wanted to do. Not the cult father, his real one.

Ironic that the person whom his dad admired ended up being the one that killed him. But it’s always like this isn’t it? it’s always the one that you love the most. That’s always the one that destroys you past recognition.

Haruki looked at the boy, crying into his mothers body. he picked up a rose, it used to be orange, that’s his mom’s favorite color, she always grew orange roses. He hated how the cult changed the rose from something that brought him comfort into something that filled him with rage. Why did they have to use a rose? A cross would’ve been better.

He loved roses, he really did. Now he doesn’t know what to think. He doesn’t want to give his father the satisfaction of liking roses. But his mom, his mom would love to see him find the same beauty in the flower as she did.

He held the rose in his hand, the thorns drawing blood from his fingers, he put the rose into the boys hair. Sighing he walked forward, right past the tree.

When he walked forward the scenery around him slowly disappearing, again turning into the black void, which eventually turned to white.

He was back with Max. The familiar place he always ends his dreams in. Max looked at him, not saying anything and just went to attacking him straight on.

And so they fought, like they always did. Haruki knew that he had to try his best. Otherwise how would he get stronger? But after that dream his energy was a bit spent. Still, Max won either way, so does it really matter?

Of course it does.

Max speaks up, before creating a small gun into his hand. Right that would probably happen a lot more often, now that Haruki got shot. Max always used the weapons that Haruki has had used against him in these fights.

He assumed it was to train him with the things that defeated him to get better but honestly it was starting to seem like Max didn’t have any original ideas for what weapons to use.

Haruki dodges one bullet, but the second one hits him, the third one too, and the fourth one. He tries getting up but it’s futile.

He wakes up in his hammock, the sun shining out the window. His radio turned off, he turns it back on hearing that there’s a different host right now. Meaning that it’s school hours. He took his laptop in hand and turned it on, “10:24”

Yeah he slept for a long time, he picked up his phone and texted Midoriya, he has been texting the boy every day, just like he promised to himself that he would. Their conversations beginning to look way more comfortable instead of the usual awkward and forced tone.

Midoriya sometimes send him memes about heroes, or articles about important fights that took place, or even the debut videos of new heroes. They were fun to watch, and it was never a wrong choice to know a bit more about potential enemies. This time Haruki is the one to send a cool article to the boy. It was on the mission he did, but the article didn’t include him in it. that sucked but hey heroes obviously won’t admit that they worked with a vigilante. And he noticed that Eraserhead was only mentioned in it once. Which is also bullshit. Without Eraser that whole fucking operation would’ve ended completely differently.

But this was probably something that Eraserhead wanted personally, to be included as little as possible. He had his own agency, it wasn’t very well known though, Haruki only knew about it because he did hack into the police records and found a file on Eraser there.

He’s apparently considered to be working for the police because he helped on some cases, so he has a file there. The agency only having a few trainees over the years, clearly Eraserhead playing favorites with his students.

Haruki also decided to text Shinso some workouts he thought would benefit the boy in what he was trying to accomplish. They were nothing too intense, as Hitoshi was also incredibly weak right now. But they were something to start with.

And so Haruki changed, disassembled the hammock, putting it into the corner of the room, needing to be washed. And he began studying.

He was on schedule with everything but he felt as if he needed to study even more. He was above average in his test scores, but U.A was the best school in Japan. He needed more.

He had to upgrade his study plan, he sighed as he decided to just start studying for the next few topics already.

Chapter Text

He was sitting in the library, in a corner. It was quiet, he liked it that way. He could focus on his studies. Most of the things he’s studying, he’s just revising. He finished middle school, both on paper and in reality. Astris – the nerd she was – made sure that he had the proper education. It was fun, he liked whenever his sister got to a topic she was excited about and was able to explain it to their siblings, and whenever they understood it she felt so proud, Filius always enjoyed seeing how her face lit up at the little ones doing math equations, she loved showing new topics, you could always tell whenever she liked a topic more than the others. Biology was the best subject for her to teach, chemistry was a strong second.

She always made Fil, Seoung and Renne do more homework, teaching them harder subjects. He didn’t mind it though, she loved teaching and he loved learning.

So when Haruki now has to study for U.A applications, he realizes he knows most of this. A lot of the history pre-quirk era he remembers from his childhood, English was the language they spoke in the cult so that’s fine, Astris taught him enough math to get by, even if he struggles a bit he figured it’d be enough to pass.

His biology is excellent for obvious reasons, he did have to know everything about the human body in order to modify it. He did hate the experiments, but back at the start. He actually enjoyed them, he liked feeling powerful, liked being worshipped. Eventually though he realized how messed up the whole situation was. But he was the one who suggested some of the changes made into his body, he and Astris sometimes brain-stormed together on the things they could modify. But even so, most of the modifications were made by fathers request, he hated them whenever they were.

When he was doing his own experiments he knew what he was doing, where, what it would take and where he got the ‘parts’ to do it.

When Father made the doctors at the cult do some experiments he never knew what it would add, if it would leave a scar – it usually did – and how they got the things they were putting into him.

His wings weren’t his

He knew they weren’t.

They took them from someone, that was one of the reasons he cut them off. He didn’t deserve them, he couldn’t bear to look at them. All he saw was his father’s face, the feelings of the person they were taken from and the feeling of Raine’s hands on them

He quickly regained his composure, pushing the memories away.

His chemistry knowledge was decent, a bit under the average but he could study that to make up for it. His Japanese was lacking,

Many of the people from the cult were Japanese, so he sometimes got taught a word or two, but when he got out of the cult he was basically clueless and had to learn it from scratch. It was difficult but he now considers himself fluent. Well he used to, now that he looks at the answer sheet to some online quiz he did, he’s terrible.

The textbooks in the library not helping him in the slightest, they all just repeated the same advice, which he did not understand. It was infuriating, ‘language rules were stupid.’

He couldn’t memorize them, there were too many, and anytime he tried to go with his gut he just got it wrong. It annoyed him. He couldn’t fathom the idea of being able to speak the language but suddenly writing in it is the problem. He speaks just fine. Maybe with a slight accent but that’s barely noticeable, at least nobody ever said that they couldn’t understand him.

And he made sure that his vigilante mask concealed any accent. So he didn’t have to worry about that.

He checks his phone, the sudden light making his eyes close for a second, after regaining his composure, he sees a couple of notifications.

Zuku

“Wait that’s so cool, it sucks that Eraserhead wasn’t mentioned in it more. :(“

Izuku read the article, Haruki usually just liked the message he sent and read the article in his free time, Izuku actually responded.

‘Was I meant to be doing that this whole time?”

“yeah besides from what it reads it seems like Eraserhead actually did most the work since he was the only hero at the place”

“It would be so cool if he got any type of publicity right? Like I get why he doesn’t but he does a lot of work around Musutafu”

Zuku was right, Eraser did do a lot. Every patrol he had to avoid him, he was always there. They didn’t meet every time since Fil made sure to sneak past, probably didn’t work but he didn’t get called out so that’s the only thing that matters.

“Yeahhh, maybe in the future he’ll get the recognition he deserves :’]”

Haruki wasn’t a fan, no of course he wasn’t. if anything he was only recognizing that Eraser does a lot, and doesn’t get rewarded for it nearly as much as he should. Compared to ‘other’ heroes.

Endeavor.

‘of course Endeavor, fuck that guy. There’s something off about him. I dunno what but he just gives me the ick.’

The dude’s strong but he’s so annoyinggg.

Max answers, dragging out the ‘annoying’. After which he disappears,

“I hope so! :D” Haruki loved the little emoticons, after seeing Izu use them so much he started picking up on them and caught himself typing them out way more often than he would admit to.

“Also my mom’s asking when you’ll be coming over again haha”

Okay both of you are literally so awkward it hurts. Max appears again, looking over Haruki’s shoulder onto the phone. He didn’t need to, he knew what the text said simply because Haruki knew, he was only doing it for dramatics. Like everything he did.

‘what? He was asking cause his mom was probably pestering him about it!’

Sure thing, what’s next? A girlfriend who goes to a different school?

‘shut up Max, that’s not even funny…’

“I could come over if you’d want, Ik you’re busy with school so I don’t wanna interrupt.”

“No, no it’s fine really! I liked hanging out with you last time! Maybe Wednesday?”

Oh that’s soon.

Well it would still be a couple of days from then but it’s still really soon, though Haruki didn’t mind, he wanted to hang out with Midoriya this week anyway.

“Alright! 4pm?”

“Yep! See you then!! ^^”

He was going to hang out with Midoriya again, ‘and he enjoyed the last time!’

He liked hanging out with Izuku as well, even if they were talking in passing at the library, it was nice. Comforting, the boy had an aura around him that made you feel like you were heard, like he was listening to everything you said, even if it wasn’t important, even if it was something stupid like memes or dumb things you saw on the internet.

He still made sure the conversation was pleasant, he still asked questions, he still listened.

Haruki looked over the next notification, seeing it was from Shinso.

Laundromat boy.

“That’s intense.”

It was a basic full body workout…

‘don’t shame. Everybody starts somewhere.’

“if it’s too much I can search for something less demanding?”

“no, no it’s good. My body just HURTS”

“lmao, rip then”

Cringe. And forced.

‘”cringe” is cringe’

Haruki rolls his eyes, he was going to be as cringe as he could. Who cares? Not him

Is there anything you do care about?

‘Shut up max.’

Eraser

:https:/article.idk.how.to/make/links.com

‘okay what the fuck is this?’

“New vigilante Filius caught on camera during mission?”

‘ W H A T ‘

Haruki reads through the article, which does in fact have a photo of him, nothing identifiable though. Just him in his costume fighting a random villain on the street, he doesn’t actually remember that fight. He runs into petty criminals every patrol, he can’t even begin to remember every single one. Unless their quirk is something noticeable or they do anything note-worthy, then he remembers them, but this criminal seemed boring. His quirk just giving him more muscle, of course. Very common quirks, many people had them.

The article describes him in a… very incorrect manner.

‘6’3? 24 years old? Eye color: purple? OKAY THAT IS NEITHER MY REAL EYE COLOR NOR THE CONTAC LENSES THAT I WEAR, HOW??’

Max starts laughing on the floor, amused by the incredibly inaccurate article.

“LMAO” Haruki texts back, he didn’t know what else to say. ‘wait.. does Eraser understand slang?’

“???” ‘he does not.’

Kinda funny that he doesn’t, like how does this 30 year old man not know basic slang? These words were around when he was growing up, how can he not know them?

“Laughing My Ass Off… means that it’s funny”

“not you?”

Eraser I thought you were meant to be smart. What’s with this texting skills… Max says in between laughs.

“the pic is me… the article though…”

‘Seen’

…

‘are you kidding? AGAIN?’

Haruki closes his phone, Eraser won’t respond, if he was going to he would’ve responded immediately.

Haruki looks back at the books laid out in front of him, and then back onto his phone

“15:42”

Time goes by fast when you have to study huh? He needs to start picking up harder parts of the books about the things he’s studying, he knows that usually the textbooks in school don’t teach everything that they should. So learning a few books ahead might be helpful.

He puts the books he already finished at the shelves, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he finishes studying the new books. He has to study somehow, or he’ll forget everything. But he can’t just repeat the things he already learned. He’d get too bored and stop studying completely.

He picks up the harder versions of the books he had, but when he takes them out another book falls out.

“Japanese sign language for beginners.”

‘oh?’

Looks like he found his answer. Sign language, seems useful to know. He was going to have to clean his house again as a pre-caution but he decides to check the book out and take it home. talking a bit with the nice librarian, whom he once again forgot the name of before going out. The streets full, people returning from work or school running all around.

He walked back to his apartment, the books he checked out in his bag. He could try to hack into the U.A systems. He didn’t want to cheat his results, or look at the test before. He would get caught, his hacking skills weren’t that good. And he’s heard rumors of the principal knowing ‘everything’  that happens, so he wouldn’t want to risk it.

Seems a bit creepy but whatever. So maybe just to see the teachers? He knows that Eraserhead is one, but who are the other ones? Probably all pro heroes, might be dangerous if one of them has a mind reading quirk.

Haruki never met a person with a quirk like that, but he can imagine how terribly that would go, so he’s always been a bit paranoid about it after leaving the facility.

He’s learned that Shinso has a similar quirk, Brainwashing,  he wonders how that would work with Max inside his head, but it’s too risky to test out.

When Haruki gets back home he uses his make-shift broom and tries to clean up. Some dust gathered over the couple days but it’s all relatively clean now. He puts his books in the corner of the room, still needing to find/make a desk.

He sits down on the floor, after forgetting that his hammock still needed to be washed.

The smell lingered, he could feel it from the other side of the room. Why is it so intense?

He opens up his laptop and tries to hack into the U.A systems. And to his surprise, it worked.

He was able to see the teacher and student files. Except oddly enough the application tests were in fact still not accessible to him.

‘so that’s what they meant by “the principal knows about everything”’

Why the fuck would he let you hack into their systems? I don’t think you understand what you’re doing…

‘Max…’

Shut up, I know, I know. you always say that.

He looks over the teacher list

“Snipe” “Nemuri Kayama - midnight” “Shota Aizawa – Eraserhead” “Ectoplasm” “Ryo Inui – Hound dog” “Higari Majima – Power loader”

‘no mind reading quirk for now’

“Sekijiiro Kan – Vlad king” “Ken Ishiyama – Cementos”

“Hm?... oh he works there?”

“Hizashi Yamada – Present Mic”

Who?

‘The radio guy. That’s his name. He looks… different from what I imagined but it’s cool.’

Oh, okay?

And then, Haruki reads something he thinks he wasn’t meant to see.

“Yagi Toshinori – All Might”

‘HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT. FUCK. NO WAY. NUH-UH.’

HAH! Good luck with that!

‘IF HE CATCHES ME, HE CATCHES YOU, YOU DINGUS.’

Well yeah but they won’t see me.

Haruki just sighed, this was probably not meant to be public knowledge. Not like he has anyone to say it to. Well maybe Midoriya, but he shouldn’t. he really shouldn’t.

But the urge is still there. He’s still trying to find out whether Izuku is a trustworthy person. Well Haruki knows that he is, but the things he wants to tell him are way beyond the normal trust someone can put into one person.

He wasn’t going to tell him about the cult, no that’s out of the question. No one will know about that, at least not until father is gone.

Not until his siblings are out, not until he knows that they’re safe.

After getting over the new info he found, he snoops around some more. He finds out that Eraser did in fact expel a whole class on the first day, meaning that the article he read a week ago was not lying.

Honestly? He’s not surprised. That seems exactly like the thing Eraserhead would do.

He looks through some of the student files, which all seem like the regular stuff. His quirk is legally listed as “basic enhancements” so that’s what he will have to stick by in U.A. He never planned to show off his actual quirk. Nobody knows about that.

And if he can help it, nobody will.

And hey, ‘basic enhancements’ isn’t exactly a lie, he does have more stamina, strength, jumping height and speed than the regular human. And it’s easier for him to gain muscle or increase his limits.

He stands up and stretches, turning the radio off. It was nice music but he was going to have to make that drying rack, then find a bowl and buy some laundry detergent.

The drying rack should be easy, just a couple of planks will do wonders. If he could find string it would be ideal but he won’t.

Planks are everywhere, the apartment he’s living in has them scattered all around. He didn’t even have to leave his floor to find any. Which he really should clean up the whole upper floors, since nobody can get to them anyway. But he was busy most of the time, so he always put it off. He cleaned up his room today but his floor was still dirty, not to mention the other floors.

He finds enough planks and since he has no un-bent nails he just uses duct tape.

He puts it up on the roof, hoping that it won’t get spotted, he put it near the two walls, hoping that it will conceal it a bit more, but if you’re searching for it you’ll find it without a problem.

He quickly realizes that assembling that took him way longer than intended and the store near him is going to close soon. And it had such low prices too! usually some promotion going on.

So he quickly got out of his apartment and ran to the store – realizing halfway there that he forgot his wallet and then had to quickly run back to get it.

But he finally got some detergent, it was pretty cheap. And there was indeed a 2 for 1 special so he lucked out. He also got some quick foods he could eat over the week. It wasn’t much. In fact it was barely anything but it was good enough for him to not starve. And he bought a 5l bottle of water. He will need it if he wants to wash his clothes regularly. Going to the drinking fountains with a laundry bowl probably won’t look good.

His reputation is already shit but doing that would just confirm the fact that he was homeless.

When he got back he manages to find a nearly-uncracked bowl inside a dumpster. Not missing Max making fun of him for digging in trash again. It was the perfect size for laundry. He didn’t really know how to do laundry, since back when he was a kid his mom did it, and in the cult the peace keepers did it. So he never got taught how to.

Living on his own has taught him a lot of new skills. Though he still is missing many basic ones.

He gets back into his room and immediately googles ‘how to do laundry’ before adding ‘by hand’ to his search.

Turns out most people use washers. Makes sense but his building doesn’t have electricity, nor does he have the money to buy one.

He puts away a decent chunk of his money into a hidden compartment in his floor. Apartment savings

If he kept doing jobs like those he could actually earn enough for a small apartment. He would have electricity, running water, a fridge and in general, a house.

As much as he liked the fact that no one could track him inside this building. It was falling apart. So he needed to upgrade pretty soon.

His studies are easy so far, maybe he could try to do 2 big jobs per week? At that rate he would have an apartment before he joined U.A. and then he wouldn’t have to use Midoriya’s address to put down for the application.

‘Okay so new goal?’

When he was washing his clothes he remembered about the 3 missions he picked up. He texted the clients back during the past week, they’d discussed pay and other details about the jobs. He could finish the spy job today. That millionaire lives close to Musutafu and usually these types of guys don’t really care if anyone was watching. He could find some incriminating things pretty quickly. If he does the 2 missions the money will add up to be basically a 1 big mission pay off.

And then there’s the big mission he picked up. He had to somehow break into a police station, he couldn’t go as Filius. If he did then they would have more things to put into his file. And every police officer would now have a reason to not give up chasing him.

And Eraser would probably not fix any more of his injuries. Which was nice of him to do. Normally he would’ve let the bullet stay and heal it up with it still inside. Eventually his body got rid of things like that on it’s own. Though it always did leave a scar.

It left a scar anyway, probably because he was stopping it from healing at first. But that’s fine, he can handle another scar. And at least this time it’s in an easy to hide place.

If he picked up another big job that week he would probably get some form of publicity. Since many of those jobs are about helping civilians. Out in the open. And he’s been slowly gaining popularity as is. He hopes he won’t be shown on the news anytime soon.

He finishes washing all the things that reeked of cigarettes. Knowing that soon he’d have to wash them again for the same reason.

He didn’t have the urge to do it again yet. But he knew that eventually he would, he still had a couple of things that he planned to do, and none of them enjoyable.

So he probably will smoke again. One of those things is visiting their graves.

he probably will have to get rid of weeds and plant some flowers around them, he knows that he doesn’t want to. It still hurts. He still remembers holding their bodies, and then burying them into the ground.

He somehow made two gravestones with his quirk. He doesn’t know how, he can’t replicate it now. He just did back then. Yeah after that he’s going to need to smoke at least a whole pack.

He snapped out of his thoughts just as he realized he’s been washing his hammock way too much.

He took it out and hanged it out on the drying rack. Along with his vigilante outfit, he would have to go out with that outfit he wore during his infiltration at the hospital.

If he adjusted it a little but it was still really similar.

It was pretty early “20:21” his phone said. When he was looking at the time got another message from Eraser.

“you’re patrolling tonight”

‘…what?’

Is that supposed to be a question?

‘I… actually… can’t tell.’ He looked at the text message with confusion. Wondering what to respond.

“my leg is fine.”

He said. Getting straight to the point, if Eraserhead was asking, it would probably because of getting shot. And if he was telling him, then he doesn’t know why the fuck the pro hero would do that.

“district 7 building 2, midnight. Meet me.”

‘WHAT?’ this was making less and less sense the more he texted Eraser.

Why would he want to meet him? Is he going to be there with the police? Is it a plan to arrest him? He won’t come. No way. Too risky.

“I need help with a job.”

What…

“WHAT THE FUCK????” Haruki screams out. There’s no way that this is happening. Why would Eraserhead need HIS help? This was so weird. He didn’t understand any of it.

“…” “what” he texted back

“I need help with a job.” And then quickly “well, me and Tsukauchi need help with a job”

I no longer understand anything.

“why would I do it?” Haruki texts back

“You will get paid. Either in money, or in information. The pay you want will be discussed today, if you come.”

…okay this would make that mission way easier.

You can’t ask them for the info the client wanted. They’ll know who got it.

‘fuck.’  Okay maybe not, but he could do something else. If he could pick up the money at the police station stealing the info would be much easier.

“could I pick the money up at the police station?”

“I’d imagine there’d be no problem but I have to ask the detective.”

He thinks for a second before responding.

“see you.”

“seen”

Of course he leaves us on seen again.

Haruki sighs and runs his hand through his hair. A lot was just dumped on him.

If Eraser texted him 5 minutes ago he would’ve still had his costume. Now it was wet.

He turns on his radio and begins studying sign language. By the time he has to leave to patrol he’s learned some common phrases, it wasn’t much but it was something, and besides he was studying this in his free time.

He put on the black-white jacket, wearing his black turtleneck underneath. He can’t wash his mask as it’s not waterproof, though it doesn’t really smell of smoke at all, which is odd since he did wear it while smoking.

But he’s not about to start complaining. He puts on the tracksuit pants again, his regular black boots also not needing to be washed. He did reinforce the boots they had spikes on the bottom of them so that his kicks hurt more. He liked kicking people. It made him feel more powerful, and his legs were stronger than his arms.

he tied his bangs back with a rubber tie, as he didn’t have regular ones. it would be a pain to take off with his tangled hair but it was either this or let Eraserhead learn that his hair is a very specific shade of blue. He got some other gloves, these ones fully black and latex, he didn’t like that fabric but they were the only other gloves that matched.

He put in his contacts and went out. It was around 23:10 when he started patrolling, so he decided to finish that one job while he was at it. He found the millionaires house, the lights were still on.

It took him 20 minutes to find something incriminating. Recording with his phone he saw how said millionaire had a very, very big passion about gun ownership, and drugs. Of course it’s drugs. It’s always drugs. The gun thing was small, he did not have a license. And he for sure wasn’t in the military so those riffles were definitely illegal.

He took pictures and videos until he had to go.

He jumped onto the rooftop of the building Eraserhead sent him. He did not feel his quirk, but Max’s presence decreased. He was still there. Which meant he was adapting. One day Eraser won’t be able to get rid of him. Which made Filius have goosebumps. He didn’t like the fat that his quirk was able to evolve without any work from him.

“You’re late” He hears, ‘how did he even know I was here?’ and of course his quirk didn’t pick up on him AGAIN. Eraserhead looks back before clear confusion is seen on his face.

“Emergency situation. Don’t mind it.” Filius declares, walking closer. He didn’t have his capture tape, he didn’t have the addition to his shirt that made it so that he could stick his bo staff there, so he had to hold it.

Eraser shrugs, making sure to keep his distance.

He’s trying to gain your trust. He will arrest you the second you walk closer.

Filius shuts the voices out of his head. He cannot get distracted right now.

“What’s the job?” He says, before adjusting his mask realizing that the voice changer is way too robotic than it normally is.

Eraserhead raises an eyebrow and sighs again.

“We need you to look into someone.” Fil smirked. The police wanted him to do something illegal? Now that was interesting. He expected something tedious that they just didn’t want to do. But no, this was something they couldn’t do.

“They are suspected to be in possession of drugs, illegal weapons and has had reports of sexual abuse against him.” Eraser continued, trying to gauge reaction. He probably had some sort of bug on him. Are they trying to catch Fil admitting to doing a crime? Why? they already had enough incriminating things about him. There’s already an arrest warrant out for him.

But that also sounded oddly similar to the guy he just got the footage on. No way.

‘there’s just no fucking way…’ he thinks, internally face-palming.

“oh? Can’t the police do that on their own?” He asks, reading the heroes every move, every change in expression no matter how small, every breath he took.

“No warrant.” He adds, “the guy lives on the outskirts of the town. District 4 Building 32 in the town over.”

‘HOLY SHIT THAT IS THE SAME GUY.’

Filius sighs at the irony, the fact that his work and the polices work somehow interjected twice in a row just baffled him. It seemed like all that luck he had for finding new things for his apartment was actually just rewards for this bullshit.

“Can you do it?” The hero questions, tilting his head to the side.

“give me a second I have to see something.” The vigilante responds as he takes out his phone and texts that client. And of course that they’re ecstatic about the turn of events. Apparently the entire job was just to have evidence against their abuser.

So now Fil will get money from the police and from the client. Okay, not bad. Still it makes Filius kind of pissed off, why is he actually considering helping the police?

“Fine. Do you need proof of all of those things?” he asks crossing his arms.

“That would be ideal, but if you only manage to get proof for the drugs and guns that would already be plenty to arrest the guy. Especially since recently he’s been keeping to himself, he might not have another victim until a few more months.” Filius could feel the hatred dripping from Erasers tone, he clearly had the same stance about people like the target.

“Got it, time limit?”

“A week, if you need more text me.”  Filius raised an eyebrow, pretty long time frame, especially considered that he already had said evidence. But he could get the last one. He knows he could. The evidence he has so far was from the windows of the guys mansion. The guns were in a room with no windows but there was one right outside the door. There were a few rooms Fil wasn’t able to gain access to, one of them the guy entered multiple times. That’s the room the proof is in.

It had to be.

He realized he’s been staring for a while without responding.

“I don’t work for cheap”

“140 000 yen”  Fil nearly choked on his own spit from that, there’s no way he heard that right. The price was insane. He lowered his tone and tried to keep it as monotone as possible

“Excuse me?”

The hero put a hand into his pocket. “200 000 yen? We do not know your rates.”

‘We. So they are listening.’

“That’s enough. Guess the police really is desperate to get this guy.” He responds looking to the side and onto the city.

All the answer he got was a grunt from the hero. They stood in silence for a while before Eraser spoke again.

“You’re not limping anymore.” He states, but it’s obvious it’s just a question.

“High pain tolerance. Remember?”

Another grunt. Seriously he spoke less than Fil did. And that’s an achievement. Silence fell between them again before Filius remembered the question he wanted to ask.

“Do you listen to black metal Eraser?”

Eraserhead looks at him, Fil hasn’t even realized that he has been looking at the city lights with him. His eyebrows twitched, his gaze sharp, clearly looking for a double meaning in that sentence.

“sometimes? Unless you meant something other than the music.” The hero answered, still looking right through fil. ‘if looks could kill huh?’

“knew it.” Fil stretched, before standing up quickly. He felt quirks, many of them, all suddenly increasing in power. ‘Shit, trigger’

Two emitters, four transformation, three mutant, and one accumulation.

“Eraser. Come.” He says quickly, running onto the next rooftop, running towards the feeling. They were strong quirks, his head hurting slightly from it. When they reach the scene they see many people fighting each other, all seemingly on trigger.

Fil boosts himself into the air by extending his bo staff and swings himself at the now giant… DRAGON? WHAT? WHY? HOW?

The dragons wings seemed to be not small enough to fit in the street, breaking a couple of windows, the police will be here soon, with pro heroes. Fil had to be quick. He looked at the other villains.

They all had weaker quirks, the most dangerous one was probably the one that let that one guy turn anything into a liquid, but it seemed to tire him out pretty quickly.

When fil was losing his momentum and began falling down he flips his bo staff and extends the katana that’s hidden inside it. the black blade identical to the one he fought in the facility. The black roses reflecting the light from the light posts on it.

He falls back onto the dragon-person and slices at their back, making sure not to go too deep. Just to hurt them, maybe immobilize them, but nothing that would permanently damage them.

They shouted and tried to push him off, breaking the cement on the street in the process.

Eraserhead is fighting the smaller villains. His quirk does nothing to the dragon, Filius stands up and attacks again hitting the dragons neck, they shriek and finally manage to knock him off. He holds himself up by a windowsill on one of the buildings. seeing someone recording from the inside of the apartment. He makes a heart with one hand to the camera before he leaps off and aiming for the dragons eyes, trying to kick him he misses and hits their neck again.

Ouch! No more voice for you!

Max is back. Alright meaning that Eraser is far away for his quirks radius to not work anymore

He’s fighting those other villains a bit further away.

Fil holds onto a balcony on the other side of the road, the dragon now attacking him. Breaking the brick of the buildings in the process. ‘Shit’

Fil falls onto the road, hearing a loud ‘crack!’ in the process.

Oh, damn RIP your shoulder.

He stands up, his shoulder now broken, starting to heal. Luckily no blood spilled. He was right handed so this made the battle so much more inconvenient. He takes his bo staff in the other hand, it was numb. But still usable, he runs under the dragon. And slices at it’s legs. Trying to make them fall over.

After many tries, many cuts and many hits from the dragons tail it finally falls to the front. Not hitting any more buildings.

Fil climbs up to the top of it. looking for Eraser, trying to see if he’s still fighting. He hears cheering from some of the windows.

‘Damn, I got spotted by way more people than intended’

He gets slightly embarrassed, hoping the masks covers his red face. He then raises one fisted hand, just like he saw many heroes do.

He then swiftly boosted himself off the ground again, leaping in the air after sensing some quirks still fighting nearby.

Fil and Eraserhead fight off the remaining villains before Eraser ties them up and they bring them to the main guy.

When Filius sees some other heroes arriving he knows that his time is up. He glances at Eraser, seeing him nod. So he runs – Before the heroes see him – he runs away.

He hides out in some alleyway, waiting a few minutes for his hand to heal. It was 3 am now, his patrol would have to end in a few hours, he had to make the most of it.

After his shoulder healed he headed back into the mansion. ‘Better to get this over with’  he already knew what he was looking for.

The security on this place was tight, but not tight enough. Fil could easily break in. he went in using the fireplace, maybe a dangerous choice but he did not feel like hacking into a window.

He sneaks around the house heading up the stairs, surprisingly there is nothing. No alarms, no sensors, no nothing. This guy was reckless.

Filius reached the door and saw that it had a padlock, he saw the code. During the 20 minutes he was scouting his house before he had entered that room 12 times,

‘172816212230’

Random numbers, safe, the door opened with a small click. At which the lights in the bedroom turned on, He quickly entered the room and closed the door behind him. They lock once again. He can see the light turning on in the corridor, a shadow appearing on the crack in the floor. Fil stands behind the door, his bo staff in his hand, set to the lowest setting with the katana poking out.

But after a few minutes the shadow went away, the lights turning off again.

He looked around the room he was in, it was lit up by a red light. A black room? Not many people use polaroids in this century. It was a machine of his times, the guy probably paid a fortune for the camera. They were collectors’ items now.

He looked at the pictures, just what he was expecting. The photos of his victims.

It was sick. Fil took out his phone and took as many pictures of the room as he could. He then unlocks the door again, this time by using a spare lockpick – thanks eraser for the idea of getting one.

He got out, the door not clicking this time. Filius walks over to a window on the second floor, since those didn’t have any security on them, he sneaked out easily. Walking back to his apartment.

Laying on the floor, no longer having his hammock to sleep on. He pinches his nose bridge, right on top of his piercings. Which he put right back in after returning.

He now still has to: track someone and bring them over to the client. And steal the info from the police station.

He sighs, the radio on, it always was recently. He found comfort in the music it played, and present mic’s personality was something that cheered him up.

He picks up his phone again.

Eraser

“Are you safe?”

Huh? What… why is he asking that?

‘is Eraserhead… checking up on them?’

“yes.”

“The villains are currently detained, the city is being restored by Cementos and other heroes. Thanks for the help.”

Aw, you got a thank you for your help, how sweet Max’s voice filled with mockery. Haruki shook his head sighing.

“Seen”

Haruki didn’t want to respond, he was too tired to. Instead he updated his client.

“I have enough evidence, the police will get it in a week. The guy will be detained shortly after”

He texted, not bothering to read the response.

The sun was now rising. He decided to go for a run. Putting on a white tank-top, revealing his scars again. Some black cargo pants, one of his better pairs of clothes.

He’s been working out before his patrols, but he still needed to get stronger. And additional exercise won’t hurt.

Haruki ran around the beach in Musutafu, it was littered with trash. It sucked, he hated how much people litter, littering was one of the worse crimes in Haruki’s mind.

He noticed something though, a desk. He had to get that, it was a decently sized desk, light wood with three drawers. Haruki dug up the desk and returned home, he got looked at by everyone he passed but he was happy.

He placed the desk right at one of the corners of the room. Haruki went onto the rooftop seeing if his clothes were dry yet, seems like they are.

He takes his vigilante costume and the hammock, putting the costume onto the floor and hooking up the hammock to the ceiling again. The radio playing some old song. Old even for Haruki. He hummed along when he began cleaning the desk. Eventually setting all of his books and notebooks on it, and his clothes into the drawers.

While he was at it he decided to clean out his floor, he swept the floors and went over them with a wet rag – which was all he had.

In the process he found some scrap and parts of fabric he could make something out of. He decided on gloves, and so he made a needle using some blood from his hand, he had thread already lying around from old clothes that fell apart. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to use but he didn’t have anything else.

He made a pair of fingerless gloves. They were black with parts of it being blue. Surprising that the fabrics he found were his exact color palette. Maybe they got ripped off of some of his clothes when he was entering his floor?

It was clean now, he liked it that way. He enjoyed the cleanliness. The entire floor empty, but there was a couple more rooms that were now accessible as before they were covered by junk.

He found a bathroom, but obviously it didn’t work. He got bored so he continued cleaning the floors until he finished most of the building. He picked a building that didn’t have many other homeless people in it, just so that there’s a lower risk of being mugged. He found an old couch on one of the floors, bringing it up to his floor was a pain.

But eventually he did it. now having a couch in front of his hammock. He went over it with the same wet rag to clean it up a bit, the springs from it were sticking out in some places but it was still usable.

His place was starting to become cozy, he really felt like it was his home. Sure it looked old and dirty, and it wasn’t an actual house but it was his.

He was going to have to move all of this stuff to his new apartment when he finally gets it. which with the money he gets from this mission it will put him about 1/4^th of the way there. He’ll have to go apartment hunting. He sighs out of relief, things were starting to seem better. He was finally able to make good money. He was glad.

Haruki had to go take a shower now. He decided to sneak into a gym.

It wasn’t that far away, maybe a bit of a walk but nothing too far, the sun was already setting, he had to be quick. Before the gym shut down. He managed to sneak in fairly easy, he gets into the showers. The warm water hitting his hair, it felt amazing. The laundromat usually mostly had cold water, Haruki didn’t mind it that much but it was still nice to feel the warmth.

He let the water fall onto him for a few minutes, before he started to wash himself. Using some nearly used up 3 in 1 shampoo. He hated it, it was terrible. But he wasn’t able to afford better ones. He walked out of the showers, getting dressed again and sneaking out. The city during the night was beautiful, it was even more beautiful out on top of the buildings, but the sight of the street lamps lighting up the street and lights still on in the apartments gave him an oddly comforting feeling, it felt familiar, the cold night air hitting his lungs, it was going to be autumn soon. He heard that the winter in Musutafu can be brutal, he might have to invest in some kind of heating system, ‘maybe he can buy a bunch of those pouches that you poured hot water into?’

‘no that was a stupid idea.’

He started mumbling while walking, obviously picking up the habit from Midoriya. He didn’t have a good idea for what to do for winter, maybe he could just buy a shit ton of blankets?

He gets knocked out of his thoughts by a familiar feeling, Eraserhead’s here.

“Kid, why are you out past curfew again?” The hero said, jumping down from some building.

Haruki jumps up, he knew the hero was there but whenever he’s not wearing his costume, his presence in general makes him uncomfortable.

“G-gym?” Haruki replied, voice cracking again. He had proof since his hair was still wet from the shower he took. He didn’t look into Eraserhead’s eyes. He felt like if he did he would get attacked.

Eraser scoffs moving closer to him. Haruki was about to start running, thinking that Eraserhead figured out who he was and was now going to arrest him. But when the hero reached him, he just held out his hand …holding a nutrition bar? The same present-mic themed one. It tasted great the last time he ate it, peanut butter flavored.

He stares at the bar in shock, blinking rapidly.

“Are you allergic?” Eraserhead questions, tilting his head to the side, slightly furrowing his eyebrows.

“Huh? No, no I-I’m not!” He says, voice cracking again. As if he was going through puberty again – did he ever go through puberty though? – he grabs the nutrition bar from his hands and begins to eat it. “why?” he asks faintly when the hero turns back, stopping when he hears the question.

“My… roommate got a bunch of these for free one day. I think they taste like shit while he’s allergic to peanut butter.” Eraserhead answers looking over his shoulder “So I’ve been taking them on patrol and giving them out to anyone who seems like they might like them.” He adds.

“oh.” That’s all that Haruki says, he didn’t know what else he could say. He didn’t know Eraserhead was the type to have roommates. And the way that he said that word, there’s something more to it.

He was still looking down, realizing how terrible he looked, his clothes ripped and stained, his shoes covered in grime and dirt. “thanks…” He finally responds, eating the nutrition bar. “it’s tasty…” He regretted saying that as soon as he said it. The hero literally just said that he thought the candy was terrible, saying that it’s tasty is literally such a weird thing to say.

“Glad you think so kiddo.” He turns back fully and pats Haruki on the head once. “Now go home. it’s late. You have school tomorrow.” His eyebrows furrow and his gaze hardens, Haruki flinched at the touch, he hasn’t felt like that in a long time. The last time was probably when his mother – the one at the facility – was still alive. It was a nice feeling, he could feel his face becoming even redder.

“y-yes sir!” He responded, a little bit too loud. Eraser lifts an eyebrow before turning back again and leaving. Haruki started to walk back to his house. He finished his nutrition bar and stuck the wrapper into his pocket before reaching a trashcan and throwing it out.

…

Eraserhead is following him. He can’t hear Max, and if he focuses he can feel the low buzz of his quirk, and the light gray aura around it. He hopes that the hero won’t follow him the entire way back. He can’t let him know where he lives. He took a longer route, luckily the one that also could lead to Izuku’s house. But when they reached the bad part of the city the hero stopped, Max returning to Haruki’s side. After 10 minutes he couldn’t sense his quirk anymore.

He’s definitely gay.

‘WHAT?! Max, you can’t say that!’

I mean it literally! The whole “roommate” thing is basically code for gay!

‘ still, none of your business’

Max sighs, shaking his head as he floats besides Haruki when they both go back home. When Haruki goes back into his room he realizes that he hasn’t actually written in his notebook in quite a while. He has so many things he has learned that he should probably write down. though the notebook can be easily read through if he ever looses it, he could write it on his laptop but even if he made as many pre-cautions as he could, it still can be hacked. There’s no one way to solve that problem. Some hackers are just too talented for Haruki to defend himself against. So the notebooks it is. He picks up one of his notebooks and begins writing. About all of the heroes he’s met, all the villains that were note-worthy, all of the quirks he felt and was wondering about, some new things about his quirk – and how Eraserhead impacts it.

He writes like crazy, switching between different languages on a whim whenever he forgets a word, his handwriting is messy, jagged, barely legible. That was a bonus in his books though, that meant that only he could read them. Any other people he would have to take a long time to decipher the words, and then would have to translate the words that he wrote in different languages.

The ones that he cycled through were polish – his native language, English – the one that he spoke during the facility and Japanese – whenever he could, just so that he could practice, he was getting better. He was proud of that, he liked seeing his progress. Everyone did.

Do you think that they miss us? Max asks, he was sitting on the hammock, looking between Haruki on the floor, the radio and the couch. The mood shifts immediately after he says that, Max’s usuall teasing tone gone. He wasn’t insulting Haruki, he wasn’t making fun of anyone, he wasn’t acting like he was better than everyone, he was just asking. It was a simple question, but they both knew what he meant, they both knew that they thought about their family every day, and every day he wonders what are they doing. Whether they’re alive. Whether someone took his place as the prophet. Whether they will remember him when he returns? How long even passed in there? time passes more slowly inside the facility. Incredibly slow. Maybe it was only a day there? maybe a month. He didn’t know. But he wanted to. He had a way to see where they were, Astris and him made themselves compasses that pointed to eachother. So even if they moved places, he knew where Astris was.

He knew that she was moving, he knew that she was alive. And she knew that he was alive. Which made him calmer, it made him think that no matter what, he can still save them. That he’ll be able to return and help them run away.

‘I… maybe. I hope that they… are but uh… w-who knows.’ He answers, his voice quiet, trembling, not certain of anything. he was looking around the room as well, his grip on the pen tightens, he stopped writing. No longer remembering what he was writing about at that time. Max is playing with his long hair, the light purple shining brightly in the moonlight.

I… he sighs, not knowing if he should continue. I know what we went through Haruki… I’m you. I’ve always been you. I also get those nightmares… well mine are a bit different, you don’t see them but uh… sometimes I just see how our siblings look at us..  w-when we return. He says, stuttering. It was new, Max never stuttered. They look at us… like they don’t remember anything… like they just …forgot.

He laughs faintly at the end, Haruki swears he can see him shaking slightly. He didn’t know what to do. Max wasn’t a real person. He was just a fake human inside his brain..

Right? … right?...

He didn’t know anymore, how can a fake human have dreams? How can he have his own thoughts? If Max has his own thoughts but Haruki doesn’t does that mean that Haruki is the fake human? Is Max real?

Haruki doesn’t realize when his breathing speeds up, or when he’s holding himself by his shirt. Not knowing what to think.

If he’s the fake one. What should he do? Should he let Max lead forever? Should he try to get rid of Max forever?

…I’m the fake one.

‘h-huh?’ Haruki looks up, eyes landing on Max. On himself, or a past version of him. He doesn’t know why Max stopped updating his appearance, he always did. Whenever Filius had a huge change in his appearance Max changed as well, he looked identical to him. Except for the part that Max showed his quirk. Max had horns, Max had different eyes, Max had black marks on his skin, Max had a tail. Everything else was identical. But somewere along the lines he stopped. He dressed differently, he wore his hair differently, he stayed the version he was in the cult. None of his scars showing.

Haruki didn’t know why. Why the person who was a copy of him suddenly looked so different?

Why did he not see himself when he looked in the mirror, why he didn’t see himself when he looked at Max? The only times he recognized himself was back with Kaori, back with Astris and Seoung and Renne and Nea and Bea and Haru, and even Raine.

He was himself. He was happy. Why did his father have to fuck that up? Why does he no longer feel like himself?

Why can’t he just go back to when he felt good. When he was oblivious to the pain that was happening to him or around him.

Back when Alekai wasn’t dead, back when Haruki was still just a foreign name that didn’t mean anything to Filius.

Back when he didn’t have a favorite color, back when the only reason it became purple was because Kaori said that it seemed like it would be his favorite color.

He couldn’t see it the same after that, purple was everywhere. He saw it in the sky, in flowers, in feelings, in quirks, in himself.

He loves purple now.

She was amazing wasn’t she? Always so confident, always so fiery,

‘that was the best part about her.’ Haruki answers, leaning against the wall. Sighing, remembering everything that he did with her

‘she was always so determined, like she knew exactly what was going to happen, even if she was just a human. She spoke like she knew what was going through everyones mind.’

Hahah, I remember how she was amazed by our wings. She knew where they came from, she still loved them. Max chuckles, his voice light. He was remembering everything too, he was living through those things as well, seeing them from an outsiders perspective, but he still saw them. Max sees himself as Haruki. Max thinks that they are one and the same. The exact copy but in different fonts.

And maybe he wasn’t wrong. Maybe there wasn’t a real and fake one. Maybe they were both real?

Maybe he didn’t need to decide who was the original. They both are, they’re both him.

And so, max disappeared, and Haruki couldn’t feel him anymore. He was just… gone.

Haruki tried calming his breathing, his heart thumping loud inside his chest, he doesn’t remember the last time he felt like this. The last time where he actually had an identity crisis. He was probably back at the cult. The first time they completely changed the way he looked, he didn’t recognize himself. He didn’t feel like his face was his, Raine tried to help him but his words fell slient on Filius’ ears, he wasn’t listening, he was just staring in the mirror, no longer himself, no longer anyone. He didn’t know who he was back then, and neither does he now.

Would he ever know? Does he have to know? What if he never knows? Can he ever be himself?

He isn’t human anyway, so who is he? He’s himself, yet who is he?

Did he stop being himself when he was 8? He missed his house, he missed his face, he didn’t remember it now, he missed who he was. He missed the childhood he didn’t have.

He didn’t know anything. He would never know the things that could’ve been.

He shakes his thoughts away again, standing up taking deep breaths, turning the radio on louder. Just so that he can silence his thoughts.

The songs quieting everything else out, he was surprised to hear present mic again. He was the host for a cuple of days straight now. He’s probably tired of it already. He normally he worked every Friday from 1am to 5am. But so far he’s been working everyday non-stop. With only a couple of hours of breaks. Was he overworking himself? Haruki was worried, he shouldn’t be. He didn’t even know the guy.

Still, over-exhaustion is terrible. He knows, he used to avoid sleep for as long as he could. He sometimes still does, it isn’t a good feeling. Sometimes he started seeing things, which – alright he normally saw things.. Max – but those were different. He didn’t think that seeing random flying tomatoes were supposed to be a sleep deprivation symptom but after that he definitely started sleeping a lot more often.

He sat back down onto the floor. Still needing a chair for his desk. It was a nice storage space so far, he placed the clothes that didn’t fit into the drawers onto the couch. His costume always on the bottom of the drawer, in between other shirts. That makes it less likely to be found. He scribbles down some ideas for upgrades, some things that he could buy. Basic hosuehold things were on said list. It was not something he was going to buy anytime soon, but it was a “in case im rich” kind of thing.

The list included things like:

-mugs, plates, forks and in general cutlery

-pillows/plushies

-a kettle

-a heater

-blankets.

-plushies crossed out. He wanted them, he always liked them. He just never got them, in the facility he couldn’t. He had one plushie, a small white sheep with a crown, Kaori gave it to him. If he had money his bed would’ve been stacked full with plushies. Actually scratch that, he wpuld not have a bed anymore. It would all just be a pile of plushies.

He sometimes looked over the toy store, they had those huge 1.80cm tall teddy bears, he always wanted one. It was bigger than him. It looked so fluffy. Sadly it cost a fortune, and it would probably get matted immediately inside his house.

He starts rocking his body to the music playing, it was a beautiful song. He didn’t know the name, but he recognized it from his childhood. It was always on the radio back then, that was another reason he liked the “Hands Up Radio” it played old songs, songs he remembered from when he was a kid, driving in a car for hours. Just zoning out, trying to sleep while the radio played some songs. So far Present Mic’s radio show was the only one that played songs from his generation. And he really liked it for that. It was different, it was nostalgic.

He hasn’t stopped playing that station ever, even if “Hands Up Radio” didn’t play at those times, Haruki was bad with time keeping. So whenever he heard Mic’s cheerfull voice he knew that it was 1 am already.

He wrote down more things, more tactics. More info about the teachers at U.A. and anything he would have to watch out for, he made strategies for how he’d hide his scars with the uniforms. He learned that wearing things under the clothes they give you are allowed, so he figured that if he got a few more turtlenecks he would be fine. Just washing them after every use and then putting it one again.

He sighed, knowing that this would have to be an investment, as he only had one turtleneck shirt. And he had to design his hero costume. But he was going to leave that for another time.

For now, he was going to go to sleep. He had a long day. He laid into his hammock, still slightly cold after washing it. He lowered the radio to a normal loudness and let himself lose consciousness.

He was in the white room again, the void ever so consuming.

Except, Max wasn’t here. He was gone, so Haruki just sat down and waited. Eventually realizing that he was sitting in a field, the sky a beautiful blue, clouds scattered around it. the grass a vibrant green, flowers growing all around him. He laid there just relaxing.

And for once, he felt like he would wake up well rested.

Chapter Text

Aizawa’s head hurts, it typically did. Except that today, he knows very well why it hurts. He stands up from his bed, untangling himself from his husband when he does, he makes himself some coffee, really sweetened. Nobody except for Hizashi knows that his coffee isn’t actually black. It is the most sweetened thing that exist on this planet. It could probably murder someone if they’re not used to sugar. But hey – Everybody needs something sweet in their lives from time to time.

If you can describe multiple times a day ‘from time to time’. He feeds his cats, the small green mat they put under the bowls now stained with cat food. They just gave up on cleaning it, it would just get dirty again the next day. The sun still isn’t up, meaning that he only slept for a few hours. He was going to take naps later on so it’s fine.

He sat down on the dark green couch, Aizawa still doesn’t understand the odd color choice. He put his feet up on the glass coffee table. Hizashi told him many times before to not do that, that the table will break but it was the only comfortable position on the couch in Shota’s opinion. He picked up his laptop and started working, having to write some reports. Especially the one for what happened yesterday.

The fight that broke out was sudden, he didn’t even notice it at first. The kid did.

The kid was the one who told him to follow him, they somehow knew that there was a fight starting out. ‘Maybe some kind of quirk?’ Nobody normal can see a fight that was so far away. He shrugs, doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that he’s 80% sure that he saw the kid fall down from an unbelievable height and then immediately stand back up and continue fighting. He summed it up to his eyes playing tricks on him, a normal person would’ve definitely broken something at that point. And what was strange was that the vigilante swapped to his left hand after getting hit.

They’re right handed. He knows they are, it’s obvious. Their right hand is stronger, they’re always using their right hand to do everything.

So they had to have hurt themselves somehow, why would anyone in their right minds fight with their less dominant hand against an enemy that strong? Maybe Filius wasn’t in their right mind. Maybe they were just doing it to train their left hand more. It would be a foolish thing to do but they’re a vigilante, a young one at that. So Aizawa wasn’t about to assume that they wouldn’t do it.

He was still surprised that they managed to defeat the villain on their own. It was huge, and it would’ve taken Eraserhead way more time. But honestly? He wasn’t happy about that fact. No one that young should know how to fight that well. No one should have to fight villains like those.

The vigilante looked a bit more buff recently. Still malnourished but now it looked as if they had gained muscles. ‘They better not be overworking themselves’.

The new outfit they wore during their last meeting. surprised Aizawa, did their old costume get destroyed? No, that can’t be it, they still had the mask and boots. Maybe it was getting washed then? Probably. They may have not planned to patrol that day.

Aizawa only texted them that day because they knew that they patrol every other day. If he knew that they were washing their costume and were planning on taking a day off he would’ve told them to stay home and just meet him the next time they went out.

He didn’t expect them to take the job. He was wondering why they needed to text something on their phone before accepting it. Maybe they have an agent or something? Are they a part of some vigilante organization?

Those things weren’t unheard of. They weren’t common, yet many vigilantes did their jobs with at least one other person, usually a friend. But he’s seen a trio of vigilantes become friends during their jobs together. He’s actually seen that happen multiple times, but he remembers one almost too vividly.

He remembers how he just started out his hero work back then, how he thought that all vigilantes were glorified villains.

He’s glad that he’s changed his viewpoint. If he hadn’t then who knows how Filius would’ve dealt with that gunshot wound. They seemed to have forgotten about it when they were on that rooftop. ‘How can someone just forget that they were shot? And how could they not feel him taking the bullet out?’

The more he’s met the vigilante the more he’s worried about them. They seem like they haven’t eaten in days, they somehow are still gaining strength and muscle, He noticed many scars on their legs when he was treating the gunshot wound. But none of them seemed accidental – no they all looked, deliberate. A bit too similar to surgery scars for his liking.

All of these were warning signs, causes for concern. Were they actually overworking themselves? Before that was just a silly thought but now he realized that it might’ve actually been true. If they were working out to gain those muscles, and then not eating, and then going out on patrol – and don’t think that he didn’t notice those eyebags – he’s sure that the kid needs a break. There’s no way that anyone can somehow do that and have a normal social life.

Maybe Filius just didn’t have a social life? they had to right? They were young, probably around 20, most college students were out partying or spending their nights hanging out with people. But here was Filius, risking their life every night. And for what? Is it cause of some moral beliefs? Future dream? Money?

All of those were probable causes, he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. His head hurt because of that vigilante.

‘Why is he letting himself worry so much? A few years ago he wouldn’t have cared if some idiotic 20 year old was being reckless and putting themselves in danger.’

Well he would’ve told them that they’re stupid and to stop, not that any of them did. Not until he had to save their asses from almost certain death. After that they usually had to get taken to a hospital so then they were charged by the police for being a vigilante. And they stopped.

But this kid. This kid was different, so far he hasn’t had to save them. He did have to dig a bullet out of their thigh though, still they seemed like they wouldn’t have died if he didn’t.

Which also worried him, ’why were they acting as if getting shot wasn’t a big deal?’

And the call he heard from before then. So the whole thing was a job. They were probably doing this for the money, but they still took the time to free everyone, they still got shot just to save everyone in there.

They sat out on that roof and made sure that the person responsible was arrested, they’re a good kid. Even if they’re trying to make it look like they’re just a cold and heartless vigilante.

Aizawa knows their type. He’s sure they’re doing that, he knows that they’re just pretending to not care.

It was what people that age always did, teenagers were always like that. And yes he considers 20 to still be a teenager. Besides there’s a very high chance that they are younger than that. Maybe 17 even.

Aizawa looks back on his laptop realizing that he’s done barely any progress. At this rate he wasn’t going to get any work done. He sighs, closing the laptop he picks up the TV remote from the couch armrest and turns on the news.

The news station is covering some new things that All Might did. They still don’t know about him joining U.A. next year. The school will probably be bombarded with reporters when they do. He knows that he’s going to get huge headaches when the new school year starts. And he’s going to have a new class of students. It was a bit more calm with no class to have to be responsible for. At least now whenever he broke apart a fight he wasn’t the one that had to lecture the kids for it.

Now he was going to have a class full of new students, he’s probably going to have to expel a few of them as always. It was normally the ones that got in by recommendation. They all acted like they were better than the others. Just trying to become heroes for the fame.

Some of them had actual potential, those were the ones that he let stay. Though by the end of the year out of 20 of his students, only around 10 were left.

By then his husband has already gotten out of bed. Groaning when he was making himself a cup of tea, Aizawa didn’t know how Hizashi managed to go through the whole day without even a single drop of coffee. Especially with how energetic he was.

“Morning Sho” Hizashi says, walking into the living room with a mug of orange-mango flavored mint tea in a “Hands Up Radio” mug. Mic always loved that tea, it was his favorite, he always drank it after he woke up.

Shota kissed his husband when he got close enough to. “Morning” He answered, his voice still raspy from sleepiness.

Yamada lays his head on Aizawa’s shoulder and changes the channel to the Disney+ one they had on their TV. Shota didn’t know about Disney until ‘Zashi introduced him to it. the movies seemed cute. So far his favorite one was Mulan. It was a really old movie, he was surprised they even had ways to animate back then. But it was a great movie.

Mic puts on some other old movie, one which he hasn’t watched yet. “Rapunzel” they had a few hours until they had to go to work. So they had time to watch the movie

He leans his own head on his husbands, watching the movie. At one point their cats walked up and sat around them.

He felt content, it was a nice morning. Something was missing though, and he couldn’t quite tell what.

***

Haruki woke up to the warm sun shining onto his eyes, he felt good, He normally woke up suddenly and immediately sitting up, but this time – for the first time ever – he was happy, he was rested. He turned the radio off, standing up and stretching, his back cracking loudly. He moves his shoulder, trying to see if it was fully healed now. It seemed like it was, there was a light numbness there but that would soon pass. He looked at the time “13:52”

It was Wednesday, he was supposed to go over to Izuku’s again today. He rubs his eyes and walks over to his couch, picking up some clothes and getting dressed.

He was wearing a fully black graphic shirt, he would’ve wore a white one but most of them had stains he had to yet wash out. Jean pants, not ripped. Even if he’s met Midoriya’s mother before he still wanted to at least look a bit presentable. An oversized light green hoodie, the sleeves rolled up so that they don’t annoy him. His black latex gloves, the fabric no longer as sparkly as when he first had them. The most recent mission he did without his costume probably messed it up a bit. he tied the shoe laces on his brown boots. He liked them, they were comfortable, just warm enough to be comfortable to wear during the whole year.

He sighed when he started feeling Max’s presence again, the sounds and frequencies of quirks outside of his apartment hitting his head again. He’s lucky that there weren’t any really strong ones, his always had a headache around those people.

He picks up his nearly empty deodorant and sprays himself. Hoping that he doesn’t smell as badly as he looks.

He sits back down on his hammock and takes his laptop in his lap. He looks at the jobs he still had to do. Just one left, he just has to locate someone, he’s good at doing that. If he knows their quirks he can feel them in a 1km radius.

That alongside the general area they went missing, the time they were missing and where they could’ve gone. It was easy.

Though considering that the person was already missing for a week that meant that they could’ve been anywhere. So that makes it a bit harder, still most of the time these types of things are done by someone the victim knew.

And so he found a family tree, Facebook contacts really help out with this. He made a small map of the city, the places the family lived, the places the family worked and the places that the victim liked to visit – the last one he got from the client.

He crossed off some people that couldn’t have done it. Either because of age, career or history. Which made the suspect list even smaller. Then he moved onto friends, and there he found a lead. Another missing person case.

A male in his 20’s with a simple water quirk. He went missing the same night, they lived around the same area. He dug around looking for clues or any connection between their families but there was nothing.

He was now between two choices, 1. Try hacking their Facebook accounts just to learn their passwords and Instagrams. 2. Follow their families around to see if he can find something out.

The first choice was the faster one, so he knew exactly what he will do.

He successfully hacks into their accounts, Facebook never did have good security. He was glad, it always made his job easier.

He dug around chats, he was surprised to see that they actually did use Facebook to chat. Most people in this era just made an account and forgot about it for all of eternity. He did that too, he only made an account because he needed to log into a different site with it.

But the two of them had many group chats, were in many groups and had a lot of pictures posted.

He read through the messages, nothing out of the ordinary at first but something seemed off, the conversations seemed stale, awkward. Not at all how adults would talk

That’s exactly how you text

‘oh… you’re back…’

You can at least pretend to care!

Max says clinging his chest dramatically. Haruki looks up at him and notices the outfit change.

Before Max was wearing the outfit Filius wore while inside the facility. Now though max was wearing different clothes. Dark grey and blue. Still revealing and very noble. It felt more Max, Haruki liked the change. He liked the color palette – even if he himself would’ve chosen something else.

And now, Max’s hair was untied. Normally it was the same as his old hairstyle – a light purple hair color, tied back into a long high ponytail, his bangs a mess, covering a lot of his face.

Now Max let his hair fall down to his hips, the bangs brushed to the side, revealing the black marks on his body fully.

Well? Ya like it?

‘it’s … different.’

DAMN, you’re mean! You’re diabolical Haruki!

Max’s jaw drops to the floor. Haruki doesn’t think he’s ever seen him that expressive. Though he’s always been one for dramatics.

Haruki rolls his eyes looking back onto his laptop. Continuing searching through the DM’s between the two adults.

“It’s nice.” He adds, not meaning to answer out loud, they were alone though so he doesn’t mind it. His voice comes out quieter than he intended, the soft tone almost too foreign to Haruki. He wasn’t used to speaking this way. Usually whenever he did his voiced cracked or he stuttered. Whenever he was Filius though, that voice never came out. When the mask was on, he was different. He was confident, he was loud, dramatic, expressive. He loved it, it made him feel like himself. Or a version of him that was long gone. He would keep up the act, the same act he did when he was still the prophet.

People liked extroverts, people liked loudness, people liked getting told what to think. And he needed the people to like him. It seemed to work, the people really liked him. But after all those years, after playing a part of a show for days without end. He found himself unable to stop.

He didn’t even know if he wanted to, who was he if not Filius? Was Haruki who he was in reality? Or was he just pretending again?

Not another identity crisis, Haruki I just got done changing my appearance, don’t make me change it again.

‘THAT’S WHY YOU CHANGED?’ Haruki looks at him in shock.

Doesn’t matter. Now go back to your job. Reading those messages mentally damages me. Max responds scratching the back of his neck and floating behind Haruki to look at the laptop.

‘yeah, they’re really bad huh?’ Haruki clicks his tongue, scrolling over the texts. ‘Maybe it’s a code? Like this is WORSE than my texting, and I text like an alien trying to probe humanity. Some of these messages just don’t make sense at all! “I consider love, giving you pencils so, much, much” WHAT?’ He continues, sighing. His theory was a dumb one, but honestly he’s had no other leads for now so he was willing to entertain it.

First letter of every word?

‘oh? Uh… ICLGUPMM? Nah.’

Every capitalized letter?

‘”I”… okay that’s definitely not it.’

… too smart for me, you should use your brain. I’m sure you can figure it out on your own… someday.

Haruki doesn’t answer, he looks over the text. Eventually he takes his notebook and tries to write down different combinations. He even uses a cypher solving website – nothing.

Eventually he has to leave if he wants to make it to Midoriya’s house in time. He closes his laptop, stretches, feeling the eyebags on his eyes – they have somewhat got lighter with tonight’s sleep. He picks up his bag, putting his notebook in there, and some books he was studying. Last time he went over they studied – nerds – so maybe they would study this time too?

He poured some water into the laundry bowl he used and washed his face. He goes out of his apartment and heads towards Midoriya’s apartment. To get to Izuku he had to walk through the more active side of town, he didn’t really like going here, he still did fairly often. The streets were littered with people, he had to squeeze past the crowds trying to get back from work.

He would never stop being confused on how he went from being tall inside the facility to being short on the outside. How can the average here be 184cm?, he was 170cm, so what if it was on the shorter side? He was still pretty tall in his books!

The black boots he wore with his vigilante outfit added a couple of centimeters to his height, but he was still shorter than the general public, so trying to walk through crowds of people – all of which were taller than him – were always a struggle. He eventually pushes through, ducking into an alleyway. His hair got messed up during all of that, and he tried so hard to make it look less messy in the morning.

He sighed to himself, waiting for the crowd to pass. He texted Izuku, telling him that he’d be a little late. He really should’ve went out earlier. He looks around the alley, nothing too out of the ordinary, he’s been in here a couple of times before. He basically knows the entire map of the alleyways in Musutafu. He’s been running around in them a lot recently. ‘Okay maybe being on the shorter side of the population wasn’t so bad’ He thinks when he remembers his first run in with Eraserhead. The only reason he got away without a fight was because of his height.

You have your coping mechanisms… I get that… I still feel a strong urge to make fun of you. I hope you know that.

‘Max…’ Haruki thinks with another exasperated sigh. Max only rolls his eyes, standing beside him with his arms crossed.

Haruki looks onto the street, which shows no sign of clearing up any time soon. He runs a hand through his hair and rolls up his sleeves. He jumps up the building, nearly falling off when his hoodie falls onto his head and covers his eyes, but he manages to get up anyway.

He pulls the hoodie down, readjusting his sleeves back onto the original position.

“Hey that was great wasn’t it?” He says out loud, but he receives no reply. “Max?” Nothing again. “Okay I couldn’t have looked like an idiot to a degree that you started ignoring me!” He looks around and realizes why Max wasn’t speaking.

“Eraser…” He stares at the hero in front of him. Holding a grocery bag – probably just got back from work, seeing the hero costume.

The man raises an eyebrow and Haruki remembers that he just heard him talking to himself.

“Oh! Uh. Max has an… invisibility quirk!” He explains quickly. Eraserhead clearly not believing his lie.

“Get down.” The hero says, Haruki looks down onto the still crowded street and Eraser follows his gaze “Ah. Where are you going?”

“Not far.” Haruki answers, he was trying to sound confident. To have at least a bit of the same boldness that Filius does, He fails miserably, his voice just sounding off, and forced – which it was – Eraserhead  sighs.

“Just… don’t fall, if I hear about a kid dying on this street because of their own clothes I’ll find you myself and bring you back to life just to lecture you.”

Haruki laughs “I can hear the teacher in you”

Eraser just rolls his eyes “Go before I change my mind about letting you do this.”

Haruki straightens out and turns back out the way he’s supposed to go. He prepares to jump onto the next building “See ya’ Eraser!” He shouts while jumping. The disappointment of the hero behind him can be felt from a mile away.

He jumps between the next few buildings, trying to be quick, he didn’t want to show up to Midoriya’s house covered in sweat, he cannot hear Max anymore. Which means that Eraserhead is in fact following him again. Either that or he’s just going the same way. When that thought crosses his mind he hopes that the hero doesn’t live in the same area as Izuku. Which makes way to an even scarier thought, ‘what if he lives in the same apartment complex?’ He feels dread running up his body. If he does, it would mean that he would probably see him way more often. Which could be dangerous to his part-time job. To put it lightly.

Though after a little bit Max came back, meaning that Eraserhead did not in fact live next to Midoriya. He felt glad, maybe his fear was irrational but that was something you had to worry about. A hero who was strictly on your case living next to the person you spend the most time with is a real concern.

He was happy it was dinner time in a few hours, he felt bad that he was thinking that way, he shouldn’t think of Izuku’s house as a free dinner. But his mother was an amazing cook – Either that or he just hasn’t eaten anything warm other than her cooking for months.

He looks at the building that Midoriya lives in. getting down from the roof he was on Haruki straightens out his clothes. And rings the house number, when he got inside Izuku’s house he was greeted by his mom.

“Hello kiddo! Good to see you again! Come on in!” she says cheerfully, Haruki walks inside and takes off his shoes. Izuku walks out of his room, his hair looked like a mess, Haruki always wondered how he doesn’t go crazy because of it.

They talked for a bit before deciding to go for a walk. The sky was really pretty at this hour, the pink of the sunset starting to creep into it. 

They walked around the outskirts of the town. Going to a park nearby, the place was peaceful, barely anyone there. Their conversations usually were just the both of them ranting one after another.

Except this time Haruki decided to listen more. Letting Izuku talk. The boy didn’t seem to mind though, he was happily rambling about heroes he saw, some recent villain fights. Statistics. And many other.

It was a familiar sight, made Haruki forget about everything that was stressing him. The comfort that this familiarity provided was more than he could ever ask for. He hasn’t felt this safe with a different person for a while.

Then somehow the topic changed to how the time you were born could influence your quirk manifestation. Turns out that children born later in the year have a higher chance of manifesting their quirks faster compared to kids born in the first months.

“yeah it was an actual study done. Isn’t it weird? It’s as if quirks have some sort of internal calendar.” Izuku laughs “Actually, when is your birthday Haru?”

Haruki flinches at the sudden question. being brought out of looking at the nature.

He wasn’t used to being called using his brothers name. Though Haru is a nickname people seemed to have started calling him in here, he still had to get used to it.

“Oh? Uh, 24^th of September” Haruki answers he sounded unsure, even if he knew that it was his birthday.

“Huh? I thought you were 15.” Izuku tilts his head

“yeah I uh… use the year to say how old I am.” That wasn’t true, he must’ve calculated it wrongly. He knew that next year he’d be going to U.A and he was supposed to be 16 then. Which would’ve meant that he was 15 now, but he forgot to factor in that his birthday for that year hasn’t passed yet.

“ah, makes sense. Wait. Your birthday is in two days!”

‘was it? crap I forgot…’ Haruki thinks facepalming himself in his mind.

When was the last time we celebrated a birthday? 570 years ago? Max is leaning over Haruki, way too close if he had a say in the matter.

“I guess I had to have forgotten hah. I’m not big on birthdays” he says laughing. He receives no answer as the boy next to him is now mumbling incoherently. Haruki chuckles and goes back to enjoying the look of the trees over the sunset.

It may have been a small thing to think about, but he loved nature, he loved how it looked, how it lived and grew. He loved how plants could survive even in the most terrible conditions, he loved how beautiful every single part of any plant looked, he loved them because she loved them

He pushes his thoughts away, taking a picture of the sun being slightly covered by trees, making sure to include the pretty flowers which bloomed on the stone fence of the park.

He tried sorting it to a folder but accidentally clicking on the wrong button when Midoriya suddenly screamed “I KNOW”. He decided that he’d sort the picture later.

“what?” he asked, looking at the freckled boy with concern in his eyes.

“Oh! Uh- nothing!” Izuku responds, his voice betraying him with each crack.

Haruki rolls his eyes, sighing when he leans on a nearby bench.

“I really like this park. The sun is always visible from here, no matter where you look. And it’s always framed by the trees in a way that makes it look almost like a painting.” Izuku sits on the bench

 “Yeah, I get what you mean” he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, letting the cold air fill up his lungs. Haruki opens his eyes and looks over Izuku, the boy seemed to have gained some muscle, which was odd. It was a sudden change, yet he did want to get into U.A. so it’s obvious that he’d want to get stronger. “Have you been working out?”

Midoriya jumps up at the question “yeah a bit! Just trying to prepare for the entrance exam!” He says with a smile, flexing one of his arms. It was actually an impressive gain. A few more months and he’d become an actually good sparring partner for Haruki.

Haruki smiles and says “If you keep it up I won’t be able to defeat you so easily anymore”

Izuku’s eyes light up at that statement “you think so? I’m still really weak”

“but you’re getting stronger. That’s all that matters. I’m telling you, in the summer if you’ll keep getting stronger you’d be able to beat me up!” Obviously Haruki was exaggerating, maybe Izuku wouldn’t be able to defeat him that soon, but the boy needed some encouragement. And Haruki is happy to give it to him.

Eventually they need to start getting back, the sun nearly hidden behind the shore of the beach they passed. It seemed to have less trash on it. Not by a lot but still, a few big pieces of messed up electricity were gone. Izuku seemed a little bit more nervous when they started passing the beach. Haruki didn’t know why.

 “Did you hear about the villain attack a week ago?” Izuku asks, his voice quieter than before and his eyes were darting all around the place.

“Huh? Uhh… the one with the sludge villain?” Haruki questions, trying to remember details about the attack. He didn’t know much.

“Yeah uhm.. so the kid that the sludge villain attacked was a classmate, and when I saw him being attacked, I ran forward to save him, I didn’t do much in the end but I couldn’t just stand there and wait for him to die you know?”

There’s a look of understanding on Haruki’s face. He didn’t know that that person was Izuku, is that why he’s started working out? To be able to fight villains in case that happened again?

“I’m sure you helped in more ways than you realize”

The rest of the walk back was quiet.

They walked back into the apartment, once again taking off their shoes. Haruki sat on the couch in the living room while Midoriya changed and went to take a shower.

“You could also take a shower if you’d like to kiddo. I’m sure Izuku wouldn’t mind borrowing you some clothes.” Ms. Midoriya said from the kitchen, Haruki could hear the sizzling of meat on the stove, his stomach was hurting from hunger, turns out that when he smelled food he immediately felt all of his hunger returning to him. Yet he still had to stop himself from gagging at the smell of meat.

He knew that the meat in Their house was normal meat, from animals. But he still remembered how the meat in the facility looked, the weird smell, the way it didn’t resemble any other kinds of meat, and how father didn’t seem to mind eating it.

Back at the start, father used to eat with him. When it was just the two of them, no mother, no siblings, no nothing.

He said that he wasn’t hungry that day, and they didn’t have meat for a long time after, he was glad they didn’t. His excuses wouldn’t have lasted for a very long time.

He realizes he hasn’t responded and Izuku’s mother was just looking at him concerned.

“Oh! Uh, s-sure! Hahah…” he hates the way his voice cracks, his awkward laugh only makes the situation worse.

They sit in silence from that moment. Eventually Izuku walks out of the bathroom and his mother asks him to find some clothes that would fit Haruki. When he does Haruki walks into the bathroom, it was a nice bathroom. Nothing too fancy, but it was still homey, like their entire house was.

He places the clothes on the sink and walked into the shower, shutting the glass door behind him. He turns on the water, not having to wait for it to warm up.

It takes a while for the warmth to get through the skin of his scars, as it has become slightly more resistant. He uses Midoriya’s shampoo, it was strawberry scented, a nice change from his 3 in 1.

It wasn’t the right shampoo for his hair type but it can’t be worse than the stuff he normally uses. The hot water making his muscles relax, it was warmer than the one in the gym. It was in that moment that he decided that hot showers were the best thing in the world, right after nature of course, nothing can ever beat nature.

He stands in the shower for a bit after finishing washing himself. He turns the water off and lets the last drops fall off his skin, he gets dressed, Izuku’s clothes slightly too small for him, but it’s not like it’s a huge difference.

When he walks out to the living room again he sees Izuku setting the table while his mom brings out a lot of different types of food, Haruki notices how there’s significantly less meat than the last time.

They all sit down and start eating, Ms. Midoriya making some light conversation in the meantime. The food tasted amazing. The things he normally ate couldn’t even think about trying to compare to this.

Midoriya is talking about some things with his mother, they both laugh. Haruki just observes. He likes coming over here. It was always so nice. He was surprised when he suddenly got asked a question

“Say Haruki, when would I be able to meet your mother? I’m sure she’s a lovely lady from how well she’s raised such a smart boy.” Izuku’s mother questioned, Haruki could hear his thoughts racing. He had to respond quickly or it would seem suspicious. He didn’t want to seem rude. It’s expected that people come over to each other’s houses interchangeably, but so far Haruki only went over to Midoriya’s

“oh! Uh. She’s busy most of the time. Her boss always calls her into work at the weirdest of times. She’s on a business trip right now.” He answers, hoping that the lie will suffice.

“What about your father? You must be staying with somebody.” Inko’s face showed concern, Haruki didn’t want her to be worried about him. He was fine, even if he was living in an abandoned building.

She’s not going to let this go huh?

‘Max not right now.’

“I- uh.. don’t have a dad…” Haruki utters, he couldn’t stop the stutter, he ate another bite of the food on his plate. “I have enough money and food, so I don’t mind staying alone for a few days at home.”

Ms. Midoriya seemed to quiet down at that, he really didn’t want to make the situation awkward, he hoped that someone would start talking again.

“Well, you’re always welcome here kiddo. The door’s open” She spoke up, her voice soft. Really motherly, he was almost jealous of Izuku for having such an amazing mother. Not that he didn’t. His mom was amazing, she was the best mom in the world. But she wasn’t here now. She was never going to be back.

He gives Ms. Inko a faint smile before looking back down onto his food.

“Do you want to stay over for the night? It is getting late. I wouldn’t want you to walk in the streets alone at night. There’s villains everywhere these days” She adds, picking up empty plates from the table and going to wash them.

Haruki helps tries to help with the dishes but she stops him before he can.

“I wouldn’t want to bother Izuku, it is a school night.” He responds scratching the back of his head.

“oh now don’t be silly! You two will just walk to school together then!”

Oh, she doesn’t know?

“I already finished middle school miss.” Haruki answers while chuckling “when I came to Japan I was in the middle of the school year so I took an online course to get my diploma since I was practically already close to graduating anyway.”

“ah, I understand. Still doesn’t mean that you can’t stay. It’s fine, and if your mother is not home then that’s even more of a reason for you to sleep here tonight.”

Haruki was about to say something before Izuku whispers in his ear “Just give it up. You can’t convince her.”

And so he sighs and decides to stay the night. The world will be fine without Filius for a day.

They went into Izuku’s room and it looked like he did guess correctly, as the boy asked if it was fine if he studied. Which, obviously, it was.

And so they decided to study together. It was nice, since Midoriya sometimes asked Haruki about his biology homework and Haruki was able to ask Midoriya about different kanji’s he did not understand.

In the end, they both managed to study way faster than they normally did. And they understood more than they originally thought they would.

And so by the time it was 8pm they were once again sitting on Izuku’s bed. Watching another movie, this time it wasn’t anything about heroes, just a regular pre-quirk movie. It wasn’t one that Haruki recognized, though it was a 16+ movie so he probably shouldn’t recognize it.

The movie was interesting though, a little bit cringe but interesting nonetheless. And besides, Izuku seemed to be invested in it, so he didn’t say anything about it.

The movie ended and they started talking again, having to be quiet since Midoriya’s mom already went to bed. The topic somehow moved onto U.A. and what would happen if they both got in.

Don’t do it.

‘don’t do what I’m just sitting’

I can hear your thoughts Haruki. Don’t say it. But Haruki ignores Max, he usually does.

“Hey what if All Might decides to teach at U.A?”

Izuku jumps up at the sudden question. “W-why would he? He’s a pro! He doesn’t need to teach!”

“Yeah but like what if?”

The freckled boy’s sudden nervousness surprised Haruki, he normally would’ve been ecstatic to talk about a hypothetical like that. Even if it wasn’t truly a hypothetical, Izuku still seemed to be hiding something.

But, Haruki doesn’t pry, he has his secrets so it is only fair that Izuku gets to have his. He looks back onto the laptop, focusing back on the movie.

When it was 11pm they both decided that it was now time to go to sleep. They were both tired, and Izuku did have school tomorrow. Haruki lies in a futon that was laid out on the floor. He hasn’t slept on something touch the ground in a while now. Even in the facility he was sort of floating while sleeping inside the tube, so this was a weird adjustment he had to make.

He was struggling to sleep for a few hours, he could hear Izuku’s breaths, his chest rising and falling. Eventually he did manage to sleep.

His dreams were no different from the usual, at least that’s one thing that will always stay the same.

When he woke up he could hear shuffling near him, someone moving around. The sound of the TV turned on the weather report coming from the living room.

“Haruki are you up?” He recognizes the voice to be Midoriya’s, he sits up and rubs his eyes. Seeing the boy already in his school uniform.

“ah, crap. Is it that late already?” He stands up, getting the clothes he was wearing yesterday from the chair. “I’ll uh.. change? And then we could go to school?” He asks, frankly he has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing, should he leave? Should he walk Midoriya to his school?

“Yeah sure! You can change in the bathroom. I still have to pack” The boy answers. Haruki leaves the room and goes into the bathroom to change, when he walks out he’s holding Midoriya’s clothes folded in his arms.

“Put those onto the washer won’t you dear? And come here, breakfast is nearly ready.”

Haruki nods and goes back into the bathroom to put the clothes away. He sits down in the comfortable wooden chairs, though he has no right to judge what’s comfortable or not, he has been sitting on a messed up couch.

The breakfast is amazing as always, a lot of food. Full meals, and Izuku’s mom even made cupcakes for desert. That was the best part. Haruki didn’t remember the last time he had cupcakes. And they had chocolate chips in them too.

He happily eats the food that’s been given to him, making sure to thank Ms. Midoriya when he walks out of their apartment with Midoriya beside him.

They walk in silence for most of the way, the school wasn’t a long way from Izuku’s house. And they still had a lot of time, apparently they actually woke up early.

When they finally reached the gate of the school Haruki couldn’t walk with Midoriya, not because of some law, but because he felt like the kid would be so embarrassed to be seen with someone like him.

He walks back through the outskirts of the city, stopping to take more photos, which reminded him to see what happened to that photo. He looks at the odd notification he got, and then he realized what he accidentally clicked back then.

Eraser

[photo.93717392]

“it’s pretty, you’re at Kanagi park, kid?”

Haruki stared at the text in horror, he actually sent the picture to Eraserhead. What is he supposed to respond to that

“I didn’t mean to send the photo. Sorry.” Apparently Eraser is currently on his phone as he responds almost immediately.

*Thumbs up emoji* Haruki looks at the singular emoji, ‘cold’

“do you have any other ones?”

“yeah. I have a lot.”

“Show”

Hah, guess he does like pictures like that.

Haruki rolls his eyes, though he is surprised that Eraserhead wants to see pictures of nature. Maybe he is a normal person.

Haruki sends some of his favorite pictures, Eraser likes them.

“Do you like nature?”

“Yeah”

‘seen’

‘OH COME ON’

Hahah! Classic! Max bursts out laughing.

When he’s back home he finally sorts out his photos into appropriate folders on his phone. He sighs, laying down onto his bed, all of that socializing was taking a toll on him and he definitely needed a break. He picks up his laptop and decides to go back to work. He was way too tired to deal with the stupid code that they were talking in. He takes out his phone again, snaps a picture of the texts, blurs out the names and profile pictures and sends it to Eraserhead.

[photo.193853521]

“It’s in code. I have no idea what code though.”

‘seen’

’of course it was’

Haruki sighs, feeling his exhaustion overwhelming him. He decides to just scroll the internet until the sun goes down and then go on patrol.

When he goes out he meets Eraserhead again, at this point that's typical. though he is surprised as Eraser doesn't know that he's patrolling tonight. He was supposed to patrol yesterday, which he didnt. So today should've been a patrol free day, but Fil is in fact terrible with keeping a schedule and he wanted to patrol. So nobody is going to stop him.

“Every other word.” Is the first thing the hero says to him.

They were in a park, Filius has just finished taking down some villains and apparently Eraserhead wanted to put in his input to his job

“What?”

“The texts, they’re talking using every other word, that’s why some of the sentences don’t make sense, and that is also why their texts seem so weird.” The hero gets his capture tape and ties up the villains, deciding to tip the police off about them instead of bringing them to the station on his own. It was only the start of his patrol, and criminals were most active during these hours. So he had to be vigilant.

The vigilante on the other hand, just looked at him, nodded and walked away. He couldn’t stay for long anyway, Filius hoped that he looked mysterious and brooding cause inside he was freaking out. How could he not have realized such an obvious thing?

He walks into a small alleyway and reads through the messages again

“We meet Creek tomorrow?” The sentences were barely anything, but they did make sense. And now Filius knew where to search for them.

He tracked down the creek they were talking about and was walking around the premises, when suddenly he sees something lighting up in the distance. He crouches and walks closer, making sure to not make any noise.

His thoughts racing with different possibilities over what could’ve happened to them.

Though he is knocked out of his focus when he hears the sounds coming from inside the tent. He stands up, walks next to the campfire, when he’s next to the tent the voices quiet down while giggling.

“Uh… Hina? Is that you?” He asks. Even if he knew exactly who the people in front of him were, though he couldn’t see them. He knew what their quirks were. And who could’ve guessed that they were exactly the same thing that was described to him by the client.

“Who’s asking?”

“you’re considered missing. Along with your friend over there, the police have been searching for you and your family is worried sick.”

“WHAT?” She looks out of the tent, only her head peeking through, she looks up at Filius before sighing and going back into the tent.

She walks out wearing only a towel. Yeah Filius should’ve expected that from two young adults on a camping trip together.

“I told my mom I was going camping with Karu!” She said angered “That woman is mental. Always calling the stupid police on everything I do!” She sighs again, by this time the man walks out beside her. Looking at Filius with an emotion between disgust and confusion on his face

“Did she get the pros involved this time too?” The man asks

“uh… not exactly. I’m a vigilante. Just uh… I’ll text her.” Filius takes out his phone and texts the client. Getting a string of weird texts in the process. But whatever, he doesn’t care that the mother doesn’t approve of a camping trip. He found her and so he will get the money for it.

“Tell her, that just as I said. We’ll be back tomorrow.” And so he did.

He apologizes for interrupting and leaves, wondering ‘what the fuck compelled a woman to hire a vigilante to find someone who wasn’t even missing’

He starts walking back to the club, to get his money. He knows these types of people, you have to get paid as fast as possible from them or else they’ll try to argue that you didn’t actually do the job.

Fil was supposed to find her, and he did. Their camping trip is literally almost over so the woman can wait not even a full day.

When he got the money he looked at the job postings, deciding to pick more jobs up. He was nearly done with these ones.

He goes back to patrolling, except that something is different. He’s has a creeping feeling of unease, his entire body anxious.

He knows that he has to visit their graves soon. He doesn’t want to but he has to, it’s been worrying him way too often, and he feels as if it would be the only thing that could somewhat help him.

But that day won’t be today. Today he finishes up his patrol and heads home to sleep

Chapter Text

Shouta wasn’t one for publicity, he was an underground hero for a reason. He was very happy with his ranking as the nr 222 hero in Japan.

But still, for some reason, he’s been seen many times by the public in the recent month. He knows why, he’s been helping that vigilante too much. He should just do his job and arrest them, there’s not many people who can defeat him in a fight. Well maybe there is a lot of them, but those are the types that don’t start said fights. Filius hasn’t attacked him either, they probably know that he can defeat them.

Though when they first met they seemed to run not because of fear of being defeated, they were scared. That was sure, but they seemed to run for a different reason. Which is a stupid thing to think about in Shouta’s opinion. They ran, why does it matter why?

But he still wonders, he can’t help it. It seemed like lately he cannot stop thinking about Filius. They were obviously young. But they still fought as if they’ve had years of training, they move with a precision that many can only dream of. Their actions are quick, calculated, and if they felt any fear while doing that mission at the abandoned school then they haven’t shown it.

Shouta can feel a pit open in his stomach when he thinks what they had to go through to get that far. What they had to sacrifice, and what possibly drove them to do things like these. They are around the age of someone who could go do a hero course. They could get a license, become legal and help people that way. But they were doing it the hard way.

Aizawa wonders who trained them. Who hurt them so badly that a bullet in their thigh didn’t hurt, that they could easily just continue on with their mission ignoring it, what sick fuck wanted to hurt a child. Shouta felt anger at his own thoughts, he didn’t know whether Filius was actually trained by someone. For all he knows the kid might’ve just done all of those things on their own. Which if Aizawa’s being honest is an even worse outcome.

He knows that teenagers are more prone to being self-destructive. They’re emotional, irrational and reckless. He works with them so he’s learned a few things here and there. But Filius, they lacked those traits – Well maybe except that ‘emotional’ one – Kids should have the chance to be reckless, to be a menace and enjoy those times. It was a childish thing, but still, every child should experience it. And something was telling him that the vigilante was not allowed to ever be a child. Call it a hunch. But his gut was telling him that something was wrong, and he’s learned to trust his gut.

He ran a hand through his hair sighing, it was late. He should be home with his husband and cats right now. But instead he’s filling out more reports about villains that Filius took down on their patrol. Seriously the kid can’t keep leaving random criminals tied to lamp posts so that someone can report them to the police for them. How is he supposed to know what the criminal did?

Tsukauchi comes up to him with two mugs of coffee, handing Aizawa one he sits down in a desk close to him.

“Tough night?” Naomasa asks, taking sips from his coffee.

Shouta sighs “Yeah, the kid’s been running around again.” He answers, drinking the black coffee the detective handed to him. Tsukauchi didn’t know that Aizawa actually drank his coffee with enough sugar to kill an elephant, so he had to settle for the bitter one currently in his hands.

“It’s not a patrol day though?” Tsukauchi raises an eyebrow.

“Have they ever stuck to that schedule?” Eraserhead questions sarcastically, letting the warm coffee warm him up from the changing air. Though it was theoretically only autumn Musutafu was one of those places that seemed to be naturally more cold. And recently it’s been getting colder and colder. He hopes the kid has some kind of winter gear.

Naomasa only laughs in response “Guess not. Have they texted you anything?”

“Just an accidental picture of a sunset, then when I asked for more pictures I got.. uh… 4 more” Aizawa takes out his phone to see the pictures that Filius sent him last night.

The detective looks over the pictures before handing the phone back to Aizawa.

“All of them are of pretty common areas of the city, except that one, though it seems to be taken from the abandoned hospital in which we already knew they were in. Nothing that’ll give us a lead but it’s still good work. You’re gaining their trust fast Eraser. It’s why you’re perfect for the job.” Naomasa praises looking over to his computer and typing something on his keyboard.

“Look, save the flattery for later. You know my stance on this.”

“Yes Shouta, I could never get you to put aside those fatherly instincts of yours” Tsukauchi laughs at his own joke but Aizawa only stares at him and sighs again.

Finishing his coffee Eraserhead puts the mug in a sink that was in the kitchen. He’s grown familiar with the police station, the place was pretty welcoming to new people. Especially heroes, he didn’t have to worry about walking around the place. He did have to bring in his own mug though.

When he’s done with the report he finally heads home, the walk back was nice. The city was always prettier during the night. When he was going through a bigger street he saw Filius on one of the buildings in the distance, they seemed to be looking around for something. Maybe they were finishing up patrol. It was odd for anyone to patrol this part of town. The crime rates here were bad, though it was just petty crimes. Fights, muggings, sometimes breaking and entering. Since many people stopped living here and many of the buildings were falling apart heroes just stopped patrolling here. If Shouta had any choice in the matter he would’ve patrolled around here. But his hands are already full enough with his given area. The fault of the commission, just the life a hero has to adhere to, though he was glad that at least someone decided to patrol here. Even if that someone is a vigilante.

He walks for a while longer, walking out of the bad part of the city. U.A. is not far from here, he and Mic moved closer to it when they got married since they both worked there. It was only natural to live closer to work, and they were looking for a new apartment anyway.

When he gets closer to his house he notices a how the moon shined on a few plants that were planted near their apartment, he didn’t know who originally planted them but Hizashi sometimes helped out with the gardening. The flowers of the plant were starting to bloom. Which in the moonlight made the whiteness of the petals glow. He decides to take out his phone and send the picture to the vigilante, thinking that they would enjoy that sort of thing.

He goes into his apartment, seeing his husband sleeping on the couch with a blanket on, some popcorn in his hands and the TV playing one of his favorite shows.

Yamada opens his eyes tiredly “Sho? You’re back?” He asks, rubbing his eyes trying to stir himself awake

“Yeah darling. Just finished up patrol.” Aizawa puts his scarf on a hook beside the door. “come to the bedroom, your back will hurt from the couch.” He takes the remote from beside his husband and turns the TV off.

Hizashi stands up and walks over to their bedroom before letting himself fall onto the bed. Not bothering to move for his husband.

Aizawa pushes Mic to the side so that he can get into the bed too. They lay in under the covers and go to sleep peacefully. Not worrying about anything. Shouta always loved the warmth that sleeping next to someone provided.

***

When he woke up, he could feel his head trying to convince him to do a DIY lobotomy. The quirks outside his house, even if weak annoyed him further than they normally did. The sun was too bright, it was too warm yet somehow still too cold. He wanted nothing more than to just lay back down and sleep again. But Max wasn’t going to let him.

When was Haruki allowed to sleep in? The answer is never, he has things to do. He gets up groaning, his back ached. Apparently falling onto a very sharp knife will hurt, who could’ve guessed.

But at least he knew that his quirk was getting stronger. In the past he’s had to wait a couple of days before the scar was gone completely, now it happened in just a few hours. The pain was a small side effect but he was glad that there’s no scar he will have to take care of so that it fades properly. The resources needed for that are far too expensive.

He got dressed in some random clothes he had laying around, he looked like shit. But he felt like shit too so it didn’t really matter.

He has to turn in that evidence tomorrow, for the mission that the police gave him. He was still confused as to how did he not get arrested yet. He expected it to happen way sooner. Like weeks sooner, and as far as he knows, the detective has only been on his case for a few months. While Eraserhead only for a week.

It was taking them too long. If they were going to arrest him they should do it quickly so that he can defeat them and show them that no matter what they won’t succeed.

When he starts packing his bag his mind decides to play tricks on him. He feels the warm smell of something cooking, but there’s nobody near him. He knows there isn’t. He’d feel them. But still, he’s almost 100% sure that he can smell his mother’s signature Brownies.

They always were so good, never too dry, never too wet. Always perfect, just like she was. Exactly like she was. He wanted a brownie. The smell made him remember how he would be the first to try them, he never listened to his mom telling him to wait because they were hot. And he constantly burned his tongue. But hey, in his defense they were best when they were straight out of the oven.

His mouth felt hot, even if he wasn’t eating the brownie right now. He could feel them, he could taste the chocolate. The sprinkles his mom put on top were an amazing addition, the melted chocolate on top added just enough flavor to it. The portions were never too much or too little, it was perfect.

They were the best brownie’s he’s ever ate. His mom’s cooking was the best food he’s ever eaten. She loved cooking, she taught him some basic recipes whenever she could. He messed them up every time he did try though, but she still ate it with him. Still said that it tasted great, even if he added way too much salt to that portion of eggs. Even if he burned one side, even if he couldn’t mix the ingredients together correctly so the whole thing seemed off.

She still said she loved it. And maybe she was talking about the fact that it was something he made for her, maybe the only reason she ate it was because her son was trying really hard to make the same food that she did so effortlessly.

He shook himself together and ignored the smell, and the smoke flowing through the stairs below. The smoke turning black and the smell turning vile, he can feel the warmth of fire engulfing him, but he cannot see it. he feels his skin burning, the fire picking at it and making it burn away. He feels it. But it’s not real, he knows that it isn’t. He quickly jumps up the hole in the ceiling and runs away from his building, jumping down onto the sidewalk beside him. He looks back at the building. Nothing’s changed.

It’s still the same building, it’s not on fire, nothing happened.

But he still feels his skin trying to recover. Twitching after the fire burned it. He takes a deep breath and walks towards the library. Max visible in the corner of his eyes, just staring at him. It feels like another nightmare. He doesn’t feel like he’s inside of his body, he’s just an observer watching a movie.

He walks through the empty city, most people are at work right now. It was pretty early. He didn’t stop by the usual park he went to. He didn’t let himself look at the child with light brown hair sitting on the swing, beside him a woman with long hair. He looked away, they weren’t real. She was dead. Why couldn’t his brain understand that?

He felt anger. At himself, at his mom, at dad, at father, at Max, at everyone.

They shouldn’t have left him. Why did they? Did he mess up? Maybe it was all just because his mother saw him for what he truly is and couldn’t bear to see him anymore. Because if she really did love him, if he really was her son why would she leave him?

She left him to fend for himself, she knew what dad was planning. She knew where he would take him. And she still left him, she didn’t protect him. She didn’t even try. She just left him for death. She left him, knowing what he will have to endure. Knowing that it would’ve probably killed anyone else. And maybe it did. Maybe a part of him was dead, a part he can never get back.

Was he not good enough to be saved? Did she realize how awful he actually was? Did she know?

He lowers his head, rubbing his eyes, he won’t cry. He can’t cry. He tries to swallow the pain in his throat, it didn’t work.

He walks into the library, seeing that today the mean librarian had a shift. She glared at him, he wanted to ignore it, to just walk past her. But of course she had to speak up

“The homeless shelter is right down the street darlin’” He stops, he shouldn’t react. He really shouldn’t give her the time of day. She was 65 anyway, she was on her way out. Soon she would have to retire, and he wouldn’t see her again. But he was having a bad day, and he wasn’t going to take a hit from some entitled woman.

“And the retirement home is in the town over ma’am, did you get lost on the way? I think they’re playing bingo right about now.” He barks back. As a vigilante he would’ve put on a cheerful tone, but right now he was too tired. He let the aggressiveness in his tone seep through.

The woman hardens her gaze, looking him up and down before having a face of disgust. She scoffs and returns to her magazine. Haruki decides that it isn’t worth it anymore and he just goes to sit down in his usual spot.

Studying is hard, he can’t focus at all, he keeps remembering everything.

Mom’s smile, Kaori’s eyes, Raine’s hands, Astris’ voice, Seong’s songs, Nea and Bea’s creativity, Haru’s determination, Alekai’s curiosity, mother’s hands on his face bandaging his scars whenever father was too rough, father’s punishments.

Those were the things he remembered the most, and he hated how that’s what he meant to do. Father wanted him to remember them, he wanted him to look upon himself and think about what he has done to his body. He wanted Filius Haruki to look on all of his scars and remember exactly how he made every single one. How he was never to show any emotions other than respect in front of father or else he would get angry. He remembered how his back always fell against the bookshelf, knocking many books off when he hit it.

He felt his scars itch. It was a weird feeling, they’re healed they shouldn’t hurt in that way. But they still do, he can still sometimes feel every scar as if they were being remade over and over again. It started as a simple itch but by the end of the day he wasn’t able to handle the pain and he was left clawing at the scars trying to get them to stop.

It wasn’t a nice experience, nothing that father did was. He knew what he was doing, he was very precise, all of his scars are very even. If you look at them it would be hard to believe that they weren’t done by some sort of machine.

The ones he hated the most were the ones he got from the surgeries, back when he still didn’t have a quirk. Back when they were shooting up his body with father knows what just to see if the quirk would stick. When they were cutting off the skin off of his arms just to have better access, it hurt like hell. He passed out many times during the operations. When he woke up he was still in the same place, sometimes after the surgery, sometimes not. Sometimes he would wake up with the doctors in the facility probing inside of him. He would feel the pain, his blood changing, his body being altered. He felt it all.

Those were the feelings he never wants to go through again. He wouldn’t wish it upon his worst enemy (well maybe except for father).

He gagged, trying to stop the puke rising up in his throat. He couldn’t lose his composure like this. He already went through those things once, he should be desensitized to them, he shouldn’t be puking from the memory. It’s not like he’s living through it again.

He rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, trying to get back into reality, yet obviously it doesn’t work. He looks on the books laid out in front of him, some math equations he couldn’t be bothered to remember on them.

All he can focus on is the crimson red liquid dripping onto the book, eventually starting to spill more and more, until it’s entirely covered in blood.

He’s hallucinating again, he doesn’t know why it happens. He’s not schizophrenic, he can’t be. Even if hallucinations are a sign of it, It was just PTSD. He was sure of it. The things he went through were traumatic, it wouldn’t surprise him if he did have PTSD. And a lot of people with it have hallucinations… ‘probably’

He closes his books, realizing he won’t be able to study anyway, he ignores the oddly similar figures running around the library and just leaves. Not stopping by the librarians smirk when he does.

He was running through the more empty parts of town, he thought that it would help him clear his mind but it seemed to only make it worse, he feels terrible, his movements sluggish, he can still feel his hands still twitching after the fire, which he thinks they shouldn’t do. There was no fire after all. He runs onto a beach seeing the piles of trash beside him he goes on the pier right next to it, hoping that nobody will be here to see him, he takes off his bag that’s holding all of his belongings and he jumps into the water.

It was freezing, it was a really bad idea. He swims out, ignoring the way he sees a black vine trying to pull him back in, maybe if he gave up and let it, it would pass? Maybe he just needed to let go of everything.

He sat at the sand and looked at his hands for a while. His mind swarming with past memories. He couldn’t even recognize half of them, they were all going to quickly. He could hear his heartbeat, it was too quick to be considered normal. His chest was heavy and the cold from his now wet clothes was starting to get to him. He was like a wounded animal, laying helplessly in the sand, trying to keep any sort of grasp on reality.

He knew that if he didn’t move soon he would get a cold, he had to get up, go home and change. But he still couldn’t get his body to move, every thought he had was telling him to stand up and to move. Yet his legs stayed put, he couldn’t bring himself to. A part of him wanted to stay at the beach, catch a cold and maybe die of hypothermia when the sun went down. A part of him also knew that it was one of the few deaths he actually could achieve.

His body regenerated quickly, so the regular deaths were kind of out of the question. They would hurt but that’s all, it would just pass. And while his body did have better temperature control, if he stayed out long enough he could die from freezing to death. If he just kept laying on the sand with those clothes on, he would probably at least start the process, maybe it wouldn’t have been enough, but it was still a thought. And if it would be enough, it surely would’ve been a slow and extremely painful death.

You’re giving up?

Max spoke up, standing beside him, glaring at him from above.

‘I have a feeling we’ve already had this conversation’

Get the fuck up.

‘I tried.’

Don’t bullshit me right now Haruki. Get. Up.

Haruki is surprised at the tone Max is speaking in, he hasn’t heard him talk that way in a long time. It wasn’t anger, even if on the surface it seemed like it was. It actually was a mix of many emotions, distress, disgust, fear, doubtfulness and concern.

Haruki forces his arms to move, one step at a time and eventually he’s sitting. The wind now hitting his hair, the sun shining near the horizon, blinding him. He moves up onto his knees and after some trial and error he stood up.

His head hurt like hell, it was 10x worse than in the morning. His scars now actually hurt. Haruki rubs his eyes, and decides to ignore everything.

He ignores his headache, he ignores Max, he ignores the way his scars ache for him to reopen them, he ignores the nature around him, he ignores how the two people he just passes were Kaori and Raine, he ignores how he sees his old self in a puddle near the street. He ignores everything.

He gets back home, changes into a dirty green shirt that had holes in it, ripped jeans, the rips weren’t made during production though and it shows, his dark brown jacket – which he tried to wash recently, but it didn’t seem to go so well. He had no idea how to wash leather. – he looks at his phone and sees he got a text from Eraserhead

Eraser

[photo.13284717]

Haruki stares at the photo he sent, it was beautiful. The white flower clearly just starting blooming, soft blue light bouncing off the petals. And the moon which was visible in the background framed the scene, making it even more beautiful.

“damn”

“is it bad?”

“No it’s amazing O.O”

He sent the text before realizing that he typed the emoji out, his body was on autopilot, can you really blame him?

“O.O?”

Somehow it felt so wrong to see Eraserhead type that.

“It’s like an emote, just ignore it.”

“Something’s off with you”

Haruki nearly choked on the water he was drinking. – oh please you were basically chugging that thing with how fast your ‘drinking’ is.

He doesn’t know how the hero knew that he wasn’t having the best day of his life right now, but he somehow did.

“I’m fine.”

“Take the day off.”

Of course that’s what he says, Haruki rolls his eyes.

“Wasn’t planning on going out anyway.”

‘seen’

Haruki lays in his bed. Trying to calm himself again. Though obviously it didn’t work…again. He tried to close his eyes and maybe go to sleep. Even if Max would only let him sleep for a few hours, he still wanted to end this day. He was too tired to deal with any of this. He shouldn’t be dealing with any of this. If only he defeated father that one time then he would’ve been living a happy life by now. But no – of course that stupid old geezer had to regenerate his leg and end the fight.

Haruki gets snapped out of his spiral because of another notification.

Https://Article/yes.anotherone/stilldkhowtomakelinks.com

Haruki reads through the article, barely registering the words written. It takes him about three tries to finally understand what the pro hero sent to him.

It was an article about him. Or rather, about Filius. Turns out that his recent jobs did grant him a bunch of publicity and the people whom he saved at that abandoned school were all praising both him and Eraserhead. Who he is sure also got a crap load of new fans because of that mission.

He can’t say he hates the idea of being famous, but he doesn’t exactly look forward to it. More fame means more people who know who you are, means more people who will try to find out your real identity which means more people he will need to watch out for.

The article also shows the picture the person from the window took during the time he was fighting the dragon-person. He looked like shit and the picture was blurry but it was pretty much the first picture the public got with his different costume. And it would be the only one.

At least he did have his normal mask on, so the outfit can still be used for other things. A black and white hoodie is common right? People won’t recognize him simply because of that… right?

Well no matter, that hoodie is now reserved for vigilante work only. Which was a bad outcome for Haruki since now he had one less hoodie, and it was one of his favorite ones. it’s a jacket, not a hoodie… Max says shaking his head in the corner of the room. Right beside him Haruki sees hands sticking out of the wall trying to grab things.

‘hm. Wonder what unresolved trauma that comes from.’ He thinks to himself as he reads more of the article. They somehow did get his vigilante name right. That was weird cause he didn’t exactly have a name tag or anything of the sorts. But he paid it no mind. It was good they used the correct name for him. It would’ve been so lame if the public made up a fan name, that was probably something as corny and stupid as “The nighttime savior” that sounds like something an edgy 12 year old girl would make up for her characters.

Haruki – out of pure curiosity – decides to google his name. His vigilante name of course, a bunch of results comes up. Some reddit threads, Tweets – or X’s is how they’re apparently called now.

He clicks on many links and finds out that people seem to be mostly praising him for “doing what he does.” It was an odd thing, seeing the public praising a criminal wasn’t a common sight. But hey – if they want to call him a hero for doing his job what can he do about it?

It’s not like he needs to do anything, he quite likes this new outcome. But still it might mean that now more pro heroes are aware of who he is, and that’s not exactly an ideal scenario. Even after months of being a vigilante, many pro’s didn’t actually know that they should be trying to arrest him. Most of them thought he was just some sort of delinquent sneaking around the city at night and ignored him.

So he guesses it was actually a good thing that he didn’t wear his normal costume back then, maybe they’ll have a harder time recognizing him in his actual costume when he does go out now. But that means that the jacket-hoodie is even more out of commission.

He sighs, it was a well-made hoodie – jacket – ‘…Jacket’ He sits up, and stares in front of himself. He sees the same boy from his dreams, He looks at Haruki. Or rather he looks straight through him. He’s older now, his arms and legs covered in bandages. His face now uncovered but it’s not his actual face. Haruki remembers how he felt back then, after the first operation his whole appearance changed. He couldn’t recognize himself.

The boy is barefoot, he’s wearing a very revealing royal outfit. Mostly white with some gold accents. He doesn’t look pleased to be here. In fact he seems angry, his eyebrows furrowed, his teeth showing off the fangs that Haruki has shaven off. The same fangs that he now felt growing back out, and he knew that once again it wasn’t real. It would still be a couple more months till they grew back out. But somehow he still felt them.

The boy stared at him, the light blue eyes with a star as the pupil looking weirdly unsettling. That’s the worst thing that father changed about him.

He used to have the most beautiful eyes, a very deep blue. Almost looked unrealistic with how the color popped out. His mother had the same color. Most of his genes were from her, he was glad. Even if he didn’t resemble her at all now. He was still glad that he was born with her seeping into his looks.

His father took his eyes away, changed them to this unnatural color. Just because he felt that it would be better for the stupid cult. When he got out he tried using his quirk to get his eye color back, and even if it was a really deep blue now. He knew it wasn’t right, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t her color.

He stared at the child in front of him in disgust. Tears swelling up in his eyes. – he wasn’t sad though – no, he was angry.

Angry at the things he got taken from him. Angry at how his father acted as if he should appreciate the things he’s done to him. He was angry at how he went along with it for the first couple hundred years.

Haruki stands up, takes his phone and headphones, throws everything out of his bag except two things. He puts the bag over his shoulder and puts on his brown boots, he turns on some music on his headphones trying to block out everything that’s happening around him and storms out of his apartment.

He lets his legs take him wherever they want to, he doesn’t know where exactly he’s going but the direction seems familiar, The music tunes out anything that might be a hallucination, but he can’t tell the difference between real and not at that moment.

Eventually he reaches a forest, He feels a bittersweet pang in his chest upon realizing where he walked to. He sighs and just decides to go, he knew he had to come back here eventually. Maybe these weren’t the conditions in which he wanted to do it but he was here nonetheless.

He walks around trees and bushes, the forest hard to navigate as the sun was now nearly fully gone from the sky. But after a few turns he finds it. The graves.

There’s a clearing in the trees, making the moonlight shine right in the middle, just like he remembers, even if he doesn’t remember much. He looks at the flowers around the graves, those weren’t the type of flowers that would naturally sprout here. And the graves looked clean, too clean. Someone’s been here, and Haruki doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. He walks through the field of naturally sprouted white flowers around him, the whole view was beautiful, he would’ve taken a picture if the place wasn’t the thing that it was. He sits in front of the graves, Fireflies flying all around him, the flowers carved into Kaori’s stone covered by real flowers, red roses.

She would’ve hated that, but it was kind of ironic. That even in death father managed to somehow find her. Haruki scoffed, more at himself rather than anything else. He felt the urge to cry again. He hasn’t felt like that for a long time before today, and even if it normally passed really quickly. There has never been a time during which he continuously felt the need to cry during a single day.

He takes a deep breath, he realizes that he sees no hallucinations in here, in fact he doesn’t even see Max. He can feel him around in his head but he’s quiet. It’s unusual for him but Haruki isn’t about to start complaining. He can still feel his scars burning. Nearly making him cry out of pain.

He looks at the graves again, he still has no idea how he managed to make gravestones with his quirk, especially ones with carvings inside them. But he was glad that he did, without them he doubts that the person who was planting the flowers here would’ve noticed that these are graves.

He wonders what’s happening to their bodies right now. Are they already decomposed? Are they only bones? Would there be bugs all over them? He doesn’t want to find out. Images of their limp corpses lying in front of him flash to the front of his mind for a second, making him grab his head from the sudden pain. He remembers how Kaori had a trail of blood coming off of her lips, her eyes stared lifelessly at whatever was in front of her. She died a warrior, fighting in a war she shouldn’t have been a part of. Something inside of Haruki was telling him that she didn’t care that she died. The only thing she wanted was to free the people inside the facility. And since Haruki got out, she kind of accomplished that goal. Even if she lost herself in the meantime.

He rubs the tears away from his eyes, which now have a slight red under them from all that’s been happening today.

He looks over to Raine’s grave, his body more engraved into his mind than anything else. The way half of his face was blown off, his skull showing through, How he looked Filius right in the eye when he died, how he only died because Fil wasn’t fast enough. But how he also knew that he would die, he was prepared for it. that’s how he turned his head at the exact right time to be able to take his final breath while looking at him. To know that the only reason Filius was alive was because of his sacrifice, just because he traded his own life for Fil’s. He still managed to smile at the last moment, even while dying he smiled right at him. Even as the blood pooled around him and the alarm stopped playing in the background, Filius remembers how his body laid there, smiling. Right beside the peace maker whom he has just murdered.

Filius was exhausted back then, their deaths didn’t even fully register. But a small part of him knew that it wasn’t meant to go that way, they both knew they were going to die. But did they have to? Maybe if Filius did something differently it wouldn’t have happened, maybe the rebellion wouldn’t have started so quickly and they could’ve prepared more. Maybe then, if they were ready they would’ve defeated father once and for all. But it was too late now. Because that didn’t happen, what happened was that he got too comfortable with his position which got Alekai killed, which led to two of his best friends getting murdered as well.

He wipes some leaves off the graves, sighs still looking at them, the moonlight lighting up the carvings in the stone. He stands up and walks through the trees onto the cliff. He sees that the facility is not there anymore, if it was there that would endanger father. A mark in the ground still shows up, the grass not yet grown.

He walks over to the edge of the cliffs and sits down. He looks inside his bag, taking out the pack of cigarettes and her  his lighter.

He lights the cigarette and puts it to his mouth, the smoke filling his lungs. He’s gotten used to that feeling by now, even if he only smoked a couple of times. The smell only reminding him more of what he lost. He rubs his eyes again, which were now starting to hurt. He scratches at the scars on his arms. They still beg for more, for something stronger, for something sharper than his fingernails.

He puts on, only one side of his headphones, seeing as the other side didn’t really work anyway and he wanted to hear the wind against the leaves.

He tries to ignore the pain in his throat, he can no longer tell whether it’s from wanting to cry or because of the cigarette. He looks down the cliff. If he jumped he would survive. So that was out of the question. He suddenly feels his head banging again, unsure why. But he quickly realizes exactly why.

“Aren’t you a bit young to be smoking?” He hears a soft male voice from behind him. When he looks back he sees a blond man with glasses on, and what seemed to be a hearing aid in his left ear, he was holding a bag of gardening supplies. Seemed like Haruki met the person who was taking care of his friends graves.

He looks between the bag and the trees behind which the graves lay and, the man seems to understand what’s happening.

He sits next to him, readjusting his glasses. Haruki just stares at him, lowering his music – which has now auto played to Lana Del Rey’s albums.

The man notices the action and takes it as a cue to start speaking.

“How old are you kiddo?” He asks, tilting his head.

“…’m 15.” Oh right, he was now officially 15, since the clock seemed to have struck midnight sometime while he was at the graves. He assumes that, that was the reason his phone was buzzing with notifications back then.

The man nods, thinking of something then saying “well, I’m Yamada Hizashi. Can I know your name?” He questions, he says it as if knowing Haruki’s name was some sort of privilege, although Haruki immediately recognizes the name, he has been listening to his radio every time it was on after all, the man seems to notice Haruki’s eyes widen since he chuckles shortly after speaking but he doesn’t comment on it yet.

“Haruki…” He responds, his voice quiet he’s still taking hits of the cigarette, he just makes sure to blow the smoke away from the man. He doesn’t want to be disrespectful. “Haruki.. Nomine” He adds, he hasn’t used his full name yet. He has an ID with that name. But it’s different spoken instead of written. He remembers why he chose that name. His mom’s last name was Nomine, before she married dad.

“mhm, are they your family?” Present Mic looks over to the side, Haruki shakes his head “Friends?”

“Sure… something like that.” He hates how weak his voice sounds right now. But he has no energy to correct it. his body isn’t listening to him and he doesn’t have the vigor to care anymore.

“ah, Lovers?” The question catches Haruki off guard, he wasn’t expecting the man to be so straight forward. “it’s alright, I don’t judge.”

Haruki looks away, jumping off the ledge seemed really temping at that moment, sure he may have just met his idol. But talking about his dead friends wasn’t the conversation he thought he’d have with him.

“It’s… complicated.”  Is all that he responded, the hero seemed to understand and just nodded.

“Bad memories huh? Yeah death can be cruel. But it’s important to let yourself grieve.” The words seem wise, even if the hero had no idea what happened he still tried to help. Present Mic is one of the few people Haruki considers to be actually good heroes.

“I don’t know.. how.” His voice cracks again and he decides to hide it by taking another hit. The warmth from the cigarette spreading through his hands, he didn’t care if Mic could see the scars on his palms right now. He wouldn’t ask anyway, he’s not that type of person.

“well you’re here. And so far I haven’t seen you here before. So that’s a good first step.” The man hesitates before putting his arm on Haruki’s shoulder. He jumps slightly at the contact.

His quirk was making his head throb, he was powerful, Haruki already knew that. But this type of power was too huge, he hasn’t been in the radius of a quirk like that for a long time. Last time was probably around father, and his quirk was already tuned down inside his head because it was based off of his body.

The quirk felt like a really high noise. And it was a light cyan with sparks of yellow and black in it. He’s glad that Mic became a hero and not a villain because he would’ve been insanely hard to defeat.

When Hizashi notices his silence he speaks up again “I uh.. didn’t know what flowers they would like so I went with the basics, and I tried going off the gravestones a bit.”

“They’re pretty… She would’ve hated the roses though.” He answers, regret immediately filling his voice, he shouldn’t have said that. The man was already spending his free time, and his money on making sure the graves of two people he doesn’t even know look good. “S-sorry, they’re great..”

“Don’t apologize little listener, I get it. I can just replant the roses into the garden by my apartment, actually recently this beautiful plant of mine and my neighbors started blooming, here let me show you.” Haruki doesn’t outwardly reacts to the nickname, he watches as Present Mic takes out his phone. “My coworker took this specific photo and I think it looks really majestic in the moonlight. Hahah” he laughs quietly at the end. Haruki looks at the photo, recognizing it instantly. He hopes his surprise isn’t visible on his face.

“It’s really pretty.” He nods, he looks at the moon currently above them, it was a full moon that night, so it was even brighter than it normally is. Haruki puts out the cigarette on his pants and the man next to him nearly drops his phone while trying to stop him.

“Woah there! little listener don’t do that! That could go through the fabric and hurt you! or it could burn a hole through your pants!”

Haruki looks at him with a small chuckle, the man really liked fashion, so seeing what Haruki did probably made him reconsider talking with him at least a little bit, but the boy liked seeing the reaction. Present Mic takes the now unlit cigarette from Haruki, probably to make sure he doesn’t litter and accidentally starts a forest fire. He would never, but he can’t blame the man for making precautions.

He seemed to notice Haruki’s smile and sighed. “I don’t think I have to worry about holes in these pants.” Haruki says, when he lies down onto the grass below them. Present Mic follows suit soon after.

The leaves around the cliff aren’t covering the sky as much as in the forest, since many trees had to be taken down to build the upper ground level of the facility. Making a small meadow in its place. The stars were visible, making constellations on the sky.

“They shouldn’t have died.” Haruki says after a while of silence.

“No one should kiddo, they still do. That’s life”

Haruki can feel the tears coming back up into his eyes. The song from his headphones switches, he can feel himself getting lost in the melody, which is making him remember every single moment he, Kaori and Raine spent together. His throat hurts again, this time definitely from the tears, he sits back up again, trying to push the tears away, Mic scoots closer to him. Putting his arm over his shoulder again.

Haruki cannot keep the tears in anymore, he gives up on fighting and just lets them fall. His mind showing him all the times he did in front of father. The man didn’t take kindly to “weaklings” as he called them, Haruki shouldn’t cry. He knows he shouldn’t, not in front of his idol. He probably thinks he’s weak now. It was the only trait his father could never get rid of. No matter how much he tried, Haruki was still weak, he still felt bad for those who were in pain around him. He still tried to help everyone, and father despised that.

So he made sure to break him down, every time he thought he helped someone father would just come in and prove to him how fragile human lives are. Filius used to think that at least his friends were safe, at least his siblings were safe. But now, Alekai, Raine and Kaori are all dead. And it was all strictly by fathers own hands, Raine maybe indirectly but it was still the only thought going through that peace keepers mind. “Doing god’s bidding” is what he called it. In the end father succeeded in everything he tried to do. He took away everything that Filius had. He took away Everyone.

Haruki sobs into present mic’s jacket, it was warm, he could feel the man’s heartbeat, it made Haruki a bit calmer. it wasn’t the usual clothes that the hero wore, in fact the jacket seemed slightly too big for him, and Haruki saw a number on the tag meaning that it was probably thrifted. It made him like the man even more. He thrifted most of his clothes, he’s glad that Present Mic doesn’t think that thrifting “is for poor people.” Which is what he heard some heroes say in the past.

He always hated those who thought they were better than others, which actually wasn’t hypocritical. He did think he was better, but he also hated himself.

The man lead Haruki’s head onto his shoulder. After some time he started slowly running his hands through Haruki’s hair. Which made the boy cling onto his jacket harder. He knew he was going to regret doing that later, in fact he was starting to regret it now. But he needed it, and the hero knew he did, and it seemed like he didn’t mind staying at the cliff for a bit with him so he pushed his regret away for now.

The action was small, but it was still something Haruki had forgotten what it felt like, he remembers his  mother’s hands, – the mother from the cult – also entangled in his hair. She always said he had pretty hair, and she loved to play with it when he was laying in her lap.

His mom also did that, though back then his hair was short she still made sure to let him know that she knows he’s there by the smallest little touches. It was how she showed love. And he must’ve picked up on it himself, the one thing he always does with people he likes is being as close to them as he could. He’s had a couple of people complain about it in the beginning but they all got used to it. They all seemed to also figure out that the action meant that he cared.

He doesn’t know when, but his scars stopped hurting, his head got used to the powerful force next to him and calmed down a bit, and his throat was getting better after he started crying.

He was feeling better, and it was because he cried. It made no sense in his mind, why would  something like that help him? It shouldn’t. it should make everything worse, it’s him showing a flaw to other people, giving them a clear path to hit him later on. He really shouldn’t be feeling good after crying but he does. He really does.

He looks down and notices Present Mic having a ring on his finger, it was a really pretty one too. A black ring with a sun surrounded with clouds on it. ‘could it be a wedding ring?’

He gets off of the hero and wipes his eyes again. “S-sorry.” His voice cracks again and he decides it would be best to end his sentence with a single word, he didn’t want to embarrass himself further.

“Don’t apologize for crying kiddo, it’s normal. Especially after something like that.” Haruki looks at the man in front of him, he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t disappointed at him for crying. He was concerned. Haruki didn’t know what to do in that situation, normally he would already be apologizing for crying while on his knees, not daring to look at father. “Are you a Lana Del Rey fan?”

Haruki tilts his head in confusion, realizing that for the past 20 minutes the only thing the man has been hearing was Lana Del Rey, coming from his busted up headphones. “I only listen to rock…” He answers looking to the side, his cheeks getting red from getting caught. It was a silly hill to die on but he’s kept up the ‘only listens to rock’ persona for years, he didn’t really know how to say that he actually likes other types of music.

“ah, so you’re not a fan of the radio. And here I thought you were by how you reacted to my name.”

Haruki’s eyes widen again he stares back at the hero – who is now chuckling uncontrollably – his face entirely red. “that’s… different.”

“hahah, sure thing. Doesn’t the radio play a little late for you to be listening to it though? You should be sleeping enough, you have school don’t you?”

“Graduated already… I- uh.. moved here in the middle of the year.”

The hero seems to understand the rest without asking. “Are you feeling any better now?” Haruki nods “uh here, eat something” He hands Haruki a nutrition bar.

Okay I think we’ve just met Eraserhead’s boyfriend.

‘MAX! he’s present Mic, it’s obvious he would have HIS OWN nutrition bars on him’

Haruki takes the nutrition bar and starts eating it. “thanks, I like them. They’re a good flavor.” The hero laughs

“glad you think so. I can’t say for myself since I’m allergic.”

Literally exactly what creepy hobo man said about his ‘roommate’.

‘Max drop it.’

What am I a dog? Woof woof?

He stuffs the wrapper into his bag, hoping that he’ll remember to throw it out later. The hero stands up and holds out a hand for him to take, Haruki stands up as well, deciding not to use the hero’s help. He quickly realizes how his action comes off and tries to explain himself.

“I- it’s not l-like I-“ He stutters trying to make up any sort of explanation but Present Mic interrupts him.

“It’s alright Lil’ listener, I get it. now, do you want to help me uproot those roses or do you just want to head home for the night?”

“I’ll help” Haruki nods again following the hero into the clearing, they dig up the roses and he sees the hero taking out another flower from the bag he came in with.

“I wanted to put this flower next to that grave but since you said that they wouldn’t like the roses, it will look great here too.”

“s-she” Mic raises an eyebrow before correcting

“Since you said that she wouldn’t like the roses, it will look great here too.”

A comfortable silence falls between them, neither daring to break it in for a good while. Haruki wonders whether he should tell him their names, he has been coming here for god knows how long, he would probably enjoy knowing a bit more about the people in the graves.

“Y-you don’t have to do this you know?”

Present Mic looks back at him and smiles “Yeah, but I want to.”

There’s another moment of silence. Mic knows that Haruki wants to say something but he waits for the kid to start, not wanting to scare him off by asking.

“uh.. i-it’s Kaori and Raine.” He points to the graves when he says the name of the person underground.

“Pretty names. I’m sure they meant a lot to you.” Haruki doesn’t respond, he watches the hero cover the new flower with dirt, making sure that it’s correctly placed before watering it and then standing up and stretching. Haruki was mostly just holding the bag and giving him the things he needed but he still felt like he somehow helped. He hands the bag back to the hero and tries to smile. Hoping it doesn’t look too out of place. Mic takes off his gardening gloves and pats Haruki again. Seeing his piercings.

“those look cool. You did them yourself kiddo?”

“yeah… are they that bad?” he fidgets with the longer earing.

“nah they’re good. Now then, it’s late. And I’m sure your parents will freak out if they see you’re not home at this hour, so we should head back. Do you want me drive you to your place?”

Haruki looks up at him “no!” He says, maybe a bit too loud. He calms his tone down and repeats “n-no need.”

“Okay then maybe I could just drive you to someplace closer? If you don’t want me to see your apartment, I won’t judge though, not like I live in a mansion myself”

Haruki keeps quiet for a second before nodding once again, he tells the man the address of the library near his house, assuming that it’s far enough for him to not get suspicious.

The car he’s sitting in right now is fancy, too fancy. He gets in the passenger seat, which feels odd to him. He’s way too close to the drivers, when he was with his mom he always sat behind the driver. But it felt rude to do that then so he just sat at the front. He can see this side being slightly dirtier than the other one, clearly whoever Present Mic drives with doesn’t really care about the car looking nice. The radio is on, “coincidentally” playing Lana Del Rey, He can see that the car has Spotify on it. Mic can’t use the excuse that it was just what was playing on the radio. He specifically put that on. Though Haruki didn’t mind it, he did like her music. Even if he didn’t admit it.

They arrive at the now closed library, Haruki leaves the car and says bye to the hero, he doesn’t know when but he got another nutrition bar. He walks back to his apartment, dropping down onto his floor. He cannot help but feel a bit lonely, not that he minds it. No he’s used to it. He’s always alone in his house, as he should be. If there was anyone else here it wouldn’t be safe for them, and he wouldn’t be able to provide for them. But still, it was nice hanging out with Midoriya, and talking with Mic and hell he even enjoys meeting Eraserhead out on his patrols.

He doesn’t know when his days started becoming filled up with meeting other people, instead of just doing his job and training. He doesn’t know how he should feel about the change, he enjoys talking with others but at the same time if it’s distracting him from his work and studying maybe he should try to distance himself a bit?

Though, if he hadn’t met Present Mic that day he doubts that he would’ve felt better by now. He probably would still be seeing things.

He walks around his floor, checking to see if he can see any of the hallucinations from before – which he cannot. – he lets out a long sigh before taking some spare clothes into his hands, plus some other dirty stuff to not look suspicious and goes to the laundromat. He isn’t washing his hammock again. The smell still lingers on it so he probably will have to.

He gets to the laundromat, he’s lucky that it’s open 24/7, he decides to take a shower first. Leaving his clothes on one of the benches in front of the washers. He walks into an empty shower, and he had a lot of choices since he seems to be the only one there.

He lets the cold water wash off the smell before using his 3 in 1 shampoo. He did not miss it, he didn’t miss it at all. If he could afford it he would’ve bought something similar to what Midoriya has at his place, that shampoo smelled really nice, and it made his hair feel great. He exits the shower and dresses in some spare clothes he brought with him. He starts the cycle on the washer and waits.

He checks his phone looking at the notifications he ignored earlier.

Zuku

“Happy birthday Haruki! ^^” “I know you’re probably asleep right now but could we meet up tomorrow?” “Or just soon in general!” “If you have the time!”

Haruki reads the spam of texts and chuckles to himself.

“Idk if I can do tomorrow, maybe Saturday instead?”

He gets a text back almost immediately, which makes him worried about the boy’s sleep schedule – as if he had a right to judge.

“Sure! :D I was thinking about going to the movies since there’s a new movie about All might that came out, if you want you could go with me!”

Haruki stares at the text, movie tickets are expensive, but since he was basically getting double the money from tomorrows mission he thinks he can make do with what he has.

“alright see ya then :]]”

“See ya!”

Haruki turns his phone off and puts it in his pocket, moving the laundry from the washer to the drier and having to wait again. He sighs and just decides to watch a random movie on a ‘completely legal’ website.

When Haruki returns home he puts away his clothes on the couch’s armrest, deciding that for his casual clothes it’s easier for them to be there since he doesn’t have to search through his drawers to find the clothes he’s looking for.

He’s going to have to make up for today’s lost studying time but he doesn’t mind it. He lays down in his hammock turns on the radio, checks his phone for the last time today, reading the texts he sent today again, stopping to look at the photo Eraserhead sent to him, the exact same one that Present Mic showed him. In hindsight it made sense for the two to live together, they were coworkers after all.

I’m telling you they are dating!

‘shut up Max, you can’t just assume that two people are dating because they live together. And they’re coworkers, obviously they spend a lot of times together. You’re just confusing friendship with love like you do every time I talk to anyone!’

Okay, okay maybe I do go a little bit overboard whenever you talk with your nerd friends, but like actually I know I’m right about this!

‘sure, sure whatever’ Haruki ignores Max’s words and he focuses on the radio playing, tuning out his thoughts. As he drifts away he feels peaceful and he has to admit that this was the best birthday he’s had in a while. Even if it did start off a little rocky.

Chapter Text

Haruki looks at Max, his gaze was hard, his brows furrowed, the atmosphere inside the room they were in was tough,  not awkward – nothing between them could ever be awkward anymore, not after knowing each other for nearly 600 years. The room around them was a fully white void. He’s grown familiar with this place, it was slightly comforting now. The familiarity soothed him, filled his chest with a warm sensation – one that he couldn’t ignore. And even if he hated waking up in here every night, a part of him was glad that at least he had one sure thing in his life. One thing that couldn’t be taken away from him, at the smallest mistakes he makes, he knew that no matter what happened, Max would always be there, waiting for him at the end of the day. And that was one of the few things that kept him sane.

Max wasn’t speaking as usual. Haruki walks forward, but even if his legs move, he doesn’t get closer. The void seemed to increase the space between them when he tried to close it. Max didn’t want him to get closer.

They both stare at each other, waiting for the other to do something. The silence was unsettling, and the feeling of comfort Haruki felt deep down now completely disappeared from his chest. He felt like he was about to suffocate, but then Max spoke up.

“You’re getting stronger.” He says bluntly, not bothering to elaborate. Haruki knows what he means.

He might be able to defeat him soon, if he keeps training, he could actually overpower Max. The thought is an odd one, and he doesn’t really want to entertain it. It’s an unachievable goal, as even if he does win, he dies anyway. So why does it matter if he’s technically the one stabbing Max this time? He’s still the one who’ll feel the pain, it’s as if he were stabbing himself. And in a way, he is.

He takes a deep breath and steps closer, this time Max doesn’t deny it. He had been in the dream for quite some time now. It had to have been at least a few hours in the real world, so he knew he had to wake up. He had to text Midoriya, he had to meet Eraser, and he had to do his job. He couldn’t waste his time talking with Max. They can do that all day when he wakes up.

But for some reason, every time they spoke in the white room, it felt different. Max wasn’t his usual snarky self; He didn’t have witty comebacks, and he didn’t try to tell Haruki that his way of speaking is awkward or that something he did was embarrassing. No, in here, he was serious. Too serious for Haruki’s liking. If he’s being honest, he preferred the immature Max. It felt like him, this version was also him, but different, fake, filled with anger, fear, and dread. Haruki doesn’t know what Max is planning to do. Or if he even has a plan, his actions always seemed to be planned beforehand, but is that even possible? Can someone’s entire life be planned ahead? Maybe it can. Maybe during all those times when Haruki had Max control him, father was actually giving him orders. Maybe whenever he wasn’t in control, father showed Max everything that was planned for him, and maybe that’s the plan that Max is following right now. Maybe it’s the plan that Haruki is also following without even realising it.

Even if Haruki didn’t understand everything that Max was or what he thought about, he still knew that in the end, Max was him. And so their goals couldn’t be so different. Their drives, their memories, and their reasoning. He assumed they were at least somewhat similar. They had to agree on those things, even if he didn’t realise it. Max wouldn’t be letting Haruki do whatever he wants to if they weren’t. And the feeling that in the end, Max is just the same person as Haruki, but with minor changes, helped him.

If he couldn’t feel it, he could no longer classify himself as a single person. If Max had a consciousness of his own, then Haruki couldn’t call himself that; He wouldn’t know what to do in that situation. So, as a way of ignoring his fears, he just says to himself that Max is just something his brain made up, something that manifested when they gave him his quirk, and that Max is just the effect of his blood turning into a person. He didn’t have thoughts, he couldn’t have. Even if he seemed like he thought, Max doesn’t have an actual body, he doesn’t have a brain, so obviously he’s unable to think… right? He has to be following fathers orders, or someone else’s. Someone had to tell him what to do. That’s the only explanation for him being able to act as if he knows everything.

Haruki’s thoughts are stopped short when Max manifests a knife into his hand, he throws the knife onto the floor before making a sword for himself. The same sword that Filius used, the same one he now has inside his bo-staff.

It was weird, Max has never let Haruki have a weapon for the battle before. He was never given an advantage. In fact, he was always put at a disadvantage, no quirk, no weapons, no costume. Just a human, and a mockery of one, fighting.

The blade of the katana that Max wielded was nearly pitch-black inside the void; There weren’t any lights inside the white room, but it wasn’t dark. He couldn’t see the roses carved into the sword. Normally, during fights in the real world, it would be illuminated by lights around him, and the roses would pop out; he honestly couldn’t wait for the public to take a picture of it and go crazy over the detail. People were always like that, trying to find symbolism and beauty in everything. It was always so fascinating how they could look at the smallest detail and start theorising about what it means.

Filius’ blade didn’t mean much. Not to him, at least, he was practically born wielding it. He doesn’t remember a time in which that blade was not in his hand. He assumes it was designed by father. The roses carved on it were very pretty, obviously done by someone who has mastered the craft. It was a beautiful katana, he can admit that. But still, to him, it was just that. – a katana. A weapon he was meant to wield. Just a thing. He could use any other sword the same way. It wouldn’t change anything.

And so he didn’t know why he kept it. Why he added it to his bo-staff. And why did Max keep fighting with it. It was just a weapon. It meant nothing. So then why? Why would he keep it?

Haruki ducks and grabs the knife, avoiding a hit coming from Max. The knife was small, slightly curved, also black. Seemed a bit tougher than a regular knife. Seems like the research he did on reinforced weapons and how they’re made was paying off. He stands up and turns to Max. He runs to the side, avoiding another hit from him. He jumps up and tries to kick him, but Max grabs his leg.

Haruki uses the momentum to plunge the knife into the other’s shoulder. Black liquid starting to spill onto his outfit and leaking to the floor. Max recovers quickly and just uses the blood to claw at Haruki’s arms. Forming it into a tendril-like object, it grips Haruki’s upper arms, forcing him down.

The teen gets stuck to the floor trying to rip away the liquid from himself. Max stabs his stomach with the katana, making him whine. It hurt unusually hard; During the whole fight, he couldn’t shake the feeling of something being different, something was off, and he couldn’t just ignore it. Haruki cuts the blood away, slicing through it fast enough so it doesn’t have the time to regenerate. He jumps away again, clutching his stomach. The blood that spills from it is red, so technically, nothing was different. It was always red, Haruki just thought it was because Max was his quirk. Not him. But he still felt like something bad was going to happen. Something Major was going to change soon, and it seemed like Max felt it too.

Normally, these fights didn’t last a long time; They both knew each other’s every move, so they didn’t stall. Max returns the blood to himself and runs at Haruki, sending another almost tentacle-like wave of blood his way. Haruki reflects the katana with his knife, kicking Max’s stomach, moving him slightly back, but he swings right back using the tendril and slams the katana into Haruki’s left shoulder. Haruki tries not to react, and he slices at Max’s stomach once again.

Max leaps back, not bothering to try and regenerate his scars; That was different. One minor detail, and it confirmed what Haruki was thinking completely. Something was different, and the fact that Max isn’t trying to regenerate just proves it. He always regenerated his wounds. Haruki assumed it was so that he could fight more, fight as if he never got hit in the first place. Why wouldn’t he be regenerating? Even if something was changed, why would he give Haruki such a huge advantage?

Haruki quickly attacks Max again. He was distracted, he lowered his guard for a second, and Haruki wasn’t going to pass on an opportunity like this. He quickly grabs the knife tighter, pointing it at Max and stabbing right through his right eye. Max stumbles back, his face contorted with anger – not at Haruki no. At himself.

He gets back before re-entering his fighting stance and lunges forward at the boy again. Haruki dodges it and jumps up again. Max tries to grab him, but Haruki just kicks himself off of him and jumps even higher, falling on his legs, a couple of meters behind Max.

He looks at him shocked, and Haruki returns the expression. He couldn’t believe that the fight was lasting this long, or that he was able to knock Max off his guard. He was actually close to defeating him, but his pride is soon ripped from him when Max stabs clean through his chest. And then again, and again, and again, all until Haruki is lying on the floor, not moving. His body once again not responding to him, he could feel his life slipping away from him. He felt frustrated, he let himself get distracted too easily, making him lose the battle. The smell of blood filled his nose, and a metallic taste leaked onto his tongue. There was no way he could get up now, but he was still happy with the outcome. He did manage to win in some way after all. Even if it wasn’t an official win. He managed to get a couple of good hits, and that was enough for him.

And he noticed something else during that fight. His quirk was evolving, getting stronger. Before, Max wasn’t able to use the blood in any other way than to create new weapons and regenerate himself. Which meant that Haruki’s training was paying off. He felt a warm feeling engulfing his entire body just as his consciousness was stripped away from him.

He sits up as fast as he wakes up. He quickly remembers that he lost and lies back down, sighing. After a few seconds, he picks up his phone, “11:32”. He had a couple of hours before having to meet Eraserhead to bring in the evidence, he still needed to print it. So he stands up, stretches, gets dressed in some random clothes, and heads out to the library.

The streets were mostly empty, except for some random families walking around. Or people waking up from sleeping after their night shifts. He walks into the well-ventilated library. Ollie – the nice librarian – greets him. Her warm smile already making him feel better after the loss. He waves back at her, trying to smile himself.

You look like such a dork. Max laughs, returning to his regular tone. His smirk, already glued to his face. He was standing behind Ollie, looked over at the page she was reading, and looked away in shock, his face slightly blushing. Haruki did not want to think about what he saw in those pages. He’d rather his image of Ollie remain as is.

He heads over to the printer and gets all of the pictures he’s taken printed off onto paper. There was a small fee for using the printer, but he was able to afford it – For once – He writes some dates and basic info about what it is and where he found it on the other sides of the papers. He folds them and puts them into his bag.

 Deciding to pick out some other books, he looks around the proper section. He was still doing pretty well in his studies, and he was above the average for regular high schoolers, but his knowledge of history after the phenomenon was non-existent.  He picks out a history book and returns the other one he had. Ollie smiles at him when she looks up from her book – a cheesy teenage rom-com, Haruki thinks when he sees the cover. Now he doesn’t want to know what Max saw even more. – Her white hair covers her eyes for a second before she moves it away and tucks it behind her ear.

“Hm? Did the pre-quirk history bore ya? Well, yeah, I guess a world without superpowers is boring.” She says her tone, warm and gentle. She seemed to be the mom friend of many friend groups.

“O-Oh no. I just read through all of it already. It wasn’t boring, just… predictable, I guess.” Haruki answers, his voice cracking again… typical. He clears his throat and looks back at the teenager snickering in front of him. He can feel his face getting red.

He looks at her for a moment before Ollie speaks up again. “Hm? I don’t know much about pre-quirk history, but I’ve never heard anyone describe it as predictable before.. huh.. interesting.”

He just nods in response.

“I saw you rented a sign language book, how’s that going for you?” She puts her book onto the desk, she’s sitting at, it was open, keeping the page she was on marked.

“It’s going well.. I need to start practising in real life, though.”

“Well, I’ve seen people who are trying to learn sign language use it when speaking normally so that they can get used to it. Maybe you should try doing that?”

He stares at her for a second before signing and saying. “That’s… a good… idea, thanks.” His sentence is slow when he has to think about what the right sign for the words he’s speaking is. She laughs, smiling softly.

“I…should…get back.” Haruki signs again, this time his voice slightly faster, the knowledge he’s been remembering for the past two weeks coming to him. Ollie seems to notice the speed up too, as she smiles even wider.

“Righto! See you soon then!” she waves, picking her book back up. Haruki leaves the library and heads for the park, thinking that studying outside in the fresh air might help him.

He sits under a tree, the soft autumn breeze going through his hair, the air filling up his lungs. It calms him, he loves the peacefulness that it provides.  The grass was touching the palms of his hands, he didn’t forget to put on gloves this time; Luckily, he was still able to feel everything through them.

When he got home from the time he went to their graves, he’d realised that he forgot to put on his gloves, though, could anyone ever blame him? He was hallucinating the whole day, and nothing felt real. It was as if he was in a never-ending nightmare. Anyone would’ve forgotten to wear gloves in that situation. Though he faintly remembers realising that he didn’t put on gloves while talking with Present Mic. He can’t be sure, though, that night was really fuzzy to him. He could hardly remember anything.

He did remember that he didn’t wear a turtleneck. Which means that not only did Present Mic saw the scars on his hands – which could’ve been easily explained, – He also saw the scars on his neck. Which he wouldn’t be able to explain in any way. So he’s glad that the man didn’t ask. He’s grown tired of lying about everything. Maybe it’s the life he chose as a vigilante that caused this, but he hated lies. He hated it when people lied to him, so he didn’t lie to others. But he’s been slowly giving up on that belief. When he first started lying, he couldn’t stop. Why would he? The lies protect him. If he didn’t lie, he would’ve been identified as Filius and taken away to Tartarus.

He takes out his books on Japanese and begins practising, he does worksheets he printed off and tries to correct any mistakes. But just like always, he still doesn’t understand it. It annoys him. Makes him feel angry, more angry than he probably should be. He felt like slamming the book against his face, he kept making the same mistakes. He didn’t know what he was doing wrong. The book wasn’t explaining it right, and anytime he searched it up, he ended up being even more confused.

After a couple of hours, the sun was already setting. Which normally would’ve made him stop and appreciate the silent beauty. He knew that it was silly to like the sun so much. But he couldn’t help it.

And after that entire speech about how humans are weird for finding beauty in the ‘smallest of details?’

Max scoffs, rolling his eyes.

‘I can be a hypocrite if I want to, Max.’

He sighs and closes the book, realising that he still has to work out, go meet Eraser, and then patrol. Haruki stands up and packs up his books. Still feeling angry from not understanding the topic. Studying everything else was easy to him. Why would this specific thing be hard?

Haruki walks back to his apartment using the alleyways, seeing as the streets were once again swarmed with people coming back from work. He jumped onto the roof of his apartment and then went down onto his floor. He gets changed into what he has dubbed his workout clothes.

It’s literally just a tank top and shorts.

He ignores Max and begins his long workout routine. It was intense, but it had to be. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be getting stronger. He was already training inside the facility, and in there, he had a whole 3d simulated arena where he and his siblings could fight with themselves or generated enemies. So the switch up was hard; It took him a long time to find a workout that matched his skillset. One that still made him sweat. And yeah, maybe it did take an unbelievable amount of time. He had to make do. It would’ve been easier if he had some equipment, but he didn’t.

When he finished his workout, all he wanted to do was lie down on his hammock and go to sleep. But he couldn’t, since he still had to do his job that day. He sneaks into the nearby gym once again to use their showers. The gym was crowded at this time, so it was kind of easy to sneak by without anyone noticing that he doesn’t have a membership. He goes into the shower area, looking past the machinery that would probably raise his strength by a notable amount if he could use them.

Even if he didn’t feel like taking a warm shower, he still did. He had to use the warm water he was given. He never knew when he might get blacklisted for getting caught. He lets the water run on his back, relieving some muscles – they didn’t hurt. His muscles haven’t hurt for a long time. He just assumed it to be his regeneration being too quick for the pain to settle in, before being healed. But he isn’t about to start complaining about being in less pain.

Still, he wished his muscles would show any signs that the workout was successful. It’s hard to tell if they don’t hurt. Before this, Haruki was just convinced that his workouts weren’t enough. But seeing the improvement, he’s sure that they are, in fact, working and are enough.

Obviously, in a couple of months, he would have to raise the difficulty so that he can get even stronger. But he’s sure that U.A. has a school gym, so he probably will be able to work out there. Which means that he will get access to machines that’ll speed up his workouts and make them more effective. God, how he loved expensive schools.

Which brought him to his next concern. U.A. was expensive to even apply to, sure, they did have a program for ‘underfunded’ families. But Haruki’s situation was worse than that. He probably will have to start doing even more jobs. Not only does he need to save up for an apartment and U.A. But he also still needs money for food. This revelation has just made his life 10x harder. He was going to look up how much he needed to save up for U.A. and then he’ll just work more. His patrols might have to be cut then. But that’s fine. He’ll be helping people nonetheless, whether he’s helping for the money or just to help, didn’t matter at that time. All that mattered was that he needed to survive. And it’s not like he’ll stop patrolling completely, he’ll still do it. Just less and maybe on an even more uncertain schedule.

He sighed to himself. You’ve been in this shower for 15 minutes already.

‘Shit!’ sure 15 minutes might not seem like much, but when Haruki was breaking into the gym he couldn’t raise any suspicion. So he had to be quick with his showers. And all he did so far was stare at the water falling as he thought about his vigilante job.

Steam had already filled the shower room too, and if he didn’t get out soon, he would be found for sure. And then he would get blacklisted from the gym, which means that he’d get a bad reputation, which he couldn’t afford to have. He’s heard that the manager of this gym was a bitch as well. Which means that if she wanted to report it to the police, it would go on his record. Which meant no more U.A. Since they didn’t accept anyone with any kind of criminal background – Unless a teacher can speak on their behalf that they are a fit to become a hero. And Haruki is definitely not close enough with any of the U.A teachers to get that.

So he quickly picked up his shampoo and washed himself – he was rushing, but he still made sure to be throughout. He disliked smelling.

The warm water eventually stopped, and he practically ran out of the shower after getting dressed again. He snuck out of the gym. The sun was already gone from the sky, he really must’ve been in there for a long time. The streets, which before were filled with people now empty. He knew he had little time, so he sprinted back to his apartment, dropping down onto his floor and getting changed into his vigilante costume.

***

The night was dark, and the full moon last night was something that Shouta missed. He enjoyed how it illuminated the city. He could see everything more clearly. But tonight, not even stars appeared. His husband got back home oddly late. Aizawa listened to the story the man had, and he was surprised. Sure, he knew that Yamada was taking care of some graves he found near the end of the city. But he just assumed the people buried there didn’t have any relatives or friends. He was genuinely shocked when his husband said that he had met someone at the graves.

He felt bad for the kid, since from Hizashi’s description, they had a lot of scars on them. And Hizashi said that the scars didn’t look like they were obtained from small accidents. That made Shouta’s stomach churn.

But they had to move on, yet he was still worried, even if he hadn’t personally met the kid, and Yamada probably never will again.

Right now, he had to wait. He was early, he liked to be. Normally, when people he was supposed to be meeting already saw him there, they either panicked or were relieved. He enjoyed seeing which one different people he’s met will be. He was betting that the kid was going to be the panicked type.

 Eraserhead looked at the time, “23:12.” They were late. Maybe they didn’t manage to get the info in time? No, if they couldn’t do the job, then they wouldn’t have accepted it. Guess they were just running late. And so Shouta sat down on the edge of the roof, trying to enjoy the view of the city.

It was really pretty. Shouta looked at the way the lampposts illuminated the town, almost like a painting. He loved the night. Even if he loved it more when he could spend it with his husband, cuddling in bed. He had a job to do, and he was well aware of that fact.

Meeting the vigilante was an odd thing, they seemed to change their opinions about how to react to him really quickly. One day, letting him bandage their leg up while the other running through the entire city just to get away from him. He just hopes that today will be a good day. He cannot handle another edgy teenager who felt like they are above the law; he has a whole school of those already – and some teachers seem to fall into that category as well, judging by their actions.

The air was cold, Aizawa liked it that way; he liked seeing his breath, mostly because that meant he could see the breaths of any villains he had to chase. Sadly, that wouldn’t work on the vigilante since they have a mask, but it would’ve been a funny thing if the only reason Shouta spotted their nearly fully black costume was because of their breath.

He looked up at the pitch black sky, trying to remember any tactics for approaching scared children, which is the category he put Filius in – Sure, maybe they weren’t a child, child. But they were still young. And definitely scared of everything. Say what you want, but Shouta has spent years with teenagers, a lot of the kids in U.A are traumatised, and so he gets to see firsthand what a certain type of trauma or a coping mechanism looks like. Sure, he never really was a ‘comfort teacher’ of sorts; the kids usually preferred Hizashi. He didn’t mind that. His husband was great at making people feel better.

But he still saw how they acted in class, how they reacted to certain things said to them, how they interacted with the world. And he saw a lot of similarities in Filius, he was sure that they had some problems, what well-adjusted teen would choose to do vigilante work in their free time? They should be in school. Maybe they were, and maybe they were still going out on patrol every other night, sometimes more. Eraserhead didn’t know how someone could manage doing something like that without straining their body. But who knows, maybe they were straining their body. Which only made Eraser more determined about finishing the job Tsukauchi gave him.

Because behind the curtains, he’s been pulling some strings. And if the kid gets caught and swears off vigilantism, Shouta could vouch for them and get them into U.A. He already talked to Nezu, and the principal said that if they get in the top 10 of the entrance exam, they will be able to go to the school. So if he arrests them, he could start training them to make sure they’ll get in.

And after they graduate, they can just do their job again. They would be able to save people, legally, this time. But the hardest part was actually catching the kid, and then convincing them to go to U.A.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Filius was basically giving him permanent migraines. He sat up again when he heard boots falling onto the concrete behind him. Seems like the vigilante was here – only 20 minutes late.

Aizawa turned back, seeing a very unfazed teenager. Maybe he was wrong, and they were the type to feel relief. Or their face showed their exact emotions. Which was simple boredom.

They were holding something. Shouta assumed it was the proof the police needed.

“You’re late.” He says when he notices that Filius will not initiate the conversation.

“You have to wait for celebrities.” They answer, the robotic voice cutting through the air. It was almost uncanny how tuned it was. It didn’t resemble any voice at all, and it seemed to double the voice and speak in a couple of different octaves to mix off any identification programs. Smart, the hero thought. If they have multiple very different versions of what the vigilante’s voice could be, it would mean that they practically had no idea what their voice was.

“I think you’re misquoting that.”

Filius just rolls their eyes in response, they take out a knife from their shoe. Which makes Eraserhead raise an eyebrow – they wouldn’t attack him, right? That would be foolish.

But no, the kid doesn’t attack him. They just place the stack of folded papers on the floor and put the knife on them so they don’t get swept up by the wind. Once again, smart. They back away to the other side of the roof, for a second, Aizawa thinks that they will jump off. But today seemed to be his lucky day since Filius just stayed right on the edge, waiting for Aizawa to pick up the papers.

And so he does, when he has them firmly in his hand, he kicks the knife back to Filius. Knowing that they’d get it back one way or another, even if he did try to take it.

Aizawa assumed that the kid would just leave like they always do when they decide that the interaction between them is over, so he sits back down onto the ledge of the rooftop and begins looking through the photos. Yet, after a few minutes, he can still feel them standing there. Not moving from their position, except that the knife was now back in their shoe. Shouta didn’t even notice them picking it up. It feels a bit odd, but it’s the longest the kid has ever stuck around him, so he won’t comment on it. If they needed something, they would ask.

***

Filius stares at the hero in front of him. He wanted to ask the man about the Japanese stuff he didn’t understand. Eraserhead was a teacher, so surely he’d know how to explain it like a person. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask; in fact, he couldn’t even bring himself to walk forward to him.

He’s been closer before, but he doesn’t understand why, right now, his mind is telling him to keep away at all costs. But he’d need to get closer to show him the stuff he’s been struggling with. He hasn’t been able to figure it out in quite some time now, so he definitely needed help. But he didn’t even know how to begin that conversation.

He just stood there, watching. Hoping that Eraserhead will understand what he means, hoping that maybe he had a telepathy quirk somewhere deep inside him and just needed to awaken it.

But even as he practically glared at Eraserhead, the man seemed not to understand what Filius was trying to do. Which only makes him even angrier. How dare he not be able to read his mind?

He scoffed, to which the hero raised an eyebrow. “Something the matter?” Finally, he says something.

Fil stays quiet for a long time, so long that by the time he speaks again, Eraserhead is back to looking at the photos in his hand. “What’s an adjectival noun?” The question was a simple one, probably not even relating to Japanese. Filius assumed that many languages had them, but he still didn’t understand them. Eraserhead looked up from the papers, turning to face Filius.

“What?” He asked, almost as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Filius’ eyebrows furrowed.

“…forget it.” He turns back and is prepared to jump off, but then the hero starts speaking again.

“An adjectival noun is a noun that functions as an adjective, modifying another noun in a sentence.”

Fil looks at him for a second before his eyebrows furrow again. Eraserhead can imagine the pout on their face. The hero chuckles at the thought before trying to conceal it by coughing, clearly didn’t work, and now he had an even angrier vigilante in front of him.

“I don’t speak Latin, ironic, I know.” He answers sarcastically. The hero sighs and points to the edge of the roof. He wanted Filius to sit down beside him.

“Why is it ironic?” Eraser asks when Fil looks at the distance between them cautiously.

“…cause my name is Latin? And my quirk name. Though I guess you wouldn’t know the second one.” After a moment of consideration, Filius decides to get closer to Eraserhead, keeping his hand in the pocket of his pants, holding a self-made glitter bomb (thanks, Nea, for teaching him how to make one).

The hero notices the action, but he doesn’t comment on it. “What does your name mean then?”

Fil thinks for a bit whether he should tell him. And in that moment, he’s glad Max isn’t around to tell him off for choosing anything.

“Son.”

“Excuse me?” Eraserhead looks at him, confused.

“…It means son.” Filius clarifies while sighing.

“That’s a… name. Why son?”

“My dad chose it. Now I use it just to spite him.”

Eraserhead wants to dig deeper, to get to know the vigilante in front of him. Seems like they have a lot of stories to tell, which is odd for their age. But he knew that they were growing impatient; they were never one to stick around. And so he just drops the topic and tries to explain what an adjectival noun is. Trying to put it in sentences, he wasn’t great at languages. He knew the basics of course, but in the end he was a heroics teacher.

After a couple of examples and three different explanations, Filius seems to finally understand it.

His anger finally subsided.

Fil still doesn’t leave, he didn’t know why. Probably because it was so peaceful without Max, he didn’t want to leave the perimeter of Eraser’s quirk and have to be subjected to emotional torture by a twink with a superiority complex again. So when he understood what he had trouble learning on his own, he went back again, leaning over the entrance to the roof.

Watching Eraserhead once again, look through the pictures. One of them now had random sentences scribbled on the back of it. Filius was being too nice to the hero. He knows he was. He shouldn’t have asked for help, he shouldn’t have sat down. He’s getting too comfortable around him, and it shows.

Last night, he admitted that he liked meeting him and that was the scariest thought he’s ever had. He cannot afford to get distracted, he can’t change his goals. So what if the hero was sometimes nice to him? So what if annoying the guy was incredibly funny? Filius couldn’t get attached. He knew that, but right now he’s allowing himself to trust the man.

He'll change that. He shouldn’t lower his guard around the hero. Not this hero, at least.

After a couple more minutes, Eraserhead speaks up once again. “This is more than enough. Thanks. You said you wanted to pick up the money at the police station, right?”

Filius was going to raise his guard again. He was going to show the hero that he was not, in fact, getting used to him. “Yes.” He states coldly. Letting the voice changer make his voice even more emotionless than it already was.

Eraser quirks an eyebrow at the sudden tone change, but once again doesn’t comment on it. “We can meet here tomorrow, and then I’ll take you to the station.”

Fil’s anger goes back to him when he hears how that sentence sounds. He’s going to have to be prepared for that night. He’ll probably need a few more glitter bombs. Which he’s happy to make since the materials are really cheap. He was going to be attacked at the station. They’re going to try and arrest him, and he needs to be prepared for it.

He scoffs, “11 pm, here.”

He turns back on his heel and jumps off the roof. Well, at least that’s how it looks like to Eraserhead; in reality, he jumped onto a window of another building and climbed his way back down before running away into the shadows.

***

Eraserhead just stared at the space that the vigilante had just occupied, honestly, he wasn’t even surprised, it did seem like something the kid would do. So he simply returned his gaze to the papers in his hands.

He sighed and stood up. Walking over to the ledge – just in case – and just as he suspected, there was nothing. Just the empty and dirty alleyway. And that’s how he knew that the noises he heard when they arrived were done on purpose; if they really weren’t stealthy, he would normally be able to tell which way they went. They couldn’t have gotten far, well, unless their quirk is teleportation. And at that point, it was a strong theory.

He stretched and decided to go to the police station to hand the evidence in. He didn’t need to tell the detective about his plan to enrol Filius into U.A or the fact that the kid now shared the fact that he doesn’t exactly like their father with him.

His job is to get closer to them and to finally arrest them, and so he will do just that. Maybe if he convinces Fil to just drop the vigilante act, he will be able to make this go even smoother since he wouldn’t have to worry about the criminal record.

Or maybe if he just handed Filius an application form, they would apply on their own? Maybe if he just told them that their skill set is good enough for U.A, that would convince them?

Shouta knew that he shouldn’t start hoping for things like that, because most likely they wouldn’t happen. He didn’t even know if Filius was the right age to apply to U.A Normally, if it was a recommendation from a teacher, they would accept people up to 21 years old. But honestly, today’s question about adjectives made him consider Filius to be 16. Or a severely uneducated 18-year-old.

He was about to head out when he randomly got a text.

The kid

“Did you know that in case of a blackout, a crayon will burn for 30 minutes?”

Aizawa just stared at the text, not knowing what to even think about that statement. Literally like 5 minutes ago, the vigilante was acting all cold and distant towards him, and now this? He has no idea what level of trust he has with this kid. Or whether he has any trust with them, considering the fact that they were ready to fight him when they sat down next to him – still a bit too far than Shouta would’ve liked, but he’ll take what he can get at that point.

“Why?”

“Are you asking why am I doing this to you or why does the crayon do that?” and before he can answer, “actually both of the replies would be 'I dunno'”

Aizawa sighs and just decides to turn off his phone. He wants to go to his house, with his husband and his cats, and his bed, and his TV, and his husband again.

***

Haruki laughed, looking at the texts. He enjoyed sending random useless things to Eraserhead, he was questioning whether he should send him one of those videos of bread falling over. But no, that was going to have to wait for the right opportunity.

Thought you were keeping your guard up? Max stares at him from the corner of the room. Haruki had already taken off his vigilante costume, now dressed in just his boxers and a long-sleeved shirt.

Haruki pats away at the air in the direction that Max is standing – Floating? – in.

He also texted his client, who wanted to pay him immediately. Which is weird cause the sensible thing to do was to wait for the police to do their thing and arrest the guy, and only then pay Filius. But hey, he isn’t going to argue. He gets money anyway. He’s already picked up the money since the client was pretty close to him. So now, considering that he’ll get paid a shit ton more From the police, he thinks that he should treat himself and buy something for his apartment.

He thinks about it for a second before standing up and putting on some pants and his boots.

He goes over to the closest electronics shop, which, for some reason, was still open. And he quickly walks over to the portable stoves. He finds one for a nice price. He also gets a few bottles of the gas that he had to refill it with. He’s never used one of those before, so he was a little bit confused about it, but he had time to learn.

He also went to a different store and bought a pot, some spoons, and a mug.

That mug is… actually something that you 100% would get. Max looks over his shoulder before adding. That wasn’t a compliment.

Haruki just rolls his eyes. The mug was beige with strawberries on the outside, and the inside was red. It was an average size, maybe a little bit wide, but Haruki didn’t care. He liked how cute it looks. And like it or not, he loved cute things.

Maybe that wasn’t the most ‘manly’ thing of him to like, but once again, he did not care. He couldn’t exactly look cute anymore. – Turns out the things he used for general body-care and hygiene were extremely expensive – But he could still get cute objects. And a mug with little red strawberries on it was definitely something that pleases his need for cuteness.

He couldn’t quite allow himself a plate and forks, the spoons he bought already came in a set of 10, which meant it cost a bit more than just the one he wanted would’ve cost. So he settles for the things he has and goes back to his apartment. At least now he can make himself some instant noodles.

But of course, just as he was walking back, Eraserhead once again finds him, out on the streets in the middle of the night. Holding suspicious objects.

Eraser walks out of an alleyway, clearly tired already. He was probably going to end his patrol and go home, so it’s understandable.

“Kid… Why?” He says with an exasperated sigh.

Haruki looks down at the 10 cups of instant noodles he was holding. Okay, maybe he did get a little bit over-excited and went over budget, but can you really blame him? He couldn’t cook for himself for nearly half a year now, so he deserved this.

“Uh… late night snack?” He answers, but it’s phrased more as a question, obviously not even believing his own lie.

“You know what? I don’t even care anymore. Sure, enjoy your food, kid.” The hero says, raising his hand to his face. He then abruptly adds, “Go home, though. I will know if you don’t.”

‘Yeah, cause you follow me nearly the whole way back.’

“Are you a stalker or something? Like… eugh.” Haruki doesn’t finish the sentence, letting the faked disgust seep through. The man just stares at him, looking as if he had gained 4 more grey hairs in that minute alone.

He opens his mouth as if he wants to answer, but he scoffs instead, turning around and going back into an alley. He does shout back to Haruki when he’s nearly completely covered by shadows, “Home. Now.”

So Haruki decides not to test his luck and heads back home. Not like he had any place better to be right now, he still wanted to eat his instant noodles, and the creepy homeless stalker he’s got isn’t going to stop him.

I don’t think you have the right to call him that.

Oh, Max was back. Has Eraser not followed him back to the apartment this time?

Haruki looks over to Max in confusion. The hero literally said that he’d know if Haruki didn’t go home, which implied that he would follow him back again. ‘So then why was Max here?’

But he decides not to question it; if Eraserhead didn’t follow him, that just means it’s a better scenario for Haruki. He jumps down onto his floor again and practically runs to his room.

He put the stove in the middle of his desk, he takes out all of the things he bought from his bag, and starts to boil some water. It was the first warm meal he had made for himself in a while. And sure, maybe it wasn’t the most balanced meal, or a healthy meal at that. But it was food.

And beggars can’t be choosers if they want to live. There’s only so long a person can survive on dry bread and free dinners at Izuku’s house.

When the water boils, or so he thinks that it does – not like he has anything to tell him that it did. – he takes it off the stove and pours it into the noodle cup. It was some sort of non-spicy version. He hadn’t eaten instant noodles before, so he didn’t know what flavour to get. There were way too many.

He waits for the recommended 5 minutes, but when he starts eating it, it’s way too hot. His tongue burns. Haruki can already hear Max’s laughter. Even if Max has decided not to show himself. He still has a way of annoying Haruki.

And after another 5 minutes, he finally decides to start eating, and the warmth spreads on his tongue. He can feel the taste of the flavour packets he added in; It may not be the best meal he’s ever eaten, but it’s still good food. Well, at least as good as he’s going to get for a while.

He takes his time, making sure to savour every bite. When he finally finishes the whole cup, he stays sitting on the floor for a little while.

He stands up and goes outside to throw the trash into a dumpster of the store, next to his apartment.

When he finally goes to sleep, he feels full, glad that he did spend the money on this. He turns on the radio – which was in fact still on the same station. – Recently, Present Mic has returned to his regular schedule. Haruki was glad that the man wasn’t overworking himself anymore. Considering that he does technically have 3 jobs.

His dreams are the same once again. He fights Max, this time without a knife, and quickly loses. He could still feel something changing, as if his dreams were getting stronger. He doesn’t know how to put it. But the area of his dreams seems to be evolving. The sceneries getting clearer, stronger.

He chalks it up to just his quirk getting stronger, but in hindsight, he should’ve realised that it wasn’t that simple.

Haruki is waiting for Izuku in front of the cinema, they had agreed to meet here to watch a new movie coming out. Recently, though, the boy has been talking less about All Might, and he gets notably more flustered whenever the topic of the hero comes up.

‘Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he did ran into an ongoing fight between heroes and a villain to save a classmate?’

Haruki pushes his thoughts aside and decides to drop the topic. In the end, it could just be that Izuku is losing interest in All Might and he’s focusing on his studies.

The movie tickets were expensive, but nothing too outrageous, especially since they qualify for a discount because of their age.

Even for an All Might movie, it was long, and the average length for movies like those is 3,5 hours. But it was an interesting movie nonetheless. Their seats were decent ones, nearly up to the top. Midoriya bought butter-covered popcorn and some nachos that he shared, and Haruki couldn’t thank him enough for the snack.

Haruki did not miss how Izuku brought his notebook with him to note anything new he’s learned, so at least his interest for analytics isn’t going away anytime soon. They sit through the movie, it was interesting – even if Haruki didn’t care about All Might as long as he didn’t run into him on his patrol.

But sadly, it seemed like he had to start caring about All Might because he will be his teacher when he starts to attend U.A – ‘And yes, that’s a ‘when’ alright Max?’

Didn’t even say anything. I’d prefer not to interrupt your date.

‘IT’S NOT A DATE’

Whatever makes you sleep at night. Max winks at him, and Haruki can feel the anger seeping into him. – Why has he been so angry recently?

But he quickly disperses his thoughts when a particularly interesting scene comes onto the screen, it was a very personal moment. Haruki isn’t exactly sure how the director got this information. Even Izuku seemed surprised, which was a very rare occurrence when it came to All Might. Haruki focused on eating the popcorn and nachos, while Izuku scribbled like crazy.

Seriously freaky how fast he can write.

‘…Yeah, I can agree with you on that.’

The movie went on, though, showing how All Might always got up even through the tough times, even when it was hard, he still smiled.

He knows that Izuku wanted to be the same; he wanted to bring hope to people, and he wanted to smile while fighting. The motivation warmed Haruki’s heart. To see Midoriya so determined to become a hero without a quirk made him feel like he could also become one. It made him feel like his past didn’t matter.

He made him forget about all that he caused and all the people who suffered because of his choices. And maybe it was selfish for him to enjoy it. Maybe he didn’t deserve to feel like he wasn’t a monster, but he still let himself get lost in the feeling. ‘Just for a moment.’

When the movie ends, Midoriya tells Haruki to stay for the after-credits. Of course, the boy would stay for those types of things. Truth be told, Haruki hasn’t ever seen the after-credits of any movie in a cinema. – You sure are having a lot of ‘firsts’ recently. Wonder what’s next. – Sure, he’s seen them when he was watching movies on his legal websites, but never in real life. So he sits back down, finishing the nachos, while Izuku eats the popcorn. The credits were long, almost made him want to leave, simply because he was getting bored. But then the final scene finally plays, and it shows actual footage from a fight that All Might was a part of. He’s surprised that they were allowed to show this as the fight has only been seen by All Might, the person recording the clip, the police, and the villain whom he was fighting.

The only reason that Haruki knows about it is because he was snooping around the police’s files when he was bored in his apartment. It was hidden from the public simply because the villain was saying a lot of hero secrets. The police records show that they don’t know how he obtained the information, but it was all correct. So they hid it.

Haruki was surprised that they were showing it to the public now, a couple of years after the fight happened, but whatever. It was probably a marketing tactic. He shrugged, but he could feel the sparks flying off of Midoriya’s pencil as he wrote.

“Zuku, slow down, you’re going to start a fire!” he says, his tone rushed when he turns to the boy next to him.

“I have to write this all down before the scene ends.” The freckled boy answers, and Haruki doesn’t argue with him. He has to write down what he has to write down.

When they exit the movie theatre, they decide to go for a walk around town. The streets were filled with people, but it was still walkable. Haruki was glad that they didn’t have to use the rooftops of the alleyways.

When they reached a park – the same one that Haruki was trying to study at yesterday. – Izuku sits down on a bench, and Haruki follows suit.

“Hey, uh.. so I know that your birthday was a couple of days ago. But I still wanted to get you something, and s-so, I remembered that you said that you listened to ‘put your hands up radio’ and that it was your favourite radio station.” The boy starts talking, and he takes something out of the bag he had with himself. “and I saw that they had a lot of merch, so I decided to get you this.”

Izuku hands a folded shirt with a chocolate bar to Haruki. He unfolds it, the shirt was dark blue and long-sleeved, and it had an image of a city at night seen outside a window, the moon in clear view in the middle of the buildings. On the windowsill, there was a radio that had music notes drawn coming out of it. On top, there was a “Put your hands up” and a bigger “Radio” on the bottom in a beige font.

The shirt was beautiful. Haruki knew that the Hands Up Radio had a lot of merch and that Present Mic made sure that there was something that matched everyone’s style, but he didn’t expect it to be so well-made. He stares at the shirt in awe before folding it back again and smiling.

“You know you really didn’t have to buy this for me!” He says, the freckled boy blushes before answering.

“Well, you’ve been pretty much an amazing friend to me, even if we did meet a few months ago, but you keep encouraging me to reach my goals, and I wanted you to know that I appreciate everything that you do for me!” Izuku starts to ramble.

 “Alright, alright! I get it!” Haruki stops him, “I get it, thank you. It’s a perfect gift.” He adds, a little bit calmer than before.

The boy in front of him just blushes even deeper, and Haruki can’t help but laugh.

Told ya’ it’s a date.

‘Max, do not ruin this for me.’

The rest of their day goes by smoothly, they walk around town and talk. Laughing at stupid and immature jokes or talking about theories on other people’s quirks and how they would interact together. Haruki can feel his worries stopping around Midoriya.

He has missed this feeling; the last time he remembers talking just to talk was back at the facility, with Kaori. It was a fleeting feeling then, though; no matter what, they always had to go back to planning the rebellion and their escape. But here, right now. He didn’t have to worry about it.

There was no rebellion to plan, there was nothing he had to escape from. It was just him, the teenage boy, rambling on about his recent notes and the future promise of a hero school.

And maybe just for a second, he let himself dream, and just ignored everything other than the warmth spreading in his chest. He can afford to relax for a few hours, if he didn’t, he might’ve gone insane already. So he’s glad that he has a friend who can keep him in check.

And just when he thinks that he remembers. And so he decides that it’s finally time to tell Midoriya.

They walked to a playground, sitting on the swings with the setting sun behind them.

“Hey Zuku?” Haruki starts, he doesn’t know why he’s so stressed about this. He knew that he was going to tell him eventually, so why are his hands shaking?

“Hm? Yeah?” Midoriya tilts his head, looking at Haruki.”

“Uh… you know how we have to put down our addresses when we apply to U.A?”

The green-haired boy seems to understand where this is going. “Mhm? What about it?”

“I- …” Haruki’s voice fails on him the first time he tries to say it, and he can feel Izuku also becoming nervous with every second. “I’m kind of… in between places… And I don’t know if I will be able to put down my actual address down when we apply.”

Izuku’s eyes widen “Haruki…” He says softly. “Y-you could stay over at my place! I’m sure my mom won’t mind!”

“N-no! That’s not necessary! Just.. uhm.. If I don’t get an actual apartment to live in by then, could I put down your address on the application form?” Haruki looks down, he can hear how those words sound, and he hates to admit the fact that they’re true. He is homeless. The apartment he’s living in isn’t a house.

Midoriya looks around the park nervously before speaking up again. “I-it’s really no bother at all! My mom won’t mind either! Y-you can come live with me for the time being!”

“Zuku… I… Have a house. It’s just… not really considered that legally…”

“Oh… Well then, s-sure. But if you ever want to sleep over at my place, the door’s open!”

Haruki just nods, and silence falls between them.

“W-when you do get an apartment, could I go see it?” Izuku says, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

“Of course, dude! You’d be the first person I invite over!” Haruki answers smiling, and the conversation escalated from there.

They talked about what décor Haruki will put up, what kind of apartment he’d want to get the most. And eventually they start making jokes again, the laughing is practically non-stop. Because yes, of course, Haruki’s going to have a private shark pool! Why wouldn’t he? And every day, he’s just going to stand in front of the sharks and monologue dramatically.

When the sun is long gone from the sky, Haruki walks with Midoriya back to his house, saying hi to his mom when they reach it.

He lies down on his hammock. He knew that Izuku could be trusted, but he still didn’t think that the boy would just accept him being practically homeless. But he’s glad that it went the way that it did.

‘See? Told you nothing bad would happen’

Whatever, I still think that it was a bad idea to tell him.

‘You think it’s a bad idea that I’m doing anything other than working and training’

Because it is!

Haruki just shakes his head and sighs. He decides that the day is over now and goes to sleep. And apparently, Max didn’t like his attitude towards him that day.

Chapter Text

Okay, this was definitely not the best situation to be in right now. Filius would honestly rather be anywhere else; in fact, he does have to be somewhere else. He’s running late. He was supposed to meet Eraserhead right about now to get his money from the mission and steal some files from the police station, but this job was sadly his priority right now, so Eraser would have to wait.

He was standing in an old factory, where he had just defeated a villain. Classic case of ‘bad guy thought he could change the world by kidnapping a bunch of people.’ Fil thought it would be easy money. He would just go in, defeat the villain, save the victims and anonymously tip the police off about the place, Maybe he’d even light it on fire if he really felt like having a bit of fun.  

Yet this turned out to be way harder than he first predicted, as he didn’t have any information about the criminal's quirk beforehand. When he found out it was an emitter-type quirk, he thought nothing of it. Probably something small like being able to shoot knives out of his skin or something. Oh, was he wrong.

Not only did he underestimate how strong the guy was – thanks, Present Mic, for messing up his strength meter – he also didn’t expect the guy’s quirk to be creating bombs. Especially not ones that are now strapped to Filius’ chest.

Fil tried to fidget with the bomb, but he had no idea how they worked. It didn’t even have any wires coming off of it. Isn’t that how bombs are supposed to work? The device was small; if it exploded, it wouldn’t kill him, it would just blow away a part of his body, but it would regenerate.

He looked around him, the villain tied to a pipe nearby, using Fil’s makeshift rope – which was just some random pieces of cloth he found lying around – He was unconscious, which made him slightly relieved as even if the bomb did explode, no one would find out that his quirk lets him regenerate. Which is how it’s supposed to be. He can’t exactly be a mysterious figure in the dark alleyways fighting crime if people know exactly how he does everything. He stared at the bomb, it wasn’t coming off, no matter how hard he pulled; it was one of the ticking ones. Which he found to be ironic, seeing as it didn’t have a visible timer.

He would’ve taken the villain out of the factory and maybe even dragged him to the front of the police station and kicked him inside with a note explaining who he is. But right now, he had no idea when he would explode, so he couldn’t risk going outside.

He sat down, dirty machinery surrounding him. He could feel slight disgust, which would’ve been unreasonable if the factory was abandoned – but no, it was very much still in business, and it seemed to be one of a popular brand at that. The dirt around the place made Fil decide not to buy anything from them. If he could afford it, of course.

It feels as if an eternity passed when he finally hears the ticking speed up, it must be getting close to detonation. He has been trying to prepare his quirk for having to patch up a hole inside his chest, and he thinks he did a decently good job at that. He could feel his power surging through him, his scars ached again at the feeling. But he ignored it, the feeling was starting to get too familiar for him to react to it anymore. It was hard to find a moment when his scars didn’t ache now. He lays his head onto something, hoping that it’s not dirty in the area where he is lying.

The ticking sped up again, and shortly after again, until he finally heard a “beep”.

***

Eraserhead was standing on the rooftop of an apartment building, waiting for Filius, he had been there for about 30 minutes now. He did get there a bit earlier than the agreed time, though, so he assumes that the vigilante was simply going to be there on time. But it seemed like his assumption was wrong.

After an hour had passed, he was thinking that Filius had just forgot. They couldn’t have forgotten, though. Filius wasn’t the type to forget about getting paid. Or at least that’s who Aizawa pegged him to be. Which only left two other explanations. A) that they were spying on Eraser, trying to see how long he would wait or B) Was currently simply running late cause something held them up.

But Eraserhead already met the kid a few times, and the fact that they once texted him while inside a very dangerous facility showed him that their priorities were kind of messed up. And so them not responding to his texts asking if he was coming left Eraser feeling a bit worried.

Tsukauchi was already spamming his phone with questions, also wondering the same things as he was. Neither of the men actually expected Filius to show up at that point, but the world liked surprising them – and Aizawa didn’t really have anything better to do, seeing as his husband was off at his radio job – He still decided to wait. Just in case. Well, actually no, he tried to leave a couple of times, but any time he moved his head started blasting alarm sounds, making him stay right on that rooftop. Waiting for someone who hasn’t shown any sign of life for over an hour.

Eraserhead runs a hand through his hair, sighing. He didn’t know when he started worrying so much about a random vigilante he’d met on the street. He knew that he always was at least a bit worried about them, seeing them, they were way too skinny to be healthy, and way too young to be that skinny. Their bones were basically showing through the shirt that they wore.

Eraser had a spare jelly pack on him, wanting to give it to them when they finally met again. And yeah, it still wasn’t anything big, but the kid should at least have something to eat. Especially since Eraserhead didn’t even know if they ate at least once a day. Though he wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t, they sure looked that way.

He was going to wait for only 30 more minutes, no more. He couldn’t be out here all night, he wanted to be home when his husband came back. He wanted to once again hug him and fall asleep right next to him with their cats lying scattered around in their bed. He really shouldn’t be out here waiting. He can feel his body wanting to move, but his brain was telling him to stay. That something would go very badly if he left.

He didn’t like how right his brain was at that moment.

***

His arms ached, his chest was still red from the scar, he could see the black marks on his arms from his quirk, and one of his eyes has probably turned to Max’s eye. It always did that when he was close to death; if it was a really intense scar, Max would completely take over his body. Filius didn’t read into it much.

His costume was torn, and the shirt he was wearing was practically fully gone, except for the bits on his arms. He can feel blood falling from his forehead, he ignores it and takes the villain – who has now woken up and was looking at him in shock that he survived that – to the nearest police station. He throws the guy inside, having put a sticky note on him that says what he did.

Filius looks at his phone and the spam of texts from Eraserhead.

Eraser

“Kid? Are you coming?” “You alright?” “How long do I have to wait?” “Did something happen?”

His head hurts from the screen light, half his vision obstructed by the blood.

“Coming”

That's all that he texts back. He doesn’t have much time, and he knows it. He searches his utility belt and pants to realise that all of his glitter bombs and additional knives are still in there. He even managed to make a reinforced knife. Maybe it was just a single one out of 5, but it was still something.

He climbs up the building, not having enough time to change. He focuses on his quirk and makes the marks disappear, and his eye to go back to normal, the blood was drying, and the scars have already healed, but he still looked pretty rough.

When Eraserhead sees him, his eyes widen.

“what the fuck.” Eraserhead stares at him, Filius looks himself up and down before covering his chest with his hands.

“Oop! Don’t look, that’s not something a person can get for free.” The hero’s gaze widened.

“I don’t want to even begin trying to unpack the implications of that sentence.”  Filius smirks, forgetting that the hero can’t see it.

Eraser walks forward, and Filius tries to take a step back but is stopped by the roof ledge. He wonders whether he’s up for another chase but decides against it. He holds the glitter bomb that was lying in his pants pocket, ready to throw it at the man in front of him.

“Easy.” Eraserhead stops when he sees Filius reaching into his pocket, the hero puts up his hands. “I just want to bandage up your scars again.

When Filius hears those words, he realises that every single scar he has on his body is now visible to the hero.

“shit” he mumbles, before jumping off the rooftop and running away.

***

When Eraserhead sees the vigilante, he feels his worry intensify tenfold. And he notices the many other, probably older scars they have on their body, ones which he has not seen before. He can feel his heart breaking. He wanted to murder whoever had done those things to his  a child.

In the span of a few seconds, he had counted at least 7 scars, all of which were pretty big. But now he knew that the vigilante was male. He had suspected that, but he didn’t want to start calling them something that he was unsure of. And something that they might have been uncomfortable with.

When he jumped off the roof and ran away, he wanted to chase after him. Filius needed to get bandaged, and Shouta needed a name for his new enemy. But he was stopped when he saw his back; he couldn’t believe that something could be worse than the scars on his torso, but apparently, the world can still surprise him.

He saw two huge scars, which kind of looked as if they used to have wings. But that was a stupid idea…right? Well, Aizawa hasn’t seen the vigilante using a quirk, so could it be possible that he used to have wings?

Why would he cut them off?

And then the thought that maybe he wasn’t the one to cut them off hit him, and it hit him hard. He felt sick imagining that someone might’ve done this to him. It probably hurt like hell, and it seemed as if the scar didn’t heal back properly.

But he stayed there, Filius would come back, he knew that he will. He just had to give him some time. And so he waited.

And, after another 20 minutes, they do come back. He’s now wearing their signature black and white hoodie. But with a light blue knitted scarf? ‘Did he have a scar there that Aizawa missed?’ There was a slight red tint on the left side of their face, the blood clearly didn’t want to come off.

“Kid…” He says, trying to keep his voice as soft as possible. He didn’t have the knack for comforting kids like his husband did. But Filius did remind him more of a stray cat more than a child, so he could try the same tactics.

He takes a step closer, the vigilante immediately prepares to start running, at which Eraserhead stops, and raises his hands.

“It’s fine. I won’t do anything. Just- …” He sighs “Here.” Aizawa takes the jelly pouch out of his utility belt and slides it towards Filius. He then backs away to the other side of the rooftop.

Filius stares at the snack in front of him before taking it, pulling up the middle side of their mask, and starting to drink the jelly pouch.

Aizawa can see how he’s shaking, as much as he’s trying to cover that up. His hands are unsteady, and it seems to make eating slightly more difficult. ‘he’s scared’

In hindsight, it’s obvious why he would be scared, but it still was hard to see for Shouta. He never wanted the vigilante to be scared around him, but right now, he had to be careful of everything he says, and how he says it.

“I can go get more.” Then, after a pause, he continues. “I don’t know what happened,  even though I can’t see any new scars on you right now. I think that you should still have this.” He then tosses a roll of bandages to the now-sitting vigilante.

He stops eating the jelly pouch, puts his mask back together, and answers, “I’m not hurt.”

“I don’t care, you will get hurt eventually. And I know that I can’t be there every time, so keep it. I have more in my apartment.”

Filius looks between Eraser and the bandage roll a couple of times before picking it off the ground and putting it in the pocket of his hoodie. He sits back down, this time on a different ledge of the building, it was closer. Still really far, but it was progress, and Shouta has learned to accept what he’s given with the kid.

“We can meet up again some other time for the money, when you’re feeling better.”

He knows that saying that is risky; in the worst-case scenario, the vigilante will think that he’s trying to scam him. At best, he actually does go home to rest – if they have a house.

Another thought that scares Shouta, the kid might not have a house to return to. And the more he meets him, the more that theory is confirmed.

But it seems that luck is on his side again.

“Fine.” He mumbles after finishing the jelly pouch and readjusting his mask. Filius rubs his eye, a slight sway in their movements. ‘Yeah, he definitely needed to go to sleep.’

He stares at him as if he wants Aizawa to do something, but he doesn’t exactly know what to do. Should he leave? Does he want him to say something? Do something? He doesn’t understand kids, and it shows.

He stands up and stretches before walking up next to the kid, which he’s surprised that he lets him do. He remembers how he treats his cats whenever they do this, and he just pats Filius on the head a couple of times. The fabric of both the hoodie and the beanie they still have underneath felt cheap. Aizawa thought that it couldn’t be warm.

The vigilante stares at him again for a few seconds, confusion visible on their face – alright, so maybe that was not something that he wanted Shouta to do.

“…I’m not even going to comment on that,” Filius says, sighing into his mask. But there’s an unfamiliar feeling in his voice, there’s only so much that the mask can disguise after all. Eraserhead may not know what that emotion is right now, but it cannot be all that bad. Filius stands up and readjusts his beanie.

“Are you going to go home now? You should rest.” Aizawa asks, tilting his head.

“Mhm.” He mumbles back, his mask making it sound nearly like static. “I miss my hammock.” Shouta knows that he wasn’t supposed to hear that, but he still did. The kid didn’t seem to realise that, though. So he decided not to say anything, even if the thought of him not having an actual bed made him even more worried.

And then, Filius left. Going in the direction of the bad part of the city – a small detail that Aizawa never misses, they always go that way at the end of their patrol, no matter where they are.

When he comes back home, he hugs his husband, who is once again sitting on the couch. And he tells him all that happened that night. But he can see something sparkle in Hizashi’s eyes.

“I’m getting us some parenting books.” The blond says with an odd smile on his face, looking at his spouse currently sitting down beside him.

“What?” Aizawa almost chuckles.

“You have proven that you have absolutely no idea how teenagers act.”

“He might still be over 18. We don’t know.”

“From what you’ve told me, I don’t believe that he’s above 13 Sho.” And at that, Aizawa starts to wonder again. he had been thinking about the possibility of the kid being younger than 16, but he quickly dispelled those thoughts; he had too much experience, that kind of fighting style that couldn’t be learned in just a few years. But maybe, just maybe, Hizashi was right, and he really was younger than he originally assumed.

“I don’t like that theory.”

“I don’t either, Hun” Yamada runs his hand through his husband's hair.

There's a moment of silence between them before Yamada asks again

“Do you- uh.. think he’ll need a place to stay?”

Shouta sighs. “If you don’t want him to-“

“No!- no, no, no!” Yamada cuts him off with a panicked voice before he calms down. “Not what I meant, darling, if he doesn’t have a place to stay on his own, I’d be happy to let him stay here!”

Aizawa nods in response.

“You know that I’ve always wanted a kid.” Hizashi says, slightly quieter than his other words. It was true, he’s always loved kids, and they would’ve adopted one already, but their jobs are too dangerous to risk it. So they never did, and in Hizashi’s mind, the vigilante is a young child. So maybe, just maybe, he’ll finally be able to fulfil his dreams in some way.

***

Haruki lies down on his hammock, he was cold. But he didn’t exactly have anything to warm himself up, so he had to suffer through; he looks up at the ceiling, and sees the slight movement in the darkness, but it’s not real, it never is. He lets the tiredness take over him and drift away.

When he wakes up, he’s already inside the white room, the void the same pure white as it always is. Max is there, a sword in hand, which tells Haruki that he’s been waiting for him. In the other hand, he holds a knife, the same knife that he gave to Haruki a few nights ago. But, he doesn’t hand it to him this time. Max wastes no time in talking or their regular staring, and instead attacks right away.

He runs forward and slashes at the area where Haruki was standing. The boy ducks and kicks Max while balancing himself on his arms. It doesn’t faze him, though; he’s done that way too many times for it to hurt Max anymore. Haruki quickly runs, putting distance between the two of them. He prepares for the next hit.

 Max normally liked hitting his stomach. And so when he aims for it again, Haruki reflects the weapon by holding it up with his leg, and in the moment of distraction, he grabs the knife that Max was holding.

 He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything, preparing to strike again. Haruki takes this as his cue, and he runs at Max, the knife in hand, and he slices through his torso. Making a long line of blood leak from it.

Max uses the blood and once again strikes Haruki with a tendril, but he just does the same thing he did last time; he slices through the blood, and before it can regenerate, he jumps up to his feet again. Haruki then tries to hit Max again, but he dodges and instead stabs through his shoulder.

And it feels as if he’s been taken out of a trance; the battle before was quick. He barely registered any of the things that were happening, but now, after getting stabbed, he can feel everything. The pain is immediate, sharp and stinging. He can feel the warm blood spilling onto his clothes. Max takes the katana out, and Haruki is quick to try and kick him again, his moves now more sluggish than before, but that’s fine. Max’s are too.

His torso was still bleeding; it was a huge scar. If Haruki managed a couple more good hits, he could do it. Which felt foreign to him, he hadn’t won in over 300 years, and even that time was because Max got distracted.

But now he knows more, he’s trained more, Max is actually trying, and so is he.

Max runs forward at him, trying to use the now smaller tendrils he made instead of the one big one to hit Haruki in many places at once. Haruki knows that this is a stupid move, and he’s sure that Max does too; he’s getting desperate.

Haruki aims his weapon forward, keeping it close to his stomach.

Max stabs through the far side of Haruki’s throat, but impales himself on the knife too. His eyes widen, Haruki knows that it’s not the end, though. If it was, the scar would also appear on him. He takes the knife out of Max and stabs again. Just like he did the last time, and then he does it again, the blood from his neck already falling off of him and mixing with Max’s.

 Yet when he stops moving, he realises that he hasn’t felt the stabbing. Not one of them. He knows that it doesn’t matter; he will still die from the scar on his neck. But he won, the void fills with silence. Pure silence, and Haruki didn’t remember how it felt. Even when he’s with Eraserhead, he can still feel Max buzzing in the back of his head. But now, there’s nothing.

Truly nothing, the whiteness seems to fall apart for a second, flashing an image of something Haruki couldn’t quite make out. He looks at the body in front of him for the last time. He’s going to return, and he’s secretly glad that he will.

Maybe Max is bad for him, maybe he isn’t a good influence, but he wouldn’t get rid of him – even if he could. He wouldn’t, he hates admitting it. But Max is something that he knows way too well, something that he can no longer give up. He’s become too dependent, his life doesn’t exist without Max.

And perhaps it’s for the best.

His vision blurs, and all he can feel now is the warmth spilling over his clothes, making them wet and sticky. He doesn’t have much time left like this, but he’s fine with that.

When he finally falls, his consciousness no longer there. He feels Max regenerate, come back, at that moment, he’s nowhere, not awake, but not dreaming either. It’s the moment that Max comes back, his presence once again pressing against Haruki’s skull that he wakes up.

When he does wake up, though, he can feel the headache he has from the night before. The explosion took more out of him than he’d assumed. His entire body was twitching at random moments; he couldn’t stop it, and he hated that fact.

He decided to stay in for the day, he did have to break into the police station later that day, so he wanted to gather as much information about the place as he could. Even if that was very little. But he has learned a bit about hacking, mainly because he was hacking into the police station's systems. But he got better nonetheless. He wanted another jelly pouch; the last one he ate tasted good. It was sweet and slightly cold. The best part about it was that it was sweet, and the only other thing he ate that was sweet were the nutrition bars that Eraserhead gave to him, those few times. And well, he just missed that taste.

Maybe Eraser will give him another one today? Sure, it was a dumb idea. But he didn’t care, the hero clearly enjoyed feeding him, and he wasn’t going to tell him to stop.

After a couple of hours of scouting the systems of the police station, he turned on a movie. He had no energy to go out that day. And Eraserhead did tell him to rest, and for once, he will listen. He could feel Max hanging around his room, and sometimes he saw him in the corner of his eye. But he never said anything.

Haruki was grateful for that, he was too tired to argue with him. Even if he did finally beat him, he was still unbearably tired. He would’ve imagined that he’d feel more rested than anything after winning against Max, but no. He felt like absolute shit.

When it was finally around the time for him to go out, he turned off his laptop, sat up. And dear god, he just knew that he smelled like he just crawled out of a dumpster – which was odd since he hasn’t had to dig around one for about a week now.

He hasn’t actually eaten anything today either. He just forgot, he woke up a bit late into the day, and so he must’ve not felt his hunger. But it was too late to make instant noodles now.

He realised that he had slept in the clothes he wore yesterday, and that his shirt is still just sleeves now. He felt how he got even more tired in that second. He sighed to himself, noting that he will have to wash these clothes after that day. And he waited on the rooftop, he met Eraser at yesterday.

This was the only time he was actually early to their meetings, though they didn’t meet often. He still didn’t like being early, especially when meeting Eraserhead; it was hard to spot him. His quirk barely picking up on his. And since Max had felt the need to hide all day, he wasn’t going to be a good enough indicator either.

And maybe that’s why when Filius feels a hand on his shoulder, he immediately attacks it with his bo-staff.

“Jesus!-  Fuck! Kid, it’s me!”  Eraserhead holds the left side of his face.

“Shit!” Filius says to himself, he digs around his pockets, taking out the roll of bandages Eraser gave him yesterday. The hero looks at him, and Fil can swear he saw his lips twitch up for a second.

“It’s fine, I don’t think that it’s bleeding.” He says after a second, pulling his hand away from his face. And he was right, it wasn’t bleeding, but it was sure to leave a bruise under his eye for at least a week.

Filius looks to the side, readjusting his mask. “…Sorry.” He says so quietly that he’s not sure if Aizawa heard him.

The hero just lifts an eyebrow. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have scared you.”

And it’s that moment that Filius realises how close he is to the man, he walks backwards, putting some distance in between them, and Eraserhead just sighs while shaking his head.

“Ready?” He asks, and Fil nods in response, having to hold his bo-staff since his shirt – which had a place on the back built specifically so that it could hold his weapon there – was still ripped to shreds. But it’s fine, this just means he has something to boost himself up with for the entire time, without being seen as a danger by the hero.

They jump across the rooftops, Filius letting the hero go to the front, not having to worry about being faster than him this time. But the situation did bring up a small feeling of nostalgia in the both of them, he was sure of it.

The hero didn’t look back when he was running, either to focus on the path, or to make Fil feel better, instead of making him feel like he’s being observed. But he appreciated the action anyway.

They got to the police station fairly quickly. Filius held his hands in the pockets of his pants, his right hand holding a small knife – one that could cut through Eraserhead’s scarf if needed to. – while in the other hand, he held a glitter bomb, and he did make sure that this would leave a blinding effect as well, just so that he had some time to run.

He didn’t feel many quirks from the station; in fact, he only felt 4. Eraserhead’s, the person at the front desk, and two other ones from the room behind him. That was weird; usually, there would be a huge amount of quirks in this place.

That only made him more suspicious of the whole thing. They were definitely planning something. Haruki was sure of it.

Eraserhead led him behind the door. The person at the front desk was looking at him, she clearly didn’t expect him to be there. He just rolled his eyes.

“Oh.” Filius said when they entered the room. The detective was there, and beside him a person, with a cat head? It was an odd sight, that’s for sure. But Fil liked that quirk; he always liked quirks that related to cats.

“Filius is it?” The detective asks, holding out his hand.

“Detective? We’ve met before. You know my name.” Fil crosses his arms, not moving. Eraserhead stands next to him.

“Do I?”

‘oh this fucker.’  Fil knew what he was implying. So what if his legal name wasn’t Filius? It’s still his name.

“You’re funny.” Filius answers, his voice cold. Eraser seems slightly surprised at the loss of playfulness he normally sees. “Where’s my money?”

“Straight to the point, huh? We have it, don’t worry. But, would you be willing to answer a few questions?” Fil’s grip on the bomb tightens; he knew the detective would try something. “Don’t attack us just yet. We know you can run whenever you want to, the windows are open if you noticed.”

“Damn you thought this through.” Filius walks over to the windows, they were all open just as Naomasa has said; he didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed this at first.

“We just want to know a couple of things. Are you willing to sit for a bit?” The cat-headed police officer goes into another room while the detective is speaking. “It won’t take long, and you can either have Aizawa here or, if you’d prefer, he can leave.”

“I will not tell you who I am.” Filius looks back at them from the windows.

“We know.”

The officer comes back holding a briefcase, Fil has to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Of course, they would give it in a briefcase; the police have always been the type of people who love theatrics.

The detective throws the money to Filius. “You have your money. We’d still like you to stay.”

Fil opens the briefcase, which was in fact filled to the brim with money; he didn’t count it, even if he looked as if he was. He was way too impatient to count all of it, he trusted that they gave him the correct amount.

He closed it again, and for a minute, everything was silent. He knew that the detective was panicked; he could hear the slight edge of his words, how no matter how hard he was trying, he couldn’t conceal the slight shake to them.

Fil raised an eyebrow and sat down on a desk, right in front of Naomasa. He put his bo-staff against the desk, which was oddly standing still and did not fall over.

“Well?” He asks, waiting for the questions to start

***

The detective really didn’t expect the vigilante to accept his offer, and as the silence dragged, he was starting to be more sure of that belief, so it shocked him when he actually sat down in front of him.

“I- uh yeah! Just let me grab my notebook.” He tripped over his own words, but he no longer cared if the vigilante saw his nervousness; they accepted his offer, so that’s all that mattered at that moment. He quickly grabbed a notebook from his desk and brought a chair over so that he could sit looking at the vigilante. “Do you want Eraserhead to leave?”

“I don’t care either way.” They answered immediately. As if they knew that he would ask that, and maybe they did. Aizawa did tell him multiple times that they seem to be able to read people like a book.

It was a truth, though.

Naomasa looked at Sansa, who nodded and went to the front desk. While Aizawa just took another chair and sat next to Filius.

“Right, first question. How old are you? A range you can give is fine.” The question was a bold one. But if they didn’t know it, they couldn’t effectively help him.

“Older than you.” He heard Eraserhead scoff.

True.

That couldn’t be. Did they have a way to trick his quirk? No way. No one’s ever done that before. But the clearly very young vigilante in front of him couldn’t be above 20. And well, Naomasa was definitely older than them.

He looked at Eraserhead, who seemed to understand what he meant and started to think.

“Can I get a range?”

“Not one that you could understand.”

Truth

Though that one won’t give him any info. Maybe they had some kind of time control quirk? Is that why they became a vigilante? Maybe when it manifested, they accidentally got put years into the future, and they couldn’t go back. It would be a tragic story, but with quirks still being a mystery, it could be possible.

“Do you currently have a quirk?” His questions are thought out, making sure that they aren’t too out there, but that they would still give them enough information.

“Yes.”

Truth

He was glad that the vigilante wasn’t trying to lie to him, even if that would’ve proven useless. But at least that answer meant that they didn’t have previous wings, but still. The scars on their back were described to him as ‘brutal’, so it probably didn’t help the situation.

“Will you tell us what quirk that is?”

And after that, he was quiet for a while. Tsukauchi was about to ask a different question, but they spoke up again.

“Emitter.”

Half-truth.

That made him raise an eyebrow. How can a quirk type be a half-truth? Maybe it was a combination between two different types.

He was writing all of the things he’s been learning down, his handwriting right now was messy, barely readable, but he could worry about making better notes after this. Right now, he had to somehow keep Filius talking. But before he could ask another question, the kid (?) spoke again.

“You have a very interesting quirk, detective. Wonder what answers it has been giving you.”

How did he know what quirk he had? He looked over at Eraser, who just shrugged.

“Mostly truths.”

“Mostly? Interesting.”

“You’re not letting us know about everything that you could be.”

“If I did, I would be a terrible vigilante.”

And then more silence, he didn’t know what to think about this interaction. He tried to think of all the other questions he’s had for them, but these answers were something he did not expect.

“Are you a citizen?”

“According to the law, I am”

Truth.

Did that mean that their documents were faked? That would only confirm the theory he’s had about them having a time control quirk. But would that quirk be classified as an emitter? Probably something between an emitter and an accumulation quirk. Which matched just too perfectly.

“Is your body the same age as you really are?”

“That’s too complicated of a question to answer. But it would have to be more on the side of ‘no’.”

Truth.

“Is your quirk time travel related?”

And he laughed, the vigilante in front of him actually laughed,

He knew that Eraserhead clearly has been thinking of the same theories as he has because he also had the same expression on his face.

“Oh? Is that really your theory? Like really? Okay, here I thought y’all were actually going to figure me out. Guess I was worried for nothing. No, it’s not. Not even close.”

Truth

Goddamn it, not even a half truth. That was fully true. Which meant that Tsukauchi’s theory was now in the trash.

“Anyway, interview’s over. Do you have a bathroom anywhere around here?” He stood up from the desk and began walking away to a different part of the building.

And that was the end, he hasn’t learned many things. But he’s still learned a bit, even if his theory was wrong. He still knows more than he did before this.

“Wait!” The vigilante turns to look at him, his eyebrow lifted. “Do you have a house? A place to stay?” Eraserhead glared at him. Before he came there, he specifically told him to not ask about it.

“… I have an apartment.”

Half-truth.

“That wasn’t fully true… was it?”

“I think you already know, detective.”

He looked at Eraser, who looked at him. They both knew what that could mean.

“Legally, how old are you?” He was pushing it. Filius clearly stated that it was over, and he wasn’t writing this down anymore. But he still wanted to know. If he faked his documents, he obviously put an age that he really felt like he was down.

“Legally, I’m a minor. Now, bathroom, don’t make me run.”

Naomasa looked at Eraserhead, who sighed and went to lead Filius to a bathroom.

***

Filius entered a stall, it was odd, seeing that a bathroom at a police station is nearly the same as a regular mall bathroom.

He didn’t need to actually go to the bathroom, but it was the only room that had a vent he could climb into. He was glad that Eraser stayed outside the door.

He was trying to crawl through the small vents, which was unbelievably difficult with the briefcase of money he had to drag around with him. He knew that Detective Tsukauchi had his own office, even if he had another computer out in the room he was just in. The folder he needed was in there, it was truly an accident that the client wanted a file on someone who just so happened to be a case Naomasa had.

He focused on his quirk, feeling the detective at the front desk, or somewhere near that room. He was pretty far already, he was glad that he didn’t have to worry. He dropped down into his office, searching through the cabinets.

Tsukauchi was really organised, which only helped Fil, alphabetical order. He found the right file pretty quickly, he hid it in the big pocket of his hoodie.

It’s still a jacket-

Just as Max appeared, he was gone. Filius thought nothing of it. Sometimes he does that, just appears for a single sentence and decides to go back right as he finishes it. Making it seem as if he got cut off, but in reality, he wasn’t.

Fil thought that it was safe to leave, since Eraser should be waiting for him in front of the bathroom, and he can feel the cat-headed officer and Naomasa far away from him. He opens and closes the door to the office behind him. Deciding to leave Eraserhead alone. He needed to show him that they weren’t friends.

He did say he was going to distance himself. And this would really show that to the hero.

He picked up his bo-staff from the desk it was leaning on, and snuck out of the station using a window. But right as he was about to start running and climbing buildings, he heard a familiar voice.

“Why’d you need that file?”

He’s been caught. It felt as if his heart stopped beating.

He should’ve realised that Max got stopped because of Eraserhead, and not some stupid timing thing.

“It’s for a job… closed case, the guy was caught. Don’t worry about it.”

But Eraser just raised an eyebrow. “Meet me up on the same building in 10. Unless you aren’t planning on patrolling today.”

Fil looked at him for a second, but he didn’t answer.

He walked back to his apartment. Making sure the hero wasn’t following him. Which he didn’t even try to do.

He texted his client that he had the file they had asked for. They responded almost immediately. ‘Why do they always do that? They never sleep, do they?’ They scheduled a meet-up in a few hours, after his patrol, he was going to get the money for this job. Which in addition to the money he had just gotten from the police was a crap ton.

He divided it halfway, leaving half for himself and the other half he hid into his apartment savings. He was actually so close to being able to afford one, he felt happy. He wouldn’t be homeless anymore, and the thought was a difficult one to have. But it filled him with pure happiness.

He would have a house, his own house. A place where no one could tell him what to do. He could do whatever he wanted to with it. And his father could no longer stop him.

He would’ve cried; any normal person in his situation probably would’ve cried. He’s spent so long on the streets, in dirty apartments with barely anything in them, that the idea of actually having a house was foreign to him. But he couldn’t cry.

He still had a patrol to go to and an Eraserhead to meet.

He climbed out of the building and quickly ran to the one where he was supposed to meet Eraser at. He was only slightly late.

He jumped onto the building, making sure to notify the hero that he was there.

When Eraserhead turned to look at him, he raised an eyebrow as if saying ‘see how it’s done?’ Eraser just scoffed and patted the place next to him, motioning for Filius to sit down. And so he did.

If he was going to arrest him, he would’ve done it at the police station. So it was safe, for today at least.

“I didn’t know if you ate meat, so I got both options.” He hands Fil a sandwich, and the weirdest thing, it was warm. He’s never actually had warm sandwiches; he’s heard of them, but he saw no point in warming them up. It was supposed to be a snack after all, not something you had to spend time cooking in the right way. “One has chicken in it, the other one just has a few vegetables in it. You can eat both, too, if you’d like. Not like I’m going to eat it.”

“Don’t waste food.” He answered, before taking the middle part of his mask off. He looked at the sandwiches and took the one with no meat first. He was going to eat the both of them. He just needed to prepare himself mentally for eating meat first.

He still had to rip off parts of the food in order to eat them since his mask didn’t allow bigger bites. He didn’t mind, though.

“I would’ve kept it for later, I meant.” He answers, shrugging.

Silence falls between them, but for once. It’s not awkward, instead, it’s a very comfortable silence. Filius was enjoying the warm food, the last meal of the other day and the first day of the new one, he noticed when he checked the time on his phone.

After he finished his sandwich, he looked down at the other one.

He held it in his hand, just staring at it for a moment.

“If you don’t eat meat, I can go get another vegan one.” Eraserhead said to him. “You don’t have to force yourself to eat something you don’t like.”

“No. I like meat.” It wasn’t a lie, he used to love eating meat.

He ripped off a small part of the sandwich off and put it in his mouth, he could taste the chicken almost immediately. He felt slightly sick, he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. But he was not about to stop eating this. He knew that he had to get over his fear of meat. It was a sign of weakness, and a big one at that. He had to get rid of it.

He felt Eraser’s gaze on him. But he couldn’t care less. After swallowing the first bit, he put a hand over his mouth, as if to stop any potential vomit. Luckily, there was none.

And so he continued, taking more and more bites of the sandwich. Eventually, he stopped shaking; he didn’t know when, but Eraser finished his own sandwich and was now staring at the city below them.

But he couldn’t appreciate it at that moment, he was too focused on eating. He still had about half of the sandwich left. And he was unbearably hungry.

He was about to take another piece into his mouth when Eraserhead tapped his thigh. He hadn’t even realised that he was close enough for the hero to be able to do that. He gave Fil a small bottle, which was a fruity drink. A cartoon character was drawn next to the name. Filius didn’t recognise it, but he thought nothing of it and just placed it next to him; he’d drink it after he finished eating.

The last few bites went by quickly, he was able to actually finish the sandwich without puking. And he was proud of himself for doing so. Maybe next time he’s over at Midoriya’s house, he can eat the meat they have as well. He got slightly too excited at his newfound ability. But he loved it, he felt powerful again. Not eating meat was no longer a part of him. He got rid of something that father caused. He could eat meat.

And well, if the happiness from not being homeless soon wasn’t enough to get him to cry, this was.

***

Eraserhead didn’t look at Filius eating; he clearly had something weird going on with meat, and so he felt it would only be polite to let him take care of it on his own and give him the space he needed.

But when he heard sniffling, he had to turn his head. He had already put the middle part of the mask back on. Shouta didn’t see the sandwich anywhere, so he must’ve already finished eating. He could see tears forming in his eyes.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. What’s wrong?” He scooted over to the vigilante, their thighs nearly touching. He was surprised that he didn’t move away from him; in fact, the opposite happened. The kid (now confirmed to be a kid) hugged him.

He didn’t expect this, even in a best-case scenario, touching the vigilante for more than half a second was in the far, far future. But now, they were crying, right into his sweater. Aizawa didn’t know what to do, so he just placed one hand on their back and started rubbing circles on it.

“Should I have gotten two vegan ones?”

Filius shook his head, which made him even more confused. They were crying after eating it, but they didn’t want two vegan ones? The whole situation was too shocking to Shouta, but he didn’t comment. He just continued to sit there, letting them cry it out.

After a few minutes, it was quiet again, the vigilante still in his arms. They were slightly shaking.

“I ate it.” They suddenly say, their voice soft. The voice changer was set to the lowest that Shouta has ever heard it be. Though he still couldn’t make out a clear voice, he could hear the satisfaction in his voice.

“You sure did. What about it?”

“I love meat.” They exhaled, laughing softly. “God, I missed it so much.”

Shouta’s eyes widened. “Oh. Well, I’m glad I bought that sandwich then.”

Filius just laughs in response, and Aizawa wishes he could hear that laugh more often; it was pure, something he hasn’t heard from the vigilante in a long time. His smugness wasn’t there anymore, he knew that it was forced. Even if the kid wanted to be so confident in reality, Shouta knew that many times he didn’t mean to sound like he did. But this? This was different. None of the happiness he felt radiating off the teen in his arms was forced. He really was just happy.

After another minute of sitting in that position, Filius stood up, rubbing his eyes. He took the drink Aizawa had bought and drank a bit of it. He made sure to buy something of the right size so that it would fit through the mask.

He felt glad that he managed to feed the vigilante something warm.

“You know, I recently gained the ability to make myself instant noodles.” He says, fidgeting with the mask, his voice changing rapidly during that sentence, so Shouta could only assume they were adjusting the voice changer settings.

“That doesn’t make me feel better about your living situation, kiddo.”

“Well, still.”

Eraserhead chuckles at the teen's words. “Alright, but if you’re hungry one day, and your instant noodles aren’t enough. You’re always welcome to text me. I can get you some actual food.”

“I won’t tolerate the slander of instant noodles, they’re amazing.”

And Eraser laughs, really laughs, normally he’s had to be stern with Filius, but right now, he could feel the kid’s happiness. And he wasn’t going to ruin this moment for him. He didn’t know how many of them he got.

And a part of Aizawa wanted to make sure that they had many more moments like this, moments where even a voice changer couldn’t conceal the happiness in them.

Then they finally went on patrol, maybe it was a bit later than Eraserhead and Filius normally would’ve liked, but he wouldn’t change any of tonight’s events. They fought a couple of criminals, moving through the city fairly quickly. In fact, Filius showed him one of his routes. And he introduced it as ‘route C’, he also said that there are enough routes to fill up the entire alphabet.

He also said that this was one of his shortest routes and that he only did it when he was low on time. It could be easily adjusted in comparison to his other routes as well. It all seemed really thought out. He was slightly proud of Filius. He wished his students had at least a bit of the same planning capability as he does.

At the end of their patrol, they were sitting on another building, nearly on the other side of town. Aizawa didn’t even notice when they got there. But the sun was slowly starting to rise, which meant that their time was almost up. But for some reason, Filius stayed by his side. Not moving away this time, they just sat on a building and watched the sun rise.

“Go to U.A.” He says, quickly. He didn’t even have the time to think about what he was saying.

“What?” The vigilante looks at him, putting his phone – which he took out to take a picture – back into his pocket.

“I know you probably don’t want to. But if you go legal, it would mean nobody would try to arrest you anymore. And you would get paid for it. Even if you decide to go underground, it still gives a fair bit of money, enough to live off of. And I’ve seen the way you fight. You could get in. I could even help you train.”

He went on a small rant, but when the kid didn’t respond, he decided to continue.

“And U.A. accepts students from 15 to 21, if they get a recommendation from a teacher. I could give you one if that’s the problem.”

And Filius didn’t respond, he knew that they probably wouldn’t accept his offer.

He took his bo-staff back into his hand, which was lying beside them since he seemed to no longer have a way to put it on his back. He turned to leave, but just when he would’ve jumped off, he turns back to look at Aizawa.

“This isn’t a no. But, it’s not a yes either.”

“W-when the applications open, you have until midnight of the day of the entrance exam to submit one.”

He stumbled across his words, he knew that it was probably too early to say this, the school year hadn’t even ended yet. But winter break was coming soon, after which it would end. And so he had to implant the idea of becoming legal inside the vigilante’s head.

“You’d be a great hero kid. Even if you fight quirkless, you can join. You have time to think about it. I’ll still be here, though, no matter what you choose. But uh.. they might become slightly less legal meet-ups if that happens.”

And he swears he could see the vigilante twitch slightly at those words. He wasn’t going to get an answer, he knew that the moment he spoke his last words. He knew that he didn’t mean a “maybe”. He actually realized that most of his words had so many layers to them that they could be studied by a class of psychologists and everyone would come up with vastly different answers.

But that just meant that he already had a plan. And that plan included U.A. If he joined, he probably wouldn’t tell Aizawa. But that didn’t matter, they would’ve still joined. Or maybe it meant that they were already attending. It was a wild theory, but a possible one.

But it wasn’t a no. And that’s all that mattered to Shouta.

By the time he’s back in reality, snapped out of his thoughts, Filius is no longer there. He went home. And Shouta will do the same.

And just when he was falling asleep, next to his husband he got a text.

The Kid

"Also btw, the recent fire at that factory was me. it's how i got my costume destroyed, the dude had a bomb-making quirk :3" 

He stares at the text in shock, Hizashi looks over his shoulder and laughs. "I- okay! i shouldn't be laughing, but that emote!"

"What the fuck." 

"night!!!! :D"

"..." "Goodnight problem child." 

Chapter Text

“ow!” Haruki whines when he accidentally stabs through his finger with a needle. Blood spilling out onto the clothes he’s holding.

Max laughs, rolling onto his back, staring at Haruki from his hammock. Pain is funny.

Haruki rolls his eyes and takes the needle out of his finger, he stops bleeding nearly seconds after.

Correction. Your pain, in particular, is funny.

‘Max, be quiet and stop distracting me, I need this costume back for tonight.’

It’s always ‘Max, shut up.’ And never, ‘Max, is there a reason that you keep trying to talk to me?’ You know, maybe if you tried to communicate, you would understand me more. Max rolls his eyes,

‘Alright, I’ll bite. Max, is there a reason that you keep trying to talk to me?’

Yes, I like annoying you.

Haruki looks up at him.

Did you really expect a different answer?

‘Guess not.’

Haruki sighs. He looks down at the fabrics scattered all around the ground, he should be done by now. Repairing his costume took a ton of time, but it was finally over.

He picks up the costume – now with some new patterns of different black fabrics sewn together.

“Good as new.” He says to himself. He can feel Max rolling his eyes next to him again.

‘You ready? This mission is gonna be a difficult one. And I’ll need your help.’

Yeah, yeah. I’m peachy, thanks. Max answers sarcastically. Haruki scoffs.

‘move. I need my laptop.’ He shoos Max off the hammock. The laptop’s light was too bright on his eyes, he will never get used to that feeling.

He checks his notes and the plans for the mission and decides that he’s prepared enough.

He was stupid for actually thinking that he could do this. He shouldn’t have started planning. But now he’s too far in. He wanted to do it, and nothing would stop him.

Haruki puts on his costume. This time, the public would see him without the jacket. He was grateful for that fact, if they wanted to hate or adore him, he at least wanted them to have the right outfit in mind when they did.

And he was sure that this would end up somewhere on the internet. There’s no way that he can break into the No.2 hero’s agency and leave without it being plastered all around the news.

Best case scenario? The headlines will sound something similar to “An unknown person broke into Endeavour’s office, a new villain debut? Or an old enemy resurfacing?”

Worst case scenario? “Vigilante ‘Filius’ dead after fight with Endeavour, the No.2 hero?”

He climbed out of his apartment, It was still bright outside, so he had to be careful. But Endeavour’s agency was pretty far, so by the time he reached it, it would be dark.

The cold air hit his face. He wished he could feel it entering his lungs, but his mask filtered it enough so that it didn’t feel the same way. It was getting cold in Musutafu. Winter was coming, and he was not prepared. What’s even worse is that he’s doing this for fun. It’s not a job, so he wouldn’t get paid for doing it.

But he still needed to do it. He knew that Endeavour was up to something. The guy just gave off bad vibes to Fil. And he was finally fed up with them. So now he was going to break into his agency and snoop through his personal computer.

Perfectly normal things for a teenager to do. Right?

Clear, no cops in sight. Max appears by his side. Filius was crouching on a rooftop next to a lively street. He had Max scout out the area to see if he could safely jump across the rooftops without being arrested. He really didn’t need to get into another chase. Ever since the one with Kamui woods and Eraserhead, he hasn’t exactly gone out looking to get chased.

He hopped from roof to roof, trying not to get spotted by police, heroes or even civilians. He’s learnt that even regular people will report him to the cops if they spot him. Which is bullshit in Filius’ opinion. Don’t they know that snitches get stitches?

But no matter, now he had to focus.

The agency stood tall in front of him. It was an enormous building, and he could feel the multitude of quirks coming from the inside. Endeavour was known for recruiting people with fire quirks, so Filius made sure to get some gear that he couldn’t burn through. The bo staff had to stay home. As much as he wants it to be his brand, it was extremely flammable. And he couldn’t afford to lose it.

The vents are large enough to climb into, but they get smaller in one of the corridors, making a dead end for us.

Filius nods. He finds a way into the vents, which were so far up that climbing to them gave him a very pretty cut across the side of his abdomen. But it heals quickly, and Fil notes it to himself to cover his chest with his wings; if he got shot, it would make for a very easy way to ‘kill’ him. Even if it really wouldn’t do that, it still wasn’t an outcome he was looking forward to.

He climbed through the vents, he was grateful that he didn’t have a fear of heights because the rooms below him were huge. Luckily, the vents in Endeavour's agency were very sturdy.

When he reached the point where the vents started getting smaller, he knew that he had to get out of them.

He opened a hatch, waited for Max’s green light, and climbed down. Ending up in a long hallway, he needed to start going up. Endeavour’s office was pretty high up.

He went into the bathroom, waiting for Max to make up a safe route for him to take.

Filius was sitting in a stall when someone else walked into the bathroom.

“Dudeeee, have you heard the news? I wonder what he’ll do next!” A male voice said loudly. Behind him, another one

“You do realise we’re supposed to be against vigilantism? We literally arrested one of them like a week ago.” The other voice scoffs

“But have you heard about what they did? Normally, vigilantes are annoying! But this guy finished a case that the police couldn’t!”

Filius rolls his eyes. Of course, he’d meet a fan right there. Well, not exactly ‘meet’ but it was close enough. As much as he would like to go out of the stall and sign an autograph, he knew that this wasn’t the right mission for it. Maybe some other time.

Is that guy pissing while his friend watches from the side?

Fil laughs. Which makes the room turn silent. He cannot believe he just did that. Is that really how he was going to get caught?

“Who’s there?”

He quickly takes off his mask and answers. “Sorry dude, I just... uh thought of something funny.” He hopes his voice sounds good enough for them to mistake it for a coworker.

“Yo Kanjo, why didn’t you say you were in there? It’s cool, see you on patrol.”

“S-see ya.”

And then he heard the bathroom door open and close again, their quirks disappearing into the distance.

That, was fucking hilarious.

Filius glared at Max, who just smiled.

He walked out of the bathroom and decided to use the stairs to get up, considering that he didn’t feel any quirks from there, and he didn’t peg Endeavour to be the type to employ quirkless people.

He finally reaches his office, the room was huge. A small coffee table laid in the middle, surrounded by couches. The fancy chandelier swayed lightly. Fil walked over to the desk, booting up the computer.

He was surprised when he noticed that the computer that Endeavour used was old. It barely worked, slower than a snail. He pulled out the pen drive he had in his pocket and inserted it into the computer. Before he downloaded the things he needed, though, he decided to get rid of the 60 viruses that the hero somehow managed to download onto his PC.

How do you even find that many? This… Has to be a record.

‘Trust me, it’s not.’

After that, he finally started looking through the files. Copying anything that seemed important. After he was done, he shut the computer off. And just when he was about to leave, the door burst open.

“Hey, Endeavour, sir. We have a new miss-“ A woman with green hair that seemed to be flames walked into the room. Her eyes widened when she saw Fil sitting on the desk of her supervisor. Maybe putting his legs up on the desk didn’t help him.

“Y-you’re that vigilante!” She shouts, before pressing some button on the wall – which Fil didn’t notice before.

“Oh? Are you a fan? I don’t have a pen on me, so I can’t sign anything, sorry!” He laughed, jumping off the chair. An alarm started blasting in his ear. The windows behind him got locked with metal grates.

Well that sucks. See ya in Tartarus.

The woman in front of him reached for her hair, and she pulled off a chunk that she threw at Filius. He dodged it quite easily and quickly threw one of his many glitter bombs on the ground. She got blinded for a second, which gave him the opportunity to run past her and back into the hallway.

He felt many quirks heading in his direction, one of which was a familiar level of strength. He didn’t expect Endeavour to be close at that moment. In fact, he thought that the hero was far away on a mission. But that must’ve ended early. Fire engulfs the hallway behind him, he didn’t know which person did that. Their quirks were way too similar.

He knew that he had to get out soon; if he didn’t, he’d be toast.

Literally.

The warmth from the fire cracked the lights above him, making the flames the only source of light inside the building.

His mask could handle a determined amount of smoke to filter through, so that put him on an even shorter time limit.

He ran forward, slamming into some heroes in the process. They might’ve been trained by the No.2 hero, but they haven’t experienced the fights that he did.

They had no idea the level of training he’s had. The fight was a losing one for them from the beginning. The disadvantage of mortality was a huge one. And it was something that Fil didn’t mind using.

His enemies were all mortal; they had human life spans. And well, he wasn’t sure whether he did, too. But they don’t know that.

They don’t know that fire can’t kill him. Their attacks wouldn’t be enough to cause any actual damage to him, and they were going easy on him, too. Everyone was, if every person he fought with used their full strength, then he wouldn’t need to work out on his own. But no, of course they don’t.

He doesn’t exactly make his quirk known.

He runs through the hallways. Endeavour’s sidekicks are no match for him, he was looking behind him at the variety of fire quirks running at him. The fireballs were getting annoying and repetitive to dodge if you’d ask Fil.

But then he hits something. When he looks up, he sees the flaming face of the No.2 hero glaring at him in anger.

Before he can react, he’s getting slammed into a glass window, which breaks on impact. The left side of his face burned; he could hear the metal of the windows breaking. And for a second, it’s as if the world stopped spinning, and everything turned quiet.

---

“Agh! Fuck!” Filius grips his wrist. He could feel the hot wax from the candle solidifying.

“Crap! Are you alright?” Renna runs to him, her messy hair sticking to her face. She just finished training, and apparently didn’t have time to take a shower before meeting Fil.

“Y-Yeah. I’m alright, it just hurts like hell.” He moved his hand, and the pain intensified. It felt as if literal pain was being injected into his veins. He was glad that nothing lit on fire, but he would for sure have a scar on his arm later on because of this.

His sister takes the bandages she had on her hand off and quickly wraps them around Filius’ wrist. “They’re not supposed to be used like this since they’re just hand wraps, but it’s something you can use before we can get you some actual first aid stuff.”

She picks up the candle from the stone floor and sets it back onto the table next to them.

They quickly returned to the castle. Filius put his hand under the cold water of a fountain they had in the garden. Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea, but they had to improvise. After a minute, he dries his hand with a towel and lets his sister treat his wrist. He didn’t even know that she knew how to handle burn scars.

It hurt, but it wasn’t a type of pain that he hadn’t felt before. This time, though, he had someone to help. And that didn’t happen often. He normally didn’t let people know what father did to him; he never tried to, but something inside of him told him that the outcome wouldn’t be something that helped him.

But this? This felt nice.

The only other person inside the facility who ever took care of his scars was mother. But she wasn’t there anymore.

---

When he gets snapped back to reality, he’s being held down by Endeavour, the fire from his face and costume warming everything around them. He could feel his costume getting destroyed, luckily, the mask was still intact.

He doesn’t remember what he built the mask out of, but it must’ve been something sturdy if it was still holding up. He looked down and realised that the left side of his costume was gone.

“I just repaired that! Dude! Not cool!” He says, annoyed. The hero only holds him tighter, slightly slamming his face into the concrete below him.

“What were you doing inside of my office you scum?” He asks through gritted teeth. While he spoke, Filius reached into his pocket, trying to see if Eraserhead would help him from the sidelines if he asked nicely. He hasn’t met the hero for a few weeks, which was odd, since normally they met multiple times a week.

But ever since that ‘interview’ he did with the detective, he’s been seeing the hero less.

“Getting rid of the viruses you somehow got on your PC. Seriously, where did you find that many?” Endeavour lifts Filius’ head before slamming him into the concrete.

“Like I’d believe that lie.” He opened the app he used to message Eraser – or what he hoped was that app – and he typed in a short message. “Fire ow! Help” He then tried tapping on the ‘share location’ button, but he knew that he probably missed it. Though if the police were there. And they were, then Eraserhead would probably figure out that he’s the one currently getting arrested.

“It’s not a lie! Seriously. It should run way quicker now.” Fil can hear sirens blaring in the distance, he knows that his time is up. “Righto! This was a lovely meeting, yet I have to go. Fil activates a glitter bomb inside his pants, taking it out the second it blows up. He closes his eyes, waiting for the hero's grip to loosen.

The second that it does, he jumps away. His back hurts. Which tracks, he did seem to fall 10 stories down onto another building. He’s surprised he doesn’t see any blood around him. But if he’s being honest, even if there was blood, it wouldn’t change anything. They can’t track his DNA. The scientists at the cult told him that, apparently, because of quirk usage, his DNA can change rapidly. He didn’t really understand how that was possible, but that meant that now he was untrackable.

He felt Endeavour's fire getting closer again, the man was fast. And Fil didn’t have his bo staff. Which meant that his speed was reduced.

He was still faster than most. But this just made his situation worse. He jumped through the buildings, avoiding the fire that the hero attacked him with. Though many times it hit him and burned his costume even more than it already had.

He knew that he couldn’t defeat Endeavour in hand-to-hand combat, so he ran.

You sure you can’t?

Maybe if he had his bo staff, he could’ve, or if he wasn’t currently chased by him, his sidekicks and the police. But in the situation that he put himself in, it was impossible.

He could hear police cars in the background. They were all chasing him, which reminded him that he couldn’t get shot. He didn’t use his quirk that time. He literally told himself to remember to use it, and yet he still forgot.

He tripped over the edge of a rooftop when a fireball hit him in the side of his face. When he falls down, he can hear his arm breaking, pain shoots through it. But he broke his arm many times before. He knew that it would heal in a second. But this time, he could see the blood dripping under him.

The hero drops down as well, blocking off the entrance to the alleyway, behind him, lines of policemen exit their cars.

So, Filius does what every person would’ve done. He uses his quirk.

He gathers the blood that’s leaking from his arm and the one that fell on the floor, trying to move it in a way that the hero doesn’t notice it. The sky was already dark, and the city wasn’t lit up enough for them to see. So the pitch black liquid hid itself well. He puts a hand behind his back and decides to go for a gun. Nobody is immune to guns.

He could only make small handguns so far, but he saw Max making rifles before, so he’s sure that with enough practice, he would be able to make them as well.

Besides, he didn’t need a rifle at that moment. In fact, a handgun was perfect.

He aims the weapon at the hero, who only lifts an eyebrow. “Do you really think a simple gun can defeat me?”

No, he didn’t think that. But he didn’t need it to defeat him. Because for a few minutes now, Max was nowhere to be seen. And Filius knew damn well what that meant.

He needed to somehow create a distraction so that Eraserhead could help him without being spotted. So he quickly aimed the gun at the sky above them and shot it.

In the same second, Endeavour's quirk goes out, and Filius jumps up onto the side of the alleyway and onto the hero's shoulder just to climb up the building next to them faster. Before the hero could go behind, he jumped back down into a different alley. One that he knew led to even smaller ones.

But his escape doesn’t last for a long time. Fire covers the entire area around him, starting to burn away at his skin.

He remembers how it felt during the time he was hallucinating. Apparently, that feeling wasn’t far off the actual thing.

His arms ached, and the flame hero seemed to be done with playing around. Just as Filius ducked into a small hiding spot, he was engulfed in fire.

He climbs further into the small box made of pipes. He remembers hiding in there many times before. There was no way anyone could ever see him there, unless they saw him enter the place, which Endeavour couldn’t have done since his fire obstructed his view.

Filius’ costume was on fire, and he quickly tried to put it out, but the pain burned him too much. He knew that if he wanted to survive this, he would have to let Max take control. He needed to let Max control him and focus on healing his burns.

The only ways to bring Max out were

A) Nearly dying

Or B) Manually trying to push him to the front of his head, which usually took a couple of minutes.

Minutes which Fil didn’t have. Most of his body was covered in scars, he was bleeding too much. If he didn’t get Max in there quickly, he would probably pass out and have to wait for days until he recovered fully.

Fil looks down at the gun in his hands, he knows that Max is also trying to save him in that moment. He can feel one of his eyes turning into his eye. He could feel pressure on his sclera, after many times of it happening, he realised that it’s because it's turning black. The control he had on the left side of his body started slipping. He aims the gun at his chin, and just when he is about to pull the trigger, something knocks the gun out of his hand.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” He hears a voice, but the adrenaline in his body was already starting to die down. “Crap, you need a hospital.”

He feels something picking him up, his quirk still picking up on the quirks of the policemen. Except they were moving away, same with Endeavour.

“N-no- no hospital! It’ll heal! I swear! I can heal it! No hospital!” He tries to escape the tight hold of the person's arms. Their grip was sturdy, but if he really wanted to, he could get out. He couldn’t get taken to a hospital, they would arrest him. Or even worse, they’d show his identity to everyone. He couldn’t risk it. Fire couldn’t kill him. Unless he was still burning, of course. Which he wasn’t. So he was fine, he just needed to get Max into the driver seat inside his head, and then it would all heal 5x faster.

“You what? I-it will heal? Is that your quirk? Fuck… are you sure?”

“Y-yes, just no hospital. P-please.” It was hard to speak, he could taste ash in his throat. The filters in his mask must’ve run out. His voice changer still works, so that’s a bonus. He feels his eyes starting to close. But he didn’t know where he would be taken, he couldn’t switch with Max now.

He feels his surroundings changing, the blood which was spilling from his body seeming to have stopped for the most part. He was still bleeding, but at least now his head would be slightly less dizzy.

“Don’t bleed out on me, kid.” He recognises the voice and the nickname. Filius smiles, feeling glad that Eraserhead can’t see it through his mask.

“Heyyy ‘Raser”

“Yeah, hi, kid. Just keep talking, alright?” The hero was taking him somewhere, but Filius didn’t have the energy to see where. So he listens, and he tries to talk as much as possible, he talks about the one thing that was on his mind for the past month, his siblings. Sometimes Eraserhead asks him questions. It was all small things, favourite colours, schedules, hobbies, nothing too identifying. But it meant a lot to Fil, and he could feel that it meant a lot to Eraserhead too.

After what felt like an eternity, Fil heard the sounds of keys rattling. And then he was engulfed by warmth. They must’ve entered Eraser’s apartment.

But suddenly, he felt a strong quirk from the room next to him. His head started hurting again.

“Fuckkk, why is Present Mic here?” He raises a hand up to his forehead, and when he touches the skin, he feels something wet and slimy, and pain surges through the area.

“He lives with me. Don’t touch it.” Eraserhead grabs his hand away.

He feels Present mic’s quirk getting closer.

“Holy shit! Sho? What the fuck happened?” His voice is loud, he’s clearly panicked. But who wouldn’t be?

“Endeavour. No time to explain, call Chiyo.” Eraserhead puts Filius on the couch. “Kid, your eye.”

“No, no, that’s good. Just- ignore it.” He tries to answer, but his voice doesn’t listen. He’s quiet, he doesn’t know whether the hero heard him. He feels a hand fidget with the middle part of his mask. After a few seconds, Eraser manages to take it off.

“Drink.” Filius feels something cold being put against his mouth, then a liquid is poured down his throat; he assumes it’s water.

He coughs. The water washed off the ash from his throat. He doesn’t know if he should’ve done that, but it feels better.

“Hey, hey, little listener! Look at me. What’s your name?” Present Mic crouches down next to the couch that Fil was lying on.

“Filius.” He answers, trying to force his eye to look at the hero.

“Okay, hi Filius, I’m Yamada Hizashi, or Present Mic as you know. Right now, I’m going to need you to talk with me, alright? Keep yourself conscious.” Yamada’s voice is soft, it reminds him of the time he was on the cliff. He sounds so nice when he’s not in public. “Just talk about anything, okay? Uh.. What do you like?”

“I like your radio.” He can see Mic put a hand over his mouth. “Helps me sleep.”

“Hm? Really? You listen to my radio?” He can see the faint smile on his face

“Yeahhh, a friend gave me some merch for my birthday.” He could barely talk, the urge to sleep overwhelmed him, and he knew that it would be better if he did. Max would be able to control his body without even showing himself, since it would seem as if he were sleeping.

“It was your birthday recently?” Eraserhead asks.

“Mhm, about a month ago now.”

“Kid, can I lift your beanie? I need to cool your burns.” Fil nods, and then he can feel the beanie he was wearing moved slightly to the top. Something wet is placed against his forehead, and Filius can’t stop himself from leaning into the feeling.

He knows that Eraser wants to say something, but before he can, there’s a knock on the door.

Filius could hear faint conversation, but he couldn’t focus on it anymore. His consciousness was slipping away from him, he didn’t know what to do to keep himself there.

After a few seconds, he feels someone coming closer. Their quirk is strong, but a calming strong. It’s a light pink flowery aura, with small parts of yellow embedded around it. The quirk is a nice feeling. It doesn’t make Filius’ head hurt like other powerful quirks do.

Before he can register what’s happening, he can feel something pressing against his hand, which no longer has gloves anymore. They probably burned somewhere during the fight.

“Sorry, sweetie, your forehead is fully burned, so it wouldn’t be safe to do it there.”

He can feel a warm energy flowing through his veins, clearly the effects of a quirk. He can feel his eye returning to normal. He knew that they were only trying to help him, but the action angered him. They were only making his situation worse. If Max doesn’t come out because of a near-fatal injury, he would have to spend his energy on trying to get him out, which would only make him more exhausted.

“No, wait. Fuck, don’t heal.” He puts his arms out, regaining his eyesight, he looks around the room. He was surrounded by pro heroes, who now knew his voice and the placement of his scars, which reminded him of the very identifiable scars on his throat, ones that Present Mic had seen on him before, except without the mask. He quickly sits up, his hands gripping his throat. The wet towel that was placed on his eye fell off.

“Kid, lie back down.” Eraserhead puts his hands on Fil’s shoulders, trying to keep him in place.

“N-no, I can’t y-you don’t get it.” His voice fails him, he’s trying to look around the apartment for a way out of the situation, maybe something he could use to hide his throat.

Eraser scoffs from behind him. “Mic, Chiyo, turn around for a second.” And they do, clearly confused by the command. Eraserhead puts a roll of bandages onto Fil’s thighs and turns around as well.

The vigilante looks at the bandages lying in front of him before taking them and carefully wrapping his throat. He was confused about how he managed to avoid it being burned, but he wouldn’t complain about that. Recently, he’s found that he doesn’t have a lot of things to complain about.

When he’s done, he taps Eraserhead’s thigh to signal for him to turn back around. When Filius feels a little bit more stable, he looks around the room again, noticing his mask lying on the glass coffee table. He picks it up and puts it back on.

He coughs, trying to test out the voice changer. But he doesn’t miss the way that the hero behind him moves closer.

“Damn, relax. Just adjusting the settings, old man.” He says, but he regrets it immediately after when his throat punishes him for speaking after surviving getting fried alive. Apparently, it didn’t get out as Scott free as Fil first thought it did.

“Don’t say anything, sweetie. Now that you’re feeling better, let me heal you.” The small woman leans in closer to him.

“No-“ He coughs again, this time it was real. “No healing. Won’t-“ He doesn’t get to finish his sentence, the pain making it impossible to speak. He looks around the people all gathered around him, his eyes lock with the hearing aid that Present Mic was currently wearing. Surely if he needed a hearing aid, he knew sign language, right?

Filius looks at the man and then tries signing some words to him. Unsure whether he was doing it correctly, all his knowledge was from textbooks, and he’s never actually had to use sign language before. So this was all enemy territory for him.

“Heal won’t work.” He knows he still needs a lot of practice. He can’t even make full sentences. But the voice hero seems to understand him. And somehow Eraserhead does too.

“Why wouldn’t it work?” The insomniac behind him asks, and Fil lies back on the armrest of the couch, thinking that the position is better since he would be able to see everyone.

“My quirk.”

“Does your quirk cancel out my healing, sweetie?”

‘How does everyone here know sign language?’ He pushes his thoughts aside and nods. The old woman brings him another wet towel and puts it against his chest. And then another one, and another one.

At some point, he starts wondering how many towels the two heroes had in their apartment. He feels like a burrito, getting wrapped in towels. But it feels nice, so he doesn’t try to stop it.

He’s glad that they don’t try to forcibly heal him again. The healing only seemed to make Max stronger, and his blood started feeling heavier. He doesn’t know how he knew what that feeling was; he just did. He can feel his own quirk working, trying to make sure that he doesn’t have any scars. He’s grateful for that aspect of his quirk, even if father still somehow found ways to make sure that no matter what, he still had scars.

He doesn’t remember much happening after that point, he knows that the woman left. And that Present Mic went into a different room, probably a bedroom.

But currently, he was sitting on the couch, now fully bandaged. Eraserhead was sitting next to him, scrolling through his phone.

Fil digs around his pockets to find that his phone still somehow works. Probably only because he tweaked it to be more durable.

And just as he turns it on, he gets attacked by notifications from Izuku. The hero next to him clearly notices as he looks at him and raises an eyebrow.

“Friend?”

“Hm? Y-yeah… guess you could say that.” Filius answers, looking through the texts. They were mostly about the boy ranting about the chase with Endeavour that happened, oblivious to the fact that the vigilante he was calling ‘badass’ was the person he was texting. He chuckles at the texts.

“Are you- … safe?” Fil looks up from his phone, the hero is staring right at him. He can see a slight shake in his breathing.

He doesn’t respond for a while, he doesn’t know how to. Is he safe? He thinks that he is. But, is his living situation really classified as ‘safe’?

“Tha- That’s complicated.” Filius looks to the side, another couch laid there, and right behind it, a heater and a window. The curtains the two heroes had were beige with funky shapes in them. Fil thought that they looked exactly like something that Present Mic would own.

Eraser takes a deep breath. “Is.. the person that did those scars to you still in your life?”

Filius’ eyes widen, and he looks at the pro hero again before answering. “No.” His voice is soft and quiet. Almost unsure. The hero smiles faintly, but he can see the sadness behind that smile. He’d seen it on his siblings' way too often not to recognise it.

“Come here, kid.” Eraserhead says, holding out his arm. Fil scoots closer to him, and he leans his head on the hero’s shoulder. He never knew that his sweaters were of this quality. Maybe it was a small thing to be surprised about, but the sweater was a really nice texture, and  Fil understood why he chose it for his hero costume.

He can feel the hero rubbing circles into his back. “You know, I should’ve guessed that they were blue. It’s the same shade.” Fil looks up, wanting to ask what the hero meant. Then he realised that he was talking about his hair. He quickly pulled his beanie down, making sure to conceal any loose strands that fell out.

“Relax, do you know how many people have blue hair? Not really something I can use to pinpoint who you are. In fact, I know a kid who sometimes sneaks around town with that same shade. Always tell him to go home. I don’t know if he really listens, but a part of me hopes that he doesn’t. He walks to the bad part of town, just like you at the end of your patrols, actually. And I just can’t imagine someone living there. Especially someone his age.”

Filius only gives him a hum of acknowledgement; he was tired already, and the soft voice of the hero didn’t help that feeling. But he doesn’t fight it. He feels safe, for once. For some reason, he trusts Eraserhead at that moment. The hero only continues talking.

“If you ever see him on your patrol, Filius, can you tell him to go home for me?”

“Fil.” He blurts out, not even thinking about what he’s saying.

“Aizawa.” The hero responds. “Goodnight, Fil.”

“Night, Aizawa.”

---

“Fil! Fil, wake up!” A voice shouts at him. He can feel something being thrown at him.

He sits up, looking around the room. “Renna! You can’t just throw things at people!”

“I can when they fall asleep in the middle of movie night!” His sister sticks out her tongue, smiling. Filius only rolls his eyes, he sits up. The room he was in was dimly lit, the light pinks of the carpet lighting up under the TV.

The movie that was playing was a children’s one. But it seemed to have moved both Seong and Astris, as they were both currently hugging each other and crying. Filius must’ve missed an emotional moment. But he doesn’t care. All that matters to him is that his siblings were safe. They were all in the same room, watching a movie. Nobody was hurt.

He looked over at Renna, who was sitting on the floor, looking up at the flatscreen. She seemed relaxed, like the others were. But Fil noticed the slight way that her muscles tensed up.

During a bathroom break, he went outside to the balcony. The same balcony where Astris smoked whenever she couldn’t sleep, the same balcony that Raine once jumped off of, trying to get Filius to show him his wings again.

The same balcony that Renna was now looking out of. He stood next to her, leaning over the railing.

“Why don’t you want me to help you fight?” She asks, her voice trembling. He knew that she wanted to fight with him.

“I can’t lose you.” He answers, it’s one of the only times he has let someone see his vulnerable side. He normally wouldn’t have said that; instead, he would’ve just started ranting about how fighting is dangerous or something like that. But, his sister needed honesty that night. He wouldn’t be the one to refuse that.

He knew that this was important to her.

“You won’t. I- I’m strong! I can do it!” She turned to look at him, tears filling her eyes. He hasn’t seen Renna cry before, and maybe that was his fault.

He hated how she always pretended to be fine around him. It didn’t used to be like that. But ever since she knew about the rebellion plans, she’s been trying to convince him to let her fight. And he guesses that, in turn, she forced herself to be ‘tougher’.

“I know you can, Ren. But I can’t risk it. You… don’t know what father is capable of. He… He wouldn’t hold back.”

“Then tell me! Show m-“

“No!” He shouts, he didn’t mean to sound like he did. He wanted Renna to understand that this wasn’t up for debate; she wouldn’t fight in the war, no matter how much she wanted to. He didn’t care if she could defeat father or not. Having her and the others join the rebellion was already a risky move. One that he didn’t know whether he really should’ve done. His siblings could get hurt if father decides that he doesn’t like the rebellion anymore.

Even if that’s not very likely to happen. He knows the type of person that father is. And he would most likely just see their entire plan and think that it’s a fun thing to observe. He’s probably already doing that.

Renna looks at him with shock, she’s never heard him use that tone before. She rubs her eyes and sniffles.

“I- I know that you think that I’m weak… You say that you don’t, but you do. And I can never do anything to change that, can I? No matter how much I train. You still see me as a weakling.”

“Renna, I don’t…” Fil’s voice gets softer again, he doesn’t want his sister to think of him that way. He knows that she’s strong; hell, she might be stronger than he is. But this isn’t just a battle for physical strength.

“Stop trying to lie to me, Fil. Look.. I know that I haven’t been here for as long as you, or Astris, or even Seong. But, I can still see things… And I notice whenever you have more scars that you couldn’t have gotten from training. An- And I know that you don’t want to talk about it, but I know what father is doing to you.”

“I know!- I know that you’re stronger than he is. I know that you train day and night. But even if you think that you’re ready. You’re still my sister, Ren. And I still want to protect you from anything that I can. Maybe that makes me a bad brother. But right now? I don’t care. As long as you’re alive, you can hate me all you want.” Filius tries to smile, but it comes off as bittersweet at most.

And those words seem to be the final straw; his sister runs to his arms, hugging him. She starts sobbing. He hugs her back, placing his chin on her head. He starts running his hand through her messy hair. The light from the windows hit the dark brown of her hair, making it shine in a pinkish hue.

They stay like that for a while. And it’s only when Astris goes out onto the balcony – holding a sleeping Alekai – to tell them that they’re going to go back to watching the movie that was currently paused.

Renna wiped the tears from her eyes, and Filius did too. He didn’t even realise that he’d started crying. But he knew that something had changed between them; he didn’t know whether it was for the better or for worse. But he was glad that he went out to the balcony.

He was glad that he told Renna what he felt. And he knew that deep down, she wasn’t mad, none of them could ever be mad at the other for a prolonged period of time. They were siblings after all, biological or not.

He sits back down on the floor, moving a blanket over his lap. He looks at the screen in front of him and starts eating some Skittles from a glass bowl they had. He doesn’t say anything when Renna sits right next to him, and he doesn’t say anything when she falls asleep on his shoulder. He knows that she needs it, and in a way, he needed it too.

---

He can feel the warmth of sunlight hitting his face, a shower is running in the background. He’s lying on something warm.

Filius lifts his head, rubbing his eyes, he starts remembering the things that happened the night before. He looks around and realises that he’s still inside the hero’s apartment. He needed to get out, now.

He quickly untangles himself from the sleeping Eraserhead. Ignoring the way that his body aches for the warmth again. He walks over to a window by the dining table, he slides it open. There was a pipe right next to it, he could try to use it to slide down and then run. It would be risky, but he didn’t exactly have time to search for alternative routes.

He starts climbing out when a voice stops him.

“Where are you going?” Eraserhe- no, Aizawa asks him. He’s sitting on the couch, many towels are lying on and around him.

“Home.” Fil answers, his throat was dry and speaking felt disgusting.

“You’re injured. Get back inside.”

“I’m fine.” He tries to argue, but the fact that his entire body is covered in bandages isn’t helping his case.

“Look, kid. I know that you want to go back to whatever abandoned place you got. And I know that it’s abandoned, I know that you have no electricity in there, so don’t even try to lie to me about that.” Aizawa tilts his head. “But right now, Mic and I have the proper items and medicine that will help your scars heal faster. So if you leave right now, you will be pretty fucking identifiable by the huge scar running across half your face, and the entirety of your body.” His voice is stern, but there’s a small shake to it. Something that he’s been noticing in Eraser more often recently.

Filius doesn’t argue anymore, instead, he climbs back inside the apartment. He can see Eraserhead let out a long breath that he was holding.

He sits back down on the dark green couch with his hands on his lap.

“When Hizashi gets out of his shower, we’ll have breakfast.”

Aizawa turns on the TV, and when Filius looks forward to the screen, he notices a brand new PS5 lying on top of the fireplace. He didn’t think that the pro hero would be the type of person to play video games, but the more you know.

The hero turns on a news channel. Which coincidentally was talking about the chase that he had with Endeavour last night.

“You want to explain yourself?” Aizawa lifts an eyebrow, looking at him from the corner of his eye.

“I- uh…” Filius tries to somehow explain himself, but he finds it useless. Not able to come up with a good enough excuse for his actions.

Aizawa sighs. “Look… if you really needed the money that badly, you could’ve called me. I’m not going to let you starve.”

“It wasn’t a job.” Fil doesn’t move his eyes from the screen, even if he has the strong urge to do so when he feels the glare that Aizawa is giving him.

He opens his mouth to say something, but then he can hear a door slamming open before that.

“I hear talking! Did our little listener wake up?” A cheerful voice fills the space in between them, Present Mic walks into the living room. Already in his hero costume.

Filius waves to the hero, not knowing how to react.

Yamada only smiles at him, his quirk no longer hurting Fil. Seemingly getting used to it. Instead, now he felt slightly comforted by it.

The atmosphere around their house was nice, welcoming. Filius hasn’t felt a place like that in a long time. Even Midoriya’s house can’t compete with this. He doesn’t know how exactly to describe it. But something is urging Fil to stay there. It’s a dangerous feeling. And that is exactly why he knows that he will have to leave as soon as his scars heal.

Aizawa leads him to sit at the dining table. He sits right in front of him. After a minute, a cup is placed in front of him.

“Mint tea with honey.” Mic says, putting a metal straw inside the ‘Raise Your Hands Up radio’ themed cup.

Filius doesn’t move, he remembers the last time he was offered tea. He refused to go to a sermon that day, saying that he didn’t care about what the people in the cult believed. Father didn’t react at the time, but when he was eating dinner, he was given a cup with tea in it. He remembers the vile taste. The way that father stood right next to him, making sure that he drank all of it. And he remembers how disgusting he felt after throwing it all up.

It didn’t taste like regular poison, he didn’t know how to describe it. His stomach hurt for days after drinking it. He hasn’t missed a single sermon after that.

Well, of course, until the last one.

He pushes the mug to Eraserhead, staring right at him. If it wasn’t poisoned, the hero would have no problem in drinking it himself, right?

Present Mic just tilted his head in confusion. “If you don’t like mint tea, I can go bre-“

“It’s not that, Mic.” Aizawa cuts him off, He takes a sip of the liquid. Ignoring the straw, just to show that he’s really drinking it. “Not poisoned.” He says, tilting his head and pushing the mug back to the vigilante.

Filius takes the straw and moves it under his mask, not even having to take any part of it off that time. He drinks the tea, letting the warmth hit his throat. It burns a little going down, but it’s better than yesterday.

When he’s done drinking, he notices a bowl being put in front of him.

“Miso soup.” The voice hero says to him and smiles. Getting bowls for himself and Aizawa.

The insomniac in front of him starts eating, before stopping and looking right at Filius. “Need me to test that too? Eat, you need the calories.”

Filius shakes his head. He wasn’t used to being in costume for that long. He takes off the middle part of his mask, seriously, it is a bother to keep doing that. It sucks having to conceal your identity when you’re hungry. He takes the spoon the two heroes gave him and starts eating.

--- 

The warmth of the stew hits his throat. He always loved hanging around with Renna; her cooking was amazing. Though that was obvious, she took training way too seriously in Filius’ opinion. So, in her logic, she had to have a proper diet. 

In hindsight, that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But if she wasn’t healthy, it’s not like anything would happen. She wouldn’t fight in the rebellion anyway. No matter how strong she got, or if she thought that she was ready. 

The fight would be brutal; none of his siblings were allowed to join in. The older ones understood that, and they didn’t say anything to the younger ones. There’s no actual reason for a 10-year-old to know about a war. 

But Renne didn’t seem to understand. Filius knew that she wanted to help. He wouldn’t let her fight. Even if she was the strongest person in the universe. It was too risky. She wouldn’t survive fighting against her father. He would destroy her. Just like he destroyed Fil.  

But that didn’t matter in that moment; what mattered was the delicious stew, which Renna somehow made.

“I didn’t know you cooked so well, Ren.” Filius said in between bites.

“My dad taught me, before… uh- You know…” Renna looked at him from the training dummies. “I guess I listened better than I thought that I did.” She laughed.

“Do you miss him?” The words come out before Filius can think about them, and immediately, as he said them, he regrets it.

“Of course I do. But there’s no point in worrying about what happened, right? Not like we can change the past…” She answered almost immediately, but her words had a sad edge to them, no matter how well she hid it.

He didn’t ask anything else, deciding it would be better not to resurface bad memories. All of his siblings had bad pasts, there aren’t a lot of people in the world who can go missing one day with no one searching for them.

They all just learned not to ask, but there were moments in which that unspoken rule was discarded. Everyone needed to just ‘talk’ from time to time, and no one would blame them for it.

The training grounds were quiet for a moment. Filius continued eating while Renna went back to training. The trees around them were still, and Fil wished that there was wind inside the facility. He wanted to see birds, and to run against the wind just to feel it messing up his hair. Sadly, that was something that wouldn’t happen for a long time, not until they made a plan for the rebellion, and even after that, they had to execute it and hope for the best.

So he pushed his dreams away for now. One day, he was going to have a chase with Renna on the outside.

“Ya know, sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if we didn’t get attacked that day.” Renna speaks up again, her tone was trying to be light, but it was trying to sound okay. But Filius knew that it wasn’t the direction that the conversation would go.

Nobody starts off a sentence like that and expects it to be a funny, light-hearted conversation.

Fil puts the now-empty bowl on the wooden camping table he was sitting at. After a second, Renna continues.

“I know that makes me sound hypocritical. But I just can’t stop remembering that night. His voice is engraved in my head, and sometimes I feel as if I can still hear him, screaming for me to run.” She adds, looking out onto the lake behind the castle. “You probably think I’m craz-“

“I have that too.” Fil cuts her off. She looks at him in surprise. “Uh, it’s a little bit different for me, though. Sometimes I think that I’m seeing things, or- or just going insane. But I can see her, like I can still feel her.”

He chuckles. “If you’re crazy, then I guess I must be too.”

---

“Kid? Fillius? Fil?” He can hear fingers snapping next to his ear, and he snaps out of his thoughts, looking at Eraserhead leaning forward. A concerned look was plastered on his face. “You alright? You zoned out for quite some time.”

Fil looks down at the now-empty bowl of soup on the table. “Uh.. yeah.. peachy.” He looks back up, Eraser was staring at him with shock. His eyes widened in realisation that he still hadn’t put his mask back together.

He quickly reassembles the pieces. Playing with the settings for a bit in awkward silence.

“How…old are you?” Present Mic asks, covering his mouth with his hand. “Little listener… You sound 12…”

“I feel offended.” Filius responds, chuckling. The heroes around him don’t share the same feelings, though.

After a few glances shared between the two, Aizawa speaks up again. “Rightttt… Do you want to take a bath?” The hero asks. And Fil can feel his eyes lighting up.

He hasn’t had a bath in forever. Literally. He doesn’t even remember what they felt like; the idea seemed too distant to him to be real. He nodded in response, maybe a little bit too enthusiastically, but can you blame him?

Aizawa laughs and stands up from the table. He leads him into a bathroom, which was very modern. The walls and floor were covered in black and white tile. Some small colourful accessories were lying around. But it failed to conceal the monochrome colour palette.

“Okay, so you can use either mine or ‘Zashi’s shampoo’s, and I’ll bring you some clothes in a second, so wait here.” With that, Eraserhead leaves the room. Fil sits on the edge of the bathtub. Waiting for him to return. When he does, he’s holding a folded stack of clothes. “These are definitely too big for you. But they’re the smallest things I have.” He puts the clothes on the closed hamper and closes the door behind him as he leaves again.

Filius starts the bath, watching as the water starts flowing in. He scouts the area for potential cameras and is glad to find none, though he doesn’t have Max by his side to check more thoroughly. He takes off the bandages he had on, and the remains of his shirt, then his pants, and his boots – which haven’t been taken off of him for some reason – and at the end, his beanie and mask. He looks at the burned clothes. He was going to have to spend more time repairing them. But it was fine, he knew that it would happen eventually. Still sucked that it happened immediately after he fixed them.

He goes into the bathtub, lying down and letting the water engulf him. He feels the warmth spreading around his body; it feels amazing. As if his lifespan was just extended by 50 years.

---

“Cannonball!” He shouts, jumping into the pond from a cliffside. He splashed everyone who was around the area that he jumped into. He could hear faint laughs around him.

He loved going out with his siblings. His father always let them have a day off after a successful week of training. They always did something together during those days.

This time, they went on a beach day. Even if there were no real beaches at the facility. The huge lake surrounding them would have to make do.

Nea and Bea had to have floaties made for them, since they couldn’t swim yet. Though he was pleasantly surprised when he learnt that Haru could. The logic behind it was that since his body was 90% water, he could just walk right on top of it. Which, in hindsight, made sense, but the more you thought about it, the less sense it made.

He looked at the wet faces of everyone around him, even Seong was in the water. Which was a surprise, as usually he just hung out in the back whenever they went outside.

But right now, everyone was having fun.

The warm rays of the sun were hitting his face, and at the time, Filius didn’t have to think about how they weren’t real, his hair already too wet to be tamed.

“Fil! Catch!” He doesn’t have enough time to register what’s happening before a beach ball hits his face. He looks over at who threw it, ready to take his revenge.

Renna just smirks at him. “Hey! I warned you! Not my fault you’re so slow!” She laughs. Already swimming backwards. But Fil isn’t one to choose mercy. He aims the beach ball and throws it right into Ren’s face. She ducks and catches it. Starting to chase Filius.

Days like these were rare inside the facility. Days when nobody got hurt, nobody was sad, and nobody had to worry about anything. So they would take what they were given and make the most of the days that they had.

In the end, they had to stick together. They were always together, nobody should ever have to feel like they’re alone. Not when they have 6 siblings. And everyone had a silent agreement to keep each other company whenever they saw someone just sitting somewhere.

Because they have all learned that loneliness is one of the worst feelings to experience. And maybe that belief was childish. But they were all children after all.

They went through a lot. But they were kids, so they were allowed to think like kids. No matter how hard the world would try to make them believe that they shouldn’t. Sometimes, everyone needs to think like a child. No matter their age.

After hours of playing around in the water, they were all packing up. He was holding a bunch of floaties and a surfing board. His sister was next to him in a similar position. They were both walking a little bit behind everyone else.

“You think that Alekai had fun?” Renna asks suddenly. Walking through the trees of the forest, separating the pond from the city.

“I’m sure that he did. I mean, have you seen how he was grinning the whole time?” Filius chuckles. The small boy was so eager to get into the water. But he was a part of the ‘doesn’t know how to swim’ club, so he had to wait for the floaties to be inflated.

“I tried teaching him how to swim. Don’t think that it worked.” She sighs, stopping for a moment before continuing to walk. Filius laughs

“Well, he is only four. Give him a few years, and he’ll be swimming faster than anyone else inside the facility!”

Everything is silent for what feels like an eternity, but it wasn’t a bad silence, nor was it a good one. Faint laughter of their siblings filled the space in between for brief seconds.

“I wish I could take him to an actual beach.” Ren says, looking to the side. “Do you think he even knows what they look like?”

“Well, maybe he does. We’ll just have to ask him when he’s older.” Fil chuckles again. “And hey, don’t stress about it. He’ll be able to see a real beach soon. I promise!” He smiles, looking at his sister through many colourful rings. She returns the action.

The rest of the walk back is peaceful, they go back into the group. Laughing along with whatever joke was circulating at that moment.

He would do anything to get more moments like these.

---

He opens his eyes, realising that once again he zoned out. He doesn’t know why he’s been thinking more and more about his siblings. He knows that he misses them, but he can’t do anything about it. Not until he gets stronger.

Not until he will be able to defeat father.

Filius – Or is it Haruki right now? What’s the difference anyway? – finds a sponge and starts to wash himself. He picks the better-sounding option out of the two body washes. Something that smells like vanilla, he assumes it to be Present Mic’s. After that, he washes his hair and decides to get out of the bath before the two heroes start thinking he died.

He dries himself off with a towel, the warmth is calling out to him to get back inside the bathtub, but he ignores it. He looks at himself in the mirror after wiping off the steam from it. It seems like the scars on his face were nearly fully healed, the ones on his body were still actively healing, though. He feels something metallic on his tongue. When he opens his mouth, he sees that he’s bleeding.

He quickly finds the cause of the bleeding to be the two pointy teeth that started growing out again. Now that he’s realised it, he notices that they hurt. He remembers having to pile them down into normal-looking teeth back at the cult. But he didn’t think that they’d return so quickly. That only gave Eraserhead another way to identify him, and he didn’t like how many of those the hero had been getting in the recent days.

He plays around with them for a bit in front of the mirror, trying to see if they’re real or not. In the end, he did hallucinate them growing back once. So he wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again. Even if he secretly really doesn’t want it to.

He hates hallucinating. And yes, he does understand how stupid that sounds. Nobody likes hallucinating. And yet, every time that it happens he just feels like absolute shit. His head always hurts, and everything is spinning. He can somehow tell that what’s happening isn’t real, but he still feels it. He can never stop it, no matter how hard he tries. And Max never makes it better.

And the fact that recently he’s started seeing himself in those hallucinations make him hate them even more, so what if he doesn’t remember his face from back then? So what if he can never return to the life he once had? He doesn’t care. He doesn’t need to go back. He doesn’t even want to go back.

His mom is dead, and he hated how his brain didn’t understand that. He’d do anything just to slam that knowledge inside his skull. Just for his thoughts to stop thinking about her. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. Every time that he did, he just felt tears swelling up in his eyes.

And he hated crying.

He looks back at the mirror and wipes the tears from his face. He couldn’t cry. Not again.

He picks up the clothes that Aizawa gave him. Grey sweat pants, a dark grey shirt, the same sweater that Aizawa was wearing. Or rather, a different size of it, and 2 pairs of boxers, still in the packaging.

‘Did they… buy this for me?’ He thinks, but the thought seems stupid. Why would they buy clothes for him? And boxers of all things. They probably just had an unopened bag of boxers that they bought some time ago. Everybody has one of those… Probably.

He puts the clothes on, and just like Aizawa said. Everything was too big for him. Except for the boxers, which were suspiciously close to his exact size. He feels the fabrics touching, but it feels great. These clothes are different from the ones he has. They were properly taken care of, they didn’t have any holes or stains. And they were made from good materials. In conclusion, they were warm.

And Filius hasn’t experienced this warmth for a long time.

He puts his mask back on and folds the remains of his vigilante costume. He makes sure to cover his hair with the beanie. Not needing Eraserhead to realise that the kid he was telling him about last night was actually him.

He notices that he doesn’t have anything to cover his neck with, so he puts one of his hands up to it. Hoping that it’s enough for Present Mic to not recognise the scars. He walks out of the bathroom, seeing Eraser sitting on the couch. Mug of coffee in hand, he was scrolling through something on his phone before looking up and seeing Fil.

He sighs. “The bandages are over here. Come, cover your neck.”

Filius takes the bandages and wraps them around his neck again. After which he sits down, neck to Aizawa. “We took the weapons you had on you out. They’re in the guest room. You’ll be sleeping there today.”

Filius hums in response, the mask making it sound like pointless static, but Eraserhead has learnt how to convert the noises he makes into actual phrases.

He looked down at his hands, he wasn’t used to not wearing gloves. But his were currently ashes. He would have to somehow get new ones. Aizawa stands up and walks to the hallway. Before returning a few moments later. “Here.” He throws something onto Fil’s lap. When he looks down, he realises that they’re gloves.

A near-perfect replica of the ones that he had, except these were warmer. “Thanks.” He mumbles to the hero, who is once again sitting next to him.

When he looks back down at his hands, he notices the ‘y’ shaped scar on his left wrist. It was a burn scar. Aizawa notices it too. “damn, guess you got a new scar.” 

“Hm? No… this isn’t new.” Filius responds, tracing his fingers over the dry skin. He chuckles. He doesn’t know how he forgot that he had a scar right there. It was such a funny memory to him, too. Sure, maybe it hurt a lot. But in the end. He remembers it fondly.

Eraserhead notices the way that he’s staring at his arm, but he doesn’t comment on it, instead, he decides to change the topic. “The news is going crazy because of you.” He sighs once again. “Did you really get rid of Endeavour's computer viruses?”

Filius laughs, holding his mouth – mask – with his hand. “Maybe.” He answers, dragging the word out. The hero only rolls his eyes.

“You’re….something, kid. And that’s neither a compliment nor an insult.” Eraserhead runs a hand through his hair, but Filius doesn’t miss the small smile that appeared on his face.

“I have to go to work today. Mic already went, but I trust that when I come back, I’ll still see you inside?” He asks, but when he receives no answer, he walks into the kitchen, placing two sandwiches on the counter. “When you leave. Take these.”

This time, Filius nods.

And then, the hero leaves, and Fil is left alone once again. After a couple of minutes, he can see Max again. But he doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t have anything to say. Filius gets up from the couch, walking into the guest room. The room was decently big, definitely bigger than Fil’s regular room, back at his apartment. Large windows were connected by the edge of the wall. This apartment was for rich people, and it showed. He looks at the desk, which has a multitude of weapons scattered on it. He knows that they’re all his. He doesn’t pick them up, though.

He puts the vigilante costume on the floor beside the bed. He looks around the room again.

The walls were a light grey colour, the floor was the same dark wood that was throughout the entire apartment. The bedsheets were a light blue with clouds on them, the room looked cute. A little bit empty, but it was a guest room after all.

It didn’t need to have anything more; to Fil, this was plenty. Even if he would prefer his hammock instead of the bed, he won’t complain about actually having a blanket to sleep under now.

He knew that he shouldn’t sleep again; he should get out. But Eraserhead’s words were stuck in his head, he couldn’t allow himself to gain a new scar, so he needed to give his body the right conditions to heal. And as much as he hated to admit it, this was the best place for him at that moment.

But he still didn’t trust them, why would he? Eraser literally had him do an interview with a detective. He was clearly still working to arrest him, and Filius walked right into his apartment. He sighed at his own stupidity. He could still make something out of this situation.

He took the chair that was next to the desk, and in combination with locking the door using the key that was coincidentally left in the door, he also put the chair under the handle, ensuring that nobody could get in.

He climbed into the bed, the warm blanket lying on top of him, and the bed was soft. Maybe a little bit too soft, but he didn’t mind it. It was comfortable nonetheless.

He rolled over to his side – the less burned one, mind you. – And he fell asleep. And for once, nothing happened, no nightmare, no flashback, no nothing. He had a peaceful rest, and when he woke up. He felt good.

He opened his eyes, and the room he was lying in was dark. He sat up on the bed, looking out the windows. It was already past sunset. He stood up, he didn’t feel anymore scars on his body. Everything was normal again. He took off the comfortable clothes he was given, and he changed into his costume. Except the shirt. That was now fully gone, He’d have to make a new one completely. But it was fine, not like it was difficult to make. He made sure that his costume was something he could afford to lose, time and time again.

But for now, he had to borrow the shirt that he was given. He moves the chair away from the door. When he walks into the living room, he can swear that he can see multiple small dots hiding somewhere. He sums it up to his mind playing tricks on him again. He can feel Present Mic’s quirk in the other room, probably the bedroom. But it’s significantly weaker, meaning that he’s asleep.

Filius looks at the two sandwiches, still lying on the counter. They were wrapped in foil. Fil didn’t understand why, but it was probably for some reason everyone except him knew from birth.

He picked the sandwiches up and put them in the one empty pocket of his pants. The rest were filled with the weapons he had prepared for the break into Endeavour’s office.

He didn’t have time to use most of them since the hero himself decided to attack him that day. But that just meant that he had more weapons to use for later missions.

He opens the same window next to the dining room table, and he slides down the pipe. He climbs up a different building and starts heading home.

On the way, though, he runs into Eraserhead. The hero looks at him, and after a second, he nods.

Filius looks at him in confusion, he didn’t know how to react. But before he even got the chance to, the hero jumped off onto another rooftop. Fil just took that as his cue that the interaction was over, and he returned home where he could eat his sandwiches in peace.

Chapter Text

Don’t eat so fast, you’re going to choke. Max says, looking over to Haruki from his spot on the hammock.

Haruki is sitting on the floor, a cup of instant noodles in hand. Eating them with a spoon was difficult, but he was never taught how to hold chopsticks, nor did he have any in his apartment.

Around him, what could only be described as a coordinated mess. His old costume was lying on the couch, the shirt that he stole from Aizawa was next to it, already washed and folded. Some fabrics were on the floor, from Haruki scouting his house for anything he could use to once again repair his costume. He technically could use his compression shirt, but he needed that. He needed as many of those as he could get; they were the only types of clothes he could wear that covered his neck without any suspicion and looked good.

There were a couple of empty noodle cups in the corner by the desk. Open books—which made up about 70% of the mess alone—lie in a circle around Haruki. He was trying to study, but the topics seemed to blur together, and he couldn’t focus at all. Even after a food break.

He even asked Midoriya, but he seemed to understand about as much as Haruki did. Shinsou didn’t get it either.

So after thinking about it for about 16 minutes, simply because that’s how long it took to make and eat the instant noodles. Haruki texts Eraserhead. He knows that the hero is patrolling today. And he still has to give him his shirt back. So perfect occasion, right?

Eraser

[photo.241932810313] “How?”

“… This is college-level math. Why do you need it?”

Haruki stared at his phone, confused. It was inside a math book for high schoolers. Maybe he accidentally picked up a book meant to be more advanced. He knew that those classes had an official name, but for him. They were nerd classes. Simply because back when he was a kid, someone from those classes bullied him. And so Haruki called him a nerd. He didn’t care that he got in trouble because the other kid told on him. His mom knew what was happening, but the school didn’t want to listen.

You’re getting distracted again.

‘Ah fuck.’

He looked back at his phone, which now had a few more texts than before. All from Eraserhead.

“Doesn’t matter. Just come here if you can.” “District 3 building 10.”

So Haruki did as he was told, once again having to put on his black and white hoodie. He also got his blue scarf to cover the scars on his neck. It was easy to lie about why he wore it, considering that it was getting colder outside. Though he didn’t need to, since Aizawa already knew that he had some pretty identifiable scars there.

But if he could stop him from seeing them, he would. He didn’t know if he saw them on him; they met the couple of times during the night. It was dark outside, so he doubts it, but he can’t take any chances.

He contemplates not wearing the beanie; he had the hood of his hoodie on, so technically his head was already covered, but Aizawa is smart; if he tried to, he could definitely identify him because of his hairstyle. So, once again, he couldn’t take any chances, so he just put on the beanie and the hoodie. He takes a couple of pictures of the book pages—he can't bring the books to Aizawa since the police could see in the library system that he was the one who had them—he folds the shirt into a roll and stuffs it into his utility belt. It barely fits.

He climbs out of his apartment, noting to himself that he has to do laundry again. The air was cold, really cold. He still didn’t have any proper winter gear, he didn’t even know what he could get. A warmer jacket? Those are expensive, and after looking into just how much a U.A application costs, and then how much the tuition costs on top of that, he realised that he couldn’t afford anything that wasn’t a necessity for quite some time. He still needed to get an actual house. It could even be a studio apartment, he didn’t care. As long as he had an address he could put down in the application form.

Well, actually, now that he thought about it. What address is he put under? The government has to have some address, he just forgot what he wrote down when he was making those papers. Doesn’t matter, he’ll be moving soon anyway.

Though he could get in some serious trouble if someone found out that all of his documents were faked. But hey, he didn’t have a choice. Nobody could have known that he was alive for around 600 years. Especially not the hero commission, Haruki’s heard what they do to people with powerful quirks. Hawks is a beautiful example of that. And the only reason he knows about what happened to the hero was because he got too confident, and he snooped through the hero commission system.

He wasn’t going to become a pawn, not again, thank you. As much as the government and the commission are concerned, his quirk is ‘basic enhancements’, and it wasn’t fully a lie! His quirk did make him stronger. But it worked a little bit differently than what he described in those forms.

If he wanted to, he could change it whenever he wanted to. He just couldn’t be bothered to make up a different lie. And no, telling them about his actual quirk was also off the table. Once again, they keep people with powerful quirks as pets. Who knows what they would do with someone who’s nearly immortal?

Probably something similar to what father was doing to him. And he definitely wasn’t going to go back to that.

He’s also technically supposed to be living with his mother, but well both of the moms he’s had were dead. If it ever came up, he could just change his appearance and voice, he’s done it before. He knows that he can basically turn himself into a completely different person if he tries. But it requires a lot of blood, like seriously, more blood than any human could ever possess type of a lot. And making that blood hurt, not only does he strain his quirk, but he also has to deal with feeling different. You never realise how used you are to your own body until you lose it.

Still, if push came to shove, he could do it.

“Fil? You there, kiddo?” He jumps up and nearly falls off the rooftop when he turns back. But he managed to hold himself up by the railing, he was glad that they had those on this building. Normally, the ones he jumps to don’t have any railings. Falling off wouldn’t kill him, of course, but he’d rather not traumatise Eraserhead anymore; the man already had to pull out a bullet out of his leg. Plus, he didn’t need to know anything else about his quirk, especially the immortal part of it.

Aizawa is looking at him in shock, his scarf falling back to his shoulders. He must’ve activated it to try and stop the fall.

Filius tilts his head and gives the man the nastiest glare he can manage.

“I thought you knew I was there, you usually do.” Aizawa responded, moving to sit down next to Fil. He takes something out of his utility belt and passes it to him, a blueberry-flavoured jelly packet. Eraserhead takes out a second one, this one was banana-flavoured, and he starts eating it. Or rather, drinking it?

“I’ll have you know that I hate having to keep taking off the middle of my mask. The audience is probably tired of having to read ‘the middle of his mask’ over and over again as well.” Filius answers sarcastically, but after he’s done speaking, he takes the middle of his mask off anyway and also eats-drinks the jelly pouch.

“The who?” Aizawa looks at him confused. Filius just sighs in response, deciding not to explain his jokes. The man had to understand them at some point.

After a few seconds of silence, Fil speaks up again. “How’s trying to find out my identity going?”

“As far as I’m aware, nothing yet. But I haven’t told the detective about your hair colour. It wouldn’t change much anyway.”

“Hm.. well, actually, that could change many things.” Filius smirks. “You just don’t want them to find me. Oh? That’s new. Why would the pro hero Eraserhead try to protect an unlawful vigilante?” He laughs.

The sentence was meant as a joke, but when he doesn’t get an answer. Not even a small huff of acknowledgement, he realises that he was somewhat right.

“Wait… you’re not actually trying to protect my identity? Are you?”

“I don’t think that a child who's been trying to help fight villains around the city deserves to spend years behind bars. Or have a record. Besides, you sound as if you’re 12.”

Fil narrows his eyes. he was technically speaking without his voice changer, but the hero had already heard his voice a few times before. So it’s not like it would change anything.

“I’m not 12. I think the detective has already filled you in on that, no?”

“I will never believe that you’re older than Tsukauchi, I don’t care what his quirk says. You must’ve just found a way to trick it.”

Filius doesn’t respond for a while. Instead, he takes a few deep breaths, letting the cold air hit his lungs. It was nice to breathe like this, he enjoyed the fresh air. Maybe a little bit too much to be considered normal, but like a broken record, can you blame him?

“What if in reality, I’m hundreds of years old?” He asks, looking down at the city. His tone is still playful, but there’s something off about it. Fil is unsure whether Aizawa picks up on it. If he does, he’s happy that he doesn’t question it.

“Well, then I’d have to ask how the first quirk sighting was.” Eraserhead responds, his voice picking up on the playfulness a little bit. It was unusual for the hero, but neither of them minded it. It was nice to talk like this. They didn’t have to worry about anything, and maybe Filius was starting to warm up a bit. And maybe this time he wouldn’t try to distance himself.

He doesn’t say anything, he just chuckles. Aizawa thinks that he could get used to hearing that sound. It was a true laugh, not something that the vigilante forced whenever they made a joke. It was an odd action, they always laughed at their own jokes. Eraserhead just assumed it was to signify that the thing he said was, in fact, a joke. Or maybe he was trying to make himself feel better after the hero didn’t laugh.

Filius fixes his mask and lies down on the rooftop, closing his eyes. “Oh, right!” he takes the folded shirt from his pocket and throws it over to Aizawa. “Your shirt. I washed it. Though I can't say that I did it very well.”

“Thanks? I didn’t know you had access to a washing machine.”

“I don’t”

And the hero doesn’t pry anymore, maybe he is confused. Filius wouldn’t blame him for it. But hey, is it really that hard to believe that someone does their laundry by hand? Maybe in these days, yes.

“Where did you get that gun from?” Eraserhead asks, his gaze fixed on the stars above them.

“What gun?”

“The one when you were fighting Endeavour, you didn’t have it before. And you didn’t take it from any pocket, you just had it in your hand at some point. I won’t even try to comment on what you tried to do inside that alleyway.” Filius frowns at the memory. If he tried to remember that night, all he could remember was pain, slight anxiety and the warmth of Aizawa’s sweater.

“That’s a secret.” He winks, but the hero probably didn’t see it. Still, it’s the thought that counts.

“Alright, well, we should probably get to work.” He sits up and stretches. Pulling out a folder from a messenger bag that Fil doesn’t know how he didn’t notice before.

Aizawa opens the folder and gives Filius a piece of paper, which looked pretty childish. Some pro heroes were printed on the corners, the sheet was decorated with simple shapes, and the tasks on it were basically 1st grade level.

Fil looked up at Eraserhead. “This is for kindergarteners.” He shoves the paper back into Aizawa’s hands

“No, it’s for elementary schoolers. And it’s to see what stage you are in the subjects, just do this, and then I’ll give you something harder. I need to see where to start.” The hero holds out the test in front of him. Filius mumbles something, but he takes it anyway.

After not even a minute, he hands the test back, and he gets given another one. “Can’t you just explain the thing that I sent you a picture of?” He asks while filling out the answers.

“I could, but considering that this is the second time that you’ve asked for help with studying, I guess that it’ll happen again, and that you don’t have a proper education. Seeing as the first time you asked about something that actual kindergarteners learn. And now, the second time. You’re asking for help with college-level math. I would like to see what you know and what you do not know. And then, I can help you study more regularly.”

“What was that last part?” He asks, stopping writing.

“You’re struggling on your own. I doubt that I’m the first person you asked for help. And whatever you’re studying for must be important to you.”

“Aww, does Eraserhead care about me and my wants? That’s a new feeling.” He laughs again, handing another test back to Aizawa

The hero just scoffs.

They continue this, all until the tests get harder to fill out. And Filius is unsure of what the questions even mean. When he hands an empty test back to Aizawa, the hero looks at it and decides that it was over.

“Now then, try doing that equation you didn’t understand.” Eraserhead hands him an empty piece of paper. Filius looks at his phone and rewrites the equation. He tries to solve it, but gets lost somewhere while counting.

Aizawa was oddly really good at explaining this. It wasn’t even the subject he taught. Filius never knew that the pro could do math like this.

“If you’re applying for a high school, you won’t need this. You’d be better off doing easier things to make sure you won’t forget the things you actually do need. These are things that support classes learn while attending U.A. If you’re applying to a college, you also won’t need it. They teach you these things in there. We’ll focus on other subjects, and I’ll just assign you something to jog your memory from time to time in math.” Eraserhead says, with a hand on his chin. He’s clearly thinking about something. Something about Fil, and he doesn’t like that. This was already moving way too quickly. He didn’t mind the talking, but if the hero sees his handwriting here, and then if he actually gets into U.A he could recognise it.

Filius did try to make his handwriting worse on purpose, still readable, but something that was completely different from his regular handwriting.

“Your Japanese is lacking, you make a lot of mistakes. Are you a native?”

He doesn’t answer. Aizawa sighs and moves on.

“Where are you applying to?”

No answer again.

“We can meet weekly. I think that’s good enough to prepare you for whatever program you’re applying to, assuming that it's similar to U.A applications.”

Fil can see the trap laid out for him. If he says that it is, the hero will know that he’s trying to get into U.A. Which, okay, maybe he already kind of knew that. But he won’t admit it. He could still lie and say he didn’t get in, or that he changed his mind and didn’t end up applying. But it’s too risky.

“Fridays? And don’t think that we’ll meet at unreasonable hours, 8 pm at most.”

“You’re asking for a lot.”

“Do you have anything else to do at that time?”

Filius stays quiet for a while. Did he? No, not really.

“The crystal red bar. 7:30 pm.” He huffs out. But when he stands up and Eraserhead finishes packing, they hear a scream. And well, duty calls.

For the rest of the night, they decide to patrol together. Fil shows Eraserhead another one of his routes. ‘Route H’ as he called it. Yes, he’s amazing with names; it’s the most creative name out there.

The night was mostly peaceful, they fought some villains here and there. Filius could see how, during some fights, Aizawa was watching him fight. He was studying his fighting style. It was something he got used to. Every time a pro encounters him in the wild, they always mostly observe him and try to take mental notes.

But he knew that Eraserhead still wanted to know who Fil was, and considering the fact that he could become his homeroom teacher in a couple of months, this situation wasn’t exactly the most ideal. But he literally couldn’t complain. Even if he wanted to this time. He didn’t want to be hostile to the hero, even if right now he deserved it. How dare he try to even think about finding out his identity, right?

He keeps trying to pry, and Filius doesn’t like that one bit. He liked Aizawa, he seriously did. But he was really pushing his boundaries in that moment. Still, no time to think about that now. He takes out the villains, and Eraserhead takes them to the police station. Fil sits on top of the building, feeling the urge to smoke inside his lungs. But he couldn’t then. Eraser probably wouldn’t mind, but he didn’t want to have to wash off the stench.

They finish the patrol. Filius was tired, way more tired than he usually was. He was glad to finally be back home. He lies down in his hammock after getting changed, and he falls asleep. Hoping that Max wouldn’t decide to do anything new and powerful that night.

But of course he does, he never goes easy on Haruki. It’s both a curse and a blessing.

***

Aizawa stares at the papers in front of him. He had a headache, he always did whenever he tried to figure out anything about Fil. ‘Who was this kid's teacher? What the actual fuck…’ His knowledge was all over the place; he excelled in math, biology and chemistry, but many important sections were obviously skipped since he failed them. His history grades started getting better the further in time they went, and his Japanese was atrocious, but at least his English seemed to be perfect—he had to ask Hizashi about that one, though.

Speaking of Hizashi, the man seemed to be just as confused as Shouta. There was also a clear distinction between things he’s been learning recently and things that he has learned before.

The things Filius knew before were written more creatively and more human. While the things he’s been studying were explained very robotic, just as if they’ve been copied from the textbooks. At some points, he clearly started struggling, but his knowledge was still around a third-year level at U.A. But seriously, Fil really didn’t know anything about history after the phenomenon. And even the small bits he knew were those robotic answers.

It was an odd sight, usually, it was the opposite in children and teens. Most people learn what happened after quirks were discovered, forgetting that a world before even existed. Maybe the kid just liked the simpler times.

His handwriting was terrible, but Shouta could read it. Years of trying to decipher a student’s handwriting on something that has clearly been written the night before, after an unhealthy amount of shots, will do that to you.

Yamada was currently looking over the Japanese tests. “You know, Sho, what if they’re not native?”

Aizawa looked to his side and raised an eyebrow. He looked over the Japanese tests, and the theory made sense. If Fil wasn’t a native speaker, they would have a hard time understanding the rules, which showed while he was writing. When Aizawa only heard him speak, he assumed that the kid was Japanese, but now that he thinks about it. He’s never heard them use any Japanese slang, or any references to things that most native speakers know, and maybe his mask hides the accent, or he just learnt to speak in a way that didn’t have a strong accent.

That would also explain why he had nearly 100% in every English test he took.

“Yeah, asked them whether they were, and I got no answer, it would make a lot of sense though.” Shouta sighs, he was on his 10th cup of coffee, and he was going over the tests over and over again to try and find any other information.

But with his newest revelation, he decided to take a break and call the detective. He could tell that Tsukauchi was slowly beginning to want the best for Fil, just like he did. So he didn’t feel bad for sharing this info with him.

But to his surprise, Naomasa insists on coming over right that second. And while he’s looking over the paper’s he starts mumbling.

“Both of you need to sleep.” Mic says, shaking his head slowly in disapproval.

“He faked his handwriting.” Tsukauchi answers, though it wasn’t exactly meant to be directed towards Present Mic. “You can see how he kept trying to go faster, but he had to focus and change it instead.”

“Figured, he’s too smart to leave something too identifying inside those tests.”

“Except a nationality apparently.” Naomasa smirks.

But said smirk disappears quickly when he starts going through other subjects, and when he sees the mess that the kid’s education is, all he can do is put his head into his arms and contemplate his life choices.

“Yeah, it’s bad...” Aizawa hits his shoulder.

“It’s terrible, how can someone be so smart and so dumb at the same time?” The detective sighed. “You’re going to teach him, right?”

“Yeah, he needs it.” Aizawa ran his hand through his hair. He was going to have to work a lot more now, but if he’s being honest, he doesn’t mind. He’s glad to find someone who wants to be taught. The students at U.A all seem to apply thinking that they’ll become heroes the second that they enter the building. So this was a nice change.

***

Fil sits inside the bar, he was waiting for Eraserhead. He told the hero to meet him here 20 minutes ago. And Filius was late himself! Seriously, how late do you have to be to be later than the person who’s late?

That was the worst sentence I’ve ever heard. Max scoffs from the chair next to Filius. He decides to just ignore him.

A couple of people have talked to him already, multiple of his past clients were wondering why he was there so early.

He probably shouldn’t have taken Eraser to the lounge, but to anyone who wasn’t aware of the many villains in the place, it was just a regular bar. And who knows, maybe Aizawa will recognise a coworker or two. Fil was sure that many underground heroes came here. It was an easy way to gather intel. And the people inside the lounge accepted most.

Most.

Fil was tired of waiting, and Eraserhead wasn’t answering his texts. Or the one call he made. So he decided to just go to his apartment. Like a completely sane person.

Okay, maybe he didn’t remember exactly where Eraserhead lived, but he remembered the general area, and after that, he could just follow Present Mic’s quirk.

Filius climbs up the fire escape, ending up in the window to the guest room. He doesn’t see any other easy ways to get inside the apartment, unless he wants to try to defy gravity and climb up a pipe.

He tries to knock on the window, and after a few seconds, Present Mic comes into the room and opens the window.

“Hello there, little listener.” Fil looked at him, confused. The man was speaking English.

“Uh… hi?” he answers in English as well, trying to gauge the situation.

Filius climbs into the apartment, Mic shuts the window behind him. The warmth of the apartment hits Fil like a truck, suddenly making his hoodie way too hot for him to stay in. He takes off his gloves, he figures that Mic wouldn’t try to steal his fingerprints.

They walk into the living room, and Filius can swear that he sees something moving around in the corner of his eye.

“You can sit on the couch. Shouta got a little bit held up, so he’ll be late. Do you want some tea?” Fil sits down on the couch, cringing when he sees the stain from his own blood. Now that he thinks about it, did he change his blood colour then? Probably, Eraserhead didn’t ask about it. And the stain seems to have been red.

After a minute, Present Mic places a dark blue mug with a lightning strike going through it, and text that says ‘PYHU’ on the glass coffee table. “Hot chocolate, I forgot to pick up tea at the store today” He chuckles, before seemingly realising something and asking. “Need me to poison test it?”

Fil looks over to the side, to anyone else, he looks as if he were looking out the window. But in reality, he was looking at Max.

No poison.

‘and?’

Max scowled. I’ll search for camera’s ‘n shit. He was oddly moody today.

“No need.” He speaks up again, turning his head back to Present Mic. He picks up the mug and starts to drink the hot chocolate, using the metal straw he was given, grateful he didn’t have to mess with his mask again.

Present Mic took the silence as a cue to start another interrogation. “How do you know English so well?” He asks, sitting right next to Fil—still keeping his distance, he’s just closer now, and Fil doesn’t know what to think about it.

“My parents wanted me to be bilingual, they made me and my siblings speak English.” He’s used to these lies, he’s practised the answers to these exact questions long before. He knew people would find out eventually, and he needed a good enough excuse. So saying sentences that are somehow true and untrue at the same time comes easily to him now.

“You prefer English or Japanese?”

“Don’t care either way.” He shrugs, looking around the apartment for Max. He’s kind of glad that Eraserhead wasn’t home since now he can actually search the place.

“Say, why ‘Filius?’” Mic tilts his head.

Fil looks back at him, he finishes the hot chocolate and stands up to go wash the mug. Present Mic watches him, clearly still waiting for a response. When he comes back to sit on the couch, he finally speaks up.

“I don’t really like small talk.”

Hizashi’s eyebrows furrow for a second before he goes back to his cheerful persona. He’s clearly trying to make himself seem less aggressive, he wants Filius to trust him. Which means that this was probably planned by the detective and Eraser.

Present mic takes a deep breath. “Alright then. Do you ever think about the past and see the things that you could’ve done differently, and then all you can think about is how stupid you were for not realising what you could’ve done instead?”

Fil looks over at the man, he probably looks like an idiot at that moment, because Yamada laughs.

“I’m just playing, kiddo. Ya don’t have to answer that. Not that you would’ve anyway.”

This time, Filius chuckles.

They’re both silent for a while. Nobody has any more questions, and if they do, they’re too scared to ask them. Fil decides to text Eraserhead that he changed the meeting place for their study session. And while he’s looking down at his phone, Present Mic decides to start up the conversation again. “You know… If you uh- If you ever need somewhere to crash, you can always come here.”

“I have an apartment.” Fil replies coldly, he wasn’t a charity case, he didn’t need their help. He was doing perfectly fine.

The place is clear, no cameras, no bugs, no nothing. Max appears beside him, and Filius has to physically stop himself from jumping up. Apparently, he was terrible at doing so because Mic looks at him confused.

But he doesn’t have time to ask because Aizawa walks in through the front door, hanging his scarf on a hook near it.

“Oh, hi, Fil.” Eraser walks over to the kitchen, making himself some coffee before sitting down next to Filius.

And so, they studied. After some time, Mic went into the bedroom to go to sleep. They ended at around 11 pm. The next visit went about the same. Aizawa and Filius filling in any gaps in his education, making sure that he knows the basics before moving on to the complicated things. Sometimes Eraserhead would learn small bits of Fil’s past, like how his sister taught him how to grow weed properly—that was a very odd and yet very interesting conversation.—And that many of his siblings had an urge to be strong for some reason.

Eraserhead listened, sometimes he added in a question or a grunt. But he mostly let Filius speak during those times.

Many weeks passed, and he could already see much improvement in Filius’ knowledge, mostly in his Japanese. Every time they met, it went by quickly. Fil was a quick learner for the most part. Except for the topics he didn’t understand. For those, he needed the topic to be explained around 8 times, all in different ways. During those days, Aizawa wanted to rip his hair out.

Another fairly noticeable thing was the slight weight gain. Filius sometimes managed to stop by right when the two pro heroes were eating dinner, so whenever they could, they fed him. Well, maybe they decided to push back dinner by some time just to make sure that Fil always had a full meal he could eat. And after a few weeks, the kid seemed healthier, more muscles were showing through his shirt, which he repaired at some point. And during patrol, he fought quicker and better.

Everything was going great, it seemed like life was finally starting to look up for him, he had a teacher to prep him for U.A, he was slowly but surely gaining money for his apartment, he had friends—shocker, I know—and he was significantly stronger.

It was a warm day. Filius decided to take the long way home, it was a really pretty day after all. The sun was already going down, painting the sky in beautiful tones of orange and red. It was supposed to be a good day, it was going great until that point.

He hung out with Midoriya, spoke a bit with Shinsou, and finished an easy job.

And yet, it all came crashing down the second he walked onto the street leading to the library. At first, all he saw was the bright light coming from the corner, then he felt many quirks surrounding it. He was still in costume, so he had to be careful. He felt a few quirks inside the building, so it couldn’t be that bad, right?

Well, apparently it was way worse than what he’d imagined.

The library was on fire. The whole building was collapsing. Police and firefighters were gathered all around it, trying to put the fire out.

Fil was about to head back and let them handle it, but then he remembered the quirks from inside. 2 to be specific, one of which he recognised way too well.

He ran inside, not caring that the police shouted after him to get back. He didn’t care, his mask could take it. But she couldn’t, and he won’t let anyone he knows die. Not again.

It was hot, but after his fight with Endeavour, he was pretty used to that feeling. There was rubble falling from the roof, the shelves fell over and obstructed the way. It was difficult to move around, but he had to.

He made his way over to where he felt the quirk and found Ollie; she was still conscious, but she was covered in blood. He quickly takes her out of the rubble and carries her over to the exit, He sees the detective. Looking right at him, someone must’ve called him to say that Filius was there. Seriously, how did he get there that fast, though? Fil didn’t think about it too much, he just focused on finding the other person that he could feel.

The fire was making it really difficult for him to make out where they were. He walked around in the general direction, eventually finding a mother with her child. He was surprised that there were two people there, but kids under 4 usually didn’t have quirks, so it did make sense that he couldn’t feel them. He helped them escape, going back in for a third time. Considering that he once again forgot that quirkless people aren’t going to be picked up by his quirk. This time, he will make sure that there isn’t a quirkless person inside the building before leaving. But it seemed like there really wasn’t anyone else.

 Eventually, the fire was put out. After everyone left, the sky was a deep black. Not even the stars wanted to show up on that day.

But it was fine, he could just find another library to get books from, right? He did it once, he could do it again.

Filius walked back into the library, sneaking through the police tape. He looked around the now-black and burned bookshelves, the entire place was destroyed. But who would do this? It was obvious that someone started the fire deliberately, but why? It was a simple library. Maybe they didn’t like the mean librarian, but then they should’ve burned it on the day that she was working. And Fil was sure that nobody had a grudge against Ollie. She was a sweetheart.

He was confused, well, up until he saw it.

The wall he was standing in front of was the wall of the corner he usually went to whenever he studied. The place was weirdly cleaner than the rest of the building. But now it seems like it was done like that on purpose. A sentence was burned into the exposed bricks, ‘He’s waiting, Filius.’

He? Which he? Father? Who wrote this? Did he anger some villain?

His thoughts were racing, he was the reason the library burned. There was a villain right next to him, burning this into the wall while he was focused on saving others, and he didn’t even feel him there. He never once realised that another quirk was present inside the building.

He could’ve stopped them, he could’ve interrogated them and learnt something. How could he have messed up on something so stupid?

It was getting hard to breathe, his vision was blurry. If Father really did send someone to write this, it means that he wants Fil to come back. He can’t go back, he can never go back. He worked so hard to run away the first time. He was going to save his siblings. He was going to help them regain their freedom. He wouldn’t get locked up again.

But what if it wasn’t about father? It had to be something relating to the cult. It was written fully in English. If it were some petty villain from an organisation he took down, they’d write it in Japanese. But no, in the cult, they made sure that he was speaking English. And now, Father has found a way to torture Filius even when he wasn’t in the same room, even when he wasn’t on the outside, even when he hadn’t even seen him. But somehow, something as minor as a language reminded Filius about everything that happened.

He remembered everything, the guilt, the pain and the pride. He remembers how Father always looked at him as if he were a bug, something that he could crush with his shoes. And maybe he could. Maybe that was all he was to him.

He remembered how he didn’t feel like he was himself, how his body wasn’t his. He wasn’t, and still isn’t his body, or his mind, or every other part of him.

It’s not him, and it can never be. Even if he wants to forget it all. He can never run away from Father.

He could feel his brain against his skull, his fangs were once again aching, he felt the blood flowing through his veins, and every small action that his body made. It felt disgusting, as if bugs were constantly crawling underneath his skin.

He wanted to rip it all out, he needed to get rid of that feeling. He needed to mould his body back into who he once was. Maybe then he would finally feel better, and he could do it. If only he tried more. If he were stronger and if he wasn’t as pathetic as he is. He could feel good.

If anybody else were in his position, they would’ve done everything so much differently.

“Hey, hey, kid. It’s okay, breathe, just breathe.” Someone was holding him from behind, keeping his hands away from his body.

He looks back and notices Eraserhead looking at him.

His whole arms were bleeding now, somehow his blood was red. Max probably changed it when he felt Eraser getting closer. Something he was once again too stupid to notice.

He couldn’t breathe, no matter how much he tried. It was all too much. Fil wasn’t in control anymore, Max wasn’t either. His body was just a shell of emotions that resurfaced suddenly. But the world doesn’t wait for anyone to regain themselves.

He couldn’t just keep ignoring everything, he shouldn’t have even started doing all of this. If he wanted to defeat Father, he should’ve trained. Not whatever this is. He shouldn’t have talked with Eraserhead, he shouldn’t have befriended Midoriya, and he shouldn’t have made Filius. This was all wrong. It didn’t help him at all.

And apparently, Father was waiting.

Filius pushed Eraserhead away, the hero looked at him confused.

“Kid, give me your arms, you’ll bleed out at this rate.” There was a subtle, concerned undertone in his voice, and Fil hated it; he didn’t need to be taken care of. He didn’t need help. He didn’t need it now, and he didn’t need it when Endeavour attacked him.

He wasn’t a child, he wouldn’t get treated like one.

The scars were already healing anyway; bandaging them would only waste resources.

He needed to go. Home, to the facility, to a different city. Doesn’t matter; he needed to be away.

Away from Midoriya, away from Shinsou, away from the detective, and most importantly, away from Eraserhead and Present Mic.

Everyone was just distracting him from what’s important.

Nothing that he did was good enough, he was still weaker than Father. That needed to change, and apparently it needed to change quickly. He had to figure out who wrote that sign, and why they did it.

And well, if that meant doing some things that the general public wouldn’t agree with, so what? He had to know what to expect, he didn’t even know that Father had access to the outside. Well, it was kind of obvious that someone had to; he just never thought about it in this way. Would Father really tell someone to scare Filius into coming back? He would. He’d do anything if it meant that he got whatever he wanted.

And right now. He wanted Fil back in the facility, back with him, back to playing pretend.

Not this time. He isn’t getting that, he’s never getting that. He let Fil go once, and he’d rather die than return.

Everything was spinning, he couldn’t focus on anything. The sky was too dark to see anything. A part of him didn’t even know where he was going. Should he pack? Does he have anything to pack?

He wasn’t going to be taking his phone, or his laptop, or even his radio. He didn’t need them.

When he got into his apartment, he texted Midoriya and Shinsou, they needed to at least know that he hadn’t died.

“Hey, sorry but I won’t be around for some time. I’m okay, I just need to go somewhere. See ya when I return :]”

He hoped that it was enough; he turned off his phone and began looking through all of his things, seeing if he could take anything with him.

In the end, all he took were clothes. He would survive without anything else, but he couldn’t walk around with his costume on all the time. And well, Haruki could afford to get a reputation in a different city. Filius couldn’t.

He didn’t even know what city he was going to, it didn’t matter to him. It was a place where nobody would find him, somewhere where he could finally focus on everything. A place where no one would treat him like a child.

Something fell on his face, and he realised that it was snowing.

Ironic, the first time he sees snow after he gets out and it’s in the worst circumstances possible. When he was younger, he loved snow, but he didn’t care about it at that moment.

He shouldn’t care about it. He had other things to worry about.

Winter was finally there, officially. And he wasn’t going to be there to see it. He had work to do. He was way too lenient with himself in the past, but at least now he’s aware of it, so that he can change it.

His quirk was weak, way weaker than Father's. He did see him regain his whole leg in a matter of seconds. For Fil, something like that would take at least 20 minutes, if not longer. That just showed how much he still had to train. How much longer he have to do this in order to defeat Father. He knew that he could do it. He had to save his siblings.

They deserved freedom, they deserved to see the world just like he had.

It was beautiful after all.

He was sure that they’d all love it.

He shouldn’t be the only one who got out, and hey, he did tell Kaori that he would save everyone.

And well? Scout’s honour.

Haruki wasn’t a scout, but he had to make a joke at some point. He was never the type of person who could be serious all the time.

He didn’t know how long he’d been walking for, it was long, that’s for sure. He was out of the city too, he doesn’t know these streets. His head hurts because of all the new quirks. It would need some time to adjust. Nobody too powerful though. He knew that his head was picking up on All Might’s quirk too.

He noticed it the second he got out of the facility. Even when the man was in Tokyo, his quirk was too powerful for Haruki not to feel it.

He thought that he had got used to it. But now, the moment when he feels quirks attacking him mentally from every way possible, he can’t handle it. All Might really is Japan’s strongest hero. Endeavour didn’t even have half the power that he has.

It turns out that the snow is there to stay, seeing as it was snowing so hard that Haruki couldn’t see anything. So it seemed like his hiking trip was over.

He found an abandoned factory by a beach somewhere. The main town wasn’t far. He didn’t need Musutafu. He would come back after Father was no longer a threat.

Then he would become a hero. Only then.

Chapter Text

„Fuck!” Haruki shouts as he trips and falls onto a pipe below him, his ribs hurt. But before he can drop lower, he uses the blood that started dripping to make a tendril and hold himself up. The abandoned factory was pretty tall, he could train easily without anything holding him back. He had already seen many upgrades to his quirk. It was evolving. And he was getting stronger.

It was exactly what he came there to do.

He didn’t know how long it’d passed, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know how many days he’s been training. All that mattered was the fact that he was getting better.

So what if he could feel his stomach turn inside out from the hunger? What if he hasn’t been able to sleep for more than an hour max anytime he tries? He didn’t need food, and he didn’t need sleep.

Haruki lowers himself to the floor. As soon as he snaps the tendril, his ribs start healing and go back into place.

His healing is fast, faster than it has ever been before. And it can heal more intense wounds, fully conscious now. Before, it would only heal them when Max was in control. And considering how often he got hurt, Max had to be in control for a long time. But he didn’t need Max anymore. Not unless he was dying. He was glad, it meant that when he returned, his patrol could become better. Now he didn’t need to watch out for getting hit while fighting villains. And maybe it would make hiding wounds from Eraserhead easier, especially if he didn’t see the scars before they healed.

Haruki sighs, and he closes his eyes. It was dark outside. But that didn’t matter; he didn’t care about what time of day it was. He didn’t need that knowledge. All he needed was training.

Of course, he still ate; he wasn’t sure whether he could die from starvation, but he wasn’t about to find out. Though he only ate what was necessary. He shouldn’t need more. He should survive on what is required, and that’s it. He didn’t deserve anything more.

He doesn’t move for a while, and exhaustion overwhelms his entire body. He has been training for days without sleep now.

He was starting to see things, and he was unsure because of what. Maybe it was once again the regular hallucinations he had, maybe he was too starved to realise what was real or not, or maybe he was just so sleep deprived that there was a random floating banana in front of him. And well, that was his breaking point, when said banana floated away, he decided to go to sleep for that day.

He stood up and went over to the corner where he slept. There was a single dirty rug lying there. He didn’t need more. In fact, that was plenty.

He closes his eyes again. Hoping that he will be able to fall asleep. And that maybe he will be able to sleep for more than an hour.

Max stands in front of him, and he knows that this won’t last long. His quirk was stronger, which meant that Max was stronger. And now, he couldn’t defeat him anymore. But it was a good thing. It showed him how much he was gaining by doing this. It also showed him how much more he still had to train to be strong enough.

He didn’t get a lot of nightmares since he came there. His dreams were only fights with Max now. He didn’t mind it. It helped him train more; there was not a single moment of the day when he wasn’t training. There didn’t need to be.

The fight was quick, he dodged most of the attacks. He was faster; he knew how Max attacked. But Max knew how he fought too. And just like it always is, one slip-up and he was getting impaled by his own quirk.

A single second when he lowered his guard, and he lost. But that was how real fights went, he couldn’t afford to even take a second to think when he would be fighting Father.

He wanted to think that he was also training, that Father was preparing for the fight as well. But he knew that wasn’t true, Father was too confident; he thought that Haruki could never defeat him. But he was wrong, he would prove him wrong.

When he woke up, he immediately went back to training. He had no time to waste after all. The feeling of his quirk was now constantly filling his veins. It was there before; he knew that whenever he found a new use for his quirk, he could feel it evolving. But it was smaller before. Barely noticeable. Now, though? It was all he could feel. He’d get used to the feeling in a few minutes, and he’ll return to feeling nothing but hunger. He didn’t care; he could feel the strength he possessed for a small period of time. And it was what secretly kept him going.

But there was something more there, something he hadn’t felt for a long time.

Sometimes, whenever he was around someone, he could feel his brain screaming at him. Talking about their quirk, he could feel their power mixing in with his. Haruki didn’t know what that meant; he didn’t want to know. Because there was no logical explanation for his quirk somehow trying to merge with someone else’s power. It made no sense. He knew what his quirk was, and yeah, maybe he didn’t know all parts about it, like why he could sense other quirks, or why he could always spot the slight slimmer of the same quirks as the people’s around him deep inside. But he knew the most important parts. And nothing of his quirk should be doing that.

But right now. He could feel it; whenever he tried to focus on his quirk, he could see the aura it produced. Inside of his chest, he could feel stars appearing; they were all black, but somehow still shone. He could feel the small aura that it made; he didn’t know what part of his quirk did that. Technically, it shouldn’t have an aura, but it did. Every quirk did, he could always see them. Or well, more feel them. If he closed his eyes, he could see them. It was similar to echolocation in bats back when he was researching it.

And then, deep inside those stars, he could feel it, other colours and strengths. They were his, and not at the same time. He didn’t know what that meant, and maybe he was too scared to find out.

His training today was the same as last week. He didn’t know what day it was. He’d forgotten that a long time ago. Now he was just circulating between 5 different workouts. That was how he measured time. It was wrong; he probably messed up many times. He remembers a few days when he did two different workouts. Some days he forgot completely. It didn’t matter to him. He didn’t have to remember his training; his body did. And he knew that it remembered.

The snow was covering the ground outside. He sometimes used it for his training. The cold weather helped him. He had to be prepared for everything. He didn’t know where or when he’d fight Father. But who knows, maybe it’ll be somewhere snowy, or during winter. So he had to be prepared to use it to his advantage.

He fell again, messing up some fighting move he was trying to perfect. His face slammed into the snow. He could taste copper on his tongue. But the feeling quickly disappeared.

---

“What are ya making over there, kiddo?” Fil asks, looking at his sister.

She was sitting by a table, something mechanical in her hands. Oddly, it had no glitter on it yet.

“Just something that Nea wanted.” She responds, moving her hair away from her eyes.

Bea was always tinkering with something, unless she was playing with her sister, of course. Nea had the ideas for the items, and Bea made them a reality. They were an inseparable duo. Mostly because of their power.

Having shared thoughts with someone was something that Filius was too familiar with. But at least he didn’t have to worry about the other person sharing his secrets with anyone. It must be exhausting for them.

It was always odd, seeing Father bring more people into the cult that already had powers. Fil assumed it to be something he gave them when he saw them, a welcoming gift of sorts. But, something always seemed weirdly off about it all.

Because who would give two 10-year-olds a power? Why would they even need that? They’re ten, Filius was sure that they would appreciate something as small as a toy more.

They didn’t need to be burdened with this; having power was a huge responsibility. And they were just children.

But he never understood Father’s intentions. And the man never cared to explain them; he understood why. He never explained himself either. He didn’t need to. The only thing that was different was that if someone asked Filius about something that he did, he’d answer. When Filius asked Father why he did something, he got slammed into a bookshelf.

Something in him just hoped that they got their powers in a more child-friendly way.  He wouldn’t want anyone to go through something like he did when he was gaining his power.

But none of his siblings ever said anything about any crazy experiments that Father did to them. So he just assumed that there was a different way for them to gain powers without the pain.

He looked at the item in Bea’s hand, it was small. He couldn’t really tell what it was; that was pretty normal for them. He wouldn’t ask; her creations were too personal. And he wouldn’t like getting asked what the notes in his room were of, so unless Bea wanted to tell him about what she made, he didn’t pry. And this time, it seemed like she did.

“She uh.. wanted to combine multiple of her favourite items together. Just so that she could have them all the time.” Bea says, keeping her gaze on the workbench. “I’ll add the glitter later.”

Fil chuckles, they loved glitter. Everything they had was covered in it. Even if Bea preferred darker colours, mainly cause they hid stains better. Anything she could cover in glitter, she did. And that did include half of the town that one time. The peacekeepers no longer liked kids after having to clean glitter all day, every day, for a few months. Whenever Filius walks past the area that was covered in pink glitter, he can still spot it in places.

Cleaning glitter is hard, and the peacekeepers were probably too tired to be bothered with it. The town wasn’t pink anymore, and that was enough for them. Who cares if it was way too shiny?

“It looks great, as always.” He answers, sitting down on his knees next to the workbench. He can see Bea smiling softly. He liked the peacefulness, as per the unspoken rule in the castle. No sibling will be alone—unless they want to.—Though the rule didn’t really apply to the older ones. Since they had many things to do during the day, they couldn’t hang out with the others. But still, the little ones always had someone with them. Even if the castle was safe for them. Loneliness is an ugly emotion.

So Filius didn’t mind hanging out with Bea when she was making something. Sure, the room was quiet. His sister didn’t like speaking much; she did want him in the room, though. She just liked hanging out in silence. And he wouldn’t force her to talk.

Suddenly, Nea runs into the room screaming.

“Haru put slime in my hair!” She runs to Filius, jumping onto him when she’s close enough. She had a small patch of green slime on her blonde hair.

Haru is walking right behind her. “I didn’t mean to! She got too close!” He shouts. “I can’t exactly turn it off!”

Haru was practically fully slime. It was his power; he dripped anywhere that he went. Filius didn’t know how that worked, but he didn’t really care. It did get him in trouble many times, simply because someone found slime in a place where Haru was supposed to have no access to.

“Alright, calm down. We’ll just wash it out. It isn’t a big deal.” Filius says, sighing. There wasn’t a lot of slime, and it would be easy to get rid of. But of course, his siblings always had to overreact. He didn’t mind, though; it was their charm.

---

He gets his consciousness back, he didn’t know how long he was out for. He felt angry. Not at anything that happened, at himself. It was a small fall, why did he pass out? It was pathetic.

If something so small can make him pass out, how is he supposed to fight Father? He had to get up quickly and resume training.

His whole body hurt, but he had to do this; there was no other way to get better than to practice. Last time he did this, he didn’t want to get up again. Maybe he really wouldn’t this time? Does he really want that? He already prepared everything, so it would be a waste not to do it now.

His thoughts scared him. So, before he could focus on them too much. He jumped.

The cold water engulfed him, he was going lower and lower. He was holding his breath. It was freezing, and he could feel his finger twitching. He was in a tank top and shorts after all. And maybe it was good enough while he was working out and sweating, but now? Now he could feel every part of his body getting colder. If he were out of the water, he would be shivering.

He lets himself sink for a while, a part of him wants to stay.

Maybe if he stayed, someone would find him, and then he’d return to life because of his quirk again. Or maybe he’d float up to the surface, and then he’d wake up again.

He didn’t have to necessarily die if he kept going down.

Maybe he would just lose consciousness. Feel numb for a bit, and then go back to training.

So what if he’s lying the wrong way for him to be able to breathe when he’s up?

So what if he can’t feel anyone even remotely close?

So what if he hasn’t seen anyone come in this direction for the whole time he was training?

So what if he closes his eyes?

And what if he hopes the dread that he feels inside his heart will be gone?

But, it doesn’t last long. His quirk reaches out and grabs a nearby tree to knock him out of the water. He didn’t even know he was bleeding.

He wasn’t; he could feel one of his eyes aching. He was dying. He nearly died. He could see the black marks going from under his eye to his fingertips. His quirk activated on its own.

It stopped him.

He was coughing, breathing hurt, and his blood felt weird. He assumed it had something to do with the fact that he had jumped into a frozen pond.

His quirk was already trying to warm him. He had no idea how it knew what he needed. It was as if it had a mind of its own, and in a way, it did.

His body was shaking, and he tried to ignore it.

He had to go back to training. And he had an idea of what to do. It would help him.

Okay, maybe this was a terrible idea, maybe when he nearly drowned, he should’ve realised that he shouldn’t do this. That he didn’t have enough self-preservation to do this.

But he didn’t care; his body ached. It felt as if it was asking him to do this, as if it needed it.

The orange light travelled up his face. His body wasn’t used to different temperatures, and he was trying to change that. Who knows when you’ll have to fight Endeavour again? And during that fight, he was practically K.O.’d after a single hit. He hated it. He should’ve been able to take more. It was just fire after all.

Just fire.

He looked down at the warm flames in front of him. He needed to do this. He couldn’t have any weaknesses like this. He had to get used to the feeling. He needed to make sure his body remembered how it felt.

He was close to the pond; he could jump in if anything got too out of hand. Did he actually want to, though?

He pushed his thoughts to the side again. Deciding to shut them off again.

He steps closer to the small campfire he made. He pushes his hand into it. He could feel it burning, then healing, then burning again, and it was like that over and over again. It hurt, obviously it hurt, as if he was currently being brutally tortured.

And maybe he was, maybe this could be considered torture. He didn’t care; he never cared about anything these days.

He could feel the exact moment that his hand regenerated, and the exact moment that it burned once more.

He kept it in the fire until the time between it getting burned started to slow down. Until his skin got thicker. Until it learned how to deal with this.

He yearned more; he wanted to feel more of this. He didn’t know why, but it felt familiar. He felt like he did back then.

He really did miss this feeling.

It was pathetic of him.

He used to swear that he wouldn’t go back.

He hated the idea of coming back to him.

But then, why did this feeling give him such euphoria? Why did the fire comfort him? Why did his training feel so distant yet so familiar at the same time?

Why does the pain make him feel like himself?

He felt disgusting. It was all wrong. He was wrong. He shouldn’t feel like this.

Haruki moved away from the fireplace, watching his hand regenerate. Not a single scar was left on him. And the old ones he had on his right hand seemed to have disappeared, though, it made sense, he did just burn off the skin on his hand over and over again.

 Another good part about the training. He didn’t scar as easily as before. Even if he barely scarred before.

Now, it was nearly impossible for anything to leave a scar.

It was a comforting feeling, and he didn’t know why.

He shouldn’t be doing this; he knows that.

If any of his siblings saw him in that moment, he’s sure that they’d look at him in disappointment. He was still too weak. He deserved that. They wouldn’t understand. He can’t get stronger otherwise.

And so, he continues. Until eventually he decides that it’s enough. That he would be able to easily survive another fight with Endeavour. Even if he got engulfed in flames, he would be fine.

He was lying on his back, looking up at the stars, he didn’t bother changing. He had washed the smoke that was on him off already. It was cold, he was on the snow. But the sky looked beautiful today. He couldn’t go back inside, not now.

He could feel his fingers shaking. He put the fire out a long time ago. It was unbearably cold. Yet, a part of him didn’t want it to stop.

His throat closed up, but he didn’t cry. He can’t bring himself to. It wouldn’t do anything. It would only make him feel even weaker.

So he keeps looking at the stars.

He feels alone. Max hasn’t been showing up. He didn’t know why. But at least he has the stars.

---

“How do shooting stars look?” Nea asks, but the question wasn’t directed towards Filius.

“Small, white spots on the black sky, slowly moving across it.” Bea answers

They were lying on the grass inside one of the gardens outside the castle. They were looking up, he wondered whether his sisters were disappointed that the stars here were fake. Did they even realise it? He thought about it every time he looked up. The stars, even if they were well done, looked fake. They were especially fake to him since he was the one to make them. Whenever he flew up onto the dome roof of the castle, he could see the stars around him.

Not even above, just right next to his face. He missed real stars.

Did his sisters do too?

They were young, but surely they noticed that the stars were different. And yet Nea’s question broke him. How can she not know what a shooting star looked like?

He wanted to show her one.

He wanted to one day point at the sky and tell her to make a wish. It was a silly dream, but inside of the facility. He relied on those.

And maybe every dream that he had was silly. Maybe none of them were worth pursuing, at that moment, though. He ignored those thoughts. Deciding to just stare up, imagining that the sky above him is real.

 “Why can’t we go outside?” Nea asks again.

Filius can feel that Bea had the same question in her head, she just didn’t want to ask.

He sighs, kids were really something. He could never get used to getting asked questions like these at random times.

“Because of Father, but we will go out. I promise, and I’ll show you as many shooting stars as I can find.”

She laughed, and a smile appeared on her face.

It was another thing that Filius relied on, the happiness of his siblings. It was another silly thing. But to him, there was nothing better than seeing any of his siblings having fun. They were all still kids; they all deserved to have fun.

And he would help them escape, so that they could have as much fun as possible. With no one stopping them.

He was sure that the twins were currently talking. They always were, maybe they were plotting their next glitter attack, maybe they were relieving some old memories, or maybe they were trying to figure out what question to ask next.

He never knew, and he never wanted to. It wasn’t his conversation; he wouldn’t ask.

So he kept looking up.

---

He felt sick, he kept remembering his siblings. He hated it, he knew that he missed them. He wants to get them out more than anything. But he can’t do that until he’s stronger. If he attacked Father now, he would just lose and get them all in danger.

He couldn’t stay on the ground anymore. He went inside of the abandoned factory. He picked up his bag, which was untouched. He only changed out of his costume once when he came here; he saw no point in changing out of the tank top. He didn’t have a way to wash his clothes anyway. And he didn’t really care if he smelled. He always did.

He had to get his thoughts back on track. Or at least silence them. He knew how to do that. He remembers how he used to do it with Raine back at the facility. After a long day, they were both tired, and Raine said that it wasn’t a big deal. It was something that no one would bat an eye at; in the end, Filius was the prophet. Anything that he does is right. If he didn’t do it that night. Would it have been different?

The first time he did it, he puked so hard. Raine was laughing at him, so he decided to drink more. And then he puked again. It was funny when he looked at it now.

He knew that he shouldn’t do it. He didn’t like doing it at the facility, and he won’t like doing it here. But he didn’t want to deal with his thoughts anymore. They were too overwhelming, too many of them. His head felt cramped and empty at the same time. And he didn’t know what else to do. Nothing else helped; anything he did only made it worse. So maybe this would work. It worked back then.

He enters the small store, the clerk was busy talking to another client. He had some money; he found it in the pocket of one of his hoodies. It felt as if the world was judging him. He knew that the shopkeeper wouldn’t care that he was underage, he wouldn’t ask for any ID, he would just sell it to him.

When the other client finally left, he walked up to the register. He didn’t know which one to get. He never found out which ones were the ‘good ones’ or if there even were good ones and bad ones. He assumed that there were. At the facility, he let Raine choose for him. And he hasn’t done this on the outside yet.

So he picks at random. He heads out of the store with the bottle in hand. This was too easy. It was both a good thing and a bad thing. He didn’t want any other kids to have easy access to things like this. But he needed it tonight.

And yeah, maybe that made him a hypocrite, but is that really a new thing?

He sat on a bench, probably not a good spot to be chugging vodka. But the view was pretty. And he couldn’t feel anyone around him.

The first sip was the worst, it stung. But he didn’t care, the pain only made him want it more. And isn’t that fucked up?

He didn’t know how much he drank; all he knew was that his mouth tasted disgusting, he couldn’t focus on anything, the world was spinning, and that he was walking somewhere. He didn’t know where, but the way felt familiar.

Maybe he was going home. It was an idea. Maybe he could finally relax again; his quirk was actively stopping him from dying even when he didn’t want it to, so it seemed like a win. It was a good point to stop his training.

He didn’t know whether it was a good or bad thing that he was fine with returning. But he missed his radio, and his hammock, and patrolling with Eraserhead. And everything else.

So he decided to go home.

And it felt weird to call it that. Because the abandoned building wasn’t his home. What he was describing wasn’t that building. He didn’t know what it was, but it was something important to him. And he was ready to go back.

His hands still ached. Everything was cold, even if he had a hoodie on. He didn’t want to check whether he was currently freezing. He knew that he was; he didn’t remember when he stopped holding the bottle. He just hoped that he didn’t litter.

His legs were giving up on him. He wanted to keep going, but it seemed like they wouldn’t listen anymore.

Go to the hobo.

He stared in shock at Max. He didn’t see him before. He wasn’t aware that he had returned, it felt better, less lonely.

‘What? Why?’

Just go.

And he couldn’t respond, mainly because he was already facing an alleyway, puking up anything that he had in his stomach. Though it was mostly empty.

When he finally stopped, Max was gone again.

He felt his head throb once more, and who would’ve guessed that he was in front of Eraserhead’s apartment. He sighed, he knew that he wouldn’t have been able to go inside his room anyway. He wasn’t so great at parkour when drunk.

He digs out his mask from the bag he was glad he took and puts it on, not bothering with adjusting the settings. If he sounds like a gremlin when he speaks, then Eraserhead would at least know exactly how he feels.

He also puts on the black beanie with blue horns. He liked that one, even if he only wore it when he was in his costume. It was cute.

He didn’t have his contacts with him, so he just decides to change his eye colour with his quirk. He was glad that his fangs have grown out fully now. Apparently, the process was quickened because of his training. At least now he could easily bite through his skin so that he could access his blood. And just as quickly as it appeared, the scar heals up and disappears.

He noticed the dining room window was open, and like a completely sane person. He climbs up the pipe next to it and jumps into Eraserhead’s apartment.

Immediately when he stands up, someone is moving closer to him.

“Where the fuck have you been?!” Aizawa says, walking up to Fil and… hugging him? He didn’t expect that. The hero’s eyes widen, he probably smelled the vodka on him. Or realised something else, there’s a long list of things he could’ve realised to pick from. He can feel Present Mic’s quirk getting closer, and suddenly he feels as if he will puke again.

He pushes Eraserhead away and runs to the bathroom. Slipping his mask up onto his nose, he vomits again.

He didn’t know how he could vomit now. He was sure that he had puked everything out the last time.

Present Mic places a glass of water next to him before going back into the kitchen.

Aizawa sits down next to him and pats his back.

“How much did you drink?”

He pulls away from the toilet and leans against the wall, drinking the water.

“A lot.” Filius answers, but his words slur together. He’s surprised at the action, he thought that speaking would feel weird after not speaking to anyone in such a long time, but he shouldn’t slur because of it.

He then remembers that since he last spoke, his fangs grew back. And it all makes much more sense now.

He hopes that Eraserhead will just assume it to be the alcohol. He looks at the hero next to him, he looks more tired than usual. His hair was a mess, he looked as if he drank 10 energy drinks.

And as if he needed 10 shots.

And Filius nearly laughs, but before he can, he looks over to Max. And then Eraserhead, and then Max again.

‘Oh, right, quirk training.’

And that time, Max is the one who laughs.

Aizawa sighs, he holds out a hand for Fil to take. Filius decides to stand up on his own. Ignoring everything that it implies, and the look on the man’s face that he cannot sort into any emotions that he has seen before.

“Sit on the couch.”

And Fil sits on the couch, right next to the still very visible stain from his blood. He should probably help clean that up. He has some experience with cleaning out blood stains. Though that’s mostly from clothes. But it can’t be that different. They’re both similar fabrics…probably?

After a few seconds, Eraserhead sits down next to Filius. He hands him an ice pack, which seems like overkill, but Fil takes it nonetheless.

His head hurt, and he didn’t know what from at this point. It could be from many things; chugging vodka was one of them. Present Mic and his quirk was another.

“Cold or hot coffee? Actually, don’t answer that. I can see how you’re shivering from here.” Aizawa sighs and stands up again.

“Sho, you know that coffee won’t magically sober him up. Right?” Present Mic says, Filius can feel his eyes on the back of his head.

Filius wondered whether they had any headache meds. He didn’t know whether Ibuprofen still existed in this century, though he wasn’t exactly picky about the brand.

He looks back. Staring into the green eyes of the voice hero. He was hoping to manifest a telepathy quirk again. He didn’t seem to understand what Fil meant. He looked at him with a concerned expression, and then looked down at the floor.

“We can’t read your mind, kid.” Eraser comes back with a black mug in his hand. He hands Filius the coffee.

The metal straw wasn’t in it. Filius couldn’t drink it. The only way to drink it would be to take his mask off completely or spill it.

He stared at Eraserhead.

He didn’t want to ask for the straw; talking was tiring, and he was already making them do too much.

“Do you… Not like coffee? I’ve seen you chug energy drinks back when you came over to study. It’s not that different.”

“Shouta… Coffee and energy drinks taste nothing alike!” Mic shouts from the kitchen, he stares at Aizawa with an expression that Fil can’t help but chuckle at. “Besides, how is he supposed to drink that?” The blond walks over and puts the metal straw inside the mug.

“Thanks.” Filius says, picking the mug up. He thinks nothing of what he says; he’s thanked the two heroes for many things over the past few months. But he sees Eraserhead smirk. He looks at him, tilting his head in confusion.

“You used to be so quiet whenever saying that when I met you. Now you say it in the same tone as your other words.”

“Oh.”

They sit in silence while Fil drinks his coffee, it was bitter. Aizawa clearly didn’t add any sugar. Filius didn’t mind it, but he would’ve preferred it to be at least a little sweet.

Soon, Present Mic walks into the living room, holding a plate of curry with rice. It looks delicious. Way better than the things Fil was eating before.

The hero sits down on the other couch. Fil takes off the middle of his mask and starts eating. The food is as tasty as it looks. The blond was amazing at cooking, Fil couldn’t tell whether that was a surprise or not.

When he finishes the food, he fixes his mask and stands up to go wash the plate. But Eraserhead pushes him back on the couch.

“Leave it on the coffee table. We gotta’ talk.” His tone was stern, something that Filius should be used to. But for some reason, this seemed different. Something that he didn’t see the hero do before. He was confused, and he felt as if something was about to happen.

Fil puts the empty plate on the coffee table and looks at the man.

Aizawa takes a deep breath. Pinching his nose bridge.

“Just—why?” he asked, his voice a mix of confusion, concern, and disappointment.

“…Wanted to stop thinking.” Fil stares at the rug under his feet. He still has his boots on. He’s being rude. He should’ve taken them off as soon as he jumped in through the window.

He can see how Present Mic tenses up at his words out of the corner of his eye.

“Well, that too. But Fil… You were gone for a month. You disappeared right after I saw you in that library. No text. No call. You didn’t even say anything to me when you walked away. I saw you scratch your arms until you bled. I thought you were seriously injured, or worse.”

Filius didn’t know how to respond. Should he tell the hero about his Father? About his past? No. He couldn’t. Nobody will ever know. Nobody can know. If they do, Father might come for them too.

He sat in silence, fidgeting with his hands. He didn’t know how to even begin to answer Eraser.

After the hero realises that he wouldn’t be getting an answer, he sighs again.

“Look… I was worried sick. I had Tsukauchi send the police force to go looking for you. He was worried too!”

“No, he wasn’t! He’s trying to arrest me!” He shouts back. The detective didn’t care about him. Why would he? Why does Eraserhead care? He doesn’t deserve it. And this situation proves it.

“Yes, he was-”

“No! He wasn’t worried! And you shouldn’t have been either! It’s not my fault that you decided to care! I didn’t ask for it! I didn’t ask for your help! I didn’t ask to meet you! I would’ve been fine on my own if you didn’t distract me from training!” Fil stands up. He didn’t mean to snap. He didn’t mean to scream. He didn’t know why he did. It just felt like the only option for him at the time.

He felt like crying again. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He could feel his breathing speeding up. He sat up too quickly, and now everything was spinning as well.

“Kid. Sit down. It’s okay.”

“No! It’s not okay! Someone set that stupid fucking library on fire because of me! The fuck did you expect me to do? Not leave? Yeah sure! Next time, they’ll light my apartment on fire. And who knows? Maybe this one is next?! Did you really expect me to stay and wait for everything to quite literally burn?”

He wasn’t thinking. The alcohol was messing with his brain. He didn’t want to scream at Eraserhead. But his emotions were too much for him.

The hero looks at him. He doesn’t look shocked; he saw the writing on the wall too. He knows that someone is searching for him.

“We’ll be fine. We can deal with whatever villain wrote that. Sit back down, you’re in no shape to be walking around.”

“You won’t be fine! I couldn’t defeat Fa- … Him!” He tries to ignore the slip-up and hopes that the heroes didn’t notice, but by Aizawa’s expression. He knows that they did. They always notice it when he messes something up. “And trust me, my quirk is powerful. If he wants me. He’ll do anything.”

“Your quirk doesn’t matter. You’re drunk and clearly not thinking straight. I won’t let anyone take you. Now sit back down.”

Fil looks over to the window behind him. He wants to run; he has to go back to train. It was a mistake to come there. The window was now closed, and Present Mic was blocking the way.

“Listener, you should rest. It will help you, we can deal with anything else when you’re feeling better, okay?”

Filius hated the tone that Present Mic used. Like he was trying to talk to a scared child that he just rescued on patrol. As if he needed everything to be sugar-coated, or he would freak out.

He always despised people who spoke to him like that.

But he can’t hate Present Mic.

No matter how annoying that tone is. He can’t hate the man who took care of the graves that he abandoned for a year.

“Don’t talk to me like that.” His voice was shaking, he felt too weak. Everything was happening too quickly. He was tired, and his chest hurt.

He sat on the couch, bringing his knees up to his face, trying to hide his tears. He couldn’t keep them down anymore. So he just let them fall, hoping that they’re not too obvious. Even if the two heroes clearly notice every small thing that he does.

When he realised that he still had his boots on–and that they’re probably dirtying the couch with everything he ever walked on–he took them off, not looking up. He placed them next to the couch, right where the rug ended.

He doesn’t look up when a blanket is thrown over him or when Eraserhead places a hand on his shoulder.

He does look up when he gets handed a gamepad, though. He tilts his head in confusion, figuring that no matter what, his words wouldn’t come out right.

“Please tell me that you’re a teen who likes video games.” Present Mic chuckles, pointing to the TV behind him.

Filius took the gamepad and looked through what video games the two heroes had. Not many choices, most were new games he didn’t recognise.

He finally settled on an adventure game about time-travel. He thought that the two main characters were definitely gay for each other. But the game didn’t seem to have anything about them dating in it. Though he didn’t get to the end. So he might’ve been wrong.

***

Aizawa liked to think of himself as a pretty collected person. He was supposed to be a hero and a teacher after all. So he kind of had to be one.

But, when the vigilante he’s been meeting regularly for the past few months disappears after a traumatic event. He lost any resemblance of calmness inside of him.

Tsukauchi was already exhausting the police force’s resources by looking for him. He was going out on patrol every day. But there was absolutely no sign of Fil. He ran away with huge scars on his arms, which were still bleeding. So that part didn’t make him any more peaceful. The media has also noticed his disappearance, and many articles have already been written. None of them say anything useful. And the crime rate has spiked in the areas that he patrolled.

Shouta didn’t feel this stressed since when he was a teenager. And even then, it was because of trivial things like grades. But this was serious, nobody has heard from the vigilante. He’s been texting them non-stop, hoping that maybe one day he’ll get a long message explaining that they were fine, and that they just went to their siblings and his guardian.

Or that he quit vigilantism.

It would be an amazing text to receive, but there was nothing.

And the hero commission has been getting more annoyed with his case. Tsukauchi has been working on it for over a year now, and they’ve been making progress. But since Fil ran away, they’ve been pushing them to find him. As if he wasn’t trying his hardest.

Naomasa said it vaguely, but he implied that if they don’t get new information soon. They would send someone of theirs to handle the job. Which would be terrible for them, and the vigilante.

He tried to ignore his headache; he hadn’t had a good night’s rest in a while. He didn’t care that his husband was practically begging him to take a break. He couldn’t stop. What if Filius is in danger?

He didn’t want to find him in an alleyway one day, lying dead on the floor, simply because he skipped out on patrol the day before.

Luckily that never happened, as the next day—or night—Filius just climbs through his window, acting as if nothing happened.

And he reeked of alcohol. It made Shouta want to throw up simply by being in his vicinity.

He could see the slight tremble in their movements, the way that their skin seemed to be sickly pale, and the way that they had lost at least a few kilos since they’ve been gone.

Before he could ask questions, the vigilante pushes him away and runs to the bathroom. He walks in behind him. Signing to his husband to bring him some water.

Hizashi brings the glass cup over to them and signs to Shouta that he will make something to eat.

“How much did you drink?” Aizawa asks when Fil is seemingly done puking.

“A lot.” Amazing answer, just the thing he was hoping to hear.

After the kid was sleeping, Shouta texted Tsukauchi to tell him that he’s finally back. The detective asked for details, but Aizawa just said that he would explain later. He was way too tired now; his own emotions were all over the place.

He was worried for the vigilante, but also so pissed at them for drinking, and for running away, he could’ve at least texted him.

But he was scared; that was understandable. Aizawa did many stupid things back when he was scared, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t ask for an explanation. Though maybe only when Filius has calmed down a bit and won’t explode on him.

He knew that the kid had problems, but someone was trying to track him down, willing to commit arson to threaten him was not something that he expected.

At least the video games seemed to calm him down.

He decided to end the day, and he went to sleep in bed with his husband.

***

Filius fucked up.

He knew that he did the second he woke up.

“Shouta! He was drunk! Don’t you remember back in the day? This isn’t some teenage rebellion!”

Present Mic’s voice is loud; that part is normal. The tone he was using was not.

It was clear that he was angry, Filius thought it was at him at first. But then he heard Aizawa answer.

“I don’t care if they’re going through something! We can’t just keep pretending that everything is fine! What if they disappear again?!”

They’re arguing because of you.

Max was staring right at the two pro heroes, who were in the kitchen. Shouting at each other about him while something was sizzling on the stove next to them.

Fil knows that this is the time he should go.

So he slowly gets up from the couch and searches for his boots.

“Then we’ll find him again! He came back on his own! You said it yourself that he’s starting to trust you! He just needs a little help! Something stable, something that won’t kick him out!”

Maybe it should’ve been more concerning to him. Maybe he should’ve cared about what the two heroes were arguing about. But he didn’t; if he focused on the conversation, he would’ve just gotten hurt again.

He would rather live without knowing what Eraserhead and Present Mic think about him.

“Hizashi, you haven’t seen what I did. He fought fucking Endeavour, simply because he wanted to! He nearly died! And now this? We need answers! I don’t care if he’s ready or not!”

Filius finds his boots and puts them on; his bag was next to the couch, so it was easy to grab it as well. But sneaking over to the window. That would be more challenging. The kitchen was right next to the window after all. And the counters that separate the dining room from the kitchen won’t help hide him much.

“Do you even hear yourself right now?! God! I can’t with you right now! Shouta! Pushing him for answers will only make him less likely to tell you things in the future! You know this!?”

He slides the window open.

“I know that I know Hizashi! But we don’t have tim- Fuck kid!” Before Aizawa can react, Filius jumps out of the window.

He can hear him shouting something from the apartment, but he doesn’t listen. He runs, just like he did a month ago. This time, he would go to his apartment. He wanted to see Midoriya again.

He can barely see anything. It was still dark outside, he must’ve slept for a long time. Which made sense, since no matter what. His quirk will always be dampened by Erasure. So Max was weaker, which meant that he was able to fight for longer.

He felt another quirk heading towards him. It was strong, not enough to make his head hurt, but it was still clear that this was a pro.

And that’s just his luck, how amazing that he got into a chase right when he comes back to Musutafu.

He quickly jumps up a building, he can hear the fire escape rattle with footsteps. They’re quick. But Fil has been training for this. As much as he wants to show off his new powers, he cannot risk the public knowing what his quirk is. Too uncommon. The cold air was again hitting his face. He was still in his hoodie, and Aizawa did tell him that the police force was searching for him. So this is probably a side effect of that.

But he was found! They should’ve been called off as soon as he stepped through that window!

It’s Midnight.

‘WHAT’

It’s Midnight.

He nearly trips on the rooftop he was balancing on, he can feel Midnight suddenly halt. Stopping the chase. He recomposes himself and looks behind him, seeing if she will continue running.

“Come on, kiddo! I don’t want to hurt you! Just? Uh… wanna go for ramen? I heard teens like ramen.” She says her tone was odd. It wasn’t as patronising as Present Mic’s, but it wasn’t stern like Aizawa’s. Filius didn’t know how to react.

She was probably only lying to get him arrested. He moves backwards, getting ready to run.

“No!- no, please don’t run again. My heels were not made for that!” She tries to joke.

Filius looks her up and down, she was in civilian clothes. Which made sense as she was normally a daytime hero.

“Don’t you know not to stare at a woman? What is Shouta teaching you?”

He stiffens at the mention of Eraserhead. He once again gets ready to run.

“No! Wait sorry! Okay, bad joke! Uh- fuck… so ramen?” She asks again, smiling awkwardly.

Midnight was completely different in person than she was on TV or during interviews. She was literally the person who made laws for hero costumes.—Thanks, Midoriya, for that fact.

Filius just expected her to be more… assertive. But this was a weird situation. So he doesn’t really blame her for being out of character.

Fil, I swear to god if you actually accept that offer, I will torture you in your dreams. Literally.

Maybe Max was right, and he shouldn’t go eat ramen with a hero. But he was hungry, and kind of sick of the instant noodles he had at his place.

“Where?” He asks, his throat was dry, it was disgusting to speak. And his words still sounded wrong because of his fangs. He would have to get used to it soon. It would go back to normal in a day or two. He was sure that it would; everything like this usually lasts around that long until it magically fixes itself.

He wouldn’t want to change that, though; he was glad that the smaller problems he had just kind of… Resolved themselves. Without interference.

Midnight seems to light up at his question. “It’s just a street down, they have amazing food. You’ll love it.” Before he can answer, she adds. “I’ll pay, so don’t worry about that either kid!”

He was about to jump over, but he notices the pink gas surrounding him. His mask filtered it out, so he was still perfectly conscious.

“Oh! That’s still from the chase! It’ll float away quickly! I swear!” Midnight panics slightly.

Filius rolls his eyes and jumps over to her.

You’re so dead. Also, literally.

He ignores Max again. Waiting for the R-rated hero to lead him to the ramen shop. She looks at him confused before realising that he was waiting for her.

“Right! That way.” Midnight starts to walk back down the fire escape.

Fil looks down at the ground. He didn’t realise how hungry he was; the curry from yesterday didn’t help that much. Even if he did appreciate it.

“So, kiddo! What happened? Ya’ know, Shouta was losing his mind trying to find you.” She says her tone was once again cheerful.

He doesn’t answer, and Midnight doesn’t ask anymore.

She starts telling Filius stories, some from villain fights, some from her teen days. They’re all funny. Fil knows that she’s just talking to fill the silence. But he doesn’t tell her to stop, he likes to hear these things. And apparently, many fan “conspiracies” about her were in fact correct. Those things were fun to learn.

He didn’t know why Midnight was telling him those things, but he was glad she was, though.

They reached the ramen shop quickly. It was a small place, not many people around. The presumed owner waved to Midnight when she entered.

He was a pretty buff man with reddish horns. He was wearing a chef’s hat and an apron that had ‘I’m not old, I’m well-seasoned.’  Filius chuckled, and the man’s attention focused on him.

“Holy shit. You’re that vigilante who went missing!” Some other people from the kitchen looked over to stare at Fil, and he could feel himself wanting to die right in that moment.

“Don’t make the lil’ guy nervous, Kaz! And no photos! I see you over there, Kenji!” She says, pointing to a guy in the kitchen. His phone was already taken out and pointed at Fil. “Seriously, can’t a vigilante eat here?” Midnight shakes her head and sighs.

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll get my guys in order.” The man leans forward on the counter to talk to Filius. “You’re gonna have to forgive them. Ya know, it’s not every day that a famous vigilante visits our small shop.”

Fil nods, he understood what it’s like to meet someone that the media has been talking about, he did meet Present Mic on a regular basis.

Midnight hands him a small menu. “Pick something while I talk to my buddy, alright?”

After a few minutes, he pokes Midnight on her shoulder, she jumps up at the sudden touch.

“Gee! Kid, seriously, you can’t just poke people!” She looked down at the menu that he was holding out for her. Filius points at one of the options. “Ah, okay. I like miso ramen too!” She turns to the counter again. “Get me and the kid two bowls of miso ramen.”

Midnight then leads him to a booth at the corner of the store.

It was silent for a while.

And Filius decided that he didn’t like silence.

“I was training.” He says, looking to the side. He never liked eye contact. It felt as if he was being watched.

“What were you training for?” Midnight’s tone is still the same; he’s thankful for it. He wouldn’t be able to talk about it if she were as serious as Eraserhead.

“Uh… fighting, someone. He’s- he’s really strong. But I have to defeat him.” He hated his stutter; it made him seem nervous or weak.

“Mh, yeah. I get it, I’ve had to fight my fair share of powerful enemies. So, are you strong enough? Since you’re back now.” She nodded, a waiter then brought the food they ordered to them.

“No, I uh… I’m not. Do you know sign language?” He looks at the ramen in front of him, he won’t be able to speak when he starts eating.

“Hm? No, I don’t?” Midnight tilts her head.

Filius sighs before taking the middle of his mask off. It seemed like their conversation was over now.

The ramen tasted amazing, he never ate it before. Mostly because he couldn’t afford it. He didn’t think that the food he didn’t eat could be that good. To him, food was food. Something to survive off of. He didn’t care what he was eating as long as he didn’t die.

But recently, he’s been getting fed with actual full meals. And it’s been weird. Discovering what different meals taste like has been a very odd journey. But he would never complain; it was free food after all.

“Well, when you finally fight them. You can count on me to help you. Eraserhead and Yamada, too. We’ll all be glad to help.” She says in between bites.

Fil nods.

The rest of the dinner goes by quickly, Midnight continues her stories from her youth. Filius just listens; he doesn’t need to answer. And she doesn’t seem to mind. He likes the atmosphere of the restaurant. It was cozy, there was faint music playing from the speakers in the corners of the room. Some people walked in and ordered, but they didn’t seem to notice Filius. He was glad; he didn’t need more people taking more photos of him. The corner booth was really useful.

When he finishes his food, he fixes his mask. “Thanks.”

Midnight smiles at him, her bowl was still half full. “No problem, kid. Still, you should probably tell Shouta that you’re fine. I’m worried about him. He hasn’t been sleeping much.”

“He knows that I’m back… I think so. I uh- went to his house drunk last night. But I kind of sneaked out when I heard him and Present Mic arguing…”

Midnight stops eating. “They were arguing? About what? And wait a moment, you were drunk? How are you alive right now? When I had my first hangover, I couldn’t walk straight  for the whole day.” She laughs.

“About me, cause I was drunk.” He looks down again.

“Yeah, but it’ll be fine. Trust me, don’t blame yourself for it. They’ve gone through worse things than a teenager coming home drunk. Besides, they’ll talk about it, and then it’ll be alright again. Sometimes people just need time.” She shrugs.

“Maybe.” Filius didn’t realise how bad he felt about the situation until now; his chest felt heavy. He didn’t want the two heroes to argue because of something that he did.

“Why’d you drink though?”

“I-uh.. I wanted to silence my thoughts.” Midnight's gaze softens, she nods.

“Hah, Yamada would have a lot to say about that. You know that it’s not healthy, right?”

“Y-yeah, I just-“ Fil sighs. “I don’t know… I felt like I needed it at that moment.”

He could feel his head starting to hurt again. He didn’t know why he was saying all of these things; he really shouldn’t. Max knew that it was a bad idea to come there; maybe he was right.

“You think you’re gonna do it again?”

“Maybe? I- I don’t know? It was fine when Raine and I did it before. Is it that big of a deal here?”

“Yeah, kiddo. I get that it can help. But you shouldn’t do it before you’re legal. There’s a reason for those laws, ya know? Your brain isn’t ready for alcohol yet.”

Filius nods, he felt guilty. For everything. But Midnight didn’t seem mad, but it was always like this. Sometimes when he messed up, Father didn’t let him know until later. Then the punishment was more intense than it normally would’ve been.

He knew that Midnight wouldn’t do things that Father did. But it was still difficult to imagine life without Father.

“It’s fine, but I’m sure Shouta will already try to get you to rehab.” She chuckles. “He means well, he just… overreacts a bit.”

“Tell me about it.” He rolls his eyes. he knew how dramatic Eraserhead could be. The few amounts of times he got hurt during patrol, he had seen firsthand how the hero reacts to the smallest amount of blood.

It was a MINOR stab wound!

‘Exactly! Nothing to cry home about!’

Midnight finished eating her food and went to pay for the meal. Filius waves to her when he leaves the restaurant. The cold air hits his face. He’s glad that his boots are made for the snow. It would’ve been a terrible walk home if they weren’t.

Walking home was peaceful; he looked around the streets that he hadn’t seen in a month. It felt good to be back. He couldn’t wait to go hang out with Midoriya again. And he could finally patrol again.

Everything was just as it was before. And this time, it was a good thing. He didn’t know why the meaning of that sentence had changed so much in the last year.

Before, it meant something so terrible. But now? Now it was fine.

Something about him was no longer tied to his past in the facility. And it scared him. But he would be fine; he didn’t mind it in the slightest.

Sometimes he just had to be scared. He would still meet Midoriya again soon. And that just made him excited.

He finally got back home, and he was glad to see that everything was still the same. Nobody found his house when he was gone, and the thought was both comforting and disturbing.

He took off his costume and booted up his laptop, surprised that it still had battery.

He needed to have a way to talk to the detective. Texting him like he did with Eraserhead was off the table. It was a foolish thing to do in the first place. But at least now he had the resources to make the thing that he needed.

So after many, many hours.—he was sure to get a lecture about that from Izuku later. The kid was really set on having a healthy sleep schedule.—It was finally done. He knew the detective’s number back from when he hacked into the police station’s system.

He made a small messaging app. It was simple, and that was the best part about it. No video calls. No annoying options to change the theme.

Just a list of contacts and the guarantee of being anonymous. For Haruki, of course, he knew well who he was messaging.

He sent the detective a message. Deciding to play into the part of, mysterious and angsty teenager who goes out at night and saves the city from villains.

Detective

“Guess who’s back? Back again?”

Maybe Tsukauchi wouldn’t understand his reference, but he didn’t care.

“Who are you, and what is this app?”

Okay, how does he not know? We literally designed the logo of the app to be your mask! How? Max throws his hands up. Haruki just rolled his eyes.

“…Guess. Who do the colours of the app remind you of?”

“Filius. What is this?”

“Well, I felt like knowing me only from ‘he said, she said’ was boring! Plus, I needed a way to contact the police other than Eraserhead.”

“I’m guessing this isn’t trackable?”

“Nope! Sorry, but I like my freedom!” “Still, check up on Eraserdad for me, will ya? Don’t want to get classified as missing a second time in the same month.”

“Where are you?”

“Home.”

Why does everyone keep asking these stupid questions?! Like no! we’ve been doing this for a fucking year! We aren’t just going to tell you everything!

‘Max, calm down.’

Don’t tell me to calm down! It’s infuriating!

“Also, you can get the app for your laptop/pc as well if you want to.”

[attached.file.apk]

Haruki knew that he wouldn’t find anything if he decided to snoop through the code, mostly cause he made a very funny pop-up appear if he tried. And no, embarrassing a detective while he was working by making his pc overflow with gay porn was not something Haruki was above.

He ignored the other questions that Tsukauchi sent him. He did see that he was nicknamed ‘Filius’, though.

So uncreative. I thought that by adding that feature, we would at least have a laugh.

‘Eraserhead is still an option, maybe we will.’

Adding Eraserhead was a bit more complicated; he didn’t want to lose their past conversations. But he couldn’t leave them connected to his number either. But in the end, he figured it out. And now he had his entire chat history with the hero on his make-shift app.

Before he can text the hero. He gets a message instead.

Eraser

“Kid? Are you okay? Please don’t run again. I’m sorry.”

Holy shit, it’s gonna be one of those talks, isn’t it?

‘god, I hope not, I’m not ready to be vulnerable twice in the same day’

“I’m fine, I’m home. I met a friend of yours.”

“I know, she told me you ate some ramen. I’m glad. I’m sorry for today. I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“Honestly? I wasn’t listening.”

Max starts laughing in the corner of the room.

Fil, I love you. I fucking love you, he manages to say.

“Why did you run then?”

“Because you were arguing about me.”

“I’m sorry.”

And Fil was baffled. He never imagined Eraserhead apologising to him, especially for something as small as a single argument. He’s heard worse; Father did worse back in the facility. He didn’t need an apology for something so trivial.

He didn’t know what to answer.

So he didn’t.

He closed the app and instead decided to distract himself by hacking into the HPSC.

Nothing bad could happen, right? he was untrackable in the end. The worst thing that could happen would be finding out something he didn’t want to. But at this point, he wanted to find out everything.

Who could blame him? Learning about everything and everyone was too interesting to him. He needed to know it all.

He didn’t really care what it was.

And well, what he found was certainly interesting.

It was a series of emails between a worker of the hero commission and the detective. The short version was that Tsukauchi would be off the case if he didn’t get any important info soon.

So Filius decided that he’d save his job, and he texted him something.

Detective

“I’m applying to a high school this year.”

“What.”

“Now the commission won’t fire you, thank me later :]”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT!?”

But when he decided to dig deeper, he learned that no matter what happened. Some ‘Special asset’ of the commission was already sent to ‘deal with’ Filius. Whatever, if they sent Hawks after him—cause let’s be honest. What other ‘special asset’ do they have—he could either convince him to help Haruki instead, or he would fight him.

It’s kind of ironic, don’t you think?

‘What is?’

Hawks, fighting you. His quirk is practically the same as your wings. You know exactly how it works. It’s a bit unfair towards him.

‘Hm, guess it is ironic. Though, what sucks is that I won’t be able to show off my own wings! Can you imagine how funny it would be if Hawks showed up and I was just kind of “Oh my bad, let me just-“ and then I pull out with wings that work nearly identical to his!’

Oh, I would’ve loved that.

‘I know you would! I would’ve too! I hate it when I can’t make jokes because of my stupid job!’

Haruki turns his laptop off and lies down—face down—on his hammock. It was cold inside his house, he needed to buy a blanket soon.

Maybe he could go shopping for one soon.

But it didn’t matter now.

He turned on his radio, listening to the music playing on it for a few minutes before he went to sleep.

---

A soft cry fills his bedroom, Filius immediately lifts his head from his desk. He was working on some new ideas for his quirk. Even if it was nearly all unreadable because he was writing it while sleep-deprived.

“Fil! Fil! We had a nightmare!” Nea shouts when she runs into his room, holding onto his leg. Bea follows slowly behind her, wiping her tears on her sleeve.

He picks up his sister, holding her with one arm, he walks over to her twin.

“Come on, I’ll make you some hot chocolate.”

Says, walking over to the large kitchen. He technically wasn’t allowed to be inside the kitchen—Okay that fire started itself!—but that didn’t matter at that moment.

He made them some hot chocolate—using almond milk for Nea—they drank in silence, Bea seemed to stop crying.

“It’s going to be alright, it’s just a dream. It wasn’t real.” Filius says smiling.

“We know. It was still scary.” Bea says while sniffling.

“Yeah, nightmares are like that. But it’s fine. I’m with you now.”

Filius takes the empty cups from them and washes them in the kitchen sink. He leads his siblings to their room. Putting them to bed again.

Of course, he read them a bedtime story too. He’s not a monster.

Eventually, they both went to sleep peacefully. He was glad that he was awake when they had that nightmare, they probably wouldn’t be comforted by him sleeping inside a tube. He hoped that they haven’t seen it before. Though, he wouldn’t really know.

Still, his siblings were precious and he would protect them no matter what.

Chapter Text

Haruki woke up to his phone buzzing uncontrollably. The sun was shining in his eyes, blinding him. He had a feeling that setting up his hammock right by the only window in his room wasn’t such a great idea after all.

He yawned, his head ached, and everything seemed to be shaking. But by now, he was used to it. There’s not a single day when the world stops spinning.       Not for him, not for anyone.

He remembers how she used to make fun of him for complaining about a migraine. It was always something about him ‘being so strong and yet a single headache managed to defeat him.’ He missed that now, even if he knows that he can never get those moments back. No matter how hard he tries.

Haruki stands up. He looks out the window. It was sunny, but the snow didn’t seem to halt. It would get hard to move around in a few days if it didn’t stop. Patrol would get harder, but he would survive.

After last month, he could survive anything.

He takes his bag and unpacks it, putting his clothes away on the armrest of the couch. Most of them were still clean, considering that he didn’t wear them.

If I’m being honest, that was disgusting.  Max gags from behind Haruki.

‘We’ve done worse things.’

You didn’t change your clothes for a month… And you were working out every day. Fil, that is filthy.

‘Yeah… I’m burning those clothes.’ He knew that he still smelled. Midnight probably thought that he was homeless based on his smell alone.

Would she really be wrong if she did?

Haruki was about to respond, but trying to classify himself into either homeless or not was starting to bore him. And he didn’t actually know whether what he had could be considered a house. So instead, he picked out some clothes and climbed out of his apartment.

When he reached the gym, he was covered in snow and shivering. Maybe winter was going to be a bit more difficult than he originally thought.

He snuck over to the showers, making sure that nobody saw him. Though the gym was nearly full, so it was easier than normal to get by unnoticed.

He let the warm water run over his body, he was already feeling better. Who knew that a single warm shower could make so much change? He tried to ignore the sheer amount of dirt that was falling out of his hair. Okay, maybe those baths he took inside the pond weren’t as effective as he thought they were.

When he finally got out of the shower, he felt as if he had been reborn. Not having greasy hair was a privilege he was not ready to lose.

Haruki got dressed and snuck out of the gym.

He would’ve run back to his apartment just to escape the snow. But getting sweaty right after he took a shower wasn’t an ideal scenario. So instead, he decided to just let the snow fall on him and take away the warmth that he got from the shower.

Climbing back into his apartment, he nearly tripped. Another thing that the snow made more difficult. But he didn’t care. He nearly tripped. As long as that nearly stayed there, he was fine.

He sat at his desk and pulled out his notebook.

He had to figure out what his training did. He knew that he got stronger, but he wanted to know the specifics. And there was a lot to be said. Compared to a month ago, he was actually strong now. He didn’t know how he managed to survive before. Now, everything about him was better. If he got shot, it wouldn’t do anything. The wound would heal almost immediately. Before, he had to get Eraserhead to help him.

Writing it all down took a while, and he was sure that he forgot half of his new abilities. But he got the basic ones down. That was all that mattered.

He had completely forgotten about the spam of notifications he got that woke him up. Well, he forgot about them until he was finished with writing, then he got even more notifications.

He sighed, ‘Who in their right mind would text him this much?’ and maybe it should’ve been obvious. Who else would it be other than his local hero-obsessed friend?

When he opened his text app, he saw the absolute walls of text that he got from Midoriya.

Zuku

“TLDR dude. Wtf”

“OH! You’re back! O_o”

“YEAH, ‘fcourse I am! Now wth did you text me?”

“Nothing important tbh. I was just texting you some updates on my hero theories. Since I couldn’t tell them to you in person.”

Nerds.

‘ Shut up, Max’

“Okay 1. Those are important. 2. Now I will go back and read all of those messages.”

“Nooooo! You don’t have to! I mean, I could just tell them to you now! Since you’re back :D”

“I’m down to meet up ‘n catch up if you are.”

You two seriously text as if you’ve never went outside. And that’s saying something considering that you’re currently making plans to go out.

“I mean, there’s a winter festival tonight if you want to go!”

“Is it Christmas already?”

“Christmas was last week? Did you forget?”

Damn we missed Christmas? That sucks! I was so excited to make fun of you for being single and an orphan!

“Oh. Righttt I forgot, soz. My family isn’t big on celebrating Christmas lmao.”

Too much slang… please stop.

‘Max, I swear to god.’

“Oh, that makes sense. Well, this is mostly a pre-New Year's festival. There’s gonna be so many fun things to do! Seriously, you’ll love it! ><” “Although it doesn’t start ‘till later. So if you want to, we can meet up at my place now and watch a movie while waiting for it.”

“Sure, I’ll come over in a bit :]”

Haruki stretched. It’s nice that Midoriya didn’t ask many questions. Though he probably assumed that he had just gone to visit some distant family. Being from a different country helped him in some cases.

Haruki decided to text Shinsou as well. He was happy that he returned, but sadly, Shinsou himself had gone on a trip away for a family vacation, so they couldn’t meet.

Haruki got a brown jacket and his scarf, making sure to cover his scars. He put on his brown boots and went outside once more.

The walk over to Izuku’s house was peaceful. Not many people walked around with this much snow on the streets. He was glad, at least today he wouldn’t have to climb up the buildings just to meet his friend.

He knocked on Midoriya’s door and greeted his mother when she opened it. Apparently, Izuku already told her that he would be coming over. She tried to get Haruki to eat lunch, but he refused. He wasn’t really that hungry, and Izuku said that there would be food at the festival.

When Midoriya led him to his room, he closed the door behind him.

The room had an oddly menacing atmosphere.

“So? Care to explain yourself?” Izuku asked, walking over to the window with his arms crossed.

Uh? What did you do to him, and why is he angry?

Haruki took a step closer to him. He was confused; he hadn’t talked to the boy in a month. He couldn’t have done something while he wasn’t even there.

“Explain what? Zuku? You okay?”

“The fangs! Haruki, you can’t speak properly right now! You were gone for a month and you return with freaking fangs! Explain!” He turns back and tilts Haruki’s head back to get a better look at the small fangs.

‘You think he should know?’

You know damn well that I’m against telling ANYONE.

‘Yeah, well, when have I ever listened to you?’

“Okay… you should sit down for this” He leads Izuku over to his bed. “So, I kind of lied about my quirk. BUT, that’s only because it has to be kept a secret!”

Midoriya’s eyes widen. “Wait, why? Is it like an odd quirk that can be passed down through generations, and you were offered it by a powerful hero to be the next heir? Or something like that?”

That was oddly specific.

“No? But uh… It’s like really powerful, and if anyone from the hero commission learns about it, I’ll be turned into a little slave that has to do their dirty work.” Haruki chuckles, hoping to turn this conversation at least a little bit light-hearted, but Midoriya just stares at him with concern.

“You- WHAT?”

He sighs and sits down next to the boy.

“Okay, so uh… I’m going to have to tell you what I found out about the hero commission. And then I’ll explain my quirk. And yes, you can get your notebook. Just don’t put my name in it.”

Haruki stares at how Midoriya is trying to conceal his excitement. He pulls out his notebook and turns to a clear page.—nearly tearing out the pages that he flipped.

And after explaining most of how his quirk works like.—Obviously skipping past the facility and everything else that he doesn’t have to know.—Midoriya has filled out about 10 pages, just with notes and theories. And some of those, Haruki himself would really like to try out. Just to find out whether his quirk can be used in those ways.

He answered questions and tried calming the boy down. But it seemed like nothing could stop the mumbling. So he just listened and waited it out.

After about 20 minutes of writing and talking straight, Izuku seemed to be out of things to say. Or rather, his throat started to hurt, so he had to stop talking.

“Your quirk is amazing! Can’t believe you never told me about it, Haru!” He said, in a regular speed, after making himself some tea.

“Yeah, but you know. I kind of had to keep it a secret, you know?” Haruki tilts his head.

“I do! I still can’t believe that the hero commission does that! I mean, they’re supposed to protect us.”

“Supposed to.” Haruki shrugs. “So? Wanna watch a movie? … Zuku? You there, dude?”

He’s plotting something.

‘No, he’s not, he just zoned out. That was a shit ton of info we just dumped on him.’

Haruki pokes Izuku’s shoulder, the boy jumps up at the touch. He stares at Haruki in confusion.

“Movie? Is everything okay? Sorry, I know it’s a lot.”

“No, no, I’m fine. Y-yeah, we can watch the movie, we still have about 2 hours until the festival.”

“Okay?” Haruki drags out his words, staring to look through the movies on a streaming website that he didn’t recognise. Probably something way too out of his budget—as usual.

‘Max, you do realise that if I’m poor, you’re poor too.’

Yeah? So? Doesn’t mean that I can’t make fun of you for being poor.

‘Actually, wait. I kind of forgot to mention you while explaining my quirk.’

You forgot? I thought that was on purpose!

‘It wasn’t! I genuinely forgot!’

You’re a fucking moron…

Haruki decides to ignore the fact that he didn’t mention one of the most important parts of his quirk while explaining it, and he just focused on the movie that was now starting.

It was some old movie about superheroes. He recognised some of the actors from back when he was a kid.

He used to love them.

The Franchise seemed to have fallen apart when quirks became more popular, and more people started getting them. But there were still many movies that Haruki hadn’t seen. And he needed to catch up on them quickly.

Midoriya didn’t really see the point in watching what people in the pre-quirk era thought that quirks would be. But after a bit of convincing, he finally agreed to watch the movie.

 After some time, Haruki noticed that Izuku was just as excited to see what happens next as he was.

Izuku’s mom interrupted them for a second to give them some cookies. They tasted delightful, though Haruki is biased, considering that he has a sweet tooth.

 As it turns out, Izuku had one too. And they had to arm-wrestle to figure out who would get the final cookie.

 As expected, Haruki won.

He smirked smugly, making sure to eat the cookie as slowly as possible, just to torture Midoriya about losing.

What? It’s encouraging Izuku to train more! Don’t judge him!

The movie ended, and Haruki knew that soon Midoriya would ask to watch more of them. When you see one, you can’t stop.

But, they had to get going. So they put on their shoes, said bye to Ms. Midoriya, and started walking towards the festival.

As they got closer, there was less snow on the streets. It was clearly shovelled. The sun was already starting to go down, revealing the beautiful lights that were put out specifically for the festival.

Izuku kept rambling about Haruki’s quirk and how he could use it in battle. And it reminded him of how she would always ask Fil to do some weird tricks using his power. He always did; it was nothing for him after all.

They walked on the crowded streets, apparently, most of the town had decided to go to the festival.

The quirks were making Haruki’s head hurt. Too many new people. He’d get used to it in a second, but for now, he decided that walking wasn’t for him.

“Izu, stand there for a second.” He says, walking slightly back before jumping onto Midoriya. The boy nearly falls over, panicking. Haruki wraps his arms around his shoulders.

“Haruki! What the fuck!?” Midoriya shouts in confusion.

“Shush! We’re in public! Besides, my legs hurt, and you can handle it.” He answers cheerfully.

Midoriya sighs, but he doesn’t tell Haruki to get off. Instead, he continues his conversation as if nothing happened, letting Haruki stay on his shoulders.

---

“Fil! Get off! You’re heavy!” Kaori shouts, trying to make Filius fall off her.

“No, I’m not! I’m light as a feather! Besides, I saw you pick up a whole ass closet before! You’re exaggerating!” Filius answered smugly. Placing his head on his arms.

Kaori rolled her eyes, deciding to ignore it and instead resume talking about the rebellion plans.

She knew that Filius wasn’t listening; she didn’t expect him to. He was always thinking about something stupid whenever they talked. But she didn’t mind it.

“Say, why green?” Fil finally asks.

“What?” Kaori tilts her head.

She stopped walking and sat down on a bench near her house. Filius got down from her shoulders and sat down next to her.

“Your hair, why’d you dye it green? Well, actually, now it looks a bit more blue than green. But it was green originally. Why?”

“I liked the colour. And, why not?” She shrugs, looking up at the sky.

Fil follows her gaze, he stares at the slightly visible stars. It was too difficult to make them hide completely during the day, so Father had Filius make them barely visible. He thinks he did a great job at that. Even if you can still see them if you look hard enough.

“You somehow managed to make a sea-green match purple. Congrats.” He chuckles, looking down at her black and purple outfit.

“Hey! Purple is an amazing colour, I will not tolerate any purple slander inside the rebellion!”

Filius laughs. He leans his head on her shoulder.

“You know that you can’t kick me out even if you tried.” He says fondly, it was how he first got into the rebellion after all. He was technically not allowed inside. But when he’s the one who everyone listens to, rules like those don’t really stick.

Also, he charmed Kaori with his smart words (Read: Annoyed her until she gave up trying to make him leave.)

‘Shut up, Max.’

Kaori scoffs, but Filius can see the small smile on her lips.

And he knows that he will never forget any moment that he had with her. Everything that they’ve done will forever be stuck in his mind.

He wouldn’t have it any other way, though.

---

“Haruki? You there?” Midoriya pokes his cheek as he continues walking.

Haruki shakes his head, trying to ground himself. “Yeah, yeah, just uh- zoned out for a second.”

Izuku was about to respond, but he was interrupted by a loud voice.

“Deku?! What the fuck are you doing here?”

Midoriya stops walking, he doesn’t look back. And Haruki can tell that he doesn’t want to face whoever is talking to him.

Haruki gets down from Izuku’s shoulder, he looks at the blond teen walking towards them.

His quirk was strong, nothing too big. But it was sure to be powerful, and Haruki knew how much people with powerful quirks liked to show off. Especially if they were teens. He didn’t need to see what the quirk was to know that he would be ready to use it, no matter if they were in public. Teens didn’t listen to the ‘no public quirk usage’ rule anyway. And police normally went easier on them because they are young.

It made situations like these way more common.

The blond looks Haruki up and down before scoffing. Another guy who was walking next to him speaks up.

“What? Did you bring your boyfriend to the festival? Maybe we should’ve expected that. You always seemed to be a little bit different from the rest.”

Izuku looks back at them, and his hands are shaking.

Haruki walks in front of Izuku. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Just that we always thought that useless Izuku would turn out to be a fucking fa-“

Haruki punches the teen, he can see blood spilling from his nose. He falls to the sidewalk. Another guy–who was mostly watching and laughing from the back–crouches beside him.

The blond just stares at his friend. After a second, he pulls him up and begins walking away without saying a word.

Haruki looks back at Midoriya, who is staring at the ground. His hands were clenched into fists, and he was digging his fingernails into his skin so hard it was making his knuckles white.

“Zuku? They’re gone. Shit– do you want to sit down?” Haruki puts a hand on his shoulders, starting to lead him to a nearby bench.

When they finally sit down, Izuku brings his knees up to his chest.

“Wanna tell me who that guy was? I may be a terrible listener, but I can still try.” Haruki punches his shoulder lightly.

“That’s Kacchan, oh uh- Bakugo. He’s a childhood friend of sorts.” Izuku says, looking to the side of the bench while talking.

“Doesn’t seem like a friend to me.”

“He got a powerful quirk. We used to be closer, but when he learned that I was quirkless, he just kind of… found different friends. And they didn’t like me.”

Haruki keeps quiet for a moment before responding.

“Fuck them.” Haruki says, standing up.

“Huh- wai—what?” Midoriya looks at him, confused.

Haruki holds out a hand for him to take. “Fuck. Them. They don’t get to ruin our day. If they wanna be assholes, they can be assholes somewhere else. I don’t care!” He smiles, and Izuku tries to return the gesture. He took his hand and got off the bench.

“What did they call you, though? Aren’t Deku’s like those little wooden dolls? Doesn’t seem much like an insult to me.” He starts walking over to the festival again, food stalls begin to surround them, and faint music can be heard from a stage in the back.

“It means useless.” Izuku looks down again. “Because I don’t have a quirk…”

“That’s bullshit! That just means that you had to train twice as hard as others! They’re fucking morons, don’t listen to them Zuku.”

Izuku nods, but Haruki can see that he’s still thinking about what happened. So he points at a nearby stall. “There! See? Let’s shoot some shit!” He shouts, maybe a little bit too enthusiastically, as some people around them look at him weirdly.

But he doesn’t care; he grabs Izuku’s hand and runs over to the game. He pays for it and hands one of the toy guns to Midoriya.

He aims right at one of the targets, and he hits it straight on. But apparently, he needed to knock it down. Which is the moment that he realised that this stall was a scam. He rolled his eyes and focused on watching Izuku try and shoot himself.

Midoriya was holding the gun in an almost funny way. It was clear that he didn’t know how to use one. He pulls the trigger and nearly hits the stall next to them.

Haruki laughs at him, trying to cover it up with his hand. Midoriya walks over to him and flicks his forehead.

They run over to a few other games. Ring toss, goldfish scooping, and Kendama. They lost all of them. Even the Katanuki, which Midoriya swore he was great at. Sadly, he got an umbrella, and he immediately decided to wallow in despair, making the candy crack almost immediately. And Haruki thought that he did pretty well with his cat-shape, considering the fact that he was doing it for the first time ever.

Still, right at the end, he accidentally cracked a piece of the cat’s tail off and lost the game.

The two boys decided to drown their losses in food; they went over to some stalls and bought enough food to last for a whole week. Haruki was glad that the festival food seemed to cost less compared to what he normally would’ve had to pay for this amount of food.

Midoriya ran away somewhere for a second, before returning with two masks, one a fox one and the other a cat mask.

“What are those?” Haruki asks, chuckling in between bites at the humorous mask.

“Omen masks! You really haven’t seen one before? Oh, that makes me wish that I bought the ugly man one!” Midoriya groans at his choice. He passes the cat mask to Haruki before putting on the fox one. Keeping it on the side of his head so that he could still eat.

Haruki does the same with his mask. Picking up the remaining few bites of his food.

He finishes eating while they walk, and he throws the empty wrappers away into a trash can.

“Oh! Come on, let’s see our fortunes!” Izuku grabs Haruki’s hand and runs towards a stall right next to the shrine that the festival is organised by. “Here, you pick one of the boxes” He says, starting to demonstrate. “You shake them until the stick falls out, and that number shows what fortune slip you’ll get.” He passes the wooden stick to the shrine’s worker. They give him a small piece of paper with something written on it.

Haruki looks at the wooden boxes, confused. He decides to give it a try. Picking the far-right box and struggling to make the stick fall out. When it does fall, though, he passes it to the worker, who stops chuckling at his failed attempts to shake the box and passes him a different piece of paper.

“What did you get? If it’s a bad fortune, you can tie it to that tree over there.” Midoriya walks over to the tree and ties his fortune slip to one of the branches.

He had “misfortune”.

‘Couldn’t help but snoop, huh?’

Hey! I have nothing better to do.

Haruki looks down at his fortune slip. Izuku looks over his shoulder.

“Oh! ‘Future blessing!” That’s cool! Means that something good will happen to you in the future!” He says excitedly.

Haruki puts the piece of paper in his pocket, shrugging. He didn’t exactly believe in what a random piece of paper had to say about his future, but it was still fun to pretend.

Suddenly, Midoriya stops walking. He stares at a stall in front of him. Haruki follows his gaze, realising that he’s staring at a limited edition All Might figure that was one of the prizes. He rolls his eyes. He remembers how a few months ago, Izuku was texting him, crying about not being able to get the figure in time before it was sold out everywhere.

He looks over all of the other prizes and finds something that catches his eye, too. The only merch of Eraserhead that exists. A limited edition blanket that was made nearly 10 years ago. Around the time when the hero had his debut. He didn’t know how the stall vendor managed to get his hands on one of those, and why he was giving it away in a simple game.

‘Max.’

I’ve already checked, it’s not rigged. Fair game.

And that was the moment that Haruki pulled Midoriya’s hand and led him over to that stall. He needed that blanket. And no, not because it had Eraserhead on it. But because it was winter and he got cold at night. Plus, the blanket seemed to be made of a good fabric.

The stall vendor noticed them walking over and started talking. “Hey there. The game is 350 yen per try. You get 3 balls, and you have to knock the cup towers down. Each tower that you hit that falls off completely is a prize. But the tower has to fall. If only half of it falls, I don’t count it.”

Haruki paid for a try. If he aimed it correctly, he could even get Izuku that All Might figure.

He looked at the cups in front of him as if they were his mortal enemies. He needed to knock them down, which meant that he needed to hit the best spot possible to do that. Maybe it was cheating to have Max scout the towers to tell him where exactly he should shoot, but he didn’t care. It’s not like Max wouldn’t have done that on his own without Haruki’s instructions.

When he finally throws the ball, it hits the first tower straight on. The blanket was his. Now he had to focus on getting Midoriya his figure.

The boy was practically jumping in place from excitement.

Haruki aimed his shot; this one would be a bit trickier, but it was still entirely possible. He threw the ball, and it hit the second tower. All that he felt while it fell was relief. He did what he needed to do, and Midoriya actually jumped up. But he still had one more ball left, and one final tower. He didn’t care for that one. But he saw some headphones on the prize counter. And he decided that his busted-up headphones needed a replacement.

He looked at the third tower made of cups; this time, he didn’t take as long as he did with the first two towers. He throws the ball, and to his surprise, the entire tower falls.

The stall vendor clapped, and he passed them their prizes.

Izuku then threw his arms around Haruki, hugging him. For a second, he only stands there frozen. He didn’t expect Midoriya to hug him. But after regaining his composure, he hugs the boy back.

“I can’t believe you actually managed to do it! Like, oh my god! That was amazing, Haru!”

Haruki chuckles, exiting the hug. He holds the folded blanket under his arm. Izuku puts the now-wrapped All Might figure into his backpack. Haruki didn’t even know that the stall vendor had an option to wrap it so that it wouldn’t get damaged. But he won’t question it.

They walk around the festival for a bit, looking at different stalls they haven’t played, or just looking through the different prizes on obviously rigged games.

And Haruki definitely doesn’t laugh when Izuku drops some ice cream that he was eating, okay, he told him to eat it instead of rambling about heroes before it melts and falls, but he didn’t listen.

Eventually, families started leaving the festival as it was getting late. Leaving couples or groups of friends all around them. The atmosphere between them gets slightly awkward when two people sit down next to them just to start making out.

They start walking to the ends of the festival. Hoping to get away from the sudden change. Then Haruki spots a Ferris Wheel that has just been turned on. He assumed that it was broken, but apparently the staff was just waiting for the right time to let the public use it.

He leads Izuku over to it, hoping that it will let them have a moment of peace from everyone else.

They enter the small carts, and they start to slowly ascend. Haruki looks down on the city, the lights from the festival light everything up beautifully. He regrets not being there for Christmas. The town must’ve looked amazing. But there’s no point thinking about it now. He still had next year to see it.

The music was calming. The people under them started to look like ants. He missed being so high up. It felt as if he could touch the stars if he tried. And maybe that’s a feeling that he got from literally touching the stars back at the facility, but he didn’t question it.

It was a great night. He was glad that he returned just in time to be here.

Haruki looks over at Izuku. He was fidgeting while looking down at his hands. When he notices that Haruki is staring, he looks out at the ground.

“Do you… Uh- do you really think that I can be a hero without a quirk?” He asks, his eyes are scanning the crowd below. He looks as if he already knows the answer to that question. And Haruki hates what the world made him believe.

“Of course. Look, I may not know most of what you went through. But there are people out there fighting villains quirkless every day. You’ll be fine. Seriously, I believe in you. Just get yourself some sort of weapon, and I’m sure that you can become the No. 1 hero in no time.” Haruki says, leaning back against the seat. “Just because you don’t hear about them, doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. I’ve met plenty of people who don’t rely on a quirk when fighting. If they can do it, you can too.” He holds out his hand, waiting for a fist-bump.

Midoriya looks up at him, fist-bumping his hand, he answers. “Thanks, Haru.”

Haruki grins in response. He looks back on the festival.

“Postcards! I nearly forgot! I need to get some!” Izuku says, pointing to a stall that sells New Year's-themed postcards.

When they got off the Ferris wheel, Izuku led him to the stall that he had noticed. Haruki watches the boy buy three postcards. Haruki looks at the stall and decides to buy three of his own. He knows who he’s going to address them to, but right now he didn’t want to worry about it.

He puts the postcards into his pocket, hoping not to accidentally bend them. They walk over to a small hill behind the festival.

Haruki lies down on the grass, closing his eyes. Izuku does the same after a few seconds.

“I think the fireworks should be starting soon.” The green-haired boy says.

“There’s fireworks?” Haruki asks, tilting his head to the side so that he could look at Midoriya.

“Yeah. I told you that this is a pre-New Year’s festival. Of course, there’s fireworks.”

Haruki shrugs. He hasn’t seen fireworks in what feels like forever. It will be nice to stare at them again. He always thought that they were incredibly pretty.

And before he can think about picking a better spot to look at the fireworks, they start.

Many shapes and colours explode in the sky, lighting up everything below.

Haruki stared at it in awe; the faint music and laughter that filled the festival could still be heard from the hill they were on. He couldn’t take his eyes away; it was too beautiful to him. Too nostalgic.

His dad loved lighting fireworks for New Year’s back when he was a kid. Back when Mom was still alive.

One time he stopped, and Haruki thinks that it was the same year that he met Father. He hasn’t seen fireworks since then.

But now, those memories didn’t matter.

None of his past mattered when he was with Midoriya.

He didn’t care what Haruki used to be. Izuku just looked at what he is now, and that was oddly comforting. Even if Haruki himself didn’t know who he was.

Whenever he was with Midoriya, that didn’t matter. He didn’t have to worry about doing something that Father wouldn’t approve of. Father wasn’t there at that moment, and so he could do whatever he wanted. And maybe that was the scariest thing that Haruki had ever thought of in his entire life.

But he didn’t mind it. If this is what his life could be, then he’s sure that he’ll enjoy it thoroughly.

Maybe he’s being too hopeful, but he did get ‘future blessing’ on that fortune slip, so can you blame him for being optimistic?

The fireworks end, but he keeps lying there. It was peaceful. A moment where he could finally relax and not worry about his past or his future.

It was a moment when he felt human, and he doesn’t get that often. He hasn’t considered himself to be human for a long time now. So this feeling was new to him, and maybe for once, he wouldn’t push it away. Maybe just this once, he could let it stay.

Midoriya sits up, he stretches for a second and yawns.

“I have to get home soon.” He says, looking over to the festival again.

“Do you want me to walk you back?” Haruki asks, sitting up himself.

“No, I’ll be fine. You can stay here. I can see that you’re enjoying the show. See you soon, though, okay? Also, you better let me test out my theories on your quirk!”

Haruki laughs and waves to Midoriya when he starts to walk away. The boy waves back excitedly, before checking his phone and starting to run towards his house.

Haruki gets curious and checks his own phone, realising that it was nearly midnight. But he didn’t plan on patrolling tonight. And he can see—and feel—that most of the town are either in their homes, or currently at the festival. So patrolling tonight wouldn’t do much.

He looks at the headphones that he won; they were pretty good. Wireless, a nice blue colour, they matched him perfectly. He was happy about his win. After that streak of losses, he will take whatever he can.

Haruki looks at the festival, he saw some faces he could recognise from walking around the city, or some quirks that stuck out from the rest. Everyone was having fun, and it reminded him of the good days with his siblings. The days when they would all just go outside and not care about anyone else for a whole day. The days when nobody else even noticed that they were supposed to be doing something else. And he missed them, he knows that he shouldn’t be thinking about it, but at that moment. He couldn’t even feel sad about losing that. He felt glad that he lived through that. And maybe having a day like that wasn’t something that would happen very soon. But he didn’t care; they happened once, and they will happen again. He didn’t need them soon. He knew that he would see them again, and he would love seeing them do everything that they’ve ever wanted to do.

It was dumb of him. The thing he’s most excited to do is see how other people do well in life. But he didn’t care. He knew that his siblings would’ve been absolute menaces during this festival. They would be running around, shouting and running into things. But that’s their charm, they are still kids after all. And they would’ve loved it.

Maybe he was too deep in his thoughts to realise that he could hear footsteps behind him. Or maybe his brain got too used to them that his brain just decided that he didn’t need to be warned of their presence. But he gets pulled out of his thoughts when he hears the cheerful and loud voice of Present Mic.

“Oh! Hi, little listener! Didn’t think I’d run into you here!” He says. Haruki looks at him, taking in his appearance,  his hair was down, he was wearing regular prescription glasses instead of his green ones. He had a puffy dark green jacket on with some black pants.

Eraserhead walked calmly behind him, hiding his face in a regular red scarf instead of his capture one. Haruki wondered whether he could make any scarf float, or was it specifically something about the one he wore during his job.

“H-hey.” he says after too long.

“Wait, you know him?” Aizawa asks present Mic.

The blond looks at his husband. “Yeah? He’s the kid I met while visiting those graves. I told you about him, remember?”

Aizawa nods. “Ah, so problem child nr.2 and nr.3 were the same person.” He sighs, and after Mic looks at him confused, Eraserhead adds. “The kid I’ve been meeting while patrolling. That’s him.”

Present Mic’s eyes widen. “Holy shi-!” He stops himself. “Shouldn’t swear in front of kids… You’re the same person!” He says in shock.

Haruki looks over at Aizawa, he was wearing a black ring. Something that Haruki hasn’t noticed about the hero before. It was difficult to see clearly, but it seemed to have a moon surrounded by clouds engraved in it.

Cheesy. Of course, Mic gets the sun one. Max chuckles. I told you the first time that we talked to Eraserhead that he was gay and married to the radio guy.

Haruki nearly rolls his eyes, but he stops himself when he realises that he’s next to people.

“And you’re married.” He responds calmly. Present Mic looks confused for a second before looking at Aizawa’s hand.

“Ah, yeah, guess the secret’s out. Don’t go talking about it anywhere, though. It’s not really public.”

Haruki nods. He understood, if the public knew that they were married, it could put them both at a risk. You never know what kind of creeps are trying to find information about you. And when you’re a pro hero, any type of privacy you can get is a privilege.

“You got new headphones?” Mic asks, sitting next to Haruki. Eraserhead stands for a few seconds before sighing and sitting down as well.

“Hm? Yeah, I won it at a stall. Actually, the headphones weren’t really what I wanted to get, but I got to pick three prizes.”

“I saw your other pair; you really needed an upgrade. Those looked like a hazard. I’m glad you’re no longer at risk of getting electrocuted every time you listen to music.” He laughs. “Say, did you go somewhere for the holidays? Shouta said he hasn’t seen you around at night recently.”

Aizawa tenses up when Mic mentions him. But he doesn’t say anything.

“I visited some family for a month.” Haruki smiles. If he were in costume, he’d tease Eraserhead about him worrying about him. But honestly, considering the fact that he did go to his place drunk yesterday, he was in no place to make fun of him for being worried. Even if he didn’t realise that it was him.

“Does your family live far?” Aizawa chimes in, his tone was oddly full of emotion and lacking it at the same time.

“Yep! I moved cause I wanted to apply to U.A this year. Well, next year, I guess. But you get what I mean.” Haruki laughs again.

“U.A, that’s so cool, you wanna be a hero? Or are you going to a different course? Wait, next year? Shouta, you might get to teach him!” Mic beams with excitement, and Aizawa looks as if his lifespan was reduced by at least 10 years.

Haruki grins and laughs. “Oh, I am going to have so much fun.”

Eraserhead runs a hand through his hair. “Please don’t make me get any grey hairs, kid. I already have enough stress in my life.”

“Don’t overreact, Fil isn’t that bad.” His eyes widen, before he puts a hand over his mouth.

Present Mic stares at him in confusion while Aizawa just sighs.

“I should’ve figured that you two knew each other. Obviously, the two problem children of Musutafu are friends.”

“Three, you haven’t met Midoriya yet. You might also get him as a student next year, though.” Haruki focuses his gaze on Eraserhead, Mic leans back laughing.

“Oh. Three. How delightful. You’re awfully confident that I won’t expel either of you.” He says, raising an eyebrow.

“I know that you would never. You love me too much. And Midoriya has too much potential, you would be a moron to expel him.” Haruki unpacks the headphones, deciding to check out the features while he remembers.

The two heroes stare at him in silence for a second.

“I’m guessing the guy you were with is Midoriya?” Aizawa sighs again. “He seems lively.”

Present Mic leans over and whispers to Haruki. “That’s a nice way of saying ‘a pain in the ass.’”

Their love makes me feel painfully single.

‘Literally, they’re like the perfect couple. Makes me miss Rin-Rin.’

I always hated those nicknames. Just call her Kaori, I never know who you’re talking about.

‘I like the nicknames, it makes people seem more humane.’

Haruki sighs to himself. He put the headphones on his shoulders; they needed to be charged before being used. So his plan to see the features was foiled almost immediately.

“Well, good luck on the entrance exam. It’s pretty difficult.” Mic nudged Haruki’s shoulder, making him realise that he’s been staring at nothing for the past few minutes.

“I don’t need luck. I know that I’ll pass.”

Aizawa raises an eyebrow. “The entrance exam is pretty prejudiced against mental quirks. False confidence will get you nowhere.”

“Who says that it’s false confidence? And I don’t need a quirk to win.”

Present Mic stretches and starts standing up. “Win? Oh, so you’re aiming for 1st place? That’s going to be hard for you, little listener. But if not, ‘good luck’ Then, have fun.”

Haruki stands up himself, picking up the blanket—thankful that he folded it in a way that hid the hero on it.

Haruki smirks. “Oh, I will.” He can see Eraserhead roll his eyes. He decides to ignore it, and instead, he waves back to the two pro heroes as he leaves. Just as they’re about to start walking away on their own, he remembers something. “Don’t try the shotgun game! It’s rigged!” he shouts behind him before leaving. And he’s sure that he heard Mic laughing.

He didn’t think it was a topic to laugh about, rigged games are stupid. He saw them as a byproduct of capitalism. They were purely a scam. Not even something that could be played off as legal.

Will you stop your rant? I don’t want to hear a blue-haired twink explain how capitalism is bad on a random Saturday.

Haruki shrugged. He knew that now nobody could see him. So, reacting outwardly to Max was allowed. It felt freeing to finally be able to flip him off.

Max scoffed, but he continued walking—or floating—beside him.

Haruki walked through the empty streets of Musutafu. He really was glad to be back. It was weird to him. To finally have a place that he could go back to. Sure, maybe he did have the castle back at the facility. But he didn’t like going back there; he simply had to. Now, he doesn’t have to go back anywhere. He can, and he wants to, but he doesn’t need to.

He didn’t like walking through the snow that seemed to never stop falling. But it’s better than not having snow at all. And at least he had a white Christmas, even if he didn’t realise that it was Christmas.

And New Year’s was coming up soon, another holiday that he couldn’t exactly celebrate. Most holidays were for spending time with family or friends, and well, he didn’t have the first one. At least not on the outside. And he’d feel guilty if he went to Midoriya’s house for New Year’s. He and his mom were already doing too much for him. He couldn’t bring himself to ask for more.

Besides, he didn’t need anyone to spend New Year’s with. He’d be fine on his own.

That’s just… sad, Fil. Like you’re making me feel kind of bad for you.

’Oh, Shut up.’ Haruki waved his hand through the place that Max was currently in. He couldn’t feel it, of course, and the hand just went right through him. But Haruki knew that it hurt him mentally, and he said it made him feel gross once, so now it was something that he did whenever he was fed up with him.

Max put a hand up to his chest and pretended to be offended. Haruki just shook his head and continued walking.

He stopped when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He quickly ran towards it.

It was graffiti, but it was beautiful. Nothing he’s ever seen, though he hasn’t seen much graffiti in his life since the peacekeepers at the facility always wiped off any that were made.

But from what he noticed in the year that he’s been out. This wasn’t regular graffiti.

It was on a decently big brick fence. A woman dressed in white, she was holding out her hands to the sky. The moon shone from above her, giving the whole fence a faint glowing effect.

Some parts of it were dripping, but that’s how gravity works. You can’t exactly put wet paint on something vertical and expect it not to drip.

Haruki stood there, fascinated by the drawing. Someone clearly spent a lot of time on it. And that in itself was worth some kind of respect. The pro heroes that patrolled in this area didn’t like graffiti, which was stupid in Haruki’s opinion. It’s art. But it just meant that the person who made this had to be more careful.

I’m going to start counting how long you stare at things that aren’t really worth staring at.

‘Dude! The fuck you mean “not worth staring at?” Can you see this?’

Yeah, I can. Take a picture, it’ll last longer.

‘Actually, good idea’ Haruki takes out his phone; his gallery was full of pictures like this one. He always hated how he could never get the colours right. The photos are always different. Less lively. But as long as he had the photo, he could imagine what the original looked like. Though he had hoped that cameras had gotten more advanced in the past 600 years. Guess his phone specifically didn’t get those updates.

You’re just bitter because there’s no glow on that picture

‘So what if I am? It’s an important part of the graffiti!’ Max rolled his eyes. Haruki flipped him off again.–No, it was not childish. It was very mature, actually, thank you very much.

He looked at the picture, it was still pretty. He sent it to Eraserhead, seeing as the hero seemed to enjoy the other pictures he’s sent him. He hoped the hero wouldn’t get mad about the fact that it’s graffiti this time. He didn’t seem like the type, but you never know.

Eraser

[Picture.4582813721]

“Did you make that?”

“No? Just found it. I don’t have spray paint. Which, actually. I should get spray paint. Thanks for the idea.”

“Oh god, I don’t want to know what kind of things you’d draw.” Then, before he can respond, another text appeared. “Or write.”

“Okay, first of all. My art skills are amazing. AND my writing skills (no, I don’t care about those essays you had me write. I still think I did amazingly in them.)”

“Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night.”

We should screw with him.

‘You know what? Sure. I haven’t caused a headache in too long.’ Haruki grins to himself, already thinking of ways he could annoy Eraserhead.

“How’s the festival btw?”

“Do I even want to know how you know?”

“:]” “Say hi to your husband for me. AND, go read your fortune.” “I mean now. I’m not patient.”

He wasn’t far from the festival. And he learned that Max could go as far as 5km away from him. Which was an unreasonable length. But it would come in handy in that moment.

Haruki looked over at him, and Max grinned before disappearing.

Haruki sat beside the graffiti, waiting for him to return.

Great fortune, or I think that’s what it said. It was something good.

Haruki saw three dots appear on the screen. Eraserhead was a quick typer, but this one time he had to be faster.

“Nice, I got ‘future blessing’. Wonder what ‘Great fortune’ means, tho. Is it like immediate?”

“Haha, funny. Where are you, if you’re going to play games, at least talk to me in person.”

“Well, A. I’m not in costume. And B. How can you be sure that you can’t see me right now? ;]”

***

“Uh, Shou? What are you doing?” Hizashi asked, he looked down at his “small fortune”. Shrugging, he was grateful it wasn’t a misfortune, but he wanted something more than a small fortune. Especially since he now had a kid to worry about, well, he always had kids to worry about. But this one was different.

“He’s somewhere here, that little bastard.” Aizawa answered, he was currently spinning around him. Trying to spot anyone with blue hair who was close enough to see what he had written on his fortune slip. But there was no one, and the only other person with blue hair that he saw in that moment was a 30-year-old woman.

“You’ve finally gone mad? Honestly took you longer than I thought it would.” Yamada laughs.

“He saw the fortune slip somehow! There’s no way he could’ve guessed it!” Aizawa points his phone at Hizashi. The blond reads over the texts, and he shrugs again.

“Maybe he’s a mind reader.” He answers, Yamada wasn’t serious at all when he said that sentence, and then he saw the way that his husband actually started considering it.

“That could be considered an emitter quirk. Either that or something between an emitter, transformation and accumulation. It would depend on the specifics, but that still doesn’t explain one of his eyes being black that one time. And he said that his quirk had a healing ability. So no, don’t think that that’s it.”

Hizashi shakes his head. “Shouta. Stop trying to figure out more things about him for a second. He’s fine, that should be all that matters. He probably just got lucky. Or he has another friend who helped him with that prank.” He leaned forward and kissed his husband. “Now come and win me my own plushie.”

Aizawa looks over to where Hizashi pointed, he saw an atrocious plushie of his hero costume. It was clearly not official merch; whoever made that messed up his speaker with 13’s. Which Yamada has done a few times, but the speaker was way too big on him.

Remembering that one time when Hizashi was tired after not sleeping for two days, and he was freaking out about his head shrinking, while in reality he just misplaced his speaker always made them—and other teachers—laugh.

***

Haruki looked down at his phone. He stared at the ‘seen’ under his text. He specifically implemented that feature in the app just to be able to see when Eraserhead was ghosting him. Which was most of the time, of course. The hero doesn’t seem to be able to type the word ‘bye’. It has to be some sort of disease.

Haruki sighed, he knew that no matter how long he’d wait. He wouldn’t receive a text back. So his fun was over.

Eraser

“Have fun at the festival. Say hi to Present Mic for me.”

“Will do. Go to sleep soon.”

Well, at least now Haruki knows that he still had his phone in his hand. Which meant that he was, in fact, looking for him at the festival. He laughed while imagining it, now he wished that he had stayed and watched it happen.

Eventually, Haruki stood up from his spot by the mural. He stretched and groaned at the cracking noises of his spine. He had to get home soon; he was getting tired, and he was craving patrol again.

He liked that day. It was one of the only ones where nothing bad happened.

That’s kind of fucked up if you think about it too much, but we all know that Haruki didn’t like thinking about those things.

He sighed and hid his phone in his pocket. It would be a long walk back, but he didn’t care. The night was beautiful in Musutafu. But he is insanely biased on that. Everything is beautiful to him. And he wouldn’t change that in a million years. It just makes life better for him. If he can appreciate everything, it means that he can be happy all the time.

He’s not.

But it means that he could be. And that’s something.

What do you think getting your teeth ripped out feels like?

Haruki looks over at Max in horror. He’s gone through a lot, but that was a new thing even for him. And he certainly didn’t want to know what that felt like.

‘Max… What the actual FUCK?’

It’s just a question! I’m curious! I can’t exactly feel things, you know? Well… actually let’s not talk about me feeling things, cause that’s uh… complicated.

‘Oh great, so you can feel some things? I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.’

Fil. I don’t want to talk about it.

Max’s tone gets unusually serious. Haruki has heard him be serious before; he hears it every night. But this was different. There weren’t many things that Max didn’t want to talk about. In fact, he loves talking. And he loves talking about himself even more. But suddenly he doesn’t want to talk. Haruki wanted to know more; he liked learning things about Max. Although that did mean that later he would be left wondering what the fuck was wrong with his mind. He still wanted to learn more.

He wanted to know everything. But he knows that in the off chance that Max has a consciousness of his own, he deserves to keep his secrets. Haruki wouldn’t be mean to the person who lived inside his brain. He still had manners.

Actually, that statement could be debated.

‘I’m literally defending you right now. Do not argue with me.’

They didn’t speak for a while after that. Neither of them wanted to disturb the peace of the night. Slow snow petals were falling around them, merging with the ones already on the streets.

Musutafu was beautiful during the winter, it made Haruki almost forget about the cold.

He didn’t have proper winter gear. None of his clothes were appropriate. Sure, they still gave him some warmth. But it wasn’t much. In fact, it was too little. And the only good gloves he had were the ones that Eraserhead bought for him. Well, he bought them for Filius, so he could only wear them as Filius.

That logic is so flawed that I’m not even going to try and debate that. Max laughs, and it seemed like the deep and angsty thoughts would have to be postponed to later.

Haruki stared up. The sky was pitch black, the white dots falling out of it were the only things that Haruki could see.

But if he focused, he could see small stars shining down onto him.

---

“I want a star.”

“… What?” Filius looks over to Kaori. They were sitting on the rooftop of her house—and the rebellion meeting place—She was lying on her back, staring up at the fake sky that surrounded them.

Filius stares at her face; he knows that it’s rude to do that. But he also knows that she doesn’t mind. She looks beautiful, her eyes were always incredibly pretty, the light blue seemed to always be almost glowing. But that was probably just something that Filius imagined.

“Don’t you ever think that it would be cool if we could just.” She sighs. “I don’t know… go up, get a star and just keep it. As a decoration. I think that I would have a whole collection. They’re just so pretty, right?”

Filius sits up suddenly, his hair falls onto his face. He quickly fixes it before standing up. “Wait here! I’ll be back in a second!” He says quickly before running away. The heels he was wearing clicked against the streets of the city. He hated walking in them, but they made him look cute, and it was good training.

Ah, yes. Wearing heels. Amazing training.

‘Look. Think about it! It makes walking and running harder, so when I wear normal shoes, it’s easier. And it means that I can run and fight longer.’

Wouldn’t it be the opposite? Because you’re not used to regular shoes? Wouldn’t it be harder?

And Fil didn’t respond; he just focused on running. Eventually, he reached the castle, he went up the stairs. Passing through different rooms and hallways. Stopping for a second to stare at the rose mural.

It was always there.

Roses were the signature of Father. Jesus has a cross; they have roses. Haruki didn’t know why it was roses, but he didn’t care. It made him almost hate the plant, but they were his mother's favourite.

The room was mostly empty, beige columns filled the corners, black and white tile lay under his feet.

He always stopped and stared at the mural whenever he passed it. He didn’t know why; it just made his stomach hurt. Something about the room was making him feel uneasy. That was probably why it was made. Father loved knowing that he had control over everything. And the best way to show that, pain.

The mural was simple, a large red rose, surrounded by dark green leaves and thorns. It was illuminated by something. Filius didn’t know by what. It glowed, and he was starting to be fed up with it. Everything always glowed.

He shook his head and looked away. He walked forward again, not lifting his gaze until he was out of that room.

He ran up the spiral staircase and onto the balcony. He could’ve taken the faster way up and just used his wings. But they were strained from training that day. Father decided it would be fun to have him and his sibling fight on a 20-story building. And well, Filius didn’t like seeing his siblings splattered against the floor. Even if they could regenerate.

Filius didn’t understand how the pills worked exactly. But he knew that they were based on his quirk. And that they allowed his siblings to regenerate for a small period of time, or come back from death.

Even if Fil knew that they wouldn’t die if they took those pills before training. He was still scared whenever he saw them die.

And he knew that they were also scared, it was the look in their eyes. Whenever one of his siblings realised that they wouldn’t finish training. Their eyes always reflected the deep disappointment that was washing over them.

Filius once again shook his head. He couldn’t get distracted now; Kaori was waiting for him. He had to get going before she started worrying.

He climbs up the side of the building.

The glass of the dome under him clicked with every step he took.

He walks over to the very top. He knew that there was a star hanging right there; he saw it every time he hung out with Raine.

Filius pulled it down, snapping the string that it was connected to.

He remembers making the stars; it was exhausting. He had to draw out, cut, and paint around 500 individual stars. All in different shapes. And of course, Father didn’t even let the peacekeepers help him. Because he “needed to learn what real work would feel like.” It took him 15 hours, and he barely ate during that time.

When he returned to Kaori, she was lying on her side. Her eyes were struggling to stay open.

Filius chuckled, and he leaned closer to her. “Hi Rin-Rin.”

She gave a small groan in response. Filius tucked the fake star under his arm and lifted Kaori up. Getting down from the roof and walking into her bedroom.

He put her down on her bed and threw the blanket over her.

Kaori looked up at him for a second and smiled. “Night, Fil.” Filius glanced over to her from the door. He placed the star next to a dresser.

“Night, Rin-Rin.” He answers. Walking out of her room and going back to his own.

---

When he finally regained himself, he was in front of his apartment building. He couldn’t see Max anymore. He had no idea how he managed to walk all the way over to his house while not being conscious, but he wouldn’t read too much into it.

Though the hardest part was still left up to him.

That might be a bit of an overexaggeration. But climbing a whole building, and then trying not to get impaled on weird pipes that collapsed while climbing down into said building, wasn’t very easy. Especially while carrying a blanket.

Haruki sighed, and he let his body fall onto the hammock. He jumps up when something stabs his stomach. He searches the pockets of his jacket and finds the postcards that he bought with Midoriya.
They were a little bent, but he didn’t mind it too much. It wasn’t as if the people to whom he’d address them to would read them anyway. So it didn’t matter.

He decides to get it over with; he knows that maybe he should’ve waited. Just to make sure that the day ended with him feeling happy. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to lie back down on the hammock and go to sleep.

Now that he remembered what he wanted to write to them, he wouldn’t sleep.

Haruki sits down at his desk, he doesn’t have a lot of space on the postcards. But that’s the point, they’re made to have few words on them. Just a few sentences wishing the receiver happy holidays or something similar. Haruki had a lot to say, but he knew that even if he was allowed to say it all. He wouldn’t.

He picks up a pen that he discarded at some point. He should probably stop doing that; he couldn’t afford to keep losing pens with how much he wrote. Also, now that the small art store that he buys them from has noticed that they are in higher demand, the price has increased. Not by a lot, they’re just pens. But it’s still something that Haruki will suffer from.

He takes one of the postcards, it was red with light pink and yellow flowers. Haruki thought that it was really pretty. And with a few strokes of his pen, he starts writing.

Words fill the small paper; he wanted to write more, but he neither had the space nor the words to do so. Because how could he write about the many things that he wishes to say when they meet again?

He stares at the postcard, the colours now framing the black ink of his pen. He looks at the messy letters that he wrote. He reads them over and over again.

“The festival was beautiful, I just wish that I could’ve taken you with me.”

Writing that may make him a hypocrite, he did go on a monologue about how he didn’t mind them not being there an hour before. But he can still wish.

Are we going to get sad letters for everyone now? Do Kaori next. I wanna see what that emo mind of yours thinks of.

‘Max… not right now.’

Look, I’m just saying. This is stupid, you will see your siblings again when they get out. And Kaori and Raine are dead. There’s no point in writing to them! Besides, it’s not like any of them speak Japanese.

Haruki ignores him.

He didn’t care that they couldn’t read it.

He didn’t care that they were dead. He wanted to do this, so he would.

The next card is a purple one, small balloons are printed on the corners. It was clearly meant to be more of a birthday card, but it was the only good shade of purple there.

This time, he decides not to dwell on the words. Whatever he wrote was what was going to be there.

“I know I shouldn’t, but I still think about you every day. I miss you, Rin-Rin.”

Max doesn’t say anything this time, but Haruki knows that he wants to. He was never the type to stay silent for the sake of it, though. The change scared him.

He looks at the third, and final, postcard that he bought.

Light purple and blue clouds. It was simple, but somehow it matched him perfectly.

And even if Haruki knew what he wanted to say, he couldn’t bring himself to move the pen. He felt his chest get heavy, the sounds of his heartbeat were banging against the edges of his skull.

He could feel fingers sliding against his back. It felt disgusting.

He stood up, everything stopped.

He picked up two of the postcards, leaving the one for his siblings at home.

The short bell on the door rang when he left the store. He held two candles. It was a bit over the top, but you could say that about everything that he did.

The walk over was empty; there were no cars, no passersby, and none of the lights in the buildings around him were lit.

Eventually, he reached the forest. He knew that he had to get it over with.

When he finally found the clearing, the fireflies surrounded him once more. They were peaceful, as if they thought of him as another piece of the forest.

He sits down by the graves, the flowers that Present Mic planted looked beautiful. Even if they were covered by snow.

Haruki placed the purple postcard under the candle to make sure that it wouldn’t get swept away by the wind.

He takes out his lighter from the pocket of his jacket. It flickers for a bit before finally lighting up.

Then he does the same for the other grave.

He sits there; he probably should’ve moved a while ago. But he didn’t.

Haruki looks over to Raine’s grave. The postcard was still empty.

“I know that I should’ve written something on it.” He says to himself.  “I’m sure that you would’ve. You always did these small acts of love. Every time you were around me, you made sure that I knew that you loved me.”

He pauses for a while.

“I remember how you used to be so shy. I’m sorry that I broke you, Raine. If we didn’t meet, you would’ve still been the same nervous kid that you were before. But compared to what you became, that would’ve been a good thing.”

The snow starts falling faster, Haruki looks down, shielding his eyes from it.

“And I know that I was the one that made you who you were. And I think that if it weren’t for me, you would’ve lived a happier life. And so, as my final act of love. I won’t reach out to you ever again. But I’ll become everything that I ever promised you that I would be. And even if I want to finally move past everything, we both know that a part of me never will. I know that you died, exactly how you wanted to.”

Haruki leans forward and puts the candles out. He stands up, looking back at the grave.

“But that doesn’t mean that it was a noble death. And Raine. We won’t meet in heaven. Maybe in hell. But even if I forgave you. What you were planning to do to the rebellion will never be forgotten. Not by me.”

And he returns home. Listening to Max make fun of him on the way.

He felt weird; he thought that after doing that, his day would’ve been ruined. But it wasn’t. What he felt wasn’t a good feeling. Even so, it felt freeing. Something changed; he had more to say. Obviously. But that didn’t mean that he needed or wanted to say it. Not this time.

Instead, he turned on the radio, which was still playing Christmas songs, and he went to sleep knowing that tomorrow he would go on patrol, and things would feel better again.

Chapter Text

“S-stay back!”

Filius looks to his side. He was holding an unconscious criminal by one of his arms, and he was about to tie him up and continue with his job. But of course, he got interrupted.

The person shouting at him nervously was holding up a gun.

Why do they always have to have guns? Why can’t it be something funnier? Like a bazooka!

‘What criminal would logically have a bazoo- you know what, doesn’t matter.’

“Put the gun down.” Fil lets go of the criminal, raising his arms, and taking a step closer to the villain currently threatening him.

“No way! You think I don’t know who you are? You’re that vigilante! People thought you died! We thought that you didn’t patrol anymore!” He shouted, and his arms were shaking. The gun in his hand wasn’t steady. Even if he did fire, there would be a high chance of him missing completely, which was an accomplishment considering how close Filius was standing.

“Just put the gun down, I don’t want to deal with a bullet hole in my costume. You’ll go to jail no matter what you do. Do you want ‘attempted murder’ on your record as well?” Fil starts walking towards the criminal, in response, he walks backwards.

“I can’t go to jail! Not again!”

Fil ignores his words, deciding that the conversation was over. He walks closer, until the villain can’t move backwards anymore.

“W-why aren’t you scared?” He asks, pressing the gun right against Fil’s chest.

“Because your toy won’t do anything to me.” He shrugs.

“What do you think you’re god or something?” The criminal furrows his brows. Letting out a breathy chuckle.

“Nah, just his son.” He says as he punches him. Watching as the villain’s body falls limp to the floor.

Filius drags him over to the criminal he took out beforehand and ties them together.

‘Well, we got what we came here for, and I don’t feel anyone else inside the building. But why do I feel like I’m missing something?’

Maybe the bullet hole in your chest? Crazy idea, I know.

‘ What bullet hole?’ Fil looks down. ‘Oh, this bullet hole. God damn it, I’m going to have to repair that.’

What if, and hear me out on this, you got a bulletproof vest?

‘I am a bulletproof vest.’

Your shirt isn’t.

Filius shrugs, looking at the text from his client once more. Making sure that he got everything that he needed.

We should burn it down.

‘You’re so right, we didn’t do that in such a long time! I miss Arson!”

Filius starts to prepare everything, making sure things are lying the best way to burn as long as possible, and trigger a chain reaction. Then, he sets the building on fire. Watching as it starts out slowly, gradually making its way up and getting bigger and bigger.

It was a beautiful sight. He always loved watching things burn; maybe that wasn’t a healthy thing to think. But it was true. To Filius, fire was gorgeous; it was something that could be used for many things. And each one of them was important.

Obviously, he took the criminals outside to an area where they wouldn’t be hurt.

When he’s sure that everything is done, he pulls out his phone and texts Tsukauchi.

Detective

“Pizza delivery!”

[screenshot.47285919082]

“You can’t keep referring to criminals as pizza, and arresting them as a delivery.”

“Why not? Think of it as a code or something.”

“It’s too late for this.”

“It’s always late. You work as a detective, and you’re currently on a case about a vigilante who ONLY works at night.”

“Your fight with Endeavour was around the evening.”

“Well, no, the break-in was in the evening. The fight was at night.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“You love me.”

“I do not.”

“If you didn’t, you’d let the commission have their fun. Admit it! You care about me!”

“So what if I do? I can feel sympathy, it’s a human emotion.”

“Oh, well then I can’t feel it.”

“What?”

“What.” “Also it’s kind of on fire. Remember those few arson cases a while back? I thought you wanted to feel a bit of nostalgia.”

“WHAT”

“No punctuation? Damn I really did break you.”

Seen

‘Ghosted again. Maybe it’s my texting skills?’

Oh, definitely. You’re shit at texting.

‘Haha. Shut up.’ Filius rolls his eyes. Walking back to the city.

“Holy shit! Filius! You’re back, lil guy!” The bartender in the lounge greets him. Fil is glad that today Rody was working. The other guy who sometimes worked there hated Fil with his whole heart. Seriously, what is it with random people hating him?

The guests in the lounge look over at him, some of them shout their own greetings. Some just nod. Filius waves back to them. He’s somewhat glad that they noticed that he was gone. It showed that he had other people who cared about him.

Even if he wouldn’t admit that that’s what it meant.

“Where did you go? You were gone for quite a while.” Rody asks, passing a drink over to him.

“Just vacation. And uh.. no thanks, I don’t want to drink.”

Rody laughs. “It’s just some Coke. I wouldn’t give you alcohol, you look 12! No offence.”

Filius sighs, starting to drink the Coke from a straw. “None taken, I guess. But I’m not 12!”

“Okay, sure, but you still look young. So is your vacation fully over? Or are you going back soon?”

“Nah, I’m staying. There’s got to be someone to keep this place running.” He chuckles.

“Hey! Other people do those jobs too. We did fine while you were gone.” Rody starts drying some glasses with a rag that he always kept close to himself while on the job.

“You know how I can tell that you’re lying, Rody? Every time that you lie, that bald head of yours starts shining a little bit more. Like Pinochio but bald.”

Rody hits his head lightly. “Knock it off. Finish your drink before I change my mind about giving it to you for free.”

Rody then walks up to some other clients who just sat by the bar. Filius finishes his drink and stands up, searching for his client.

He found them in record time. Max was counting for some reason.

After getting money for the finished job, he decides to finish up patrol. He did miss it, and nobody would care if one day he worked for a bit longer than usual. Well maybe except for Eraserhead

The air was cold, it was still snowing, and walking around was getting difficult. But Filius wanted to patrol, so he would.

He climbed up a building, hoping that it would be a bit easier to move around there; he was right. But the change was barely noticeable. He was too excited to care, though. All that was going through his mind was that he was finally back.

Things were back to normal again. And maybe this time they would stay normal. But knowing his luck, they won’t. Something would go wrong eventually. And by now, he was waiting for it to happen.

But his thoughts didn’t matter as soon as he felt a very familiar quirk coming closer to him.

“Eraser. Hi.” Filius spins around on his heel, looking at the tired hero in front of him. Aizawa sighs, walking closer to him.

“Hey, Fil. You’re back to patrolling?” The hero asks, looking down at the streets below them.

“Yeah, I was just craving going out again, ya know?”

Aizawa nods. “Which route?”

Fil grins under his mask. His first patrol he was going on since he got back, and he would do it with Eraserhead. Now he was even more excited.

“I’m thinking F, you haven’t seen that one before, it’s a long one, so it’s faster than my normal ones, but it’s my favourite.”

“Lead the way then.”

After a couple of hours and many, many villains taken down, they were finally reaching the end of the patrol. Well, at least for Eraserhead, Filius still wanted to stay out and have more fun.

But then they stumbled onto something that Fil wasn’t expecting.

The town he stayed in for the last month was pretty clean, not much different from Musutafu. Except there, there was barely any drug dealing. In Musutafu, on the other hand, you could find drug deals being done in broad daylight. And maybe Fil wasn’t used to it as much as he’d like to be.

Fil stared at the deal from a building above. He decided to have a little bit more fun than he normally does.

“Sharing is caring?” He jumped down and into the alleyway, blocking the exit.

He knew that Eraserhead was watching him from above, to be fair, Filius thought that it was weed. And well, he definitely didn’t expect the dealer to actually throw him a small plastic bag of whatever he was selling.

Filius looks down at the bag in his hands, and his eyes widened when he saw a suspiciously white coloured powder inside it.

Before he can say anything else, Eraserhead drops down from the roof and ties up the buyer.

“Shit! 12!” The criminal shouts, taking out a knife from his back pocket. But before he can do anything, Aizawa kicks him up, jumps up above him, then kicks himself up by jumping from him, and slams the man down, knocking him out in the process.

He then looks over to Fil with a judging expression.

“Don’t you think that was a little bit over the top?”

Aizawa ties the two men up with some capture tape.

“Considering the fact that he just gave drugs to a minor. No, I do not.” Eraserhead then walks over to Fil and takes the plastic bag away from him.

“Hey, my drugs!”

Aizawa glares at him. An expression that would make anyone else start praying to god for forgiveness. Not Fil though, he just enjoyed seeing how pissed off he could make the hero.

“Relax! I was joking. I thought that was weed before he threw it to me.” Filius shrugs, taking out his phone to text the detective about the two villains.

“That’s still not an excuse to ask for drugs. Especially when there’s a pro hero next to you.”

“I didn’t expect him to actually do it! I was fucking with him!”

Eraserhead just sighs, climbing back up on top of the building. Filius quickly hides his phone back into his utility belt and jumps after him. “I’ve already texted Tsukauchi, he said cops will be here in a sec.”

Eraserhead knocks some snow off the side of the roof before sitting down against the railing. He pats a spot next to him, seeing if Filius will sit down.

Instead, he looks down at him.

The night was beautiful; in general, Musutafu was beautiful. And it was peaceful moments like these that reminded him of Astris the most.

The times he’d spent with her were always done in silence, slow conversations filled it from time to time. But most of it was done on the balcony in the castle. With Astris smoking, and Filius ranting about whatever he was thinking of at that moment.

He didn’t know what compelled him to think that he was allowed to smoke around Aizawa, because a minute ago, the hero was lecturing him about drugs. Usually, people who didn’t want teens doing drugs didn’t want them to smoke either.

But hey, Filius never said that he was smart. Unless he did.

He leaned against the railing, taking out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

Eraserhead looks at his movements, watching every single detail. Fil tries to ignore it. He hasn’t said anything yet after all.

He takes off the middle of his mask, keeping the part in his hand.

He puts a cigarette into his mouth and then lights it, coughing slightly at the first drag of it that he took. He looks down at the hero, who still hasn’t said anything. And that was odd, normally Eraser would be ecstatic to share his opinion about how Filius lived. But for some reason, in that moment, he stayed silent.

“You uh.. want one? Why are you so quiet?” He asks, blowing the smoke away in the opposite direction.

“No, I don’t smoke. Does your mom know that you do that crap?”

Fil raised his eyebrows at the question. He hadn’t expected his family to be brought up.

“Not anymore, when she was alive. Maybe. I don’t know, I was too young to smoke back then.” Fil shrugs, not paying attention to the words he’s saying. The moment that the hero looks at him in shock is the same moment that he realised he fucked up.

“Your mom is dead?” Aizawa’s voice is quieter than before. He seemed worried, and Filius felt like his carefree act was no longer going to be enough to steer this conversation back onto what it was.

“I- I mean yeah. But it's fine! It’s been like that for a long time!” He tries to fix the situation, but that sentence only made it worse.

Eraserhead stands up. He looks down at Fil, and he hates how small it makes him feel. “Who do you live with?”

And Filius just stares at him. The cigarette in his hand still burning. He wanted to respond, he really did. But he couldn’t; his words were stuck in his throat. Any answers that he came up with weren’t enough. They wouldn’t make Eraserhead less concerned.

“I- well, uh.. shit. Y-you know…” His voice was shaking, but his voice changer made it seem like nothing but static. Nothing was going the way it was supposed to. Today was meant to be normal; it wasn’t supposed to get emotional. He didn’t want to talk to the hero about his homelessness. Not today, not ever. He would have an apartment soon anyway. The job he finished today ensured that he would be able to get one.

He wouldn’t be homeless anymore. So it didn’t matter how he lived now.

Or that he lived on his own.

It shouldn’t matter.

“Kid? Do you have anyone to live with?”

“You already knew that I lived in an abandoned building! Why is this such a surprise!?” Filius takes a step back. He couldn’t control his breathing. The world was closing in on him. He just got back and he already fucked everything up. Just like he always did.

He didn’t even get a full week this time. He couldn’t be normal for a week.

Eraserhead stepped forward, moving to hug Fil. He dropped the cigarette, and it went out in the snow. The touch burned, he didn’t know why. It was something too familiar, something that he recognised and wanted to forget. Filius pushed him away.

“Don’t touch me!” he shouts, moving back again.

“Okay, alright. I’m sorry.” Aizawa said, his voice was panicked, but it was still different from Fil’s; he was trying to stay calm. And Filius couldn’t decide whether that made him feel worse or better. “I won’t pry. I swear, just come back and light another cigarette or something, okay?”

Filius nodded. He didn’t look Eraserhead in the eyes; he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not after that, and he didn’t even realise that he was saying something that he shouldn’t. And now there were even more things that the hero knew. But at least he wouldn’t get suspected of his real identity, since Haruki does technically live with his mother.

He sat down next to Aizawa this time. But he didn’t light another cigarette; he didn’t feel like it was appropriate now.

He fixes his mask and looks down at the street. And after a long silence, he speaks up again.

“Am I not going to get lectured about smoking? You know? Like, the whole, ‘it’s bad for your health’ talk?”

Eraserhead shrugs. “Would you listen to one?”

“Fair point.” Filius sighs. He lies on his back, ignoring the snow surrounding him. He has a feeling that the thing he just said will come back to bite him later on. But honestly? Everything that he ever says will do that eventually. He just has to wait long enough.

Eraserhead stands up when they finally see a police car drive up to the building where they were sitting.

“Uh- see you tomorrow?” Fil says to him when he sits up, pieces of snow falling off his shirt.

Eraser looks back at him, confused. “Tomorrow’s New Year’s. I’m not patrolling… Did you forget?”

“Oh, shit. Already? Damn, I forgot yeah.”

Aizawa stares at him for a second. “You know, if you need to, you can come over. I’m sure that my husband won’t mind. Besides, there’s a storm starting. So you won’t be able to go out anyway.”

Filius looks around, and the wind was in fact stronger than he realised. And when he looked up, all he could see was the white snow falling. He wasn’t even aware that it was possible to have this much snow at a time. It was supposed to be a rare occurrence in Japan after all.

He shook his head slowly. He didn’t think that his house would be able to survive a storm. Well, the building would survive. But his window was held together using tape. And no matter how well tape works, he didn’t think that it would survive a whole storm.

Aizawa noticed him thinking. “Seriously, it’s fine. It would even be more than fine. I’d be glad to know that you’re safe.”

Fil stands up. “Bye ‘Zawa.”

He jumps onto the next building, leaving Eraserhead to fill the cops in on what the two criminals they were arresting did. He probably should’ve said those things to the detective, but he didn’t feel like it.

His mind kept going to what had just happened; he needed a distraction. And so, he ignored his body shivering and the fact that he could barely see anything. And he decided to keep going with his patrol.

And maybe he stumbled onto the best distraction of all.

He jumped down the building, quickly taking out the three criminals that were in the alley. He looked through the pockets of one of them, and he found exactly what he was searching for.

Oh? You’re doing drugs again? Thought that would be a bit harder to do without Astris, but I guess I was wrong.

‘Okay, first of all, I didn’t do drugs. That was one time! And second of all, weed is barely a drug. It doesn’t count.’

Sure, sure, tell yourself whatever you need to.

Filius ignored Max and put the plastic bag into his pocket. He found it weird that any time drugs were involved, they were kept in these bags. It was like some sort of mutual agreement between every drug dealer in Musutafu. Where would they even get all of them?

He took out his phone and texted Tsukauchi again. The man seemed surprised that Filius managed to find two drug deals during the same hour. But hey, the more drug deals he found, the fewer drug dealers would be around the city. He thought that the detective would appreciate that.

He tied the criminals to a lamppost before jumping back up onto a building. He nearly slipped, and he hadn’t even realised how much he was shivering before.

His breathing was shallow, and he thought that maybe he should’ve taken his hoodie with him on patrol that day. But no point worrying about that now. He had to get home and warm up before it turned into anything serious.

Filius looked at the weed in his hand. Rolling a joint couldn’t be that hard. He’s seen Astris do it many times.

But he needed some rolling paper, at least he thought that he needed it. Astris always used that. Luckily for him, the lounge sold it. Which was something he learnt by accident when he witnessed someone else buying it.

Let’s just hope that Rody will sell it to him.

And the universe seemed to have given him some luck. Finally. Rody sold him the rolling paper. Not until he was given a very throughout lecture about the dangers of weed and everything that he expected Aizawa to tell him.

What he didn’t expect was Rody looking at him for a second, and then taking him to the back.

“Look, don’t think that I’ll do this for you in the future, but I can see how clueless you are about this.” They sat down at a table, they seemed to be in a break room of sorts. Which Filius didn’t even know that the lounge had. “Give me the weed, I’ll show you how to do it.”

Fil took the bag out of his pocket and gave it to Rody.

After some instructions from the man, Filius was finally able to roll a joint on his own. And he was glad that he had help, because he was struggling with it.

Filius sat in his home, with an empty cup of instant noodles on his desk. He looked over at his window, which was struggling against the storm. He was lucky to get inside as fast as he did, since the weather got worse soon after.

Normally, he would’ve taken off his costume, but it was incredibly cold that day. So instead, he changed his shirt to a warmer one, put on his hoodie and scarf, and decided to leave the rest of it on.

He looked down at the joints that he had rolled already.

He knew that he shouldn’t. Cigarettes were one thing, but this felt like a different level of illegal. Sure, smoking in general was illegal for him. But at least one thing, he wasn’t allowed to do because of his age. Weed wouldn’t be allowed, no matter what.

In the end, he decided to put the joints into a drawer of his desk, maybe some other time.

But he was quickly turned away from his thoughts when his window collapsed, letting snow fall inside the room.

Filius quickly walked over to the window, trying to somehow glue it back together. It wasn’t sticking anymore, and adding more tape didn’t work either.

So, as a last resort, he pulled the tapestry off his wall, revealing the nearly collapsed wall behind it, and he put it up across the window.

It covered any light coming from the outside, so he couldn’t see very well.

He turned on the flashlight on his phone. He also took the blanket off his hammock and wrapped it around himself.

It was cold.

He thought that his resistance to cold weather had at least slightly better during the last month, but apparently it wasn’t enough. And the blanket wasn’t doing anything. He suddenly got a very, very bad idea. But, it was the only easy way to get warmer inside his house, so he didn’t have a choice.

He sat next to the gas stove he had bought, the water that he had set on it was already starting to sizzle.

Deciding that it was enough, he put his right hand into the pot, it burned. But he could handle it; it was warm enough. And without thinking about it, he took off his shirt and let the water flow down his chest.

It burned; he could see large scars appear before they healed and disappeared. It didn’t warm him up too much; it just hurt. It wouldn’t be enough, no matter how much water he boiled.

He got dressed again, pulling the Eraserhead blanket over himself. It still wasn’t enough.

Breathing was difficult; every breath he took was too little, as if they didn’t reach his lungs. He looked over to his desk. And it seemed like he would smoke the weed after all. He needed all the warmth he could get. Maybe it would slow down the shivering. At least by a bit.

He picked up a joint, lighting it with his lighter. It was another familiar feeling. He did smoke weed before, though not a lot. Normally, just a single hit that Astris let him take. It calmed him down quickly, but it still wasn’t warm enough.

The joint didn’t last long, and when it burned out, he was still cold. Maybe even more than he was before smoking it.

Sitting against the bottom of the couch, his clothes lay above him. He wouldn’t be able to keep going for much longer in this temperature. So, he did what he had to do.

Eraser

“Are you home?” He stared at his screen, the three dots appeared, and then they disappeared, and again. It was weird; the hero typed fast, his texts were always typed in a very professional manner. It was unusual for him to think about an answer for this long.

“Yes.”

He didn’t need anything more; he shut off his phone. Hoping to preserve any battery that he had. He picked up his bag and took anything that was too important to be covered in snow. His clothes could be fixed and dried off. His laptop and radio couldn’t. At the end, he took off his blanket and put it in the bag as well. It barely fit, but he wouldn’t leave it behind.

He took his hammock off his wall to reduce any damage that could be done to it. He moved his clothes back into the desk drawers, and he took the money he kept stashed away into his bag. That was too important to ever lose.

And when he was finally done, he climbed out of his apartment. Though it barely could be called that. He’s sure that he ripped many holes in his hoodie from every fall that he took.

He didn’t know why his body wasn’t listening to him. He was just a bit cold; he understood the shivering. But why would he have trouble climbing?

He runs across the rooftops of Musutafu, hoping not to trip and fall. His movements were sluggish, and he was getting more and more tired by the second. He never felt like that before; he slept fine yesterday. Or as fine as he could. He shouldn’t be tired; it made no sense.

He reached Eraserhead’s apartment, he looked up at the dining room window he usually climbed through; it was way too high for him to reach at that moment. He wouldn’t be able to get up. So instead, he decided to use the proper door to the apartment.

He pressed the button on the door that corresponded to Aizawa’s apartment number. After a few seconds of calling, he heard the door click.

He walked up the stairs of the apartment, looking at the very modern decorations. To Fil, it looked kind of lifeless–as if it were taken straight out of a magazine.–But that seemed to be the vision, so Fil wouldn’t judge.

Filius stared at the door in front of him. He still had time to go back. Sure, he’s been in their apartment many times before. But this was different. He didn’t know how exactly, but it felt different to him.

He would’ve listened to his gut. He would’ve turned back and gone home to sit out the storm, but the second he turned back, the door swung open.

Revealing a very tired-looking Eraserhead, carrying a full trash bag.

The man looked at Filius, taking in his appearance. And he was glad that he stopped shivering at some point of walking up the stairs.

“You look like shit.” 

Fil looked at Aizawa in shock; he didn’t expect Eraser to insult him right in his face. Especially during a storm.

“At least this is a rare occurrence for me–you, on the other hand.”

Aizawa scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I see that your humour is still intact. Go inside, get some tea, I’ll be back in a second.” He holds up the trash bag before going down the stairs.

He walked into the apartment, the heat engulfed him. He looked over to the fireplace under the TV, it was the first time he’s ever seen it lit. Even if it looked as if it was used often. The soft buzzing of Present Mic’s quirk only added to the warm feeling. He was glad that his body finally got used to it. He was sick of feeling as if his head would explode every time he was around Mic.

“Hey, lil listener! I’m glad you came, the storm’s really picking up, isn’t it? So sudden, too.” Mic says. He was sitting on the couch, a white cat was lying on his lap, purring softly.

Fil nods. He goes into the bathroom, deciding to clean his face, he didn’t even remember why it was so dirty. He takes off his mask and gloves, letting the warm water flow down his face. He looked himself over in the mirror, he really did look like shit. Aizawa was right, still didn’t need to point it out.

He puts his gloves into a pocket, trying to ignore the headache. The lights in the bathroom were too bright, and there was too much noise and yet there was a feeling of never-ending silence deep inside Filius. He hadn’t noticed it before. He didn’t remember when it started; the feeling came and went as it pleased.

He dried his face with a towel and put his mask back on. When he came back out into the living room, Eraserhead was already back, sitting in the spot that Present Mic was in.

“Am I right to assume that you hadn’t eaten anything?” He asks, not looking up from the papers that he was holding.

“No, actually. I ate some noodles.” He gets a scoff in response.

“That’s not food.”

“It’s great food! Do not slander the instant noodle!” He says in a fake, offended tone. “You don’t know what you’re missing out on.”

Mic walks up to him, holding a plate with a meal that Filius didn’t recognise. It did look really tasty, though.

“Save your energy. I heard from Sho what you two were doing in that patrol. You really shouldn’t strain your body like that. If you need some pain meds for sore muscles, just ask.” Mic then hands the plate to Fil.

It burned, he didn’t even realise what was happening before it was too late. The plate fell to the floor, and it broke on impact, sending small shards of it all around the floor. The white cat that was sitting on the couch jumped up, running over to hide under Eraserhead’s legs.

---

His head ached, he could feel blood starting to flow down from his forehead, everything hurt. Father was standing above him, looking at him as if he was disgusted by his very existence. Filius always thought that the look was ironic, seeing as Father was the one who made him like this. He made everything about Fil, and yet he still looked at him as if everything that he did or thought was wrong.

“Well? Pick it up.” Father’s voice cut through the silence.

Filius looked down at the shards of glass surrounding him.

He dropped a vase; he was supposed to move it from one point of the castle to the other. But he dropped it on the way.

“Hurry up.” Father put one foot on his back, moving him down. Filius tried to keep his head up; he didn’t want his face to get cut up by the glass, but Father moved his boot from his pack to the top of his head and pushed him down again.

The glass was sharp; it cut through his cheek, it burned. He wanted to cry and scream at once. But if Father was there, he couldn’t. If he tried to, he would just regret it even more.

“Pick. It. Up.”

---

As soon as he snapped out of his memories, he dropped to his knees. Starting to pick up the pieces of the plate, mumbling apologies while doing so.

His heart was racing, and there was a loud ringing in his ears that tuned everything else out.

He didn’t care that the shards he was picking up were cutting his fingers, or that they were still too hot to hold. He had to pick it up. Even if he could see Eraserhead running over to him in panic, he couldn’t stop.

He made sure that his blood appeared as red, so even if the two heroes saw anything, it would’ve looked perfectly normal—or well, as normal as it could’ve.

He didn’t know how he’d explain the lack of cuts on his fingers; it didn’t matter in that moment.

Before he could’ve picked everything up, he was being held back. Aizawa was behind him, locking his arms behind his back.

“Kid, calm down. It- Fuck, it’s okay!” Filius tried to rip away from his hold. He was fine.

Mic crouched down in front of him. “Hey, listener, look at me.” He put his hands on Fil’s mask. When Filius finally looked him in the eyes, he smiled and then continued talking. “It’s alright, you don’t have to pick it up. You’re okay, you’re safe, and nothing’s wrong.”

He stopped struggling against Eraserhead, and the hero soon let go of him, letting his arms fall back down.

The pieces that he picked up have once again fallen to the floor. Some broke again.

Mic touches Fil’s hand, bringing it closer to him.

“Shit, sorry lil’ listener, didn’t know you had this. I shouldn’t have given you that plate.”

Filius looks down at his hands in confusion. The skin on them was still healing from the boiling water he poured down on himself. He thought that it had already healed, but apparently it didn’t. His right hand suffered the most, having half of the skin on it basically gone.

Eraserhead stood up and walked towards the bathroom, returning with a first-aid kit.

“Seriously, Fil, you have to start by saying that you’re injured. I don’t mind helping you. But I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s wrong.” Aizawa says, starting to bandage his hands.

“In my defence, I didn’t know that that was there.”

“How do you not notice your whole hand not having skin on it?” Eraser looked up at him, standing up and helping Fil do the same.

“I just forgot, I guess?”

Aizawa sighed. “Come here, kid.” He leaned in and wrapped his arms around Filius.

Filius leans his head down onto Aizawa’s sweater. He didn’t hug him back; he was too tired to. This felt nice too.

After a few more minutes, Mic brings another plate to him; this time, he places it on the table. Filius sits down and starts eating. Present Mic was an amazing cook, and Fil would never waste a single bite of any food that the hero made.

Eraserhead sits down next to him. “Stay for New Year’s.”

He tilts his head, looking to his side at the black-haired man.

“Don’t go outside in this weather; we have guests coming over, but if you want to, you could just stay in the guest room.” He pauses for a bit before continuing. “Don’t spend New Year’s alone.”

Fil fixes his mask, trying to pick up the plate again to go wash it, but Aizawa stops him, raising an eyebrow before looking down at his bandaged hands and then back up. Filius puts the plate back down, watching as Mic takes it and washes it instead.

“Sorry..” he mumbles, looking to the side. He didn’t want the heroes to do his chores for him. He didn’t mind washing after himself. In fact, he expected to have to do it. It was only fair.

“Don’t apologise, you didn’t do anything.”

Fil nods in response, but he didn’t believe him. But he didn’t want to start another conversation about how messed up his brain is. He was tired already, and it was way too late for those types of conversations.

Every single time, they feel like an intervention. Like it’s always. “No don’t think that you’re useless, the world is made of rainbows, and puppies, and fucking- unicorn puke.” Or something like that, it’s exhausting. Max said, he was standing beside Fil. Except right now, he looked as if he was glitching. Parts of his body disappeared for a second before coming back, and he looked more transparent than usual.

‘Yeah, I can agree on that one. Like, no, Susan, just because you said that everything will be alright won’t mean that I’ll magically feel better.’

Max chuckled. Filius was about to do so as well, but he stopped himself in the last moment when he remembered that there were two heroes watching him pretty closely then.

“Can I go to sleep?” Filius asks, looking at Eraserhead.

“Yeah, I think sleep will help every single one of us right now.” The hero answers, rubbing Fil’s shoulder for a second, before standing up.

Filius walks into the guest room. He puts his bag down by the foot of the bed before lying down on it. The soft duvet only strengthened his exhaustion. He didn’t want to move, and he was happy that this time, he didn’t need to.

He could’ve just fallen asleep, letting his body rest.—and that’s exactly what he did.

His eyes closed on their own, and before he could think about it. He was asleep. But this time, he had no nightmares. Which meant that even if Max was stronger, Eraserhead’s quirk still didn’t allow him to attack him at night.

He wakes up to the sun already going down, he can hear the TV playing from the living room. And the noise of something sizzling on the stove.

The door to his room was unlocked, and he could’ve sworn that he closed it last night. But he quickly realises exactly who opened it.

Two cats lay next to him in bed. A tuxedo cat, who was–very  comfortably–lying right next to Fil’s ribs, and a small tabby cat, who was sleeping on his back, his paws stretched out, taking as much space as he could for his tiny body.

Filius tried to get out of bed as slowly as he could, trying not to wake the cats. He almost succeeded, but when he was already out of bed, the tuxedo cat’s eyes opened before it stood up and walked out of the room.

He heard Present Mic greeting the cat, his name was “Mr. President” And Fil didn’t know why they would name a cat that, but he loved it.

He walked out of the room, waving over to Yamada.

“You’re up? Did ya sleep well? I hope Shouta’s snoring didn’t interrupt your sleep.” He says jokingly, flipping a pancake to the other side.

“If any of us snore, that would be you ‘Zash.”

Mic furrows his eyebrows before speaking up again. “And that’s how you just earned yourself the pancake I burned.”

Filius sits down on the couch, but Aizawa points to the table. “Go eat, you need all the nutrients that you can get.”

“I don’t think that pancakes are very nutritious, but I won’t argue with free food.” Fil shrugs, walking over to the table.

Hizashi sets a plate with a couple of pancakes in front of him and walks off to make more.

Considering that his mask doesn’t have that big of a hole in it. He had to rip off pieces of the pancake to be able to eat them.

Fil’s head hurt; he didn’t know why. It was probably from Mic’s quirk. Maybe his body just decided that he was no longer used to the feeling. Which was realistic, his body hated him, so he wouldn’t really be surprised if that was the case.

But then, the doorbell rang. And his headache intensified tenfold when Aizawa answered it.

Midnight stepped into the room, waving at Fil, who had just fixed his mask. “Heya kiddo! So you’re the person who will be joining.” She nodded, walking over and sitting next to him.

Filius looked at the other person who was walking through the door. And in that moment, he recognised their quirk. He felt stupid for not realising it before; he had an incredible quirk that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. It was the only quirk that managed to give Fil migraines even from half the country away.

“Why is All Might here?” He asks, staring at the frail-looking old man who just walked in through the front door.

The blond looked at him in surprise. “How do you- I’m not- What?” All Might (?) started talking, but his words only came out as half-finished sentences. He took a deep breath. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess….?” Filius drags out his words, hoping that the hero would believe him

All Might looks at Aizawa “And why is a vigilante here?”

“Uh…. House arrest?” Fil answers instead.

Do you… Know what house arrest is? Cause saying that explains nothing and only makes things more confusing. And there is no way that ‘house arrest’ could ever describe this situation.

‘Shut up, it was the first thing  that came to my head.’

All Might just sighs, seemingly deciding to accept the explanation. He then sits down in front of Fil.

“Young man, you cannot tell anybody about my true identity. Do you understand?”

“I won’t if you don’t tell anyone that you met me.” Filius takes out his hand, waiting for a handshake.

You watch too many movies.

‘Let me have my moment.’

The blond shakes his hand, smiling before going into his hero body—Form? Costume? “Let’s get the party started then!” he shouts, and then he goes back to his smaller form.

The moment that Filius hears the music start to play, he takes Mr. President into his arms and hides away in the guest room. He sees the white cat follow him inside, and he understood them completely. He didn’t like loud noises either. Especially if people made those noises. Since that meant that the noise made his headache from all the different quirks even worse.

So, if he had to sit out the party in the guest room, petting cats and watching movies, he would. He actually wanted to do exactly that; it beat sitting alone in the abandoned building he lived in.

He sat down on the bed next to the small tabby cat, who was still sleeping. He pulled out his laptop from his bag and turned on a random movie that came out when he was a kid, but he wasn’t paying attention.

The two other cats soon joined him on the bed, all curling up next to him. He frowned slightly when he realised that he could only pet two at a time.  But after deducing that the white cat wasn’t in the mood for getting pet, he focused on Mr. President and the tabby.

The movie soon became background noise to his thoughts. It was a rare moment—a moment when his thoughts weren’t trying to actively outrun him. They were quiet, slow. There were still a lot of them, but it wasn’t too much.

Fil looked up at the white ceiling.

“What do you think Father was like. As a child, I mean.” He lets out a chuckle. “I can’t imagine someone like him ever having a childhood. But what went wrong? What could’ve happened to him that he wanted to make me?”

He looks at the cats, and they don’t answer. Because why would they? They’re cats.

But they’re looking at him. And he takes that as a cue to continue.

“Like, do you think there was a certain thing that messed up his brain? Or was he insane from birth?”

He takes a long pause.

“I’d like to think it’s the first thing, because then, maybe it won’t ever happen again. But if he was born that way, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

“And like, if it is the latter, what if it happens to me too? I don’t want to be like him… but, what are the chances that I wi-“

He stops talking when he sees light enter the room again. The door opens softly before Aizawa walks inside.

“Hey, kid? I tried to knock, but you must’ve not heard it over the music.” He pauses for a second, closing the door behind him, silencing the music again. “You okay? Who are you talking to?”

Filius sits up. “No one. Just thinking out loud.”

Eraserhead sits down on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the cats. “You know, you can come with us to party. It’s nearly midnight.”

Filius shakes his head. Focusing his eyes back on the movie.

“You brought a laptop? Smart, wouldn’t want it to get ruined. Do you not like fireworks? Or is it All Might? He won’t bother you, I can make sure of that.”

“Teach me that move you did back on patrol.”

“What?”

---

“Fil! Fil! Teach me how to fight!” Haru shouts, pulling down a piece of Filius’ sleeve. Staining it green.

Filius looks down at his brother. “No, stop asking.”

“Why not?” He pouts, letting go of him.

“Because I’m neither old nor strong enough to train anyone, and you are 8, you don’t need to train. Ask me again after puberty.”

“What’s puberty?” His sibling tilts his head, a few drops of slime fall down from the strands of his hair onto the floor.

“Not something that I should teach you about. Talk to Astris.” Filius starts walking out of the training grounds, he was dripping with sweat, and certainly wasn’t in the mood to tell another sibling that no—they aren’t old enough to fight in the war.

Although Haru shouldn’t even know about the war, so there was no reason for him to want to be stronger.

“But you’re the only person who can train me! You’re the strongest person in here! I’ve seen the scores that you get during training! It’s like 1000%!” Haru puts his hands up to signify the score. Making them out to be bigger than they actually are.

“It’s 98%, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t know how to teach. Go ask Renna.”

“But she says she’s busy!”

“Well, I am too. Kiddo, really, you don’t need to be strong. You’re the strongest 8-year-old I know! And trust me, you’ll get stronger when you grow up!” Fil crouches down to be at eye level with his sibling.

Haru looks to the ground and then up at Fil again. “How will I help you defeat Father then?”

Filius took a deep breath, so his 8-year-old brother knew. That was something that he wasn’t prepared for. He was sure that he was being discreet enough.

“How do you know about that, buddy?”

“I snuck into the rebellion.” Haru says, looking back down. “I know that I shouldn’t have, but I want to help!”

“No, you will help plenty by staying safe and not worrying about it. I can deal with Father on my own, okay?”

Everything was getting fuzzy, and there was a soft clicking sound spreading through the room. Filius tried to ignore it.

“Bu wh- abou-- --?”

---

“Fil? Filius?” Aizawa snapped his fingers in front of Fil’s face, and suddenly, he was back in the guest room. Soft party music filtering in through the cracks under the door. He could hear Mic singing the song, and Midnight cheering him on.

When Eraserhead notices Filius staring at him, he relaxes. “You’re back? You zone out a lot. Always worries me.”

“Y-yeah, I zone out.” His voice cracks, and he coughs, trying to conceal it. He knows that he failed as Eraserhead chuckles.

“Puberty hitting you? And here I thought that I was a late bloomer.” Eraserhead looks him up and down. “You barely ate the month that you were gone, right? I can see it, you’re starving.”

“I ate however much I needed.”

“But not wanted.”

Filius looks to the side. He was fine.

Aizawa sighs. “Look, I’ll show you how to do that move later, but now, go out, talk to the others, and get yourself some chips.” He stands up, waiting for Filius to do the same

Fil follows him back to the living room. Mic greets him, and then he looks back at the screen, continuing to sing a duet with All Might.

The vigilante sits by the dining table, eating chips. Eventually, when everyone else is busy with something else, Midnight sits down next to him. Her cheeks were slightly red, she was clearly already pretty drunk.

“So, wanna explain to me why you smell like weed?” She asks softly. “I have a feeling it wasn’t just regular teenage curiosity.”

Filius looks over to the TV, nobody is paying attention to them, apparently seeing Aizawa drink was enough of a shock for All Might and Present Mic that they can’t hear the conversation he’s having.

“I- … I was cold.” He finally answers.

Midnight’s eyes widen, and her eyebrows furrow. She looks deep in thought. “Did you not have anything else? A blanket? Tea? A fireplace?”

Filius holds out his hands, unwrapping the bandages on the right one. The scars on it were disappearing. Filius hated how long it took; it should’ve been faster. He shouldn’t have had the scars when he reached Aizawa’s house. He made sure of that when he was training. But for some reason, they still weren’t healed. “I had water.”

“Jesus… kid, are you… okay? This- this isn’t okay. You shoul-“

“I’m fine.” He cuts her off. He knows that it’s rude, but he didn’t need her pity. He already got plenty of that from Eraser and Present Mic.

Midnight sighs, looking forward to the kitchen. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

Fil looks down, he missed the cats, he shouldn’t have gone out of the room. “Fine.”

“Midnight! Filius! Get your asses over here! The countdown is starting!” Mic shouts at them, the TV starts displaying large numbers, counting down from 10. He walks over to the back of the couch, deciding to stay close to the windows. He wanted to see the fireworks.

Everyone around him shouted off the numbers, he only thought them. He wasn’t in the mood to scream.

When the TV reached zero, fireworks started going off in the city. And the music resumed.

‘Happy Birthday, Astris.’

You know, I’d say that I expected you to make a bigger deal out of her birthday, but no, you wouldn’t. This is exactly you.  Max stood next to him by the window, watching the fireworks.

‘She didn’t like celebrating her birthday. Just because she isn’t here doesn’t mean that that suddenly changed.’

Filius flinches when he feels an arm wrap around him. He looks to his side, and Aizawa is currently standing in the spot that Max was in a second ago.

He just pushed me away!

‘He couldn’t see you, Max.’

Still!

Fil looks at Eraserhead, his cheeks are completely red, and he smells like a dumpster. How much did he drink during his conversation with Midnight? Clearly, too much.

But something else is different. He’s too… social. He’s smiling and starting conversations, his voice is louder than it normally is, and it’s lacking the signature indifferent tone.

It’s an odd sight, to say the least.

Aizawa lets go of Filius; instead, he walks forward to Mic, who is standing by the table, laughing at him.

And then out of nowhere, Eraserhead leans in and kisses Present Mic, Midnight cheers from her spot at the table, and All Might just stares in surprise. He walks forward and sits by Midnight again, starting to eat the chips again.

The R-rated hero next to him grins. And then passes him a drink. “One couldn’t hurt, it’s New Year’s after all.” She whispers to him. And before Filius can react, Yamada snatches the drink from her arm and places it on the table.

He was about to lecture Midnight, but he was stopped when Aizawa took the drink instead and chugged it—even if a second ago he said that he wouldn’t drink anymore for the night.

The table erupts with laughter, and Mic just sits down in one of the chairs in defeat. When everyone calmed down, Midnight decided to make a toast. Passing a glass filled with Fanta to Fil, Mic passes a blue silly straw in the shape of a star to him.

He doesn’t understand half of what Midnight is saying, but Aizawa does. Or at least, he seems to. They’re both too drunk to really tell what they’re thinking of, but he doesn’t care; it looked funny to him either way.

They all put their glasses together above the table. Filius quickly realises that he’s supposed to do it too, and he puts his glass up as well. Looking to the side in embarrassment.

After the toast, he drinks his Fanta in peace, as the party once again explodes into chaos.

“That was…something?” Fil says, looking around the room, it was dirty, empty glasses and chip bags were lying everywhere, the table looked like it’d survived an apocalypse, and there were 3 people who were currently passed out—Surprisingly, only one of those people was fully sober.

“Never been to a New Year’s party before? This was oddly tame.” Mic says from the kitchen, putting empty glasses in the dishwasher.

“Nah, Fa–my dad never let me.” Filius walks over to the window, the sun was already starting to rise, making the sky a beautiful shade of blue.

“Well, that’s good, though I didn’t expect you to listen to your parents.” Present Mic laughs, passing a half-full bag of chips to Fil.

Filius doesn’t respond; he takes the chips and goes back to the guest room.

Damn. That was rude.

‘What was I supposed to say? “Oh, I had to listen to him or I would get abused”’

Okay, fair, but it was still rude. Where are you going?

‘The roof’

Fil looks out the window, the fire escape was there, and the storm seemed to have slowed down at some point during the night.

He opens the window and slowly climbs out of it. The cold air was a harsh adjustment compared to the warm apartment, but he needed to do it now. He knew that she was doing it too, and he needed to feel close to her in that moment. Even if she wasn’t physically near.

Filius doesn’t bother making a clearing in the snow; he sits down. Digging out his cigarettes from his pocket, he put one in his mouth before lighting it.

Astris always smoked on her birthday, and Filius knew that the chances of her smoking at that moment were very low. He still felt like doing this would help him feel better. Imagining that she was up, standing on the balcony in the castle, smoking and remembering the moments that they did so together, just like he was, helped him.

And at that moment, he needed her to be.

He wouldn’t know whether she was no matter what.

He flinched when he felt something warm being put on him. He looked back, seeing Present Mic carrying a blanket.

The same Eraserhead blanket that Fil won at the festival.

“Can you believe that this blanket sold out almost immediately? I barely managed to get one of my own. And I’m married to him!” Mic chuckles, sitting down next to Fil. “And Sho is still saying that he doesn’t have any fans. He does, they’re just… oddly quiet.”

“I once found a whole 300-member group of people online. They were all just making edits and thirst traps out of the 5 clips that they had available of him.”  Filius responds, remembering how weird some people in that group were acting. Still, it was a quick way to find any new info released about Eraserhead, so he decided to bookmark the site.

Silence fell between them, the cigarette that Filius was holding was already burning out.

“You know, the blanket is kind of useless when I’m sitting in snow.”

“Just enjoy the gesture.” Mic sits down next to him. “So? Did something happen? Why are you up here?”

“No, it’s nothing… but uh- it’s my sister’s birthday.” He puts out the cigarette, seeing as it was nearly burned to the filter.

“December 31st?”

“No, January 1st.” He looks over to the sunrise. “Don’t try to get me to quit, I’m not addicted or anything… I just do it sometimes.”

“You don’t know whether something is an addiction until you try to stop. Trust me, I’d know. I know that you won’t stop, no matter what I say. Just, don’t let it become something you have to do.”

“I—… won’t. Don’t worry.”

“So? Wanna go back inside, get some tea, and watch a random shitty movie? Cigarettes will never beat the feeling of shouting at the TV because one of the characters in a show is oblivious.”

“That’s oddly specific.. but yeah, I’d like that.” Fil stood up, folding the blanket and giving it back to Present Mic.

When they got back inside, Fil sat down in front of the couch—as it was currently occupied by a passed-out Eraserhead. Mic sat down beside Fil, passing him a bowl of different kinds of chips mixed together. It was clear that these were all the leftover chips.

Mic passed the remote to Fil, letting him pick what they should watch. He picked a pre-quirk movie, it seemed to be really popular back then, he remembered watching it with his mom after school one day. Though he didn’t remember much of what happened.

The movie started, but he could already feel his tiredness taking over him. And he didn’t feel like fighting it, so he let himself fall asleep. Hearing Mic’s breath hitch in surprise when his head fell onto his shoulder.

The world comes back to him suddenly. Bright light hits his face, and the warmth of a fireplace covers his entire body. He can feel something lying on his stomach, and when he looks up to see what it is, he sees a cat.

The small, orange kitten is lying curled up on him. His breathing made the cat rise up and down.

The bright blue eyes looked up at Fil, and he immediately went to pet the cat. Feeling a sense of content when it leans into his palm.

He picks the cat up and sits on the couch after seeing that it is empty. He puts the cat in his lap, beginning to play with it again.

The TV is on, it’s playing some teen drama show, something that Mic would watch.

“Morning Fil.” A cheerful voice shouts from the kitchen. Fil and the cat on his lap jump up because of the sudden noise. The orange tabby jumps onto the backrest of the couch and stares in the direction of the noise. Filius follows suit, staring at Mic. “Sorry, sorry!” He says in English, putting his arms up before switching back to Japanese. “Didn’t mean to scare ya. Come here, breakfast is ready. And throw a pillow at Midnight to get her up too.”

Filius grins, picking up a pillow and throwing it at the R-rated hero sleeping on the other couch next to him. She groans, sitting up, clearly hungover. Filius picks the cat up and runs over to the table. Sitting down and placing the cat in his lap, once again starting to pet it.

Mic places a plate with bacon and eggs in front of him, before placing more around the table. Midnight eventually walks over and sits down in a chair next to Fil. After her, All Might also sits down—he didn’t drink at all yesterday, apparently something about not having a stomach. Filius wasn’t listening, and then Aizawa, who nearly passed out on the table.

And when Mic finally sits down, they all start eating. Midnight, Mic, and All Might were all making small talk, Aizawa just ate his breakfast in peace. And Fil wished that he could do that too, but since All Might and Midnight weren’t yet used to him being there, he was attacked with questions. Most of which he couldn’t answer.

When breakfast was finished, All Might said he needed to go. His excuse was that he needed to watch over some training. Which was a bit weird, but everything that Filius does is weird, so he had no right to judge.

Midnight said she’d stay to ‘help clean up’ but everyone in the room knew that she was going to lie on the couch, and watch TV until her hangover disappeared. Filius realised that only when he looked around and noticed that everything was already cleaned up.

Aizawa left to go sleep in the bedroom, and Mic went to the bathroom to shower and get dressed for the day.

Filius goes back to the TV, switching the show to something he’s been watching recently. Midnight walks up behind him.

“Hey, kiddo. Uh… So, you remember what you told me yesterday?” She asks, sitting beside him, she pets the orange tabby cat.

“Yeah, do you?” He asks, chuckling.

Midnight rolls her eyes. “Look, if you want to, you can come over to my place. You know, just to stay there. It’s not a lot, but you’ll have someplace warm to live in.”

“No need, I’m fine, but can you… Not tell Aizawa and Mic?”

Midnight looks him up and down before sighing. “Seriously, Filius, it’s not a bother.”

“It’s fine, if anything happens, I can just come over here.”

She doesn’t respond for a while. She leans against the couch. “Okay, yeah, sure. I won’t say anything. But seriously, if you need anything, come here, or to me. Let me give you my phone number.” She pulls out her phone.

Fil pulls out his own phone, deciding to text her from the app he made instead.

“I have an app. It’s…safer that way.. you know?”

Midnight nods. She sends a thumbs-up emote to test out the app, and when they make sure it works, they put their phones away.

After a few minutes of silence, Fil starts another conversation to ease the awkward atmosphere. “So…. Video games?”

“I knew that I liked you.” Midnight nods, picking up a controller from the coffee table.

“Filius, come with me.” Aizawa says, making Fil give his controller to Mic so that he can continue his game with Midnight.

They walk out onto the stairs, going down a few floors.

“Where are we going?” Fil asks, looking to the side.

“You said that you wanted me to teach you that move I did, didn’t you? Sorry, my memory is a bit fuzzy.”

Fil’s face lights up, and he knows that Aizawa could tell, even if he had his mask on. “Yep! Are you going to teach me now?”

Eraserhead nods, they walk into a gym inside the apartment building, and Filius could tell that they were rich, rich.

Eraserhead walks over to a few mats. “Okay, how high can you jump?”

Filius narrows his eyes. “Higher than anyone you ever saw.”

Eraser raises an eyebrow. “I’ve seen people with specifically jump-enhancing quirks.”

“I stand by what I’ve said.”

Aizawa rolls his eyes, gesturing for Fil to walk forward with his hand.

“Okay, so look, first you kick the other person up as high as possible, then you jump up, and try to land on them to jump up again and then slam down as hard as you can and hit their chest. Come on, try doing it on me.”

“That’s going to hurt if you’re hungover.”

“I am aware.”

Filius shrugs, deciding not to argue with the man. He tries to follow his instructions but misses, so they try again, and again, and again. Until eventually he manages to do it almost-perfectly.

Aizawa lies on the mat, trying to recover from being slammed down many times in a row.

“Wanna spar?” Filius asks, tilting his head. Eraserhead sits up. “Like I know that it’s kind of unfair because you drank a shit ton of drinks yesterday, but like I wanna see how I compare.”

“Are you going to be using your quirk?” Eraser asks as he stands up and stretches.

“Nope!” Fil says cheerfully. Walking forward on the mat.

Aizawa rolls his eyes, but he gets in a fighting pose anyway.

Filius attacks first, running at him and trying to kick his side. Aizawa dodges the attack, Filius wastes no time in attacking again. He can see the hero’s surprise at his speed, but he’s spent all his life fighting; if he weren’t fast, his whole life would’ve been useless.

The hero tries to attack, it’s clear that he wishes he had taken his scarf with him. And Filius feels glad for all the times he trained weaponless. Filius lands a hit to his stomach, and in turn, he gets hit as well.

Seeing you fight someone else is a new one. Well, no, it’s not. But normally, your opponents can’t fight themselves. This is new.

‘Max.’ Filius has to focus on the fight; he cannot waste his time talking.

Yeah, yeah. I got it. Max walks over to the mats, analysing Eraserhead’s fighting style. It was something that Fil told him to do whenever they fought someone worth noting. There was a special folder in his brain for how Father fought him, even if the memory is fuzzy.

Filius decides to try out the move he just learned, but to do that, he had to distract Aizawa.

He pretended to try and punch his face, before the hero could react, he jumped up, and kicked him at the same time. But, something happened, suddenly Aizawa wasn’t looking at him. He was looking to the side. Right at Max.

Filius looked to the mirrors next to them; his marks were there, barely visible, but he could see the black tattoo-like marks under his eyes. He was sure that they appeared on his neck and arms as well, but he couldn’t check. All he could see were his two pinkie fingers being black. He cursed under his breath.

He tried to focus on his quirk, making the marks disappear, and Max went away and back into his brain the second that he’d realised what was happening.

Filius slams Aizawa down onto the mats below them.

He had to pretend like nothing happened.

“What was that? You completely threw that.” Fil says, standing up and holding his hand out for the hero to take.

“I-… Who was that?” Eraserhead looks around. He then takes Fil’s hand and stands up.

“There was no one here.”

So he did see me… that’s weird…

‘Dude, I was like half convinced that you were a hallucination before. WHY ARE YOU REAL NOW?!’

His breathing was unsteady, and he could hear his heartbeat speeding up. He had no idea what to think of whatever just happened; it was all too fast and too confusing to think about. And he couldn’t even begin to try and understand why Aizawa saw Max.

Am I real? I have no fucking idea what that was!

Filius steps back, “I t-think I should go home.” He ignores the stutter.

“Wait fuck—no, Fil. You’re not going to run away again? Right?” Aizawa asks, walking up to him.

He stares at the hero in front of him. He wasn’t going to run away; he didn’t even think about doing it. Why was Aizawa asking that?

“No? I just want to go home…”

“Please don’t run again. Sorry for freaking you out, it was probably the hangover.”

“I’m not running.”

Aizawa stares at him. Filius doesn’t stare back. In that moment, he couldn’t. All this time, he thought that he was the only one who could see Max, but somehow Aizawa just saw him. And he had no control over that whatsoever. He couldn’t even make Max disappear again; he did that himself. Did he appear on his own, too? No, he couldn’t have. Why would he? And if he did, then he wouldn’t be so shocked. Nothing made sense anymore.

Filius didn’t know what to believe, what part of his knowledge about himself was false. The discussion of whether Max was conscious or not was once again reopened in his mind, and it never ended well.

Last time I got a wardrobe change. Wonder what’ll happen this time?

‘Max, I am not in the mood for jokes.’

Hey! I’m just trying to make light of a fucked up situation. You do it all the time!

Filius looks back at Eraserhead. The hero looks at him and sighs.

“Okay, yeah, sorry. Just- be careful on your way back, the streets are still covered in snow.” He starts walking back to the entrance of the gym. “And text me when you get back.”

“Okay, Dad” Filius says sarcastically, rolling his eyes. But he can see how Aizawa tenses up at the word. But he decides to ignore it. Thinking that it was just out of surprise.

Filius looks back at Aizawa, he doesn’t say anything as he leaves the apartment.

But immediately he remembers that he left everything in the guest room, so he runs up the stairs, past Eraserhead. And quickly grabs it. Saying bye to Mic and Midnight on the way.

It wasn’t snowing anymore, which was a plus; he’s had enough snow for at least another 569 years. And maybe that was biased because his window literally collapsed. Maybe if he’d spent the entire winter inside a regular apartment, it would’ve been better, but he didn’t. So now, if the next winter won’t have any snow, he certainly wouldn’t complain.

You ever notice how you’re more honest now?

Filius thinks about the question for a bit. He hasn’t. Not even a bit. But what Max was saying was true; he’s been telling everyone more, and he hasn’t been hiding things anymore. But they weren’t really any identifiable information anyway. The scars he showed Midnight were already gone anyway, so it wasn’t as if she could tell who he was by seeing them on him when he was out of costume. But he also told Mic that it was Astris’ birthday. Which only he and some people in the facility knew before. And Midoriya knew about his quirk now, which is something that he swore he wouldn’t tell anyone ever.

It was odd; he hadn’t felt like he could tell things like that to anyone before. But it wasn’t a bad feeling, it was just new.

He didn’t feel like he should stop talking about himself. He didn’t know how he felt; he knew that for safety reasons he shouldn’t share everything, but on the other hand. Telling people about his life was making him feel better. It made him feel actually connected to the people around him.

He walks back into his apartment, and he’s immediately taken out of his thoughts by the state of his floor.

Snow was everywhere, the tapestry that he moved to cover his window got swept up by the wind and was now covering the entrance to his room. When he moved it, he saw even more snow, and his window was in fact still broken. He wasn’t looking forward to cleaning it all, but he had to start soon. Or else he would get cold again, and then he’d have to go back to Eraserhead.

Speaking of which. He took out his phone and texted the hero that he was back. Not missing an opportunity to make fun of him.

He hung his hammock back on the wall and threw as much snow out the window as he could. Deciding to let the rest turn into water so that he could just mop it up.

When he was finally done, his room looked somewhat presentable. He had glued the window back on with the tape and a few planks. The tapestry was back on the wall behind the hammock, covering the wall, and the items that he took with him were all once again in their proper place.

Haruki sat down on his hammock, opening his laptop. He decided to see if he could dig anything else in the U.A files. Which, to his surprise, he could.

He looked around, reading through the new files about the entrance exam. Was it cheating? Yes. But other students should’ve also thought about hacking into the place to get this information if they really wanted it.

He was just smarter.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

He was about to respond, but he stumbled upon a file titled “Hello :]”

When he opened it, it opened an app. He had a pretty good antivirus on his laptop, so he wasn’t worried. But then, text appeared on said app.

“I see you have found it. Did you have fun looking at the entrance exam plans? My coworker said that it was too much. So, I thought I would ask a future student. You should be able to tell if it’s good or not.”

Haruki stared at the message, he noticed that there was a text window below. Meaning that he could respond.

He’d assumed that it was the principal texting him. He did have a reputation for ‘knowing everything’ after all. So it was no surprise that he knew that there was someone regularly hacking into U.A.

But if he referred to Filius as a student, that meant he didn’t know that he was a vigilante.

“It’s decent. But it might be difficult for people with mental quirks.”

“Ah, you think so too? Well, I can’t just have untrained teenagers fight the teachers, can I? Though I suppose that they’d pose no problem for you, Filius.”

Never mind, he knows.

“What do you want from me?”

“I’m just interested in you. You do realise that you’re one of a kind. Not many teenage vigilantes can fight alongside Eraserhead. Even less could change Detective Tsukauchi’s views on vigilantism.”

“I’m just great like that.”

“I don’t doubt that. It would be a waste not to take an opportunity to talk with you.”

“I know that can’t be the only reason.”

The messages stopped appearing for a few seconds, bringing Haruki out of his trance. He hadn’t even realised that they had been replying to each other almost immediately.

Before he could ask whether the principal was still there, he got another message.

“I have a job for you.”

“I don’t work for free.”

That’s my boy. He’s rich, let's get some of the money we’ll spend on U.A back.

“You’ll get paid accordingly. It will be very worth your time. You have my word.”

“What’s the job?”

“Very well. I’ll send you the details later. For now, would you like to play some chess with me?”

Nezu attached a link to his message. When Haruki pressed the link, he found a chess website. He was matched with an opponent called “Tealover123” He was given a prompt to input his name in.

“xXQuirklessQuirkHaverXx”

And then, the chess match began.

Chapter Text

Nezu wasn’t one to be easily impressed. Yes, there were many things that interested him. But they always had a good reason for that.

Even if a human caught his attention. They always disappointed him almost immediately. He’s gotten used to the cycle. He'd find a human, think they were different from others, and give them a task, which they’d inevitably fail. He wasn’t going to expect anything else.

 In his opinion, the tasks he gave weren’t that difficult. Maybe a little bit tough, but definitely possible. He even designed them specifically for the person who would be trying to complete them. And yet there was only a handful of people who succeeded–but then they would fail at something else, because of course they had to.

It was what always happened, and he believed that it was the only outcome. No one ever matched his expectations, and he’d stopped hoping for it.

So when he met someone who seemed to be able to complete every mission that he sent them to, he couldn’t keep his eyes off them. They even managed to end their chess matches in a draw a couple of times. Which was a rare occurrence, as he remembers there being one other person who had accomplished that.

Still, a part of him was waiting for the day that he would finally be disappointed. But Filius, or Haruki as he’d recently learned–Not from them, no. He just dug around and connected the dots—has kept finishing every single thing he tells them to do.

And Nezu wasn’t quirkist. At least he thought that he wasn’t. But he simply couldn’t believe that a teenager—with seemingly no prior training, though he was starting to doubt that.—could’ve finished everything that he assigned them while practically quirkless. But then again, he did keep Aizawa at the school for a reason. So maybe the quirk that was listed in his file really was the one that the vigilante had. And yet, there was still something telling Nezu that it wasn’t.

Call it a gut feeling, but Nezu had his suspicions. And he was very eager to test his theories on what his newest protégé's quirk really is.

What interested him the most was why Filius would feel the need to hide his quirk. Most people don’t even have a way of hiding theirs, as the quirk is recorded in government documents from the moment that it manifests. And even if someone changed the quirk listed because they learned something else, or figured out that their quirk works differently, the previous record would still be there. Nezu looked everywhere for any information he could find. But it seemed like either Filius was insanely good at covering his tracks, or he really did have nothing to hide, and Nezu was simply paranoid.

Though there was something that interested him even more. And it may have been the single thing that confirmed Nezu’s theory.

Even if he had records stating every school, kindergarten or anything that Filius went to, there were never any photos. In fact, he even went out of his way to check for things in different countries to see if he could find anyone even remotely resembling the vigilante.

There was nothing.

Which had to mean that Filius really wanted their past to be covered up. If Nezu couldn’t find something, it may as well be lost media, or it just didn’t exist in the first place.

Which strikes another thought in his brain. But before he could think of anything else, he heard a very irritating snapping noise next to his ear.

“Uh? Nezu? Something wrong?” His employee looked at him with concern, snapping his fingers incredibly close to his ear. Which just made Nezu want to give the man more paperwork than he already had. And every single one of his employees knew that finding paperwork that they could fill out was a difficult task, as they already had piles and piles of it.

But he understood where his employee was coming from; he wasn’t the type of person who got distracted a lot. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Many people have told him that he was “Weirdly too present.” Whatever that meant.

The hero instead repeats the question that was apparently given to him a few seconds prior. “We were questioning whether the zero-pointer was necessary. It might be a danger to students, who—may I remind you—were legally not allowed to use their quirks before this exam.”

Nezu then got a very familiar notification sound coming from his phone. So he decided to jump out of Aizawa’s scarf—ignoring the sigh of relief that he heard when he did so—and instead, he ended the meeting early.

“Don’t worry. We have….Safety measures to ensure that no one is permanently hurt.” He chuckles, ecstatic at the sudden atmosphere change in the room. He could practically see the goosebumps appear on all of his employees. And yes, maybe his reaction was a little bit evil, as some may put it. But he didn’t care. U.A was not a school for the weak.

He wasn’t lying. No student can be permanently damaged from the 0-pointer. Well, physically at least. Mentally, on the other hand…well, he was unsure.

But, he knew that the meeting was over, simply because the person who was currently his hobby had just completed another mission he sent them to. This time, though, he had an offer to make to Filius. And he was already sure that the teen wouldn’t be able to refuse.

He assumed that joining U.A was their dream. Mainly because why wouldn’t it be? Most of the students who ever wanted to be a hero have wanted to go to U.A. But, then again, Haruki has found many ways to impress Nezu, and maybe this would be one of them.

He heads to his office, already preparing for the vigilante’s entrance. Keeping the files and a grey case with the number 01 written on it close to him.

***

Haruki didn’t know why he was doing this. Well, the rat did give him a pretty good deal. And the money he’s been paying him was coming in handy.

Apparently, the U.A principal was more than ready to give thousands of yen to a random teenager who hacked into his school a few times. And well, maybe that’s why Haruki has been doing jobs for him here and there.

It was mostly easy things. Just regular jobs that he would’ve done either way.

 Getting some documents, bugging someone’s house, or spying. One time, Nezu had him locate a person; it was incredibly easy, and so obviously a test set up by him. But Haruki didn’t care; he was getting paid for doing fake jobs. Plus, the guy had a pretty clear quirk. It wasn’t strong, but whenever Haruki focused on it, he could see a very clear pink outline with sea-green circles floating around it. And for some reason, he just knew that it was coming from the person he was meant to find. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t care. Apparently, that was what his quirk let him do, so if it helped him finish a job, he wouldn’t fight it.

It was all simple. He knew that all of the jobs were a test of sorts. But he didn’t mind. Whatever the rat needed from him wasn’t his business. He’s getting paid for the things that he’s doing, and as long as Nezu doesn’t plan on revealing his true identity to anyone, he couldn’t care less about why he made him a glorified errand boy.

And that had been his schedule for the past few months.

Doing tasks for Nezu, patrolling with Eraserhead, hanging out with friends, and searching for apartments close enough to U.A that would rent to teenagers.

That was what his life had become in the last months before school started. And maybe he was trying to distract himself from the anxiety forming in his chest.

He knew that he would get into the school with no problem. But his body didn’t know that. He kept repeating to himself that he had the most training out of every other person there—even if he was technically cheating by being alive for centuries.—But his body still decided to make him feel as if he was having a heart attack every second of the day.

So that was probably why he messed up and tripped. Or maybe he was just cursed with the worst luck known to mankind. He didn’t know; all he knew was that in that second. He was falling at a concerning speed, from an even more concerning height.

‘This is going to hurt, isn’t it?’

Yep! Incredibly!  

He didn’t have time to react. Everything went black for a minute, then he was back in the white room. Max wasn’t there, but it was obvious why not. Haruki just hoped that he wouldn’t do anything stupid while he was in control.

His body regenerated fast, especially when the injury was fatal for regular people. He knew that Max didn’t have a lot of time, but from what Haruki had learned. He would still find a way to piss someone off.

The void around him was painfully quiet; he always felt awkward whenever he was there. He had nothing to do.

 At least while he was asleep, he had Max to fight with. All he could do then was walk around the nothingness. Hoping that he was moving, even if nothing around him changed.

But, seeing as the other place he could’ve been taken to was a nightmare filled with past traumas and weird portrayals of his past self. He would take the void over that anytime, no complaining.

Of course, he would still complain; that’s just who he was.

He kept walking forward, ignoring how his legs hurt. He was quirkless inside this place, so his regeneration couldn’t take care of muscle pain anymore. It felt as if he had aged 50 years almost immediately. And inside dreams, you usually feel less pain, if not none.—Because you wake up–So he really hoped he wouldn’t have to lose his quirk in real life anytime soon.

Haruki didn’t want to stop walking. Because maybe one day, he would find something. Maybe the void wasn’t infinite. And something inside him was screaming at him to keep going, to walk and never look back or stop.  He doesn’t know where he is in the real world. Just as he doesn’t know when he will wake up. Maybe he wouldn’t. The thought of that didn’t scare him anymore; it hadn’t scared him for a long time.

But there still used to be a time when he needed to keep living. He didn’t know when he lost the reason to do that. He didn’t remember it, and whenever he thought about it, it made more sense why he wouldn’t.

It wasn’t something that ever could’ve happened to him. Because everything that occurred was in his mind. And he had no proof that it ever even took place. He had no proof of thinking a different way; he couldn’t even remember what exactly he was thinking during those times. So who’s to say that he wasn’t always like this?

Maybe he just forgot.

People around him always used their memories as a way to justify something happening; he did too. But memories are just as easily manipulated as everything else. Haruki used to believe his memories, but did he really? Maybe he didn’t, and he just thought that he did.

The things that he remembered were all fuzzy. He wasn’t truly sure about anything that he believed. And when he was, that feeling faded just as quickly as it came.

He continued walking, knowing that it was futile. His thoughts weren’t making sense to him. But he didn’t need them to;  he would wake up soon. And then he would be able to get back to Nezu and collect his money. And after that, he wasn’t going to be sleeping for at least a week. He’s had enough of the eerie void.

Then, he started feeling sick. And Haruki knew that his time was up. He started choking; this part was always the most annoying to him. He could handle the dizziness, and he could deal with his legs giving out. But not being able to breathe was the line. He despised that; it was the only reason that he tried to avoid fatal injuries. Having to regenerate his respiratory tract was sickeningly painful.

Max was slowly coming back into the void; his presence faded in slowly, while Haruki faded out at the same pace.

He groaned when he was finally back in his body. His bones cracked in places that probably should’ve concerned him. But they didn’t. In fact,  he was surprised that he didn’t feel more pain, considering how a fall from that height would’ve definitely destroyed his body.

At least this time, Max decided not to mess anything up. Haruki was still next to the building; this time, he was in a very bloody alleyway, wearing an even bloodier costume. And okay, he had to somehow clean all of that up. And what’s better at getting rid of his blood than making a gun? Seeing the sheer amount of blood, it had to be a more complicated one. So naturally, he made himself a rifle. A commonly known AR-15, it fit into his hands almost perfectly. It was a little heavier than he first anticipated. The blood forming into the weapon cleaned up most of the blood that was splattered around, so no one would call the police if they passed by. Though maybe a teenager holding a gun was a more concerning sight?

Haruki decided not to get distracted—again—and instead, he put the strap of the rifle on himself and secured the weapon behind his back. He hoped that it wouldn’t interact with his bo-staff a lot. But of course it did, and of course he forgot to put the safety on. So he’s certain that someone from the apartments near him will call the police because of the noise. But hey, nobody got hurt, and this time he did put the safety on.

Luckily, he was in a spot with no cameras, which ensured that possession of a gun wouldn’t be added to his record.

He then decided to quickly flee the scene, going to drop off the documents he had in his pocket.

He climbed into the school. The principal never asked to meet in person; he mostly delivered the money that Filius earned by dropping it off at a seemingly random location in the city.

Fil was half sure that this was another test. Probably something to see whether he would be able to get past the security. Which, yes, yes, he could, easily.

When he finally reached the principal's office, he was expecting some other form of test. Simply because so far, he’s had two in the same day. And he didn’t like that; there was normally either one or three, never two.

He could feel the rodent’s quirk coming from inside the room; it was decently strong. But Filius noticed that intelligence quirks were normally seen as low-tier in his quirk. He decides not to stall any longer. Filius pushes the door open. He was met with a very plain-looking office, something that he expected. Of course, Nezu was sitting right in front of him. He could see a small smirk on the rodent’s face. But he may have imagined that.

“You actually came.” Nezu says, taking a sip of his tea—which Fil hadn’t noticed before.

“Did you really expect me to do a job for free? Plus, needed to drop this off.” He shrugs, throwing the manila folder from his pocket onto the desk. Nezu doesn’t answer for a while. Instead, he takes the folder into his paws and opens it.

“Hm… Did you have any trouble obtaining this?” The rodent finally asks, not looking up from the document.

“Not really. The ground did feel oddly solid, though.” He chuckled to himself. The principal wouldn’t understand his joke, but Max would. And that was enough encouragement that Haruki needed.

“Oh, is that so? I guess my tasks aren’t good enough for you. I can feel my ego fall as we speak.” The rodent answered, hiding his smirk behind his cup.

Filius was going to answer. Was. But the sudden realisation that the principal somehow saw him fall, and probably regenerate, stunned him.

You’re out of jokes that you could make, aren’t you? Max asked, grinning at Filius from behind the principal, which just made the small animal look more intimidating.

“Do you know how I survived?”

“No. My cameras didn’t reach that far. I didn’t expect you to fall, so I didn’t add one there.”

After a few moments of silence, Nezu starts the conversation again. “New gear?” he points one of his paws towards Fil. He stares at him in confusion for a second before remembering that he had a literal rifle on his back. And well, he did not have a snarky comment to explain that one.

“Yeah…” He dragged out, trying to figure out what to say. “I just… decided to start shooting the people that shoot me.” he pauses for a moment before adding. “A bit harder though, I guess.” He shrugs.

The rat laughs, actually laughs. It was certainly an odd sight. They were sure that they saw some of his tea spill onto the carpeted floor, and from Max’s expression, they were right. He was glad that he wouldn’t have to clean it up, already pitying the person trying to wipe tea off a carpeted floor.

“Why did you call me here? I’m guessing my perfect looks and charming personality weren’t the main reasons.” He asks, raising an eyebrow—something which took him more time practising in front of a mirror than he’d ever be able to admit.

“Right, right. Enough with the pleasantries. I want to make a deal, or well.. more of a proposal.”

Filius rolled his eyes. he never enjoyed people stalling just to make their offers seem more likeable and like they’re the ‘right decision. ’ “Cut to the chase.”

“Is there somewhere you have to be? Oh well, doesn’t matter. I want you to join U.A” Nezu pulls a grey case onto the desk. When he opens it, Filius sees a U.A uniform. Under it lies what looks like a gym uniform, and a couple of other U.A.-themed outfits. The rodent then passes a couple of papers to Filius.

This has to be a trick, right? Like the third test for the day? Max appears behind Filius, leaning over his shoulder to look at the documents.

It was a U.A application form, except it looked different from what he’d seen. It was longer for one, and he noticed that this was specifically written for Filius.

Nezu watched him intently from his chair, continuing his “offer”.

“Well then, what do you think? I know that you wanted to apply anyway.”

The vigilante looked up from the papers “Where’s the catch?” He asks, and he doesn’t know whether the voice changer in his mask made him sound hostile or if he was truly speaking in that tone. Maybe it was a mix of both.

“Perceptive as always, there isn’t one. I will be overseeing your studies here more intently than other students, but that won’t interfere with anything you’ll do directly.” He takes a sip of his tea.

“And?” Filius reads over the file, making sure that he didn’t miss a single detail.

“And, I would like to teach you personally.”

That was the sentence that broke Filius; he simply did not know how to process it. He didn’t even know that that was a possibility, or what that meant. But surely it couldn’t be anything good.

“Now, now, I can practically hear the gears in your brain trying to restart themselves. It’s nothing that won’t benefit you. Sometimes I would just give you extra sparring sessions, or give you access to things that would for sure interest you.”

“This feels like a ‘deal with the devil’ thing…” Filius thinks for a moment. “Wait, that was the hook? What’s in it for me then?”

Wasn’t the ‘give you access to things that would interest you’ the point where you benefit from this?

‘Shush, I’m trying to scam him out of everything that he’s willing to give me.’

OH, oh yeah, go ahead.

Nezu chuckles, turning to face the window, which Filius thought was a bit over the top, but he’s done worse things, so he wasn’t in a position to judge. “Right.. of course you want more. You’re very perceptive. Makes you wonder who taught you that. But anyway, you’ll get a house.”

“Excuse me?” He stares at the principal, making sure that he heard him correctly. Filius was really starting to lose all of his brain cells.

That’s impressive. I thought you had like five max. And here you are, losing more. So what.. is it like -2 now?

‘Haha, very funny, Max.’ Before he can stop himself, he rolls his eyes. And he knew that Nezu noticed, still, maybe he could spin it as a reaction to the offer and use it to bargain.

“It is a real offer. If you’re interested, I could have you live with one of the teachers. They won’t ask questions if I tell them not to. And I have gone ahead and looked through the local apartment listings for you, and there aren’t many options for you, Haruki.”

He feels weird hearing his name while in costume. Fil knew that Nezu had found out who he was. He’s known for a long time, but for some reason, hearing his name coming out of the principal’s tongue just sounded off-putting.

“Don’t sugarcoat shit, Nezu. We’re both above that.” He answers, and this time, he knows that he meant to say it exactly in that tone. Filius may not be the best at intimidating people, but for some reason, he feels like his skills improved when he was seen with a rifle close to him.

“You either take the offer, or you stay in that abandoned building.” He paused for a few seconds before calming down his voice. “It’s a great offer for you. Trust me, many people would do anything to be in your position.”

“I am aware, but I am not them. I don’t need you, Nezu. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. I lived in that building for a year, and I can survive another one. But somehow, I feel like if I don’t accept your offer, you’ll come up with an even better one just to keep me near you. Just because you find me interesting, you want to keep me close so that you can study me.” Filius was bluffing; he had no idea what the principal wanted from him. He knew that he needed a house; his was still recovering from the storm. But if he could make the rodent think that he wouldn’t accept his offer, it would make him come up with something different, something that would ensure that he would accept it. And a part of him wanted to see what that offer would be.

Nezu laughs again. “Oh, I was so right when I picked you. Want something else? Fine. What do you want?”

Filius smirks to himself, knowing that Nezu can’t see it.

“One. You will not reveal my identity. Two. Stop digging around for things from my past. And three. I want a free pass to annoy Aizawa at least once per day without consequence from you when I study here.” He starts listing off, counting on his fingers for dramatic effect.

“Is that all? Really? You had me worried there. Haruki Nomine, you are unpredictable.” He laughs, spilling more tea on his desk. Haruki moves his new uniform and the application form away from it. After Nezu calms down, he decides to finish the meeting. “Right, yeah, fine, I accept those terms. I’m already at a dead end for finding out things about you anyway. I think it’s settled then, just sign the form. And don’t think that this excuses you from the entrance exam. I want to see how you fight.”

Filius rolls his eyes again. he picks up a pen from the principal’s desk and signs the application form, handing it over to the rodent. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Though, what’s the dress code?”

“For the entrance exam?” Nezu looks at him, puzzled, already trying to figure out what Haruki was planning. “Something sporty? There isn’t an official one, but if you really need to know, weapons or any sort of equipment that alters someone’s quirk isn’t allowed, unless the proper paperwork has been filed. Other than that? Just wear something more than underwear, and I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Filius grins again, and this time he’s sure that Nezu knows; anyone who saw Filius in that moment would’ve thought that he was planning something.

“Well, I guess you don’t want to spoil the surprise?”

“Hm? Oh, the surprise isn’t for you. I just want to flex on the others by showing up in the U.A uniform.” Filius laughs; the sound echoes from the empty walls of the office, making it seem way more sinister than it was.

“Animals often like to assert dominance over other individuals of their species, even if they haven’t met them before. I think that this is a habit that humans will never get rid of. No matter how much the civilisation progresses.”

“Okay, great, like, philosophical speech or whatever, but like, you can admit that it would be funny.”

“Yes, it would be incredibly funny. I want to see the reactions of your teachers, as well.”

Filius picks up the case with his uniform; they both know that the second he closes it, was the same second that their meeting had officially ended. But just as Fil was reaching for the door again, Nezu spoke up once again.

“Oh, right, the teachers you will be staying with will be Aizawa and Present Mic.”

Filius slowly turns his head back, staring at the small creature once again sitting at his desk, sipping his tea.

“You’re evil. Fine, guess I should’ve expected this when I became your little lab rat. feels familiar.” He says half-heartedly, already walking out the door. He expected his joke not to be understood, or for the rat to get at least a little bit of an idea behind his past. Obviously, he didn’t mean it to be a confession of anything. In fact, he was sure that even with the principal’s intelligence, he wouldn’t have been able to figure out what he meant in that moment.

But the breaking of ceramic made him wonder what strings Nezu connected.

***

Nezu dropped his cup of tea, his heart racing by the time the door closed behind the vigilante. Their last words clung to him like his fur. The fur he’s gotten used to getting shaven off him for any new experiments the doctors at his past home wanted to do.

He hadn’t forgotten any of it. And he probably never would, but how could a child know what he went through?

“Feels familiar”

“Feels familiar”

“Feels familiar”

The words echoed in his brain. He was sure that any records of the lab were wiped off the internet, and any evidence of where he came from was destroyed by his own paws. Nobody except him should’ve known. Nobody could’ve known.  He didn’t want to get reminded of what happened. He wasn’t there anymore, and he would never be back. Nobody should’ve reminded him of his past. He didn’t need to be.

And yet, Filius somehow still knew about it all. He even felt the need to tell him that he knew. Nezu didn’t know whether it was a threat or just a way of showing that he knew. But it left him feeling more anxious than he had in a while.

On one hand, he was glad that his new student was able to gather such information. Because there was realistically no way that even he could’ve found anything from his past, and on top of that, linked it to him. But on the other hand, he was scared of what Filius was planning to do with that knowledge.

And now Nezu had another theory on what Fil’s quirk could possibly be. He hadn’t even thought that it could’ve been anything similar to mind reading. And he thought that his theory was solidified when he saw the vigilante fall from a building, and then a couple of minutes later walk in front of a different camera with a rifle on his back. But now? Now he thought that maybe Filius getting out of that fall was simply some sort of trick that he’d learned. And he was just toying with Nezu by making the rat think that his theory had any sense.

It had been a long time since anyone ever made Nezu this enraged. But maybe he was actually surprised. He didn’t know anymore, but he knew that he needed to know more. He wanted to know everything that Filius had ever seen or known. And he was sure that the boy would eventually spill all of his secrets. Maybe not to him. But it was enough to keep him hooked, and that was just what Nezu needed to start thinking of theories and ways to ‘teach’ Haruki when he finally comes to study at U.A.

Though he would need better gear soon. When he first saw what materials his costume was made out of, he had to physically stop himself from dropping a better version at their door… or rather, room.  But now, he could actually make a better one. He knew that Filius wouldn’t decline it.

***

Filius’s patrol was going oddly smoothly; criminals were just sort of giving up whenever they saw him. It confused him; he wasn’t doing anything differently. Maybe his reputation was finally coming in handy.

He did meet a couple of people who recognised his costume–he also got asked why he wasn’t wearing his ‘signature hoodie’ many times. It made him slightly annoyed; he didn’t wear the hoodie that often. He only really wore it whenever his shirt got destroyed and he procrastinated on repairing it.

Sadly, no matter what he does, he can’t change the public’s opinion, and it seemed like they really liked the very old and very ratty hoodie.

He walks into an abandoned warehouse close to the shore, though it wasn’t exactly abandoned anymore, as some criminals had decided to use it.

About an hour ago, he started feeling a powerful quirk following him, sometimes observing him from above. He knew that it was Hawks, but to confirm it even further, Fil decided to see what the quirk looked like. He ducked behind the wall to the entrance, hoping that the hero wasn’t aware that he knew he was being tailed. After closing his eyes, he tries to focus on the area where he’s feeling the quirk coming from, turning his head in the general direction.

 Sadly, it was pretty disappointing; he expected something big or at least something different. But no, Hawks had the least interesting-looking quirk so far, as it was just his wings and a small red outline.

He was aware that the hero commissions ‘special asset’ would’ve hunted him down eventually. He still didn’t expect it to be so soon, even if it had been a couple of months since the order was sent to the No.3 hero. Since he couldn’t avoid meeting Hawks, he figured that he could at least make the surroundings work in his favour.

The warehouse wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small either. Filius decided to go to this place from the moment he felt the hero’s quirk flying above him. It did take a while to get there, but it was worth it. Fighting Hawks in an open or large space wasn’t an ideal scenario, and he didn’t want to die by falling from something twice in the same day, so a dark warehouse it was.

He’d take care of the drug dealers remodelling that place some other time; he had a very important meeting he had to go to.

He sat down on one of the crates that were lying in the middle of the room. The light from the entrance, creeping into the room at the perfect angle for him to look, was it dramatic? Yes. But was it worth it? Probably not. He was doing it whether it was logical or not.

He knew that Hawks would follow him in; this was an obvious way to say “You’re not subtle” without actually saying anything.

Filius feels the wind around the warehouse pick up. His hair falls out of his beanie for a moment; he struggles to push it back in, contemplating whether it would be a bad decision to just let it out. Eraserhead didn’t seem to make the connection, which is still something that shocks Fil. The guy is supposed to be smart, isn’t he?

“Guess I need to be stealthier. When’d you notice me?” Hawks walks into the warehouse, fidgeting with one of his feathers. Filius was hoping that they could talk, but from the hero’s stance, it was very clear that he had no intentions of doing so.

“From the beginning. You aren’t very sly, Keigo.” He could see the slight shudder of the hero’s wings. The time he’d spent scouting through the HPSC systems seemed to be paying off. He knew a lot more about the hero than he knew about Fil. He saw Hawks’ eyes drift towards his chest; his demeanour changed slightly. Filius was confused for a second—he then remembered that he currently had an AK-15 strapped to his chest.

At least now he had an explanation for why villains weren’t being violent towards him that day. He still chose to believe that it was because of some sort of rumours going around the underground about him being really strong.

Though seeing as now the winged hero saw him as an actual threat made him think that he should’ve gotten rid of the gun before talking to him.

“You know, I never expected to come across a teenager threatening people with an AK-15,” Hawks said, ripping a long feather off his wings.

“I threatened no one. The gun was just… in the background of my very friendly chats.” Filius stands up, taking his bo-staff into his hand. Another thing that the hero didn’t know was that he had a katana inside it. Which hadn’t come in handy yet, but maybe today was his lucky day. He did deserve some luck after falling off a building. “And you’re preparing to fight. Is that a sign that our conversation is over?”

“Doesn’t have to be. I’m perfectly capable of multitasking.” The winged hero shrugged, not moving. Though his tone indicated that he truly was done with humouring Fil and whatever he came up with next.

“So hostile, and here I thought that we could’ve talked a bit. I have an offer for you, and trust me, it would greatly benefit you to hear me out.” Filius knew that holding onto the gun would just make him seem more suspicious, so he took it off and threw it to the side.

“All bark, no bite.” The blond shrugs, gripping the sharp feather in his hand tightly. It was a clear indication that he would attack. Fil then—deciding that he was done too—jumped off the crate and boosted himself up with his bo-staff, holding onto a pipe above them.

The upper area of the warehouse was too small for the hero to fly in, giving him a very clear advantage. Though he did not plan anything beyond this point out and was now left to make up fighting moves with his own imagination.

Filius was well aware that Hawks was very fast, but that just meant that he needed to be faster. He sees a swarm of feathers leave the Hero’s wings, all of them now flying towards him at an incredible speed. He swung himself onto a wall, jumping away from it immediately, and then he slammed himself into the hero. Hoping that it would’ve done at least a bit of damage.

Surprise showed on the blond’s face, even if just for a single second. Hawks was known for handling villains fairly easily and without any problems, so getting kicked by a child was probably a hit that his ego wasn’t prepared to take.

“Okay, kid, got it. You can hit. Now, could you just come back with me to my boss? I don’t want to beat up a teenager.” Hawks said, dodging the attacks that Filius sent his way once they both got up.

“I’d rather not get scouted. Sorry, Kei, but I have family business I need to finish.” He responded in a cheerful tone, jumping away from an attack.

“You’d still be able to see your family. Just a little bit less.” Hawks picked the small vigilante up with one of his feathers, trying to immobilise them as much as he could. Already sending another wave of feathers their way.

“You can’t give someone less time than none,” Fil responded, ignoring the feathers that sliced through his arms, staring at the dark liquid that came out. He smirked under his mask. The hero didn’t know what kind of advantage he had just given him. He just hoped that the darkness in the warehouse would be enough to cover the colour; he was too lazy to change it, and he probably wouldn’t be able to focus on doing that in the moment.

That day, he was glad his costume was made out of the rattiest material he could’ve found, because the stitched fabric broke in the exact place that Hawks’ feathers were holding him, making him fall back onto the dirty concrete.  He landed on the ground, pushing himself up with his hands just to avoid the same feathers heading his way. Filius took out a small dagger from his utility belt. The scars from the hero’s attack had already healed, but the blood remained; he could still use it if he needed to.

And if he wanted a chance at winning the fight, he needed to get rid of some of the feathers that the hero was using. He knew that they would grow back; he had read through Midoriya’s hero analysis. And those were very throughout. At this point, he even knew Hawks’ favourite food—which he had no idea how Izuku found out.

Slicing through a feather took a lot of precision; luckily for Fil, he’s had to do much harder things while he was training at the facility. The feathers were actually pretty easy for him, and since he specifically made that dagger to cut through reinforced material like Eraserhead’s scarf, he had no problem with the feather.

He was sure that Hawks could feel each feather being cut into two pieces, shattering his connection to them. It must’ve hurt, but it probably wasn’t more painful than what the HPSC did to him before. Still, Fil felt a little bad since this could legally be considered torture.

“Do you really want this to go on your record? Trust me, the next time they send me after you, they might not be as lenient. Bringing you in is better than death, is it not?”

Fillius laughed. Hawks had no idea that the threat of death meant nothing to him. Especially from the hero's feathers. They wouldn't even get close to killing him. And unless Hawks was planning to somehow turn the warehouse into a sea, he was not going to be able to kill them.

“You can surely try. But that makes me wonder what you’ll do after those wings of yours are all gone. I’m pretty sure hand-to-hand combat isn’t exactly your forte.” Filius sliced through more feathers as he was jumping around the warehouse, accidentally knocking over a crate. Ignoring the contents of it. If he really needed to, he could use it to blind the hero, which would’ve been at the very least funny.

As much as I hate to interrupt your little chat. There’s a camera and a mic in his headset.

Well, that made things much harder. He needed to get rid of those as fast as possible. Having the censored version of the hero was not something that Filius wanted or needed, especially with the offer that he had.

He noticed Hawks’ wings were significantly smaller than before. And he wasn’t being attacked with feathers as often. Filius ran closer, once again boosting himself up, trying to hurt the hero enough for him to start using some form of ultimate move to tire him out.

And that was the exact moment when Hawks chose to attack using the makeshift katana made out of his feather.

It sliced through Fil’s chest, pushing him rolling to the side and onto the light near the entrance door. Hawks stared at him with confusion when he saw the black liquid spilling onto the moonlit floor. Filius hoped that the camera in his headphones was shitty enough that it didn’t register the different hue of his blood. Before, he didn’t bother focusing on changing it since he thought that the darkness would’ve been enough to protect him from being seen bleeding. He quickly fixed his mistake. But the damage has been done, and the Hero Commission could now start making more true theories about his quirk than before.

He really needed to get rid of that headset.

Filius tightened his grip on his bo-staff, quickly standing up and running at the hero with the knife in hand. Hawks used his right wing to cover his face, but Filius had other plans. He pressed a button on the bo-staff, making it turn smaller in his hand before he let it go back into its original length at the right angle for it to hit the hero’s headphones off his face, the glasses falling right next to them.

Before Hawks can react further, Filius climbs over his shoulder and jumps down on the gear lying on the floor. Hoping to break both the mic and the camera inside it. The visor was just collateral damage.

‘Max? Did that get it?”

Yes. Obviously…

Hawks stares at the shards of glass lying under Fil’s feet, and he smirks. “Wanted to get rid of the evidence?”

“I figured that it had already been sent.” Fil once again makes his bo-staff smaller. Hoping that maybe now, the hero would listen to him.  Hawks just narrows his eyes.

“Then why?” He asks, and Filius can tell that it was a genuine question. It was a new emotion that he saw on Hawks’ face. Normally, he already knows the answers to the questions he asks.

“As I said. I have an offer.”

The winged hero clicked his tongue. “Sorry, I’m not interested.” He answered with a smile, running forward and trying to attack Filius with the feather he was holding once again.

Filius decides that he would have to take more…drastic measures if he wanted any cooperation from his future ally.

Bold move to call him that after he rejected you like five times already.

‘Max, can you not right now? Like, I get it whenever we’re fighting weak criminals, but this is the No.3 hero. I need to focus.’

Gee, alright. Max rolls his eyes, disappearing from the spot where he was standing.

.

Right as Hawks is about to hit Fil, he moves out of the way, slicing the hero with the knife he was holding instead.  The left side of Hawks’ face quickly gets covered in blood, obstructing his vision.

Hawks doesn’t move to wipe it off; instead, he decides that Filius was an actual threat to him, and he takes a second feather in hand. The smirk was gone from his face almost immediately. A look of seriousness showed in its place, one that Filius had never seen before.

Hawks moves to attack again, this time both by sending a horde of feathers and by trying to stab him—or, well, more make him feel enough pain by opening as many wounds as possible. But he still considered whatever he did with those feathers a stab.

Filius turns his bo-staff upside down, ducking slightly before pressing another button on it just as Hawks passes by. He ignores the many feathers going through his skin, and the now-crimson liquid spilling onto his arms and floor. Instead, he stares at the katana appearing from one side of his bo-staff and going into Hawks’ skin. He tries not to hit any vital organs or not to go too deep, but the hero makes that harder than it should be by moving around too much.

Blood splatters on the ground, some of it falling onto Fil’s costume, making him cringe outwardly. Hawks’ eyes widen before he kneels down on the floor, coughing up blood. Filius can see him already preparing to continue the fight. But he knows that he has inevitably failed at protecting the hero from his own attack when he notices the blood on his glove.

The vigilante walks towards the winged hero, using his bo-staff, now without the katana, to push him lower on the floor, before trapping him there with his boot.

He needed to win that fight, and to do that, he had to ensure that Hawks wouldn’t stand back up again and continue it—He was just too ready to harm himself just to complete this mission.—he had to somehow keep him on the ground. And putting his entire weight on him was a tested strategy. He just hoped that the steel spikes on the bottom of his shoes didn’t hurt too much.

Filius takes the two long wings from the hero, snapping one in half, forgetting that it would just hurt Hawks more, realising that when he hears a yell coming from under him. Apparently, he has now resorted to actually torturing heroes. That wasn’t exactly an ideal scenario for him. So he just threw away the bent feather, fidgeting with the other.

“Right, so back to my offer.” He leans down, crouching on one knee so that Hawks could hear him more clearly—even if his mask was set on a higher level of the voice changer, simply because he didn’t trust the hero’s ability to pinpoint what his voice would’ve sounded like without it.

“Y-you’re still on that?” Hawks says, his voice strained. And Filius feels even worse when he sees that he has to keep his head up at an uncomfortable angle just to keep it from falling into the pool of his own blood below him.

“Yes. Now then, are you going to hear me out? Or do you really want to do this again once the Hero commission sends you back to me?”

After a second of silence, he gets a response. “Speak.”

“I can free you. From the commission, I mean.” He sees Hawks trying to turn his head back, staring at him.

“And what makes you think I need to be ‘Freed’?” The blond tries to laugh; he tries to make his tone seem more uncaring. But the damage he took during the battle made it too hard; it comes out forced instead, though. Everything that he says is exactly that, forced.

“Kei, I need you to realise that I have read through the HPSC systems. I practically know your entire life story. You want to get out. I can do that.” Filius responds with a carefree note in his voice, knowing that he would have to get rid of the Hero commission at some point. Hiding his quirk was too much of a bother to him, and he was a show-off.

“What’s in it for you?”

I’m feeling déjà vu. Didn’t this already happen today?

‘Shut up, Max, I'm working.”

“An ally.”

“So instead of working for one evil organisation, I work for a different one? Amazing deal.” He scoffed, but it turned into coughing quickly, splattering more blood on the floor.

“I’m neither an organisation nor evil. I’d like to consider myself a chaotic neutral.” Fil shrugged. “And you wouldn’t be a pawn like you are now. I just don’t want to get attacked and tailed every time I go on patrol. That could endanger my… roommates.”

“Look, kid. Fuck..” Keigo sighed. “Do you really think that you can take them down? Trust me, they’re stronger than they seem. And you’re… well… you know.”

“Yes. I’m stronger than I seem to be. I have my own reasons for getting rid of them. And I want it to be noted that I did just defeat you.” Filius stepped off the hero once he felt his body getting tired from the blood loss. He watched as Hawks turned to sit up. Fil crouched down next to him, fishing a roll of bandages he got from Eraserhead out of his pocket.

“What’s your quirk? If you think it’s strong enough for you to get drafted, it must be something strong.” Hawks didn’t react when a piece of cloth was put against his forehead, wiping away the blood falling from it.

“We both know that you can’t know that. It’s stronger than what you’re thinking of.” Filius starts bandaging the smaller scars before moving on to the big one on Hawks’ stomach.

“Unless it’s something like immortality, I don’t think that you’ll be able to do it.”

“You’re pretty close.” The hero’s gaze turned to him instantly. His eyes narrowed, trying to read their expression.

Fil frowned when he saw the new bandage quickly get soaked with blood. It looked like he cut deeper than intended.

And through more organs than you intended too.

“Do we have a deal? Decide quickly because you need a hospital.” He reaches out a hand for the Hero to take when standing up.

“Fine. But don’t expect me to do anything for you until it’s over.” Hawks takes his hand, struggling to stand up.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll text you soon. Until then, pretend like you didn’t get beaten up by a teenager.” Filius sits the hero down on a crate before fishing out his phone from his jacket, dialling the emergency number and pointing the phone at him.

Once Hawks has successfully talked with the operator on the line. Filius set the phone down next to him. Running away from the warehouse and onto a nearby rooftop.

He decided not to end his patrol yet; it was getting pretty late, but his body was too energised to even attempt sleeping. So, taking it out on some criminals was the best thing for him to do at that moment.

 He had just finished tying another petty thief to a lamppost before telling the local police station about it—as soon as he figured out how to make a group chat with every officer that worked in there on his app.

“Jesus Christ, kid, and here I was, worrying why you didn’t come to patrol. He heard a tired voice from behind him. he looked up from his phone—and the many confused texts from police officers trying to interrogate him. Eraserhead was crouched on the rooftop closest to him. Drinking a jelly pouch, Filius tried to focus on it, but he couldn’t make out the flavour. He climbed up the building and sat down close to the hero. It was banana.

When Eraserhead noticed him staring, he passed him a matching blueberry one.

“For the record, it’s not my blood.” Filius takes off the middle of his mask to begin drinking. “At least most of it isn’t.”

“I didn’t get a complaint from Tsukauchi about you arresting someone yet?” The insomniac raises an eyebrow.

“I didn’t arrest anyone.” Filius shrugs. “Well, except that guy.” He motions with his head towards the criminal and the fast-approaching police cars.

“Then who?-“

“Hawks,” Filius cut him off. Unable to control his smirk, he hoped that it was at least partially hidden. Eraserhead’s eyes widen, and he turns his head to once again look Fil up and down.

He took a deep breath, seemingly trying to calm himself. “Okay, what the actual fuck? Like what the fuck? First Endeavour, now Hawks, is All Might next? Are you really going for the top 3? Do you understand how much danger that puts you in?!” Aizawa started his lecture.

“I won.”

And that simple sentence seems to stun the hero next to him completely, ending his monologue. He runs a hand through his hair.  “Did you use your quirk?” He asks, calmly this time. His voice sounded as if he already wanted to retire—which he probably did.

“I don’t think so? I mean, he saw a part of it. But it wasn’t enough for him to figure out what it is.”

“Good, that’s… good. Was it the eye?”

“The eye?- OH! No, no, it wasn’t.” Filius puts the empty jelly pouch into his pocket, opening his phone up again, seeing that Tsukauchi has already calmed down the police officers in the group chat. He was grateful for that, as it meant that he had fewer things to do.

He then got a text from said detective. And then he noticed exactly what Max did when he was in the void, waiting to be revived. Every contact that he had on the app—which was three, soon four—was changed.

‘Wait.. three? I thought I had only two? Max?’

I texted Mic.

‘OH COME ON.’

Filius opened the text messages, looking at the profile picture, which was a feature that Max had apparently added because he did not remember programming that in. Present Mic was simply a Mic. Fil thought that it was pretty uncreative for Max.

Bluetooth speaker.

“What do you do when you get a sore throat? Like, do you just… suffer? Or does your quirk cancel it out?”

“Who’s this?”

“Batman. Answer the question.”

Filius exited the chat; he did not want to deal with the consequences of telling Mic that he was Batman. Instead, he decided to text Tsukauchi back, scrolling past Eraserhead—who was obviously nicknamed “Hobo” with an eraser as the profile picture.

*Loud buzzer noise*

‘Okay, this one is funny.’

I KNEW IT. Finally, I have mastered the skill of the ha-ha’s!

The profile picture was of a classical lie-detector PNG.

“Filius. I got a concerning e-mail about your case today. And just now I heard that Hawks was in the hospital. Is that your doing? You do understand that attacking a hero—self-defence or not—is illegal?”

“Don’t worry, he won’t press charges. I’ve made a friend.”

“A friend with a nearly fatal wound on his stomach and almost fully exhausted quirk?”

“Look, I did what he forced me to do to befriend him.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Nope :3”

“Are you safe?”

“Yep, eating with Eraser rn.”

He then hid his phone back in his pocket, looked over to the street, the same spot that Eraserhead was staring at. He sighs, before standing up, “Come on! We’ve got crimes to end! Plus, I know a warehouse that is being used for drug storage.” He said, practically beaming with excitement.

You look stupid

‘You’re just allergic to fun.’

Eraserhead sighed again. “I don’t even want to know why you know that. And I’m sure that whatever we find there won’t be in the same amount that it was before you went in.”

“I don’t do drugs... now at least.” He shrugged

Before Aizawa could even begin to think of a response, Filius jumped onto the next rooftop, feeling the adrenaline rush that was present every time he did so. When he focused, he could feel Eraserhead’s quirk moving towards him. The quiet buzz entering his ears, he could never decide whether it was annoying or calming.

When they finally returned to the warehouse, Filius noticed that people were already inside. He stopped running right before he was about to jump onto the next rooftop, making Aizawa halt in surprise.

“Something wrong?” The hero asks, moving to see where Fil is staring.

“Someone’s here.” Fil takes his bo-staff off his back. He wasn’t in the mood for using knives. His fight with Hawks made him want to preserve his costume as much as possible.

He told Max to scout the area, hoping that Aizawa would come up with a logical explanation for them staying in one place and watching the building, so he wouldn’t have to.

Eraserhead sighs. Filius was about to ask what he did that time, but before he could react, something was thrown at him, covering his vision.

Filius grabs the fabric and looks down at his hands. It was Aizawa’s sweater, and now the hero was in a black tank top.

“Your costume’s ruined. Again. Put it on, it’s freezing.” The hero crouches down next to him, observing the entrance to the warehouse with a pair of binoculars that Filius had no idea he kept in his utility belt.

He was getting cold, but that was just because the stitches on his shirt ripped when Hawks picked him up. It wasn’t anything major, a small-ish hole in his shirt. But Eraser’s hoodie was oddly comfortable, and he knew that the hero had around twenty more sitting in his closet. One day, Filius would make a heist to get as many shirts out of that closet and onto his couch, but for now, he would settle for the singular sweater that Aizawa gave him willingly.

“It’s not that cold…” He mumbled, but he put the sweater on nonetheless.

Yo, I’m back, miss me? Right, so three people, Buff dude with a voice copying quirk, a blonde woman with some sort of animal quirk, she’s got claws and… I want to say…cat ears? But it might be a different animal, and the last one’s a girl; I honestly have no idea what her quirk is; she doesn’t even seem that interested in what’s happening. No weapons as far as I could tell.

‘Damn, you took this one seriously…’

Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll do a shittier job next time.

Filius stood up, changing his bo-staff into a small rod, placing it between his belt and Eraser’s comically large sweater. Okay, so maybe asking him where he got them from and getting a few sizes smaller would be better than taking his.

The hero laughed, instantly covering it with a cough. Filius sent a glare his way, which only seemed to make him laugh more.

He tried sneaking over to the warehouse, keyword tried. He knew that he should’ve thought about the cat lady’s quirk enhancing her hearing, but he was too busy plotting ‘the great robbery of… whatever year it was.’ As he called it. He also should’ve been more careful when he felt the other woman’s quirk. It was strong, but he thought that he would’ve been fine.

So yeah, maybe it was his fault that they were being shot at. Because, of course, he should’ve expected her quirk to be shooting bullets out of her fingers. He was truly done with patrolling for that week. He deserved a break after the mess that today was.

Fighting alongside Eraserhead got more complicated with his quirk being stronger, as now, he cannot let Aizawa see him get hurt in any way, which was proving to be extremely difficult.

In that fight alone, he got shot around six different times. Luckily, all of those times were in his legs, and Eraserhead was conveniently turned the other way. Getting the hero’s sweater ruined because of a bullet hole wasn’t something he wanted to happen. The sweater he was wearing was sacred to him, and he would protect it with his life.

They should’ve been easy enemies, and frankly, Filius didn’t know what happened. One second, he was fighting the villains, while the next, he felt something at the back of his head, and suddenly, he was back in the void. With no way of seeing what was happening with Eraserhead, and Max’s presence was suddenly gone.

***━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━***

Max took out the rusted pipe that impaled his skull; the area healed, and he could hear his opponent realise what had happened. If only he knew. The one moment he decides not to watch over Filius, and it was the same moment that the kid decided to get himself killed. Of course.

He turns to look at the enemy he was fighting. The buff guy now stared at him as if he saw a ghost—though, maybe he did.

He started stammering and moving back. Max focused on getting his eyes back to normal. Apparently, one of them also got stabbed through, so now he had to make sure they looked like Fil’s eyes when Eraserhead looks at him. He doesn’t care if the villain sees them; in fact, he already did. But he would take care of that soon.

Chapter Text

Max looks down at the three villains he and Eraserhead captured; he can feel blood drying on his hair. He had already focused on switching the colour, so he didn’t have to worry about Eraser noticing something was off.

“What did you do to him?” The very-tired-looking hero walks up to him. And in that moment, Max could’ve felt himself panic. It was a new feeling for him, too new. Before, anything that happened was out of his control, and the small bits of time he got to control Fil were too short to do anything impactful. So he thought that panicking about things just simply wasn't worth it.

But now, no matter how hard he tried, Filius wouldn’t get out of his head. He was sitting there, not doing anything, but something was blocking them from switching, which meant that Max now had to pretend to be a socially awkward teenager, in front of a pro hero. How nice.

He turns to face Eraserhead, crossing his arms and pointing to one of the criminals that were attacking them earlier, specifically to the person who put Max in this situation in the first place. He was rambling about some occult things, which maybe were far closer to being true than Max would’ve liked them to be.

Max had never considered himself a ‘demon’, but father was the leader of a cult, and some people could’ve considered Fil as the traditionally known ‘sacrifice’. So if people really wanted to, that connection could’ve been made. It still rubbed him the wrong way; he wasn’t a demon, he only existed inside of Filius’ head. And he was 80% sure that that wasn’t how demons worked.

He shook his head, telling himself to focus. He takes the bo-staff from his back and knocks the criminal unconscious.

Aizawa turns towards him, his eyes scan Max up and down, unaware that they weren’t the same person that he’d gotten to know. “So? Why did the guy freak out every time you looked at him? I wasn’t aware that you torture your victims until they go into psychosis.”

Max stared at Eraser, not knowing what to answer. “I just beat him up, but like I did it really well. Not like torture kind of ‘well’ though!” He says, waving his hands in front of him. “He’s crazy or something, I don’t know…” the las part was mumbled. Max looks back down at the ground.

When he said that, the girl with the bullet-quirk spoke up. “Shut up! Don’t call him that! Ryuki isn’t crazy! You did something to him. I saw how he freaked out after he attacked you! How can you be a hero’s sidekick?! You’re just a villain!” She started crying, her tears fell onto the ground below them. The other woman tried to comfort her, but Max filtered her words out.

Aizawa looked back at him, and a very judgmental expression showed on his face.

“What?! I didn’t make her cry! I didn’t even do anything to the guy! He just freaked out when he saw me!” Max shouted, maybe a little bit too loudly than he should’ve. Five minutes in, and he’s already made two people hate him. He was doing a terrible job at pretending to be Fil.

“Did your quirk cause it? I’ve never seen you do anything like this.”

“Maybe? But it’s not my fault! He activated it! And now I can’t fucking change back!” He hissed, before realising that he said more than he should’ve. “Shit. Fuck, you didn’t hear that.”

Eraserhead lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean by ‘change back’?”

Max shut his eyes. He had to focus; he couldn’t mess it up. More than he already did, at least. He sighed. “Nothing, just… I don’t like being called that, okay? Let’s just go; the police can handle them.” His voice came out quiet, barely audible; most of it probably sounded like nothing but static to Eraser. But Max needed to get out of there as fast as possible. He also thought that maybe sleeping would switch them again.

Eraser looked over to the villains for a second. “Yeah, we can go.”

“You’re not going to smoke?” Aizawa asked, looking over the railing of the rooftop.

“Nah, didn’t bring my pack.” He lies right in Eraserhead’s face, but he didn’t mind it. He got used to lies. Max never knew why Filius decided to cut down on them; lying was easier. If he hadn’t lied, Fil would’ve had a lot of explaining to do when he got back, but now? Now there was nothing.

The insomniac looked back at him. His eyebrows were furrowed, something deep inside Max was screaming at him, he knew that stare. He did something. He messed up. Father looked at him the same way.

“You said that your quirk is stopping you from ‘changing back’?”

“Yeah?” He responded quietly, preparing himself for whatever Aizawa had planned.

Nothing happened at first, but then—the same as always—everything hurt. Something was different this time; the pain came from inside him. He could feel his head pulsing at the same beat as his heart. His legs burned, and so did every muscle that he had. There was a very distinct taste of metal inside his mouth. If he didn’t swap with Fil most of the times when Father got mad, he probably wouldn’t have been able to stand still in that moment, but he was forced to take more while standing perfectly still. This couldn’t even compare.

Then it stopped.

Max looked at the Hero. He hated how little it took for him to yield.

“Did that help?” Aizawa asks, his hair flowing back onto his shoulders. Max tries to focus on leaning on the railing, he tries to ignore the blood threatening to fall out of his mouth. He turns away, coughing into his glove.

“Don’t… do that again. Ever.”

Eraserhead sighed. He sat down and took out a jelly pouch from his pocket. “I’m guessing that you haven’t eaten anything other than instant noodles?”

“I would answer that, but I don’t remember.” Max shrugs, sitting down beside the hero, not noticing the jelly pouch that was placed next to him.

“Sometimes I wonder what a doctor would think of your way of living… and in general, you. But then I’m scared of whatever a simple blood sample would’ve shown.” The hero scoffs.

“My blood would tell you everything, and nothing at the same time. Don't even need to test it really." 

He got no answer, but he didn’t need one. The silence stretched between them, and for once, Max didn’t feel panicked around him anymore.

Eventually, Aizawa stood up, and Max could feel every bit of said panic return to him at once. “Look… the entrance exam to U.A is tomorrow, Nezu will accept your application even if you apply now. You have until midnight.”

“Y-yeah… uh.. that’s something He- I’d do.. right..?”

Eraserhead looked over his shoulder. “Yeah? …Does that mean that you’ll apply?”

“Eraser, you can’t know that.”

“I know. I just keep asking, hoping that one day you’ll realise that I don’t want to arrest you.” He paused for a second, once again turning away. “My door’s open if you need it… or in your case, window. Just knock. If you don’t have an internet connection, you can borrow my laptop to send the application.” After he said that, the hero walked off the rooftop. Max could then see him using his scarf to move across the town quicker.

***

Something was off. Filius wasn’t acting like himself. Aizawa couldn’t tell how exactly, but that wasn’t his kid.

Hizashi didn’t understand what he meant; none of the villains they fought had any quirks that could alter someone’s personality. But after the fight at the warehouse, he was different. Like a switch was flipped inside his head, and he put on a mask. A very bad mask.

Aizawa could see the kid trying to be normal, but he could see how their shoulders were tense, and he knew that the Filius he’s been meeting would’ve made more jokes than that. And even his voice seemed different, as much as he could make it out with the voice changer that the kid was always wearing. It was lower, slightly more human. That was the weirdest sentence that Shouta ever had to think about Fil. His voice was human. But somehow, this one was more.

“Maybe it was something you said or did, Sho?” His husband said, moving away from him so that he could look in his eyes.

“When, though? I don’t think I said that much. Fuck- I don’t know, ‘Zashi, do you think it’s because I tried to lecture him about fighting Hawks? I was just worried.” Aizawa buries his head into Yamada’s shoulder.

“Maybe, we can’t be sure. This just shows us that he’s still scared. We have to be patient.”

“I don’t know if I’m that patient. I’m one missed meal away from picking him up and taking him home.” Aizawa chuckles, looking up from his husband’s arm.

Hizashi opened his mouth, but whatever he was going to say got forgotten as his phone rang. After a very short conversation, he looked over to Aizawa with an emotion that he hadn’t seen on his husband in a long time. Shock, maybe disbelief, and something between confusion and acceptance.

“Nezu?”

“Nezu.”

***━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━***

Haruki looked around, but he found nothing. The void stared at him from a distance, not moving, not faltering. It was something that he should’ve been used to by now, something that was how everything always was in there.

But this time it was different; the injury wasn’t that big. A small hole went through his skull; it was supposed to heal fast. And he was sure that it had been longer than it normally takes to heal.

So he decided to start walking again; if anything, he would at least be doing something. Even if he was truly too tired to do anything else, he would walk, only because he felt odd; the void was wrong in a way. He was itching to find out how.

He didn’t know what he was expecting; there was nothing. Ten minutes had passed, at least he thought that was how long it was. The void played with time as it wanted, and whenever you were inside, you would eventually start to wonder if you truly knew how to count.

So Haruki was simply guessing.

His legs hurt, and as much of an understatement as that was. He was too tired to do anything. The second that he would’ve stopped walking, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to get back up. A small part of him was begging to just let himself relax and fall.

He wouldn’t.

He couldn’t

He needed to know what happened, what was happening. He was never healing for this long; every wound of his body would’ve had time to heal by now.

But it didn’t. He could hear Max calling to him. He was too far. His voice echoed through the space. Haruki could tell that he wouldn’t be able to reach him. He still tried. He needed to.

So he ran, against his body asking him to stop. Ignoring the pain that shot through his legs with each step, he ran.

In the end, Max’s voice disappeared, and everything was quiet once again. He was still running.

He knew that he had to find something; one day, he would.

Just when he was about to stop, he stepped on something.When he looked under his feet, a small blade of grass poked out of the ground. And he couldn’t stop anymore, his body moved on its own. He found something. He found grass; there was something beyond the void, and he’d never seen it before. Maybe the void was hiding it from him. Maybe it was hiding him from it. It didn’t matter; nothing else mattered other than finding what the grass led him to.

He kept going, the blade of grass turned to two, then three, and then he couldn’t keep up with them anymore. He could barely see the void under his feet.

What he hadn’t expected was the void turning black.

It was only that colour when he was in nightmares. It wasn’t smooth, not at all; there were patches of black, then jagged lines, and then everything around him was a deep black.

Something was calling him, as if it knew that he was there.

When he walked forward, he could feel mud under him, water splashing with every step. It was all too confusing to him, and yet it all felt familiar. Daisies appeared around him; he always liked those flowers. They signified innocence and joy. His mom always said that the flower matched him, though she said that about every flower she thought was pretty. Back then, he didn’t know how; he wasn’t innocent, but now he knew what she meant. Daisies really did match him. Even if the symbolism behind them didn’t.

He reached a pond, the water was fully black. He recognised it, he just didn’t remember where. Trees surrounded it, there was a wooden swing on one of them. The black void around him now showed stars shining in some places.

He’s never seen the void look like that. It was beautiful. If this is what he would’ve returned to every night, he would’ve slept like a normal person, instead of his regular 1-3 hours Max.

Fil! Holy shit, why the fuck are you over here? He looked behind him, Max was running to him. When he got closer, he fell to his knees, breathing heavily. “Jesus- too far, dude. Too far.”

“Max? Did you know that this was here?”

What was her- OH. Max looked up, staring at the pond.

“How did you not notice it when you were running?” Fil holds out his hand and helps Max stand up.

I was focused on not passing out from running for so long. This place is pretty, didn’t think there was anything in here.

Haruki couldn’t hear him anymore; his voice was quiet, muffled by something slipping him away. He didn’t want to go; he wanted to stay and enjoy the moment while he could. But Max was back, which meant that now he had to go.

The alarm that he set on his phone went off, Haruki had to get up. It was an important day after all.

He had a headache, but when did he not? Though this time it was a bit more painful, because his body was reacting to the fact that he got turned into a human skewer. He looked down at his phone; there were still a few hours before the entrance exam started.

Heyyyy Fil. How are ya doing, buddy? Max says in a fake, cheerful tone. He appears right next to Fil’s hammock, smiling eerily.

“What did you do?” Haruki presses a new notification on his phone, one he got a couple of hours before.

The hobo

“Hey, kid? Are you doing alright? I’m sorry for saying that, I didn’t mean it.”

Haruki glared at Max. “What the actual FUCK did you do?”

I didn’t do anything! I mean, I did a lot. He didn’t do anything! I don’t know why he’s apologising! Max tries explaining, looking to the side.

“I don’t have time for this, I need to get into not bloody clothes… and take a shower.”

Leaving Eraserhead on ‘read’ maybe wasn’t the best choice to make when receiving a text like that. But Haruki got distracted easily, and with Max, it was basically impossible to remember what he was doing.

Laundromat again?

Looking down on himself and the drying blood that was staining his clothes, while making it uncomfortable to move, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to think of an excuse as to why the water inside the washing machine was a weird colour of red while he was using it.

“Morning!” he shouted when climbing through the window of Aizawa’s apartment. The two heroes were sitting by the dining table, eating breakfast. Neither of them reacted to Filius appearing on a random Monday morning.

“Didn’t expect you today, little listener” Mic tilted his head. His hearing aid was out.

“I need to borrow your shower.” Fil shrugged, taking his shoes off by the window “Oh, and is that bacon? Can I have some?”

He stared at the plates. Bacon, eggs, and toast, it was basic, but basic things were like that for a reason. They’re classic because they were good, and Filius hasn’t eaten since the last cup of noodles almost 15 hours ago.

“Go take a shower, I’ll make you some.” Aizawa pointed to the bathroom door behind him. Filius didn’t miss the way that his eyes stayed on him for longer than usual, as if he was trying to study his expressions—as little as he could see them.

Filius didn’t argue; he walked toward the bathroom and closed the door behind him, finally being able to breathe without his mask. Max didn’t bother changing before going to sleep, and now he would have to wash his hammock and sleep on the couch.—using the pile of clothes as a pillow. Although no, he wouldn’t. He actually needed to start packing, seeing as he will be moving into this house after his exam.

The water turned into a mix of brown and red. Haruki was glad that he decided to take a shower this time, even if he only did that to be time-efficient.

He and Midoriya decided to meet up before the exam—and yes—it didn’t start until 8 AM. But he preferred to be early. And he still had to eat, and then go back home, change, and then go to U.A. So his schedule was full, no time to lose.

He got out of the shower and changed into some spare clothes he brought, something that Aizawa wouldn’t be able to recognise on Haruki when he would be living with him. He could just tell him that he and Filius borrow clothes from each other, since the hero thinks that they’re friends. But he was too lazy to keep up with a lie like that. So instead, he just picked the most basic clothes he had that most people his—legal—age had as well.

A black beanie—to replace his very dirty one—his black-and-white hoodie, and some random black jeans. His mask didn’t need to be replaced, seeing as it was perfectly clean. And even if it wasn’t, he would’ve been able to wash it off in the sink.

When he left the bathroom, Present Mic was gone, while Eraserhead was sitting on the couch, looking over a stack of papers. “Food’s on the table.” He said in a monotone voice, the same voice that Filius got used to hearing over the year that they’ve been working together.

It feels weird, like you’ve been doing this for two years already. While for your siblings, it was probably like a day. If not less. Max talked to him as Filius ate, he didn’t respond; instead, he listened. It was something he was used to doing, Midoriya made sure of that. But he never had to hear Max ramble about a topic. Normally, whenever he didn’t get a response, he would pretend to be offended and disappear into his brain again. This time, he stayed.

“Did you apply? Is that why you’re here? To prepare before the exam?” Eraserhead looked over to him, leaning one of his arms on the back of the couch.

“Aizawa, I can’t tell you that.”

“I know. You tell me that every time I ask.” He sighed, going back to reading the paper that was currently in his hand.

Filius finished his breakfast in peace, washing the plate after he was done, and soon after, he was once again climbing through the window. Rushing to get to his house soon. He had a craving for a smoothie, and he remembered that there was a small café that opened near his house that had them.

When he entered the café, the cashier immediately looked up and shouted. “OH MY GOD HARUKI!” Ollie ran from across the register to him and threw her arms around him. “I haven’t seen you in so long!”

Haruki looked at her; she had some new scars on her right arm, probably from the fire. Before, he was hoping that everything was alright with her. He would’ve hated her to get hurt because he decided to escape the facility.

“Y-yeah.. Hi? God, how long has it been? A couple of months, right?”

“Haruki, it’s been like half a year! I’ve missed you so much! You don’t know how worried I was. I should’ve asked for your number back then.” She sighs, backing away and walking over to the counter again. “Anyways, I’ll do that later. What do you want? I promise you the cheesecakes are to die for.”

“Just a smoothie.” He paused for a moment, looking at the menu behind her. “Blueberry.”

She started making the drink right away. Haruki expected it to be blue—because it was a blueberry smoothie.—but apparently blueberries were more purple than blue. It was still tasty, so he didn’t care much.

“What’s with the shirt?” Ollie asked, tilting her head slightly. “I feel like I need to ask.”

Haruki looks at her with confusion, before reading what his shirt said. ‘Ask me about my cult.’ Oh, right. he remembered seeing that in a thrift store; it was a gem. He felt as if he had found a needle in a haystack when he noticed It. It was perfect for him, so obviously he had to buy it.

“It’s uh… I haven’t actually thought of a response. I mean, it’s a pretty shitty cult, don’t recommend it.” He shrugged, taking another sip from his smoothie.

“Dang it, here I was hoping to apply…or well, do you apply to cults? Or is it some sort of hazing thing?” She trailed off, swatting her thoughts away quickly after. “Doesn’t matter. I see the gym uniform. Did you get into U.A? Aren’t the entrance exams happening today?”

“They are. I just had a chat with the principal, and he gave me this. I’m already in, but he said he wanted me to do the exam anyway.” Haruki adjusted the p.e shirt that he tied around his waist. It was a struggle to keep on since the sleeves weren’t that long, but he didn’t care; it made him look cool. The ‘hey, look, I got into the best hero school in Japan’ kind of cool.

“You got in?! That’s amazing! Congrats!” She smiled at him. Haruki could feel the excitement leaving her and entering him “Oh crap, you’re probably grabbing the drink as pre-exam food then? I won’t keep you.” She pulls out a pen and writes something on a sticky note before folding it and giving it to Haruki.

He stared at the folded paper in his hand. He must’ve looked confused since Ollie chuckled and explained. “It’s my number, text me when you beat everyone at the exam. Now go! You don’t want to be late!”

“I still have a few hours! Haruki laughed as Ollie was already pushing him out of the café.

“Get there early then! I know how teenagers can be! A few hours can turn into ‘I’m late’ really quickly!”

“You’re like four years older! Don’t talk like a grandma!” When they were outside the door, Ollie stuck her head out just to shout to him.

“Back in my day, kids would come to entrance exams the day before, and they’d camp outside the school!” She imitated an older-sounding voice, but before she could finish her sentence, she burst out laughing. “Okay, okay, that’s enough. Seriously, go.” She closed the door behind her and waved towards Haruki one last time before the teen had to leave. He was mostly scared that the next course of action was calling the cops for trespassing, only to get him to go to an exam he didn’t have to attend.

He wanted to go, of course. He did ask Midoriya to meet him there, after all. If he didn’t want to go, he wouldn’t. But something inside him was just begging him to show off, and maybe destroy the egos of some overly-confident teenagers. Eraser was always nagging him about ‘acting like a kid, ’ and he needs to hit his daily quota in ‘annoying Eraserhead’ anyway.

He finally reached the school. It was still huge; he would never get used to it. Maybe he should say hi to the rat since he was there?

There was no one around him, which reminded him that the exam started at 9 AM, and it was 7 AM. So okay, maybe he was a little bit too early, which many people in his life would’ve told him was impossible to be. But here he was, achieving the impossible. He’s just special like that.

He couldn’t even feel any quirks near him. Which meant that he was earlier than the teachers.—Well, of course, spare for the single, very small aura he could see inside the building. Right about where the principal’s office is.

Haruki groaned; he didn’t have a student ID yet. So that meant that unless Nezu deactivated the U.A security system, he would’ve needed to break in. It wasn’t difficult for him, just a bit monotone. He’d already proven that he can do it; he didn’t want to keep doing it every time he wanted to pay his principal a visit.

Instead of starting his very boring process of breaking into the most secure school in the country, Haruki looked straight into a nearby camera. A red light was flickering on it, a small detail that he was sure the rat implemented for a reason. Said reason being to let students know that they’re being watched. Haruki tilted his head, showing the camera a very uninterested expression. Hoping that Nezu wouldn’t force him to die of boredom because he didn’t want to disable the alarm.

“U.A is open, Filius. It has to be for the students to be able to attend the entrance exam. Which I see you’re already prepared for.” A muffled voice sounded through the camera, and then a sip. Obviously tea, it was practically an addiction for the mammal. Haruki wondered if staging an intervention would’ve been worth it ‘for the bit.’

“Don’t call me that when I’m out of costume.” He mumbles, rolling his eyes in the process. He starts walking over to the entrance anyway.

“Eraserhead is rubbing off on you.”

The door to the principal’s office opened on its own. It was the one thing Haruki could get used to.

He was immediately met with the ever-knowing gaze of his new principal. Drinking tea, as expected.

“I’m glad that you decided to visit me.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m only here because I got here too early.” Fil sits down on one of the couches in the room, putting his legs up on the coffee table.

“I feel honoured to see that you are comfortable around me.” Nezu smiles at him. “I’m sure that you have some questions about the entrance exam.”

“Not really? I already saw the maps of the cities and the robots. The zero pointer seems scary, but he’s a big softie when I looked into what he was made of. Plus, the turn-off button is right inside his neck.” Haruki shrugs, taking out his phone and typing Ollie’s number into his contacts just so that he wouldn’t forget to do it later.

“Well then, you really did only come here to say hi. I didn’t expect that. Consider your first grade earned, A+”

“I get grades for talking with you? School is so easy.” He smirks to himself, leaning his head on the back of the couch.

“Well, I guess so. I will give you grades for anything I deem interesting enough to grade. But they’re a little different from normal grades.” Nezu took another sip of his tea. “The better your grades, the more you’ll be able to do. But the harder your… homework... will be.”

“That’s what we’re calling it? Alright, cool.” Haruki shrugs again, drinking the last sip of his smoothie, frowning when he notices.

“Oh, right, where are my manners. Tea?” Nezu puts another teacup on his desk, already filled with a clear-green substance.

Uh, that’s not poisoned. But there’s something funky about it. The aura is just…wrong.”

‘Since when are you a psychic?”

Since I learned that taking candy—in this case, tea—from  sadistic strangers isn’t a good idea. But what do I know? Natural selection has to do its thing, I guess.

“Uh.. no thanks.” Haruki looks to the window next to him. Still no one. “When does anyone show up to this place?”

“The students? Normally… in about 45 minutes. The teachers? 5 minutes by the back entrance.”

Haruki shot up from the couch. “I’m going to go annoy Aizawa.” He shouts after running out the door.

“Guess he already found his problem child of the year.” Nezu says, more to himself than anything. The door closed behind Haruki, and he got to sit back and watch whatever happened from the cameras he had set up all over the school.

Haruki sat by the back entrance, watching the teacher parking lot. Waiting for Eraserhead to arrive. He had already been questioned by Snipe as to why he was waiting on that side of the school. The hero seemed not to understand how important his task was to him. Pissing off Aizawa was basically a hobby for Haruki. It was something he did to pass the time, and he enjoyed doing it.

The black car finally drove into the parking lot, and just as Haruki looked up from his phone, his ears were attacked by a screech of some sort.

“Haruki! I didn’t think I’d see you before the exam!” Present Mic shouts before Aizawa erases his quirk. But the damage has been done, and Haruki is left to try and massage the pain out of his ears.

“Okay, ow. That hurt, and I’m wearing headphones.” He groans, taking the headphones off his ears.

“Why are you here?” Eraserhead asked, raising an eyebrow. “Had something to say?”

Haruki tilts his head. “No? Don’t think so? I’m just annoying you... for a.. friend.” He added the last part slower, forgetting that he wasn’t Filius. He couldn’t just be sassy to Aizawa, well, he technically could. But something made it awkward between them whenever he wasn’t in costume. And maybe it was just his imagination, but he wouldn’t be able to survive another embarrassing moment; his stutter gave him plenty.

So lying about Filius being a different person that he was friends with, who suspiciously had the same hairstyle as him, was the right choice for him.

Eraserhead nodded. “So I’m guessing he isn’t here.” He sighs, looking over to his husband. Hizashi smiles softly towards him, clearly trying to be comforting.

“Never said that. Even if he was, he wouldn’t be able to annoy you himself. So I got sent as a sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice for what?” Mic asks, chuckling.

“for the bit.” He shrugs, walking over to a nearby trash can to throw away the empty cup from his smoothie. He was still in the mood for more, and he still had about a ‘go to the café and get a smoothie’ amount of time left. “Right. So I can feel that m- his daily quota was filled, so I gotta go get another one of those. I’ll see you from the cameras I spot in the exam place.”

“See ya, kiddo!” Mic screamed after him as he ran off again.

He was back waiting by the entrance, now with a full smoothie in hand. He got scolded by Ollie for coming back with so little time left before the exam. But he didn’t care; he wanted a second smoothie.

He managed to see some cool-looking quirks. And he could feel many of them before even seeing what the user looked like. He was hoping that if those people got accepted, they wouldn’t be in his class.

The first person to arrive was a boy with engines in his legs. Powerful quirk, not enough to hurt, but if he focused on it, he could’ve gotten dizzy. The boy noticed him and started a conversation about how he appreciates a person who knows how important being early is. He had to go to the class where they would be taking the written part of the exam, as he said he still wanted to study, so Haruki didn’t manage to get his name.

Some quirks he saw looked very interesting, even if they weren’t that powerful according to his quirk. A person with jellyfish-shaped hair, that they seemed to be able to control. Haruki assumed they were able to sting people the same way, a boy with six arms that seemed to be connected together, someone with pony horns—they reminded him of Ollie—and a person with pink skin. 

Someone else he noticed was the Bakugo guy, who used to bully Midoriya. He sent a glare his way. When he saw it, he looked at the ground and started walking faster with a pissed off expression. Haruki heard people whispering around them about some ‘sludge villain’.

He got sent many confused glances; he was questioning why, but then the few questions about his shirt reminded him.

Haruki didn’t know when Midoriya would arrive; he just hoped that the boy wouldn’t make them both late, because yes, he would wait that long, no, he doesn’t care about getting a bad grade from Nezu because of it. But Izuku couldn’t afford to be late; the school wouldn’t accept him if he didn’t arrive on time.

Though he did have a slight advantage for being his friend. As Haruki is sure that the rat is watching every interaction that he’s had with the students so far.

At 8:40, Haruki felt a very familiar quirk.

Fuck, why is All Might coming through the main entrance? This shit hurts.

He put a hand up to his forehead, but then, the power got significantly weaker. About 94% weaker if he had to judge. It was more bearable that way, but it still made him dizzy. He turned on his phone and sent a text to Aizawa.

The hobo

“Do you have any headache meds? Quirk thing.”

“I’m at U.A.”

“I know, I sent my minion after you. He’ll get the meds too if I tell him to.”

“Yeah, Mic’s got some. Where is Haruki? I’ll go to him, the exam is starting soon. He shouldn’t be wandering around the school.”

“Entrance.”

He looked up from his phone and closed his eyes. Then he saw the aura of All Might’s power, though it was a little bit different from what he last remembered it looking like.

A green fire outline–which Haruki was confused about, since it looked nothing like All-Might’s smaller form–some green lightning flashing from it, mixed in with red. The quirk had a large circle-shaped aura around it, turning the area All Might was walking on green. It was hard to focus on because of the pain and the hundreds of other quirks passing by him.

When Haruki finally opened his eyes, he should’ve been staring at All Might; instead, Izuku was mumbling something to himself, covering his mouth. Haruki was about to call out to him, but he tripped.

“Are you okay?” A girl with brown hair asked him. She put her hands together, and Izuku was back on the ground, standing. “I stopped you with my quirk! I’m sorry I didn’t ask first, I figured you wouldn’t mind!” she smiles.

Izuku looks at her, dumbfounded. Haruki feels like he has to step in before his best friend embarrasses himself.

Correction, only friend.

‘No, there’s also Shinsou.’

Haruki runs up to Midoriya. “Hey ‘Zuku! You’re here!”

“Hm? Oh, do you two know each other? That’s so cool! It must be great having friends apply to the same school!” The girl says excitedly. Midoriya scrambles for words, yet for some reason, he doesn’t respond. “Isn’t this so nerve-wracking? Well, I’ll see you two inside! Bye!” she waved back to them as she walked to the front entrance.

“Dude! You can’t just act like that when a girl speaks to you!” Haruki says, starting to shake his friend. “Oh shit, the exam is starting!” He chugs the drink he had left and throws it away in a nearby trash can before grabbing Midoriya’s hand and sprinting away with him. All while the boy is still recovering from his conversation. Even if he didn’t actually talk.

The lights inside the room started to light up, and a screen displaying the logo of the school on a blue background turned on.

“What’s up, candidates? Thanks for tuning into me, your school DJ,” Present Mic said loudly to the full auditorium. “Come on! Lemme hear ya!”

Haruki put his hands up to his face and cheered, ignoring the stares he got from the people around him.

Midoriya was sitting right next to him, mumbling something about Hizashi.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Present Mic pointed to Haruki. He didn’t care if no one else applauded; he wouldn’t make Mic go through the horror of nobody appreciating his jokes. “Are you ready?”

Haruki once again shouted. This time it was something between a “yeah” and “let’s fucking go.”

“It’s the voice hero present, Mic! I listen to his show every day!” Midoriya mumbled before Bakugo shut him up

You and us both, buddy.

‘That sentence sounds so wrong.’

I am not referring to us as one person, Fil.

'you do that all the time though?'

As Present Mic explained how the practical exam would go, Haruki checked Midoriya’s card to see if he would be fighting in the same arena.

No, he was not.

Haruki was battle centre G, while Izuku was A. So they couldn’t be further apart, though he did frown when he noticed that the bully’s card said ‘battle centre B’. He was hoping that he would’ve been able to kick his ass. But apparently that wouldn’t happen any time soon.

When Present Mic started explaining the robots that would be present, Haruki decided to let himself zone out; he already knew this after all.

He assumed that he did pretty well in the written exam, though he didn’t stop Max from telling him the most common answer picked for each question. He wouldn’t have been able to anyway… he assumed.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know the answers, no, he knew them all. Eraserhead taught him this and more. And combined with the knowledge he already had, he was sure that he aced it.

Not that it mattered, since he was already accepted to the school, but he still wanted to flex.

What he did tell Max to do, though, was to go and see what Midoriya got. The answer he got was “Around 80%” Which meant that his friend was definitely going to get in. Well, maybe not definitely, but if Nezu doesn’t see his potential, then Haruki would just have to use the skills that Father personally had taught him.

But it seemed like he wasn’t allowed to zone out, as someone stood up in the hall and started speaking very loudly. Haruki recognised the boy instantly. He never thought that engine-boy would’ve been such a goody-two-shoes.

‘Never judge a book, huh?’

“Excuse me, sir! But I have a question.” The blue-haired boy said. And after the spotlight turned on above him, he continued speaking. “On the print-out, there are four villains, while you listed three. Is this an oversight? With all respect, if it is, it’s not something that should ever be acceptable in a school like U.A” he paused for a second before pointing to the back, right where he, Midoriya and Bakugo were sitting. “Additionally, you! With the blond hair. You keep insulting the person sitting next to you, even if you two know each other; you shouldn’t be saying that in public, as it sets a toxic standard. You! With the green hair, you keep muttering, which is quite disruptive. If you cannot treat this seriously, leave. And you”

He finally pointed towards Haruki.

“Your outfit is unacceptable. I originally thought you were already a student here, but now I see that since you are applying, you are wearing an off-brand uniform from this very school. That is shameful, you should’ve been dressed in something formal for the written exam and changed into regular gym clothes for the practical one.”

Haruki scoffed and stood up; the reflector light turned on above him as well. “Well, if you really need to know. I got this from the school principal, so it is an official school uniform. In fact, the only reason that I am applying is because I was told to by Nezu. And my shirt is also perfectly acceptable, as you put it. Since I did ask the principal himself whether I was allowed to wear this.”

Midoriya covered his mouth with his hands and muttered an apology, while Bakugo was clearly trying to keep it together. Haruki respected him slightly more, as he was trying not to blow up. Seeing as he himself wasn’t able to, but maybe it was because of his massive headache from what he assumed to be his quirk glitching out. Yes, it was 100% the headache, nothing else.

The people around them laugh, and Haruki can swear that he saw the boy’s face flush with embarrassment for a second. He opens his mouth to respond, but Present Mic was already quieting everyone down and continuing with his explanation.

As Mic ended his speech with something that Napoleon Bonaparte definitely did not say. Haruki once again cheered, and this time, half the other people did so with him. The introduction ended, and everyone got up to leave the auditorium.

Haruki got stopped by Mic, grabbing his arm.

“Hey, heard from Eraserhead that you needed this.” He gave him a box with a brand name that Haruki hadn’t seen before. That said, he hasn’t seen any medicine other than bandages in this century, so he had no way of judging whether the pills would work. “I hope that what he ate at our place was enough, maybe it’s the stress? Or is he sick? If he is, he should reschedule with Nezu.”

“Thanks, it’s cause of his quirk, he’s fine. This place is just… overwhelming to him.” Haruki nodded.

“Okay, good, thanks for cheering. And did you really talk with Nezu? I honestly thought that outfit was a joke because of the shirt?”

“I did, and it’s kind of a joke? It is still the actual U.A uniform.” Haruki laughed, putting the box of pills into his pocket “I gotta go, see ya?” He waved to Mic as he left, catching up to the buses that would take him into the right battle centre.

He stood in front of the large city. The students around him were all talking with each other; most were shocked that the place was this big. Cementos worked at U.A. What did they expect? He can make this sort of thing any random Tuesday if he wants to.

The meds he took were already starting to take effect because of his medically induced fast metabolism. But that also meant that he needed to either take more or he would have to take some while fighting. Neither of which was really a good scenario for him. He decided to try to silence his quirk by putting his headphones on.

It didn’t help much, but it was something. At least now he could listen to some music while fighting, which would be a classical movie moment. And obviously, he–the most classical person out there– had to play his part.

He looked around, and he saw some cool quirks. No one he knew, it seemed like Shinsou also got assigned to a different city. Which sucked, he hoped that the workouts he recommended to the boy and the sparring sessions they had would help him.

No quirks around him were particularly strong, so his headache wouldn’t be as annoying as it was in the auditorium, where everyone was in. But Present Mic and his quirk weren’t helping.

Two robots, one-pointer and a three-pointer on the right and then left. Two two-pointers on the left. And a single three-pointer to the front and then left.

‘Max, don’t cheat. At this point, you’re a huge advantage.’

I’m just... using your quirk, you’re supposed to do that here.

‘Use it when the battle starts.’

“Right! let’s go, the battle starts!” Present Mic shouted, and Haruki didn’t wait for the next words; he was already running. He had realised that Present Mic was still speaking a second later. But his words only confirmed that he was indeed supposed to be running. “There are no countdowns to real battles! You’re wasting air time here!”

Haruki ran to his right, deciding to go for the one and three-pointers. Everyone else ran to the front, all heading for the singular three-pointer.

He couldn’t feel the robots as he would a villain, but he still had Max not shutting up about the positions of every single robot inside the city. He didn’t complain this time.

Haruki ripped out a Street lamp and broke it in half, before ripping the head off one of the halves. Now he had two improvised bo-staffs. He ran forward, piercing through the three-pointer, while the other machine was aiming at him.

The two robots said something, but the music blasting through his headphones muffled it out. The one-pointer prepares to slam into him. Haruki stares at him in silence. He was kind of…slow. Which seemed odd, everyone around him was getting hit and slammed into buildings. He was sure that he felt one of the stronger quirks pass out, because they suddenly disappeared.

So then why did the robot look so…easy? Even the three-pointer, which was technically the hardest one out of the possible ones, went down with one hit.

Haruki even had time to question all of this before the robot got remotely close to him. Which is when he jumped to his right, kicked himself up higher with one of the poles, and slammed down into the bot.

Another 3-pointer found him, after him another 3-pointer and then a 2-pointer found him. Haruki grabbed his weapon from the robot he had just deactivated. He jumped onto a nearby street sign, bending it and then successfully catapulting himself into one of the robots, which fell over and defeated the one behind it.

12 points.

He ripped off the blade from the 1-pointer, discarding one of the poles in the robot he impaled with it.

There were two people in front of him, both seemed exhausted, one of whom was at the brink of exhaustion. They clearly had no practice using their quirks and overused them during the exam at the first robot they saw. He slashed the two heads off the 2-pointer and then ran to the front. He saw another person fighting off two robots; he didn’t even check what number they had drawn on them. It didn’t matter; they were destroyed in seconds. The person who tried to defeat them shouted after Haruki, but after realising that he still had a meter-long sword in his hand.

Four low-tier robots to your left, all alone.

Haruki jumped onto one of the buildings next to him, climbing up. When he was on the rooftop, he noticed another person there, the guy with six arms he saw at the front gate. He was trying to locate robots with his quirk.

Wow, he’s smart. Not that I have a bias or anything.

Haruki rolled his eyes, jumping between the building he was on and the one next to it to lower himself onto the enemies. Taking them all out.

He heard a high-pitched scream behind him as something sticky glued itself to his back. “HELP!” The very annoying-sounding person screamed. Haruki turned around just to see four different bots running to him. Three of which were the highest-tier.

Okay, I feel like he’s justified for screaming now…

One of the 3-pointers ran towards him, shooting with some kind of laser that Haruki hadn’t noticed before. Probably because he was defeating them too quickly. The person who was on his back had thrown off his balance, making him slam into a wall since he didn’t account for the weight change when jumping. That gave the robot enough time to slam into him.

He could hear a camera drone fly up next to him. He smirked. Nezu was watching, and well, Haruki would give him the show that he was expecting.

He jumped up, the person he was trying to save fell off, but he caught them just in time. There was still something on his back. He decided that he wouldn’t bother with it until he had no other machines to defeat.

He threw the small-purple haired guy on top of a rooftop. Haruki didn’t know how he’d get down; that was his problem. He jumped down onto another enemy, seeing as the top of their …heads? Seemed to be the weak spot; it deactivated it immediately. The other robots aimed their attacks—but once again—they were slow.

This entire exam reminded him of his training back at the facility, just less deadly and easier. He made quick work of the robots, winking to the drone that had now flown up right next to him.

35 points.

It was too low for Haruki. He was aiming for at least 100. He had to speed up; now he was regretting the time he spent winking at the camera, and appreciating the arms guy. He ran back onto the main street, defeating a 2-pointer right before it attacked some other person. He saw two robots; they both had two heads. He’d started to recognise their points by the way they looked.

The 1-pointers had a sword, which was decently sharp, enough to cut cleanly through a different robot. Though Haruki has his quirk to thank for enough strength and stamina to be able to wield it. He knows that he shocked Eraserhead with that, he’s aware that he doesn’t build muscle easily. His quirk also prevents him from doing that. His faster metabolism is the source of 80% of his problems, and he will not debate that. The robots also had a wheel. They enjoyed slamming into the enemy.

The sword wasn’t actually good enough to hurt a regular human, but for the oversized robots? It was perfect. As if they were designed to be that way. Which, yeah, maybe they were.

The 2-pointers had two heads; it used its arms/legs as a shield and mostly attacked with the missiles inside its body.

The 3-pointers had two cannons, with a bulkier design; they swung their arms a lot to distance the enemies and then shot at them using the lasers inside the cannons.

He defeated the two 2-pointers, a third one slammed through the building next to him. Making it fall to the ground. He was lucky that there wasn’t anyone in the area that it would’ve affected. He took the pipe he was still carrying around with him. As much as he liked the menacing aura that the sword gave him. It wasn’t a very speedy weapon, and sometimes he was too lazy to play with the robots.

Another robot joined his skewer; maybe he would be able to make a barbecue soon.

He picked someone off the street and swung them a few buildings away, then he sliced through the 1-pointer that was attacking them.

He ran through the rubble of the building, grabbing two people who had somehow still managed to get under it, even though they weren’t anywhere near the crash. He put down his sword so that he could get them out and throw them into a safe area.

A 3-pointer slammed him—and the two people—back onto the ruins of the building that used to be there. Haruki kicked the people away, ignoring how one of them puked right after. The 3-pointer had already loaded its cannon, now beginning to shoot at Haruki.

He got hit a few times, but it didn’t do any damage since the robot wasn’t meant to harm anyone. His shirt just had a few holes in it, which he could just sew back up. He didn’t mind the patches; in fact, he thought that they added character.

The robot didn’t last much longer, not when Haruki actually knew what to hit.

This really reminded him of the training sessions he had at the facility. There were robots there, too. But these ones were bigger, except they were weaker. Somehow, he failed to see how someone could’ve messed it up that badly.

He ran through the street, defeating as many robots as possible. Max was the one who was counting, so Haruki didn’t bother to; all he was focused on was getting as many robots as possible.

57 points by the way.

‘Max? I’m kinda bored, wanna switch?’

Hell yeah, I want to switch!

Haruki ran towards a small alley. He was surprised the city even had those; he assumed there wouldn’t be many alleys, considering how much Nezu loved mazes. But he wouldn’t complain about it.

He closed his eyes, focusing on the power surging through him. The blood flowing in his veins and the deep void inside his chest. His quirk always felt weird to him, but he assumed it was because he wasn’t used to feeling it. It was just something his body ignored the feeling of, the same as with noses. You can always see your nose, but your brain ignores it.

He can always feel his quirk, but he ignores it. At some point, he’d stopped noticing it. Focusing back on it made his chest hurt, but it was something he had to get used to.

Hurry up!

‘Stop whining and help’

Max then disappeared, and Haruki could feel his quirk adjusting, reaching out. For a few seconds, he was sure that he could feel the people in the other battle centres. It confused him, but there wasn’t a single part of his quirk that didn’t confuse him.

He was back in the void. But it wasn’t a void anymore; he was by the pond again. The grass still stayed; he was glad that his clothes stayed the same when he switched. He wouldn’t handle stepping on wet grass barefoot.

Curiosity got the better of him, and instead of doing anything to relax and wait for the exam to be over, or for Max to return, he jumped into the pond.

Haruki didn’t know why he kept jumping into bodies of water; it was just a calling. A special interest of his… probably.

The water felt familiar; he expected it to feel different, not similar to regular water at all. It was black after all. But no, it was the same. It was weirdly regular. He felt it enter his lungs, just like the last time he jumped into the sea. Except this time, he was sure that he wouldn’t die. Back then, well, let’s not talk about that.

Before he could’ve started drowning, he was falling.

“Oh? Who are you?”

Haruki looked up. “Oh god, don’t tell me there’s another person in my head-“ He stopped.

He stared at himself.

This shouldn’t be possible. This wasn’t him anymore; he didn’t look like that for years. But he was standing right there. Haruki couldn’t deny something that he was seeing right in front of his eyes. Even if he wanted to.

“Are you lost? I’m sure Father could show you the way, or were you looking for Mother?” The person—he?—said. His tone was soft, something that Haruki had long since forgotten how to do. He looked as if he was shining, lighting the dark place that they were in. “I’d offer to take you to them, but I fear that I am lost myself.” He chuckled.

Haruki looked over the person one more time, making sure that everything was just like he remembered himself looking like.

Light, wavy blond hair, nearly covering one eye but stopping just above, two small braids on the side of his face. Small wings where his ears should be. Those blue eyes that he hated, the same ones with a star inside of them. Wings that would’ve later changed colours until he cut them off. And the stupid halo that Father gave him when he was ‘chosen’.

It was all too perfect, even the clothes were the same, roses littered in any small accessory. They were wearing an almost orange cape. It didn’t cover his shoulders; instead, it was connected to something that went across his upper torso. He never bothered asking what it was called. Though he was sceptical about it having a name in the first place. He could see a rose necklace underneath it, and then a white sleeveless crop-top under that.

White fingerless gloves, a rose corsage on his right hand. He was wearing many robes instead of pants; he had to argue with his siblings that it wasn’t a skirt many, many times. And then knee-high white boots, with a few blue accessories.

It was him. He was looking at himself.

The thought wouldn’t process in his head; he didn’t want it to, he didn’t want his mind to make up any sort of explanation for that.

“Who are you?” Haruki asked, not bothering to stand up yet. He couldn’t bring himself to; his legs felt weak, and he didn’t want to fall again.

“I’m Filius, the prophet. If you’re a lightener, you must’ve heard of me.”

Haruki had forgotten that name. “A lightener. We really did call ourselves after make-up, huh?” he laughs for a second.

“I didn’t pick that name.” Filius laughed as well. “Do you know where we are?”

Haruki looked around, he didn’t. He could barely see anything, and from what he could see, he didn’t recognise anything.

They were standing on a checkered floor, mostly made of different shades of red, roses were carved into the tiles at seemingly random intervals. This was probably a memory; that’s what all his dreams were. Everything he dreamed about was something that he’d already seen before; that’s the rule with his dreams, he always knew who was in them, or where they happened. If he didn’t, it was simply because the place wasn’t real, and it was something that the void created. But this was different; it was too detailed to be fake, too real.

And why was he with himself?

Large columns rise up to the ceiling, the pond that Haruki entered. It doesn’t drip; the water just stays on top of them, unmoving and silent.

He can’t make out the walls; it was too dark. The only source of light being the overly calm version of himself.

Haruki finally stood up, looking behind him for a second, a black void looked back. Dead end. The only way they could go was forward.

Haruki took his past self by his hand and started walking the only way he could. Eventually, they reached a door, then a dining room, then a library. And many other rooms that neither of them recognised. There was always only one way, no choices to make. It was just forward.

Until they walked into another hallway. Nearly identical to the one before, except now there was light. Coming from the left.

There were two ways they could go, forward or left. Haruki looked at himself.

“Where do you think we should go?” His voice echoed through the halls.

“Against my better judgement, towards the light.”

“Against your-? Fuck it.” Haruki sighed, grabbing Fil’s hand again and running forward, ignoring the blinding light. They stood in front of a door; they could hear something coming from the other side. A voice.

It sounded frustrated, alongside it, they heard noises of glass, metal and books hitting the ground.

The door was locked.

They returned to the light, walking into it. Haruki closed his eyes, trying to preserve any ability to see later on.

He felt a light tap on his shoulder. He slowly opened his eyes.

He was outside, alone.

He was inside a garden, very similar to the one they had back at the facility. There was a fountain in the middle, and moss covered the bottom of it. There was a small path leading to it from the place he should’ve just come from. But when he looked in that way, there was a wall. Dark purple brick, overrun with plants and wisteria.

Roses lined the beige rocks of the path; it seemed as if there was no end to them. No other flowers grew, only roses.

Haruki walked alongside the path, eventually reaching a part of the void again.

The only visible part were the roses.

He then reached another area, still covered in roses.

A blue light shone in the middle; it fell on a white coffin, laying in the flowers.

Haruki turned away. He was prepared to leave, to climb back into the pond and never return to this place ever again, but he was stopped by a voice.

“Excuse me, have you seen my husband?”

He spins on his heel, looking at the person speaking to him.

She had long white hair that didn’t seem to quite reach the ground. Skin lighter than he’d ever seen and red eyes.

She was wearing a rose hairclip, a long, wavy red dress with matching heels, and a few golden necklaces.

“I- no. I haven’t seen anyone.” Haruki answers, she frowns and puts a hand up to her face.

“That’s alright, my Luke is always running off somewhere, I just hope our son doesn’t learn that after him. It’s always so hard trying to find him.”

“When did you…come here?… and who’s in the coffin?” He looks past her, but he finds nothing. The place where the coffin was a second ago disappeared, roses grew in its place.

“Coffin? There’s never been a coffin here. My garden shouldn’t be used for such morbid things.” She laughs, it turns into a couch right after, and the woman leans on the fountain that Haruki didn’t remember being there for support. “Don’t mind that… It’s just something that happens from time to time. Are you alright though? Did you get lost? Or are you a friend of Akemi’s?”

“I’m lost… I think...” Haruki looks around again. “This is your garden?”

“Yeah, I really like roses, as you can tell.” She laughs again. “My husband is probably in his study. Maybe he could help you? I’m sorry, but I can’t walk for that long. It should be a dark wooden door right next to the entrance to the garden.” She points to a white gate.

“Thanks…” Haruki mumbles, already walking towards the gate. It leads him to a big archway that opens to the inside.

He was back in the hallway. The left side once again lit up. He walked up to the door again, the noises stopped. It was silent; the person on the other side didn’t seem angry anymore.

He knocked, waiting.

It took a few seconds before the door opened. When it did, someone stared down at him. Two dark blue eyes looked at him as if they had seen him before.

“Filius.” The person says, and Haruki can feel his heart speeding up. The world around him distorts; he can no longer see the person’s face, and the word he spoke keeps repeating. Eventually, everything else disappears as well, leaving Haruki standing in the nothingness.

Fil? Fil, ya there? You might wanna come back, there’s the big guy that you saw back when you hacked the systems. Uh, I think you might wanna take him.

And then he was back, standing on the main street of the entrance exam city. Watching as the 0-pointer walked towards him.

Have some art

Chapter Text

Haruki looked up. The giant 0-pointer was walking towards him at an even slower pace than the other robots. It turns out you don’t understand how big 13 meters is until you see it in real life. And, yeah, the blueprints did not do this guy justice.

“Help!” Haruki turned to the person who was screaming. “You! Please help me!” The purple-haired person from before shouted. They were trapped underneath some rubble from the building that the robot attacking Haruki destroyed.

“Again? Dude, you need to learn how to run. Wait there.” Haruki sighed. He had to help him, considering that the building only collapsed because he didn’t notice the robot. Still, how do people keep getting under the already fallen rubble?

‘Hey, Max? Where is the pole?’

I kind of… destroyed it by accident.

‘Really? You know what? I don’t want to know.’

Haruki ripped out a street sign from the sidewalk before jumping into an alleyway. He climbed up the building to get a better view of the robot. It was still slow; he had no idea how U.A ever thought that this would’ve been a good enough enemy.

He jumped between rooftops, shortening the distance between him and the robot, having to dodge a couple of attacks the 0-pointer sent his way. Still, because of the pace it was moving at, it was easy, even though he was distracted because of… whatever happened in the void.

When he was close enough, he jumped towards the machine—having to readjust his headphones mid-jump so that they wouldn’t fall off.—nearly slipping when landing, without anything to hold on to. He pierced the street sign into the robot, steadying himself on the machine’s back.

The 0-pointer was trying to get him off, nearly reaching him with its arms and trying to do sudden moves.

Haruki removed the street sign from the wires it had become tangled in, then began to climb the robot. He saw the blueprints, the turn-off button, or rather, ‘destroy it and the whole thing goes down’ button was in the neck. Fortunately, the neck was also the easiest part of it to get into.

He reached the hole between the robot's body and its neck, quickly dropping himself inside. It was hot, maybe too hot. He had to be quick, which—in comparison to the robot—he could do.

Locating the thing he was supposed to hit was incredibly easy. He had figured it was the thing right in front of him; most of the inside of the robot was wires or empty space anyway.

Present Mic’s voice echoed through the city, “1 MINUTE LEFT!” Right, Haruki had forgotten that this was timed.

Deciding not to waste any more time, he positioned the right side of the street sign in the right place and pierced through it, and then many more times, just to be sure.

 The only problem now? The robot was falling over, and it was still really hot inside it. Haruki climbed out of it, ripping the sleeve on his shirt. Of course, he couldn’t have a badass moment without something messing it up.

Once he was back outside of the probably very dangerous machine, he boosted himself up with the street sign, not realising that it wouldn’t work in the same way that his bo-staff does. Instead of hitting the roof of a building, he landed on a small bump out. Which, in his opinion, was better since he was closer to the ground. But it did hurt a lot more.

He quickly jumped down again, grabbing the—now crying—purple-haired person from the rubble, hitting some other people away from the area the robot would’ve fallen onto in the process.

“TIME’S UP, LISTENERS. MAKE YOUR WAY OVER TO THE EXIT IF YOU AREN’T INJURED.” Present Mic announced.

And after calming down the person who was still holding onto him, he exited the battle centre.

***

“So, Shouta, which one do you think our little listener is?” Mic asked, walking over to Aizawa, the battle had just begun, and the judges had started analysing every participant.

The room was covered with TVs, each one displaying a different student. The judges talked amongst themselves, and silent whispers filled the room.

“I don’t know. Do you think he’s using his quirk? It should be easy to spot.” Shouta shrugs.

“Well, he knows that we’re watching, so probably not. I just hope he doesn’t get hurt.”

The door to the exam room opens, and a small animal walks through it. “We certainly have a promising bunch of students this year.”

Nezu walks towards the TVs, pressing something on the control, lighting up the big screen on top of the others. “Examinee no.01.” he says towards a mic.

“Who’s 01?” Mic whispers to his husband, getting a shrug in response. It has been a while since Nezu watched over one specific student during the exam.

The screen starts showing live footage from one of the drones they use to monitor the students. It was in Battle Centre G. It hasn’t found the student yet.

 When the drone started following a very familiar teen, Shouta looked over to his boss. “Nezu? What are you planning?” He asked, This has never gone the right way. There was no way that Haruki would’ve been 01; the list goes alphabetically, and Shouta remembered that Haruki’s last name was something starting with an N. It was a little odd that he introduced himself with his first name, but Aizawa wouldn’t pry. There are many reasons that someone wouldn’t want to be called by their parents' name.

The mammal doesn’t respond.

“What did you talk to him about?” Hizashi crosses his arms, clearly just as confused as Shouta was.

“Which day? Haruki and I have had plenty of interesting conversations.” The principal smiles.

Something on the screen changes. Haruki was nowhere to be seen; it wasn’t often that the drone lost its target. He ran out of an alleyway, but something was different; they were standing straighter, his hold on the weapon was looser, less trained, but somehow it looked as if the weapon was lighter now.

He was moving quicker, smirking while decapitating robots one after another. Shouta felt something between shock and pride. If Haruki was doing this, it must’ve meant that Filius was somewhere in those battle centres, doing something similar.

Still, the sudden switch was confusing, but maybe he just started listening to a song he liked. Shouta wouldn’t underestimate the power of listening to the right song at the right time; Hizashi had lectured him about it too many times for him to ever forget.

“Right.” Nezu turned to the judges, who were currently whispering about Haruki. Most of it was confusion about why the boy was wearing a U.A uniform. “To answer that question. Aizawa he’s in your class. I told him to participate in the exam just to see his skills in real life. I was already sure that he would fit your class perfectly. I did some… tests.”

“Nezu, what did you do?” Shouta walked towards the rat. He wouldn’t intervene whenever the rat was ‘doing tests’ on the teachers, but the students shouldn’t be a part of it. They were kids, and Nezu wasn’t known for his mercifulness.

“Don’t worry, he passed all of them. Seemingly without any problems. He managed to surprise me many times.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.” Mic walked up next to him. He glared at the rat, clearly thinking about how much he valued his job.

“He’s going to be a personal student of mine. I have high hopes for him.” Nezu turned away, looking at the screen as Haruki defeated another batch of robots without looking back.

“Your WHAT?! Nezu, no way. I’m not letting you do this to him. You’ll break him. I’m not letting that happen to another student.” Mic shouted, the principal turned his head to look at him.

“Do you think that he isn’t already broken? I was under the impression that you were the only person that has seen his neck so far.”

“We don’t know how he got those; they may have been an accident. Doesn’t mean that you get to make him fight until he physically can't anymore!” Hizashi grabbed the mammal by his collar, lifting him up to be on eye level. Aizawa put a hand on his shoulder, trying to calm his husband.

Nezu doesn’t flinch; he keeps speaking with a cheerful voice, ignoring the rising anger in his employees. “I don’t think that he will break, Yamada. I have seen him do many things; I’ve sent him on missions that others would consider immoral. Look at how he’s fighting those robots, I bet that he’s bored. He wants to be challenged, and U.A is the perfect place for that, don’t you think?”

“What did you do to him?” Hizashi puts the principal down, deciding that it wasn’t worth it.

“Nothing that he ever opposed. I mean, all the robots have noticed that he’s a threat, and he’s not even struggling. He’s even saving others. It’s clear that he already had some training and that he wants to train more. Why wouldn’t I give him the resources that he needs to… flourish?” The rat shrugs, sitting down in one of the empty chairs.

“Why him?”

“Because he has secrets I couldn’t solve.”

The 0-pointer on the screen behind Nezu gets deactivated, on the screen next to it, another Battle Centre appears, displaying a green-haired boy destroying the robot with one punch, saving a girl and breaking his arm and legs in the process.

“Izuku Midoriya, he’s also in your class, Shouta. I think he and Haruki will have a lot of fun together.”

***

“’Zuku! How’d you do?!” Haruki runs towards his friend after spotting him outside the U.A building.

“Huh? Oh.. hey Haru…” Midoriya answers, moving away from the hug that Haruki tried to give him. “I- … I failed… I didn’t get a single point.” He wipes tears away from his eyes, looking down at the floor.

“Aw damn, well there’s still next year! Still, until the results come, we can’t be sure.” Haruki puts his hand on Izuku’s shoulder, trying to cheer him up. “Say, wanna go for ice cream? They always cheer my siblings up.”

“Yeah.. sure, might as well.”

“Oi Deku!” Bakugo yelled from behind them. “How many points did you get?” He walks in front of them, blocking their way.

“More than you.” Haruki answered. “Now scram, you won’t get first place anyway, and it’s about time. It’s clear that all you’ve ever had was handed to you.” He pushed through the blond.

Bakugo tries to use his quirk. Haruki feels the power behind him move around his body. He pushes Midoriya behind, so that he wouldn’t get affected by the quirk, once again turning to face the boy.

“What the fuck? Why can’t I use my quirk!?” Bakugo looks down at his hands, trying to activate his quirk. The aura of it has shrunk, moving around, trying to be released.

“Attacking other participants isn’t allowed. If you want to be a hero, you have to handle losses. Taking it out on people who have passed will not make the result…” Aizawa walks towards them. Mic was right next to him. “Why are all of you fighting? You-“ Aizawa points at Bakugo. “did pretty well, you, I’m not allowed to tell, and Haruki, you know what you did.”

“Gee, don’t make it sound like what I did was something bad.” Haruki looks to the side.

“You know what you did.” Aizawa flashes his quirk again, glaring at him. “Now then, explain.”

“Bakugo is an asshole? Isn’t that obvious?” Haruki shrugs, gaining another glare sent his way. “Quirkist fucker.” He mumbles, and Aizawa’s gaze moves over to the blond.

“I’m not!- Tch… whatever, I got in, and when the results come, I’ll show you how I’m better than you!” He then walks away. Or rather, angrily stomped away, it reminded Haruki of the times his siblings used to throw tantrums.

When Bakugo was nowhere to be seen, Aizawa turned towards Haruki once more. “I’ll choose to ignore that. Come, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”

Next to him, Midoriya was already taking out his notebook, mumbling something to himself. “Well, actually, I wanted to go get ice cream with ‘Zuku. I already know where you two live…” He chuckles to himself

“You… know? Oh, right, Fil. Sure, have fun, but be home by 9.” Aizawa started walking back, probably heading to the teacher’s parking lot. When Haruki turns to Izuku, Aizawa looks over his shoulder and shouts. “Don’t get into any more fights.”

“I don’t promise anything!” Haruki shouts back, getting a lot of looks sent his way from the other participants, leaving U.A. He turns to Midoriya again, the boy was already 3 pages deep in whatever he was writing. “Well, that certainly cheered you up. I still want ice cream, though.”

Izuku opened his mouth to say something, but he was interrupted by yet another person talking to them. “Hey, Haruki. How’d you do? Oh, you’re the guy who destroyed that big robot, huh…” Shinsou walks up to them, looking Midoriya up and down.

“I think I want to stay humble. Anyway, wanna come with us for ice cream?” Haruki holds the two boys by their hands. Before Shinsou can respond, he starts running to the closest ice cream stand he can find.

The ice cream seemed to lift everyone’s mood. Shinsou was oddly cold to Midoriya at first, but for some reason, after learning that the boy didn’t get any points, he acted normal again. Haruki stayed quiet for most of their hangout, wanting his friends to get to know each other first, and because his quirk was still glitching around Midoriya. He didn’t know why he felt All Might’s quirk coming off his very quirkless friend. But the headache it was causing didn’t make him want to socialise.

Eventually, the sun started setting, and they all went their own way. Haruki still had to get his things from his house. He was unsure whether he should take the stove or not. On one hand, he could cook things in his room; on the other, it might make him even more suspicious than he already is.

I’m gonna miss this place, and the tapestry.

‘Oh, I’m taking that. Thanks for reminding me.’

You’re taking it? Why?

‘Because it’s cool?’ Haruki answered in a ‘isn’t that obvious’ tone, the one that always pissed everyone off as he took the tapestry off the wall and tried to stuff it into his bag.

In the end, he took everything that he could, the hammock too. Even if he wouldn’t be able to hang it anywhere there.

The walk over took longer than it usually did, probably because he was carrying two full boxes. He never realised that he had this many things, but it did make sense. He was there for 2 years already, so obviously, things have piled up as time passed.

He knocked on the door to the apartment, though it could barely be considered a knock. Haruki thought that putting the boxes down just to knock would’ve been pointless, so instead, he struggled while trying to do something even remotely resembling a knock.

“H-hey …whoever you are. I can’t exactly see right now.” He mumbles when the door opens.

“Oh, here let me help with that!” Mic says, taking one of the boxes. “How was the ice cream? Victory meals always taste so good.” He laughs. Setting the box by the door to the guest room.

“I-it was good.” Haruki answers, the awkwardness of moving into his teacher's house finally settling in on him. It just happened to show with his stutter coming back.

“Do you want some dinner? We have ramen.” Mic sits down on the couch.

Haruki looks around the apartment, everything was seemingly the same as it always was, except there were more papers on the coffee table. He could hear the shower being on in the bathroom, and the cats were nowhere to be found.

“Come sit. Do you like rom-coms?” Mic pats the couch next to where he was sitting, coincidentally being the same spot that was still stained with his blood. Except this time, nobody but him knew that it was his blood. Haruki sits down, his eyes move to the TV. Mic was scrolling through some streaming website he didn’t recognise, though he didn’t recognise any of them. He had cable growing up, and then he was in the facility, where he didn’t know how the TV worked. Astris always set something up, and he didn’t ask.

Just when Mic was about to put something on, Aizawa stepped out of the bathroom. “Hizashi, don’t torture the kid with something from centuries ago. It’d bore him to death.” Eraserhead goes into the kitchen to make himself some coffee. Haruki never understood how he managed to use that coffee machine; it seemed too complicated for him, too many buttons.

“Fine! Here, Haruki, you choose. I guess my tastes are too ancient.” He passes the remote to him, and suddenly, Haruki was put in a very bad spot. He didn’t know any movies that came out in that year. And he wasn’t going to play Marvel to two actual pro heroes.

After scrolling through the available movies for too long to be considered normal, he caved in and played something that he remembered from his childhood.

“So… uh… about those ‘ancient’ movies…” He mumbles while searching ‘The Incredibles’ up.

The movie starts playing, and Mic turns back just to tell Aizawa that he’s not the only person who likes old movies.

Haruki started to feel the weird implications of being older than most of the movies that the two pro heroes knew. And then he realises that he looks great for his age, and no longer cares about anything.

Though being older than anyone currently alive will never not be a weird feeling to him.

At some point during the movie, Eraserhead turns to him. “So… why’d you need a place to stay in the first place?”

Mic interrupts him. “Shouta! Don’t ask those sorts of questions!”

“I-It’s fine…” Haruki reassures, trying to cover up his stutter once again. He did not miss it. “My mom had to go overseas for work, while my dad is… eugh.. yeah, he’s my dad, that’s for sure.” Maybe he should’ve concealed his feelings towards his father more. But both father figures he’s had in his life were deadbeats, so he had a bit of a hard time pretending that either of them was somehow decent.

Mic signs to his husband. “See? What did I tell you? Don’t scare the kid, he’s safe here at least.”

“I know sign language…” Haruki mumbles. Looking back at the TV to try and get out of this conversation.

Eventually, the movie ended, and Haruki moved the two boxes to his room, took out his sleepwear from them, and went to take a shower. He didn’t know why he felt different; he’s been in this house so many times before. But there’s still something about this time that feels odd. Maybe it’s because he’s Haruki here, not Fil. And technically, Haruki only knows Aizawa and Eraserhead on a surface level.

He hopes that this feeling will pass; he’s awkward enough on his own, he doesn’t need another reason to embarrass himself in front of people he likes.

When he exited the bathroom, Present Mic looked over to him and then yelped before covering his mouth with his hands. “Sorry, sorry!” he says in between laughs. “I just didn’t expect that shirt.” Haruki looks down and he realises that his sleepwear shirt is still the ‘put your hands up radio’ merch that he got from Midoriya.

“You saw nothing!” He says as he runs back into the guest room, closing the door behind him.

He decided not to patrol that night; the sudden pace that things were moving scared him. He had a house, he got into U.A, He has friends, which was the most shocking thing out of all of them, and for some reason, Eraserhead and Mic seem to like him both in and out of costume, as awkward as their conversations may be.

Things changed quickly; he wasn’t sure if he liked it yet. He didn’t dislike it; it was just different. And he wasn’t used to different.

Something in him still wasn’t at peace. It made his heart race. His head was telling him that this wouldn’t last, but what if it would? He’s been staying on and off in Aizawa’s and Mic’s house as Fil for around a year now. It was fine then. So who’s to say it wouldn’t be fine now?

The bed he was lying in was still the same bed he had laid in all those other times. But now it was his, now this wasn’t just the guest room, it was his. The boxes he brought with him lay by the door, not yet unpacked. He probably should’ve done that already.

Even though everything changed, it also stayed the same. He still had to go to U.A, he was still a vigilante, he still had to take down the hero commission, and Aizawa still didn’t know who he really was.

He didn’t know how to feel; he wanted to be safe. And this seemed like the perfect place for that. But he couldn’t get himself to, something was blocking him, like a mental barrier had been placed in his brain, forcing him to be in constant fear. Making fight or flight the passive mode, he was set on. He knew that he shouldn’t feel that way, but he couldn’t stop it. No matter how hard he tried or wanted to, nothing would get rid of the feeling.

He didn’t know if he made the right decision by living here; he didn’t know if any decisions he made were right. Or if right decisions even existed, it sure felt like they did, and his life up until now was a collection of only bad ones.

The two heroes currently asleep in the other room had been trying to make this as comfortable for all of them, and yet Haruki still felt like he couldn’t truly relax.

Haruki woke up to whispers outside his door. He probably wouldn’t have heard them if not for the enhanced hearing he had. “Should we wake him up? He already knows he got in.” Voice 1 says, Haruki thinks that it was Mic.

“He looked tired, who wouldn’t be? You saw what he was doing at the exam. I think we should let him sleep. Besides, he’s in a new place, he’s probably scared. He should at least be scared and well-rested.” Aizawa answers, in his normal, tired voice. But after seeing how he acted in front of Bakugo, Haruki thinks that maybe he’s colder towards other people.

That just meant that he was one of the special ones, since Eraserhead had been nice to him. Well, maybe if you don’t count the first time they met, and he had to run away from him through the entire city.

The voices moved away from his door; little did they know, he never felt well-rested. Exhaustion was his default setting. And he was also hungry, which only made him annoyed at his fast metabolism. Just because he had access to food didn’t mean that his body was allowed to feel hunger more often. He was doing fine with the one meal a day he was getting before; simply because now he had breakfast, lunch, and dinner didn’t mean that he was allowed to feel hunger three times a day, too.

But he didn’t focus on it yet; his headache was finally gone, which only reassured him in his belief that he really needed to avoid All Might. However, that might be hard to do since the hero would be his teacher. Haruki was still sure that he could figure something out.

Or he would just get used to the quirk, like he did with Present Mic, though that was the more painful one out of the two choices. And he was certainly not looking forward to it.

He got up from the bed, not bothering to set it again after doing so. He didn’t use to have bedsheets before, and he didn’t understand why people were so adamant about setting them up.

The second he exited his room, the cats all decided to run towards him, the small tabby jumping up onto his shirt, digging its claws into it.

“Best morning ever.” He mumbled to himself, picking the cat up and starting to pet him.

“Morning, sleepyhead!” Mic says from the kitchen, there was a sweet smell in the air, making Haruki’s stomach growl. Mic chuckles for a second before adding, “Blue seems to like you.”

“You named a cat ‘Blue?’ …Eraserhead that was your idea, wasn’t it?”

Aizawa looked up from some papers he was reading by the dining table. He nodded towards Haruki, signalling for them to shut up and sit down.

“What are you cooking?” Haruki tried to walk between the two cats surrounding him, eventually getting to a chair next to Aizawa. The tabby jumped up onto his shoulder, eventually settling himself in his hair. While the other two cats tried to fit in his lap.

“Oh wow, they really like you. I don’t think that Moonie has ever sat on my lap willingly.” Mic sulks in the kitchen, flipping what looks to be a pancake onto the other side. The sizzle in the pan increases slightly for a second before returning to normal.

The TV was playing in the background, some kind of news channel, but nobody was paying attention to it. There was a quiet calmness in the living room; something was telling Haruki that the two pro heroes were used to it by now. But it was the first time that Haruki had ever seen anything like this.

He felt like he belonged; his worries from the night before seemed far away as he settled into his place in the household.

Haruki closed his eyes; he could still feel the light shining on them from the window behind him. He let the noises fill his ears; they comforted him in a way that he hadn’t felt before. Something about this moment felt so familiar to him, but he couldn’t remember from where.

The noises of Aizawa flipping through papers, the news reporter speaking about another villain attack that some newly rising hero defeated, Mic humming softly in the kitchen, the sizzling of pancakes in front of him, and the soft purring of the cats surrounding him. He didn’t interrupt the silence, not wanting the calmness to disappear.

Yet he knew that it wouldn’t last forever; he still had breakfast to eat after all. And the smell of pancakes has been torturing him for too long now.

When Present Mic finally finished cooking, Haruki was the first person to start eating. The hero’s cooking was too good to resist. And he would never say no to free food.

Mic and Aizawa talked about some lesson plan ideas; Haruki couldn’t help but listen in. They were talking right next to him, so there wasn’t really a way that he wouldn’t hear their conversation.

“I’ll probably just do the standard quirk assessment test, and then expel anyone who doesn’t have the potential.” Aizawa shrugs, getting a fake gasp sent his way.

“I will never understand how you can just crush someone’s dreams without batting an eye.” Mic laughs. “Though this batch of kids seems promising, don’t you think, Haru? I could see you looking at some of the other participants during the exam.”

Haruki jumped up at the mention of his brother's name. He seriously picked the worst name for himself. He probably should’ve chosen a name that didn’t get shortened to his brother’s name, but he wasn’t thinking about that when making the name up. “I- I mean, I saw like a few cool people. Didn’t really focus that much on them.”

“With the amount of points you got, I’m not surprised. Hell, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone get that much since I’ve started teaching there.” Hizashi answers, taking another bite of his pancakes. “Which reminds me, the letter from U.A came, though you obviously already know that you’ve been accepted.”

“Oh, god… I’m scared of what the rat wrote in there…”

“It’s a video.” Aizawa corrects, his gaze doesn’t leave the pile of papers lying next to his plate.

“That’s even worse…”

“Well, since you got 1st place, you might get the video made by All Might. I know that he recorded a few of those; all of the teachers did. Except for Aizawa, Nezu wouldn’t be able to get him to do one of those even if he let him nap for the next 5 years.”

“Now I want to see one of those made by Eraser. I bet it would be interesting.” Haruki smirks to himself.

“That’s what I’m sayin’! You get me, kiddo! Though he’d probably say some depressing thing and make the kid not want to attend.”

“I’m still here.” Aizawa glared at the two. “The letter is on the coffee table. Go watch it when you’re done eating.”

The video did, in fact, show All Might; he congratulated Haruki on getting first place. He forgot to count the rescue points. In the end, he doubled the points that he wanted to get; the purple-haired guy was probably a solid 80% of those rescue points. Still, seeing All Might be surprised at the score definitely helped his ego. Apparently, getting 200 points on the entrance exam is … going a little overboard, he thought he was getting only half of that.

The video ended with All Might saying that Nezu wanted to play chess again. To which the hero looked very confused about. Haruki almost felt bad for the number of questions that must’ve been going through his head.

Haruki decided not to go play chess, simply because he had work to do.

And well, getting the No.3 hero to agree to a meeting can be a full-time job by Haruki’s standards. Seriously, why does he have so many demands?

By the time the sun has long since set, Haruki gets dressed in his vigilante costume and has to sneak out using the fire escape. He’s glad that it connects to his window.

It was finally warm outside, sadly, Haruki still had to wear long sleeves everywhere, god forbid he ever puts on a tank top. The scars on his back stop him from ever doing that, and the ones on his neck, which he’s now sure that both Eraserhead and Present Mic saw, stop him from ever getting rid of his turtlenecks.

Hawks wanted to meet at a ‘reasonable time’. Which only meant that Filius had to be careful of the sun rising while he was still outside. Last time he was out that long in costume, he nearly got murdered by Endeavour. But Hawks wouldn’t budge to his offering a meeting somewhere more during the night, and so now, it was 5 AM, and Filius was standing in some dirty alleyway, staring at the rising sun.

As it turned out, Hawks was also not one to be on time; the meeting was supposed to be at 4 AM. But somehow the hero managed to be even later than Fil, which, once again, how do you manage to do that?

By the time that Fil could finally feel Hawks quirk from above him, the sky was a mix of oranges and soft blues.

“Sorry for being late, I got held up with something.” The winged hero says, dropping down into the alley.

Filius looks him up and down. He’d expected some kind of disguise, but not…this.

Hawks was dressed in a full black tracksuit with white lines. The hood fully covered his hair, and he had black sunglasses on. “Why are you dressed like that?!” Filius screams out; the voice changer does nothing to hide how high his voice always goes whenever he’s shocked.

“Like what!?” Hawks responds, looking himself over. “I had to hide from fans!”

“I think putting a bag over your head would’ve looked better…” Fil sighs. “Whatever, do you have the map-“

Hawks starts shushing him, putting his hand over their mask. Which realistically didn’t do anything. “Don’t be so loud! The commission has eyes everywhere.”

No… it doesn’t? There’s no cameras here… I checked like 40 times while we were waiting.

“This isn’t a movie, Hawks, now give me the thing.” Filius holds out his hand, Hawks pulls out a manila folder. “Okay, wow… you’re bigger on the dramatics than I am. It’s a stupid floor plan! Why are you so cryptid?!”

“Let me do my thing!” Hawks leans against the wall of the alleyway, clearly trying to keep up the mysterious act.

“You know what? Sure.” Filius looks over the files. He told Hawks to get him a floor plan of the hero commission. The building was huge, so there were a lot of things to look through on the map.

Filius set it up on the floor, keeping the papers from flying away by placing some of his weapons on the corners. “Come here, help me plan the break-in.”

“Break-in? What are you planning to do in there?”

“Well, to get rid of it. I’m probably going to need some incriminating thing about them, won’t I?” Filius answered sarcastically. “Unless you want me to tell the public about your backstory. That would work too.”

“Yeah, let’s plan the break-in.”

By the time they finished the plan, the streets were already filled with people. And Fil got many angry texts from Aizawa asking him where ‘his friend’ was. Fil obviously responded with an emote. But that just meant that he had to hurry up, or he would get in trouble with his teachers for sneaking out. But hey, he’s ..technically a teenager, and he’s pretty sure that’s what teenagers do.

He and Hawks had to change their meeting spot, as the alleyway was too obvious, so now they were in one of the heroes' apartments. Which was messier than Filius expected it to be.

“I didn’t think you had an apartment in Musutafu.” He says, while putting the papers back into the manila folder.

“I have apartments all over Japan; you never know where the commission will send you next.” Hawks shrugs, dialling someone on his phone. “Do you like fried chicken?”

“… What are you getting?” Filius looks up from the table he was sitting at.

“KFC?”

“Get me something that I can dip in sweet-sour sauce” Filius shrugs, sitting down on the hero’s couch instead, scrolling through something on his phone.

Hawks soon joins him, turning the TV on.

“Say… isn’t that kind of cannibalism?” Filius asks, looking up from his phone.

“Oh, god… not you too… I swear, I have this conversation like every other day. No, just because I have wings doesn’t mean that I’m a chicken.” Hawks groans, leaning his head back.

Fil shrugs in response.

“Since you’re already here, wanna come with me on patrol? I get bored on my own. And my agency members aren’t in Musutafu to help.”

“You can’t be seen with me.” Filius raises an eyebrow.

“I’ll give you a make-over, I have some clothes that would fit you perfectly. But, they have holes in the back for wings, so you might feel a bit cold.”

Filius stands up from the couch. “Fuck it, sure.”

Haruki didn’t know why he decided to trust the hero this much. Because getting seen in something other than his vigilante gear was a level of trust that not many people got.

But something told him that Hawks knew that if he betrayed them, he would be the only one who suffered, in the long run.

Since we kinda trust him… do you wanna show your wings? Let’s match him and do red ones this time!

Filius finished putting on the new mask that Hawks had given him. It was mostly black, with some dark blue accents. It didn’t have the voice changer, but his voice was still somehow muffled by the fabric. And as long as the hero didn’t see his full face, Haruki assumed that he’d be fine.

He rolls his eyes, though Max had a point. It wasn’t often that the No.3 hero patrolled with someone without any type of bird aspects to them. So obviously, it would only be logical to show his wings. Plus, it would make anyone’s suspicion of him being Fil disappear, since Filius didn’t have wings.

He looked over himself in the mirror; his hair was tied back in a small bun. It was probably for the best; he needed to cut them soon. He had dark blue headphones with some red in them. Hawks said that every hero has to have some form of a communication device in their ears; some people just choose to make them obvious.

He was given a black turtleneck, a jean bolero jacket in the same shade of blue with a line of red going through it. A red utility belt that he put his bo-staff in, and some black military cargo pants. He also insisted on having gloves on, which Hawks had reluctantly agreed to, giving him some red gloves that matched his outfit.

Then, for the finishing touch, he rolled up his sleeve to get easier access to his blood. He took out one of his knives and cut through the skin, careful not to stain the clothes he was given. He formed the blood falling into wings, fitting them into the holes in the back of his costume. They were a darker colour than Hawks’, but they would do. The scar healed soon after, and he was finally ready to go out with the No. 3 hero.

“Whoa, something tells me those aren’t fake. Is that your quirk?” Hawks looked over. He was already dressed in his hero costume.

“No, it’s not. I don’t fly often.” Filius looks to the side, he felt more exposed now that he didn’t have his voice changer to smooth out any voice cracks he had. His voice felt heavy in his throat.

“You’ll get used to it. Are you my secret brother or something? Those look nearly identical… yours are just smaller, and a bit more like a cardinal’s wings.” Hawks looks over Haruki’s wings, walking in circles around him.

“Yours look like a crow's wings…” Haruki mumbled, looking at the floor. “This outfit is pretty…flashy.”

“Is it? It’s mostly dark colours, but I guess if you’re used to the almost fully black costume you wear, then yeah. But hey, it just makes it harder for people to recognise you.” Keigo pats Haruki’s head as if it were a completely normal thing to do. Though maybe to him it was. Filius just wasn’t used to it.

“Can we go now?” Filius turned to the balcony. Before getting stopped by Hawks.

“Nuh-huh. You said you didn’t fly in a while, right? I’m not letting you jump from a balcony, Eraserhead would kill me. Come on.” Hawks put his hands under Fil’s arms, then he held them up so that their feet weren’t touching the ground.

“I feel short.”

“You are literally my height.” Hawks laughs as he jumps off the balcony, beginning to fly over the city.

It was that day that Filius realised why Hawks had a visor. The air kept hitting his eyes, making it difficult for him to see anything. Hawks let go of one of his arms, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a black visor, similar to the one he was wearing, just a bit smaller.

Immediately after putting it on, Fil started looking around. The city looked small when they were in the air. He didn’t realise how much he missed flying. The rooftops don’t have the same feeling to them. But flying? Flying was freeing; the air was the only place that father had no access to. And Filius hadn’t even realised that was why he always felt so safe whenever he was flying before. 

He closed his eyes, letting his quirk see if there were any villains nearby for him. So far, everything was normal, but he could feel something odd in his chest, the black void that he assumed to be his quirk grew, then it got smaller again. It didn’t do that normally. It always stayed the same; it wasn’t often that something in it changed.

Or at least, he hadn’t noticed it before. But maybe he was missing the moment that it did so. He never knew why his was the only quirk he’s ever seen to be black. Every other quirk he ever saw was a mix of a few colours, often bright; some people had darker quirks, like Eraserhead’s. His was a light grey aura. But he’s never seen anyone else with a black quirk. It showed what was in his brain perfectly.

But he sometimes wished that his quirk was as colourful as those of the people he meets.

“You still with me, Fil?” Hawks asks, dropping down onto a rooftop.

Filius opens his eyes, looking around for any villains. “Yeah, sorry, I zoned out.” His quirk wasn’t back to normal; he could feel it reaching out, as if it was trying to run away from him.

“Wanna try flying on your own? Just to warn you, though, the media loves me. And this area is swarmed with people during this time of day.”

“Oh, trust me, the media will love me too.” Fil answered smugly, stretching out his wings to prepare for using them again.

“Confident? I like it. Alright, try to keep up with me.” Hawks jumped down, flying over to the next area of his patrol.

Filius moved back for a moment before running off the rooftop, hoping that he still remembered how to fly. It’s like riding a bike or swimming, right? Once you learn how to do it the first time, you don’t forget…Right?

It seemed like that was indeed the case, as soon he was catching up to Hawks, flying right next to him.

“Oh, there you are! And here I thought that Eraserhead would kill me for letting his kid jump off a roof.” Keigo answered, chuckling softly as he flew through the city.

“…What did he tell you?” Filius asks. The hero had already mentioned Eraser twice.

“Well, back when you were missing, he basically called every hero he had access to. And every police station. Everyone was supposed to look out for a reckless teen vigilante. The news eventually reached me, too.” Hawks waves to the swarms of fangirls screaming at them from below. Filius is sure that he hears some confused shouts asking him who he is. Neither of them respond. “He also tracked me down once after I got out of the hospital, because of our little fight. Had a… very interesting chat… one that I’d rather not repeat.”

The patrol went by swiftly; not many criminals showed up during the day, and those that did were quickly defeated. Dealing with the public was not something that Filius was prepared for, no matter how much he’d insisted that he was.

But hey, he wasn’t the one having to deal with the rumour that started showing up on social media. It seemed like he should’ve chosen a different colour of wings, because now he was known as Hawks’ secret love child.

It didn’t matter to him, as he wouldn’t be seen in that costume or with his wings out in public ever again. Hawks had a lot to say about that, but Filius didn’t listen that much. He didn’t care for the reasons the hero had to convince him not to hide his wings. He had to hide them; they weren’t even truly his. They were an extension of his quirk, a ghost of the wings that used to be there.

He got dressed back in his vigilante costume, borrowing a hoodie from Keigo. The flashy colours didn’t match him at all, but he guessed that beggars can’t be choosers. It was day now, and he couldn’t get spotted. He put the mask and beanie into the pocket of the hoodie once he knew that Hawks was far away from him.

And ignoring the concerned texts from Eraserhead, he went the opposite way from their house.

He had some shopping to do.

By the time that Haruki had finished shopping, Aizawa had given up on trying to get Fil to text him where Haruki was. Only getting a “Tell him to be home by dinner.” As the last text. He could feel the sigh coming through the screen.

He didn’t buy much; the mall had a lot of things, but not many that were very useful or interesting to him. And the only reason he went was because he now had a house, and he somehow had to convince Eraserhead and Present Mic that he did have other things at his past home. Because it was really suspicious for him to pack only clothes, and also because now he had a shit ton of cash that was supposed to be the U.A fund, and the ‘buy a house’ fund, that he no longer had any use for.

Feeling content with his small shopping trip, Haruki was about to head out, but a store caught his attention.

It was a small shop, mostly filled with art supplies. But at the end, Haruki could see the wall of spray cans, and it was as if they called to him. It was the siren song of teenage angst. And in Haruki’s point of view, graffiti was a step up from what he normally does.

The cashier looked at the things he bought and rolled their eyes with a smirk. They didn’t say anything, but it was obvious that everyone in that store knew what Haruki would be doing with the spray paint. Though it wasn’t exactly a huge mystery to figure it out.

He’d only gotten like 10 cans… definitely a normal amount. In his defence, he couldn’t decide what colours to pick. And they weren’t expensive, in fact, everything was oddly affordable now. He didn’t need to worry about buying food or any basic household items; he was considered rich by teenage standards.

He finally left the mall, determined to try out his newly bought spray paint. And there wasn’t a better place to do that other than U.A. In the end, he needed to ‘show dominance’ or whatever. That’s what people called it in the movies he remembered watching, so that was what he would do.

And Nezu wouldn’t care; the rat would probably be ecstatic that Haruki managed to pull something like that off.

Sneaking into the school was surprisingly easy; he was used to it. Nezu still hasn’t given him a student pass, so hacking into the security systems had to do for now.

Finding a clear wall was a much more difficult task, on the other hand.

Most of the main building was made out of windows, and he didn’t want to draw on those since then the result would be flipped on the other side, and he wasn’t going to bother himself with trying to make his shitty drawing look good both normally and when flipped.

But the other clean walls were either too far away, in places that nobody goes to, or inside. But the gyms were almost perfect.

Setting the shopping bags down, he now had to decide what to draw; it had to be something relatively easy. He could draw a bit, nothing good, but it wouldn’t look like a child’s drawing, that’s for sure.

After staring at the clear wall for way too long, he finally decided to go with his gut, and he took out the orange spray paint can that he bought.

Graffiti was more difficult than he thought; it dripped way too much. He was lucky that what he drew nearly concealed all the spills.

The rose stared at him; he stared back. It reminded him of the rose room inside the castle. But this was different, this was mom’s favourite flower. It was something that he made, and it didn’t intimidate; it made the elite school seem more welcoming, as if it actually had humans attending it instead of emotionless nerds.

He added a few leaves sticking out from the flower in dark green. He liked how it looked; for a first time, he thinks that he did pretty well.

Haruki’s phone rings again. He was about to ignore it, thinking that Aizawa had once again decided to bother him.

But the second that he opened the notification, he had to close his phone and then open it again to make sure that he saw it right.

Unknown number

“That’s a pretty flower. May I know why you chose to draw that, specifically? :) -Principal Nezu”

He wasn’t crazy. Nezu was actually texting him on the app that he made. How could the rat get access to it? He made a very secure anti-hacking system, Tsukauchi tested it himself. Every time he walked into the station with Eraserhead, he could hear the other cops whispering and laughing about that situation.

The detective should’ve expected it by that point; it was his fault for trying to spy.

And yet somehow, Nezu got the app, and he was now texting Haruki with it. The fact that Nezu knew about the graffiti didn’t surprise them at all. There were cameras in every corner of the school. Well, except for the vents, which were something that Haruki would take advantage of all the time when he starts attending the school.

You should probably text back, don’t want him popping out from nowhere to ask again.

Max was right… unexpectedly.

“Mom’s favourite.”

“That’s quite a nice gesture then.” Haruki was in the middle of writing a response when the principal sent another text. “Chess?” It seemed like now he had to deal with two people interrupting his texting. He wondered whether Eraserhead got the habit from Nezu. Haruki was sure that the staff had a group chat, who knew how often they used it.

“You are aware that I’m not home right now…? Right? I don’t have my laptop.”

Haruki sighed when he felt the small quirk approaching him. He didn’t even know when it first appeared or from where, but Nezu was now behind him.

“That will not be a problem. I have brought chess to you.” The principal says, smiling, placing down a chessboard on the concrete path they were standing on. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t follow me inside.”

“I wouldn’t, no. I’m too lazy.” Haruki sits down. The mammal holds up a coin, Haruki takes it and throws it in the air. He was already used to this routine. Nezu had been asking him to play chess every chance that he got. “I’m heads.”

Haruki always chose heads, simply because that was the side that was facing up when he got the coin from the principal. Coin flips weren’t truly a 50/50 chance, and even if it was only a 1% difference, Haruki would take it every single time.

Tails.

This time, he was not lucky.

The chess match was starting to get boring. Haruki didn’t have a plan. Recently, he’d found that it was harder for Nezu to play that way. The mammal could predict any plans he made, so if he moved the first piece that he saw, he would be unpredictable. One day, he would win. It was something that he promised to himself; he knew that the rat found the dream to be ‘interesting.’ He said it all the time, in that annoying and pretentious tone that screamed ‘I’d wear a monocle in the 1800s’

“Oh, right, I almost forgot. Since technically I applied to U.A for you, we do not have an appropriate hero costume for you. It would be nice if you would send over some ideas to me, preferably with a rough sketch, to give the designers an idea of the aesthetic and look.”

“Shit.” Haruki groaned, dragging out the word as long as he could.

“And Fil- Haruki.” Nezu corrects himself; it was obvious that the action was done on purpose. It was a question; he was testing if Haruki wanted to be called by his old name—or his vigilante name by Nezu’s knowledge.

If he told the principal to call him Fil, then Nezu would know that the name had meaning to him. Something that matters. But the truth was that it didn’t. Haruki didn’t care for the name; nowadays, it was just that, a name. Something he picked his vigilante persona to be called, it wasn’t him, it was never him. Father only called him that because he had a weird obsession with Latin.

Though why he chose the word ‘Son’ was beyond his knowledge.

Thinking about it now, Filius was the only one who called father, father. His siblings used God, unless speaking to Fil.

He pushed his thoughts away; it wasn’t important.

Haruki stayed silent; he liked the name he chose for himself. It was something that finally felt good to him. The first decision he ever got to make on his own. Nezu took his silence as an answer, though, in their relationship, it was one.

“Please make the costume with your quirk in mind. I am aware that you will not be using it to train here, but I would still like you to have access to things that will help your quirk. Even if nobody but you knows how. We both know that you have a quirk, and it is not ‘Minor enhancements’.”

“But you don’t know what it is.” Haruki grinned. He was able to hide his quirk from the smartest creature currently alive. And he would be the smuggest asshole about it.

Nezu stared at him, his small, beady eyes studying them. “Make a costume.” He finally added, ending their chess game. “Checkmate.”

Haruki took that as his cue to leave; the sun already setting was another one. He hadn’t even realised how late it was, though it did make sense; he was in the mall for a couple of hours, then he was drawing, and his chess matches with Nezu did take a lot of time. He had definitely missed dinner. And now that he’d remembered that he hadn’t eaten anything, he felt hungry, because of course the pain had to settle in just when he needed to run back home.

It was already dark outside when he got to the apartment building. He looked through his pockets, realising that he didn’t have a key to the house, and someone had closed the window by the fire escape.

Which meant that he had only one choice.

The window to the dining room was open, as it always was. Aizawa and Hizashi seemed to start leaving it open when Filius started sneaking into their house at random.  His mask was still in his pocket, making Haruki have to be extra careful not to let it fall down when he was climbing up the building.

He dropped down into the house, being met with the exhausted gaze of Eraserhead, glaring at him from the couch.

Aizawa doesn’t say anything; he picks up a mug and takes a long sip.

“Damn… now I want coffee.” Haruki mumbles, sighing as he goes over to the front door to put away his shoes. Eraser stares at him as he moves around the apartment. “What? You gonna say something funny? Like a ‘This is vodka’ kinda thing?”

“No. There’s no alcohol in here. And I don’t drink. But someone is making me want to start.” He spits out his words. “Did you eat anything while you were out?”

“Not really.” Haruki shrugs, jumping up when Aizawa slams his mug onto the coffee table. He freezes in place. The action was a simple one, yet it made Haruki feel more fear than he had in a while.

Eraserhead doesn’t say anything, he walks over to the kitchen, taking something out of the fridge before putting it on a pan. Haruki didn’t see what it was; he only knew what Aizawa was doing because of his quirk. He didn’t turn around to look; he couldn’t force himself to.

He tried stopping the constant flinching at every abrupt noise. At some point, Aizawa noticed that he wasn’t moving. He stared at him for a while before going back to cooking.

Eraserhead sighed, looking around before speaking up again. “You-… you can sit down.” His voice was softer than before; it sounded forced. Haruki wasn’t expecting the hero to stutter; Eraserhead never did that before. Maybe Haruki’s anxiety was rubbing off on him. Which was a funny concept to him. The cold and uncaring Eraserhead develops a stutter because an awkward teenager moves into his house.

Haruki sat down at the table, avoiding the chairs at the end of the table. He never sat in those; it felt weird for him to. Father always sat in that chair, and Mother sat on the other end. He never tried sitting in them, and he never would.

Aizawa walks over to him, placing a plate and a mug in front of them. “You shouldn’t sneak out.”

“I didn’t mean to be out that long. I wanted to be back by 6…” Haruki picks up a fork and starts eating. “6 AM, I mean.”

“How did 6 AM turn into 10 PM?”

Haruki shrugs in response. Thinking that if he always had food in his mouth, he wouldn’t have to answer.

“I get that this is a big change…” Aizawa mumbles; he wasn’t confident with the words he was saying, it was uncomfortably clear. “But… I want you to know that this house… isn’t your old house. Whatever happened there it- uh.. it won’t happen here. You don’t have to be on so… on guard all the time.”

“Don’t talk about things that you don’t understand, Eraser.” Haruki answers, maybe it was a bit more hostile than he intended it to be. But Eraserhead was going too far; Haruki was fine. He was more than fine, sure, his Father was an abusive asshole. But the hero didn’t know that. He had no right to assume things.

By his standards, Haruki was handling everything perfectly. That time he ran away, tortured himself for a month and came back drunk didn’t count. They didn’t know that was him.

“Fuck kid… Hizashi is so much better with these types of things…” Eraserhead groans. “I don’t want to offend you. But it’s clear that the scars you have on your neck weren’t an accident. And, I just want you to know that you’re safe here. Nobody will hurt you. You don’t have to freeze up when you hear loud noises.”

“You know nothing.” Haruki snarled, not looking up from his food; he couldn’t force himself to.

“Then tell me! Explain to me how you got those scars! Prove me wrong, kid. By all means, go ahead.” Haruki didn’t answer; he stood up from the table, washing the now-empty plate before drinking the coffee he’d been given. It was clearly decaf, but he didn’t pay any attention to it.

He went into his room, after grabbing the bag with the things he bought and placing it next to the door, and the boxes he’s yet to unpack. He left Aizawa alone. Mic was probably at his radio job.

Haruki sat down on his bed. He knew that he was in the wrong, but Aizawa didn’t have to know anything about him. Every piece of information that he gave was because he wanted to; the hero had no right to know anything about them.

Haruki wiped the tears from his eyes; he didn’t let them fall. Not again.

Instead of focusing on what happened, he decided to distract himself with the task that Nezu gave him, picking up a piece of paper to begin making designs for his hero costume.

Chapter Text

Haruki was tired, more than he normally was. He hadn’t even used his quirk yesterday; there was no reason for his body to be so exhausted.

He opened his eyes, expecting to see the sun, to be blinded for a moment before regaining his ability to see. But there was nothing. Darkness surrounded the room he was in, which meant that his insomnia was back. He thought that by living in the pro heroes' apartment, he would’ve been able to sleep more, seeing as Aizawa’s quirk still somehow dampened Max. But life didn’t like him, and he had to wake up way too early than he would’ve liked.

The worst part of it being that that day was the first day at his new school, which filled him with even more dread when he remembered that Eraserhead was now his teacher, and he would see him way too often for his liking.

He wasn’t too thrilled to speak to him again after the fight—if you could even call it that—that they had yesterday. He didn’t want to remember it, but his brain didn’t like listening to him, and instead of taking the memories he’d like to forget. It takes away the memories that he likes, the ones that he wants to keep.

He figured that he should at least start unpacking. He would be at their house for a while, and digging out his clothes from a box wasn’t an ideal scenario. The things that he bought yesterday were still waiting in the plastic bag that was laying right next to the boxes, waiting to be unpacked. 

He picked the bag up, beginning to take everything out. He felt bad for the small plant he bought for forcing it to lie in a plastic bag for the whole day.

There was a small wooden tag in the plant with instructions on how to care for the plant and its name.

“Philodendron?... damn, that’s a mouthful.” Haruki sighs to himself, placing the plant on his desk. “I’m naming him Philip.”

You’re naming the plant?

‘Yes, I’m naming the plant! I’m lonely, okay?’

Haruki swatted his hand through the area that Max was standing in, making him move over to the bed.

I preferred the hammock, he groans. Putting his hands up for dramatic effect.

Haruki rolled his eyes, ignoring the annoying voice from behind him. Philip looked content with his new home, and Haruki knew that if he didn’t put anything in the room, his teachers would start asking questions.

He sorts through more of his things, placing them in their new places. A grey UFO lamp with a cat floating in the laser, he placed it on the nightstand, right next to his radio. A basketball, something that he only bought because he thought that’s what he’s supposed to like. And he remembered playing back when he was a kid. A heavy candle, with three wicks, it was oakwood scented. He placed it on a dresser that was sitting at the end of the bed. He also hung a cat-themed calendar, right above the desk.

The final things that he put in his room weren’t things that he bought. When Midoriya and Shinsou heard that he was moving, they decided to give him things as a housewarming gift. He didn’t understand it that much, but now he had a poster from a show that Shinsou shouldn’t have been allowed in, considering that it was 18+. And an All Might figure from Izuku, Haruki didn’t want to accept it at first, but Izuku said that it was from a mystery box and he had multiple of the same one. It sat on the nightstand, next to the lamp.

When he finished sorting his clothes into the closet and dresser, there was a knock on the door.

“Haruki? Are you awake? I’ll make breakfast soon. Do you want anything specific?” Mic’s voice comes through the wooden door, he doesn’t open it. His tone was soft, careful. Aizawa told him what happened; he wouldn’t be asking otherwise.

Haruki knows that he should’ve covered up the scars on his neck; if he had, the conversation he had with Aizawa last night wouldn’t have escalated. But he didn’t, and now he had to suffer the consequences of it.

After a few seconds without getting an answer, Mic sighs, something that Haruki wouldn’t have picked up on if not for his enhanced hearing. “It’s okay, kiddo, just be ready by 7, okay?”

Haruki looked around his room, realising that the sun had now risen. The soft rays filtered into his room through the windows around the bed. He took out his uniform from the closet, deciding not to wear the blazer just yet.

He put on a black turtleneck underneath it, covering the scars on his neck and arms. He didn’t need the conversation from yesterday to repeat, especially not when now both the heroes were in the house.

When he opened the door to his bedroom, the cats surrounded his legs again, this time it felt different.

“Morning, kiddo!” Mic greets him from the kitchen. “I decided to make waffles, want some? Today’s a big day.”

“I’m good.” Haruki mumbles, sitting down on the couch with his legs against his chest. He wasn’t good; he was starving.

“Are you sure? Shou isn’t exactly known for letting the kids get to know each other on the first day of school. He’ll probably have you do some weird tests.” Hizashi chuckles, but his cheerful tone gets no answer. Haruki can feel the act slipping with every silent second. He wonders how long it would take for the man to finally break. He knows that Mic is pretending, but the question of whether he was trying to trick others or himself was left unanswered.

“Well, we’re leaving in about 10 minutes. Do you have everything packed?”

Before he could answer, the bathroom door opened, and Aizawa stepped out into the living room. He looked around before walking over to the kitchen and grabbing a waffle.

Haruki thought that he wouldn’t say anything, that neither of them wanted to remember the fight they had yesterday. But he was wrong.

“Haruki, people care about you,” Aizawa said in between bites of his waffle. “We were worried when we woke up and noticed that you weren’t there. You could’ve left a note. Or told Fil to text me that you were fine. We won’t stop you from going out, but we need to know where you are.”

“You don’t need to know anything. You want to know everything.”  Haruki looked to the side.

“Okay, yeah, we want to know. But you have to look at things from our perspective, you just left. How could we have known that you didn’t run away? Or that you weren’t kidnapped? Like it or not, you live here now, and I may not know how your mom ran your house, but things are different here.” Eraserhead kept staring at him; he could feel his eyes burning into the back of his skull.

Haruki didn’t answer; he didn’t know what. He felt an arm reach over and pull him closer by his shoulder. “You’ll be okay, little listener, we’re all getting used to the change.” Mic started running his hand through Haruki’s hair. He hated how much it reminded him of his mom. “Besides, Shou can get a little bit… overprotective. But we mean well, we didn’t mean to ask things that you’re uncomfortable  answering.”

Silence fell between them. Nobody wanted to interrupt it, in fear that something would get messed up again. “Some things are too complicated for you to understand,” Haruki mumbled, feeling Aizawa’s head turn his direction once again.

Mic chuckled, standing up from the couch. “Maybe, but you don’t have to explain it all in one go.”

And for some reason, that sentence helped him. It felt as if he could breathe again; the weight got lifted from his chest because of a few very simple words. But they meant the world to him.

An alarm rang throughout the apartment. “Ah, crap! We’re gonna be late!” Mic stood up from the couch, running over to get dressed.

The ride over was quiet. Mic was driving, and Aizawa seemed to take a nap–as short as it was. Some recently released pop songs were playing on the radio. Haruki didn’t recognise a single one. He probably needed to get to know what was trending, considering that he would now have to pretend like he was born sometime this century. And he had a whole school of people to deceive.

The building seemed huge, which may have just been a physical projection of his anxiety. Yes, realistically, he was aware that nobody would figure out about his past, but he was still scared. A mind-reading quirk is his biggest fear, and he has a very good reason for it. A very annoying reason, too. And what’s a better place for a person with a mind-reading quirk than a school filled with people who have extraordinary quirks?

Mic started talking to Aizawa when they left the car. Haruki wasn’t paying attention; he was trying to figure out what he would say when the hypothetical person with a mind-reading quirk asked him why there was a whole other human following him around and judging his every action. He did not think of a single good excuse.

The school was still empty, save for a single student or two. Most of the hallways were eerily quiet. Haruki decided to leave Eraserhead alone for the morning; he did not want to annoy him when the man had the ability to make his first day at the school hell. And Mic was busy talking with the other teachers, which Haruki did not want to be a part of. Social interactions scared him too much at that moment.

After walking around the school for what felt like an eternity–and definitely counted as a full workout for some people–A few denied offers of drinking tea with his principal, and a very awkward conversation that Mic tried to rope him into. Haruki ended up back in his homeroom classroom, staring at an Eraserhead currently in a position that could only be described with pictures of caterpillars entering the chrysalis stage.

“I can feel you staring.” The hero opened his eyes, stood up and unzipped the sleeping bag. “Come.” Aizawa started walking out of the classroom, not checking to see if Haruki was following him.

They finally stopped in the teachers' lounge, which was way too full in Haruki’s opinion. And after seeing Eraserhead’s expression, he thought that it was safe to assume that the opinion was shared. The various heroes stared at them as they walked, not bothering to continue the conversations they were having before. Aizawa sat down in the corner of the room, pulling out a jelly packet.

He looked up at his husband. “Give him the thing. He’s bored.”

Haruki looked between the two, confused. Mic went over to grab something out of his bag before handing it to him. A book, in fact, a decently thick one, even if he had seen ones that were way bigger back at the facility. ‘The Song of Achilles’.

“Here ya go! I Shou and I thought that you might get bored, so I took a book from home to keep you occupied. I don’t know what you read, so I picked based on how you look. I hope you don’t mind adult topics.” Mic said cheerfully before turning back to the person he was speaking with.

Haruki decided to move to the classroom, since reading in the very loud teachers’ lounge was starting to get annoying, and he was actually starting to get invested in the book. It wasn’t something that he usually would’ve read, but he didn’t care. There wasn’t much else he could’ve done at school. And doomscrolling through social media also started to bore him already.

He didn’t even notice how people started to walk into the classroom. They didn’t bother him, so he didn’t realise that they were there. When the first bell finally rang, signifying that class was about to start, he finally put away the book, marking the page he was on with a random receipt he had in his bag.

The classroom was full.

Well, nearly full, he didn’t see Midoriya. He did, however, see the blue-haired guy from the entrance exam and Bakugo. Of course, they had to be arguing about something.

When he looked up, Haruki noticed a few other eyes fall on him. Maybe sitting in front of the entire class wasn’t the best idea, but Aizawa’s chair was too comfortable, and he knew that the hero wasn’t using it that much.

The door opened, and his already existing headache from the morning intensified tenfold. He was seconds away from vomiting. He thought that All Might had accidentally walked into the wrong classroom, but his quirk seemed to still be malfunctioning, as he only saw Izuku in the place where the hero should’ve been.

Haruki stood up, leaning on the desk in front of him for a few seconds to steady himself. He hoped that recovery girl had something strong that would work. Until he could go to her, he had to suffer through it. Haruki walked up to Midoriya, staring at how embarrassed he gets while talking. It was a very awkward conversation, but Haruki thought that he had to learn, and the best way to do that was by talking with people.

Maybe he should take his own advice.

No.

No, he should not.

A deep and tired voice quieted the classroom. “If you’re just here to make friends, then you can pack up your stuff now.” Haruki watched as his teacher climbed out of his cocoon, drinking another jelly packet while doing so. There must be a stash of those hidden somewhere in this school, and Haruki would find it, eventually.

His classmates all stared at Aizawa with an emotion on their faces that was something between disgust and confusion. Haruki took this opportunity to walk over to Midoriya and whisper to him.

“It’s Eraserhead. Your teacher, we’re probably not getting an orientation.”

Haruki ignores the glare he gets from Eraserhead for interrupting him. He also ignores the shocked reactions from his classmates when they learn that the human caterpillar is their teacher.

Of course, they didn’t do orientation; Aizawa wanted to torture them instead. Haruki looked around his classmates. He recognised some of them from the entrance exam, but most were still people he was meeting for the first time. His headache didn’t appreciate the sheer amount of new quirks it was picking up on. He wasn’t the only person who had a different gym outfit. The guy with six arms didn’t have his sleeves, most likely because of his quirk. But it was nice to see that he wasn’t the only person who made some changes. His change was the black compression shirt underneath the outfit; it was small, but it was different nonetheless. He needed something to cover his scars with, and a scarf in this weather wouldn’t be ideal.

After a very long monologue from Aizawa and Bakugo shouting at a ball to die, they were finally doing the quirk assessment test. With a small incentive to do their best, everyone started lining up for the first trial.

Haruki knew that these tests weren’t going to show his actual strength. Especially since he would be doing them all quirkless. He wasn’t worried about getting last place; Aizawa couldn’t expel him. Nezu wouldn’t let him; besides, Haruki knew that the hero was aware that he had potential.

That’s a mouthful.

‘Oh, you’re here, you’ve been awfully quiet.’

I’ve been making fun of you for so long that I’m starting to run out of jokes.

Haruki would’ve scoffed if he weren’t surrounded by people.

The first test was a 50-meter dash. Haruki would like to think he did pretty good. He wasn’t as fast as the people with speed quirks or the ones that could literally fly, but he was decent.

The one thing that he had that no one else did was experience. After a hero forces you to run across the whole town twice in one day, you kind of learn how to run fast.

Midoriya stared down at his knees. He was probably worried about being expelled. And knowing Eraserhead, he was probably one of the people that the ‘last place gets expelled’ thing was even introduced at all.

Haruki walked up to him, leaning down. “Zuku! Don’t stress, you’ll do great, he won’t expel you anyway.”

Midoriya suddenly turned to face them. “He won’t!?” The boy screamed out, making the rest of the class stare at them in confusion.

“Shush!” Haruki quiets him down and starts whispering again. “If you impress him, he won’t. I know he seems rough, but the guy has three cats and drinks his coffee with six spoons of sugar on average. Just show him that you have potential.” He gave the boy a thumbs-up before walking away.

The tests went by quicker than Haruki expected them to. He kept getting above-average scores. He was pretty sure that he had a very secure 6th place. But, at some point, he started feeling All Might, lurking close to them. It was a little bit creepy in Haruki’s opinion.

But who was he to judge? He stalked people as a job, so he’s probably the one who would be the creepy one in that situation.

The ball throw, seemingly a very easy concept. But for some reason, Izuku was just staring at the ball, contemplating something. And it was always moments like these that made Haruki wish that one of the aspects of his quirk was telepathy. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and he was stuck trying to figure out what the boy was thinking.

He had heard Aizawa telling him something about ‘injuring himself’, and a very unmotivational speech came right after. Seriously, he didn’t think that Eraserhead would’ve told anyone that they couldn’t be a hero.

But it was fine, Izuku would prove him wrong. Haruki saw what he was capable of. He’s worthy of becoming a hero.

But his quirk really needed to fix itself because the constant headache of being around two All Might’s was unbearable.

Then, after another second, Midoriya threw the ball.

The green lightning in the quirk surrounding him rose, which almost seemed as if he was actually using it. And then, the ball disappeared.

It was illogical; Izuku didn’t have a quirk. He never had a quirk. This was just Haruki imagining things; the oddly All Might-like aura around him wasn’t there because he suddenly developed a quirk. It couldn’t be. Izuku was probably just strong enough to throw the ball over 700m away. Yeah, that was the only explanation. But the whispers of his classmates about Midoriya’s quirk have been getting harder and harder to tune out.

He had assumed it was because Izuku didn’t tell anyone that he was quirkless, and they were just making theories. But some of them spoke as if they already saw him use the quirk. They said something about broken bones.

This only made it more suspicious when Izuku suddenly had a broken finger after throwing the ball.

Haruki could see the grin on Aizawa’s face. Midoriya wouldn’t be expelled; that was now guaranteed. But what exactly happened?

The sudden rise in All Might’s quirk made everything fuzzy; his head was ringing, and he couldn’t focus on anything. The world looked as if it were made out of simple shapes instead of actual objects. Words spoken by his classmates didn’t make sense, and the sudden loud explosion sound, and the smell of things burning only made the feeling worse.

Haruki moved to the back of the group, feeling a soft pink quirk that looked like bubbles walking up to him. He was sure that it said something to him, but he didn’t understand it.

He leaned against a wall behind him, letting his body fall to the floor, trying to steady his head again.

Haruki suddenly felt Izuku’s (?) Quirk getting closer. Everything went black after.

He woke up in a fully white room. The lamps above him blinded him. He could hear faint voices from the next room.

“He just passed out? Did you exhaust your students again, Aizawa?” An elderly voice, probably recovery girl.

“No, he didn’t even train that hard. One second, I’m trying to keep a student from committing murder, and the next I hear screams from the other side of the field.” Aizawa answered, Haruki would recognise that quirk anywhere. He liked the soft hum and the aura that it gave around it. Even if Max was now strong enough not to get erased by standing near the hero, he was still dampened, which made Haruki’s head sound calm for a moment.

The door opens, letting more of Aizawa’s quirk to pass through. It was a very soft feeling, very different from how Eraserhead wanted people to see him.

“You’re awake. Does your head hurt?”

Haruki sits up, putting his hand up to his forehead. It was better. Significantly better. He couldn’t feel All Might’s quirk anywhere, and his headache was completely gone.

“Good morning, sweetie.” Recovery girl stepped into the office, sitting down on a chair nearby. “For some reason, you didn’t react to my healing. Did you sleep tonight? Are you feeling fatigue or any sort of discomfort?”

Haruki shakes his head. “I don’t think so… I- It’s just the quirks. I get dizzy when meeting new people, especially if they have a powerful quirk. I puked once after meeting Mic.” He mumbled.

“You did!? You should’ve told me! I would’ve kept my distance!” Present Mic storms into the room, his hair was messy, and his glasses were crooked.

He didn’t look like he was going to a class; in fact, neither did Eraserhead. Haruki looked out the window. The sun was setting, and he saw students leaving the school, which meant that he had been asleep for way too long.

The heroes spoke with each other, but Haruki wasn’t listening; his brain was filtering every noise other than his thoughts out. The last thing he remembers was moving back towards a wall, and then feeling a spike of All Might’s quirk.

He never wondered what would’ve happened if he were too close to a too powerful quirk. But now he didn’t have to. He just knew that Midoriya would love writing theories about it. Those poor notebooks are probably filled with information about him. Haruki liked how passionate Izuku was about hero analysis. He once tried to follow some of the moves from the notebooks, but it didn’t feel right. Maybe because he already had professional training, or maybe because his quirk didn’t match.

He looks up at the fluorescent lights, seeing a very small and very familiar quirk in the vents above him. So that’s how Nezu monitored him. Good to know. Haruki closes his eyes, looking around the school, trying to make it seem like he was just tired.

He saw Cementos leaving the school from the back exit, Vlad King in his classroom, Ectoplasm and Lunch rush together in the cafeteria, and the last quirk, sitting in the teacher’s lounge. The same quirk that put him in the nurse's office.

Which made him remember.

Izuku used a quirk. He had a quirk. And the quirk that he was sensing from him was the same quirk that All Might had. The exact same, maybe the hue was a little different, but it was still very recognisable.

But that didn’t make sense. If his quirk wasn’t actually malfunctioning, and Midoriya did suddenly get a quirk, would that mean that he got the same quirk as All Might? That theory wasn’t completely crazy; many people have similar quirks. Element-type quirks like pyrokinesis were extremely common after all. But, they were never the same. Usually, there’d be a huge difference, something like ‘User can breathe fire’ and ‘User can summon small fires from their fingertips.’ Those are technically both fire quirks, but they’re different. They might have a similar aura around them. 

But Haruki met people with very similar quirks; their auras were completely different from each other. And he’s never met anyone who had the identical quirk as a different person. It was illogical. It wasn’t possible. Someone being born with a quirk the same as the No.1 hero wasn’t an everyday thing.

It would’ve been one thing if Midoriya suddenly developed a small quirk such as the ones Haruki thought of before, but it’s another that his quirk is All Might’s quirk. The chances of that are less than impossible, less than zero.

Haruki stares at the outline of the hero. One thing that his quirk was able to do almost too easily was determine what strength the person that Haruki saw had, and what position they were in. And for some reason, the second that All Might coughed, his quirk strength went down. Not by a significant amount, just a bit, a small part of it went darker.

Haruki opens his eyes. The symbol of peace was getting weaker. Well, his quirk was, but All Might’s fighting style relies solely on his quirk. And Haruki had already seen his small form; he just thought that All Might had some type of transformation factor alongside his quirk. But now, everything seemed different.

And since he started thinking about it. Before, he could feel All Might from across the country. His quirk kept creeping up on him when he walked to the area of Musutafu, a little too close to Tokyo. But the hero was a few rooms away, and Haruki felt nothing.

He hadn’t gotten used to the quirk, that’s for sure, which only made the theory of All Might losing his power more true.

He looked around the room he was in. Present Mic was gone, and Eraserhead seemed to be napping in a chair close to him, while Recovery Girl was typing something on her computer.

“Hizashi has paperwork to do. We’ll go home in about an hour. Rest.” Aizawa opened his eyes and glared at Haruki, who was about to stand up. He seemed more tired than usual, but so did Haruki. But he was sure that Aizawa slept the entire night; he didn’t have to patrol yesterday. Haruki knew that before he started living with the man, since they started patrolling together, Filius remembered his patrol schedule and his standard routes. Mostly in case he needed to run away from him. And no, he will never let Eraserhead live that chase down.

“You look tired.” He says, mimicking the indifference that he hears from the hero way too often.

“I always am, and I always do.”

“Yeah, but it’s different now.” He grins, standing up from the bed and crossing his arms. “You were worried about me!”

Eraserhead closed his eyes again, seemingly ignoring the comment. But after a few seconds, he responded. “Was that not obvious?”

Haruki looks around the room. He was going to make fun of the man, but he just admitted that Haruki was right! That wasn’t how he was expecting this interaction to go, so he was a little bit stunned.

“Don’t make stupid faces, it’ll get stuck like that.” The hero leaned his head back, seemingly trying to go back to his nap, but Haruki didn’t miss the small smirk on his face.

Instead of trying to save his already failed joke like he normally would’ve, Haruki walks out of the nurse’s office, hearing Eraserhead mumble something before standing up from the chair he was sitting on.

Haruki knew that he would follow him. But he had something that he wanted to ask the symbol of peace, so Aizawa would have to kindly leave him alone.  He looked around the unreasonably large hallway, spotting a great hiding spot.

Just as Eraserhead was about to start speaking again–probably telling him to go back to bed–Haruki climbed the wall and entered the vents.

It was cramped, not a lot of space to move around. It made sense. Nezu wasn’t very big after all. Still, it would’ve been nice if the vents were a little bit bigger.  The air inside was dry, as if Haruki had entered a place with dust. But to his surprise, it was practically spotless. Which only made Haruki respect the janitors who cleaned U.A more. Not only did they have to clean the whole school, multiple gyms and training grounds, but apparently they needed to clean the vents too.

Haruki started to walk in the direction that he saw All Might in. His quirk was still there, so Haruki had a pretty good idea where he would have to go. The one thing he wanted to avoid was the principal; he wasn’t ready to answer the many questions that the rat would throw at him about his quirk. He wouldn’t tell him anything anyway, screw the bad grade he probably would’ve got.

Eventually, crawling through the small space got easier, and Haruki was getting closer to All Might with no sight of the mammal. But just as he was about to reach him, he fell.

The vent hatch he was crouched on opened, and he fell into the room underneath.

“So nice of you to drop by.” The principal greets him from his desk, sipping a cup of tea.

“Was that a pun?” He stands up and stretches, cracking his back. “What do you want?”

“I can see Eraserhead rubbing off on you. Anyway. After watching you, I have decided that it is time for you to gain access to the first reward I’ve prepared for you.” Nezu stands up, walking over to a bookshelf on the wall next to him.

“Is it one of those, pull the right book and the bookshelf reveals a secret door?” Haruki chuckles, crouching beside the rat.

“No, but you’re close.” Nezu moves a few books away, revealing a button behind them. Haruki thought that it was a dumb thing to do; the books might accidentally press the button if someone presses them too much.

When Nezu puts his paw on the button, the bookcase moves away. Showing a small room full of different weapons, fabrics, and other spare parts. It was similar to what the support class workshops looked like, except this was more professional and way more dangerous.

“Holy shit! Those are amazing!” Haruki says, running up to a wall with different types of knives on it. “Why?” He asks, turning back to look at the mammal again.

“You’re interesting.” Nezu shrugs, already back in his chair.

“This feels like when a psychologist gives a child many different toys just to see what they do.” Haruki picks up a couple of knives that were connected to two containers, which seemed like something that would help Vlad King during fights, which made Haruki consider how their quirks are similar to each other. Though his is a little more versatile, and he doesn’t think that the other has a literal devil on their shoulder. Doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t study the man’s fighting style later, just to take some notes.

Hey! I ain’t a devil!

‘You act like one, plus you have those horns.’

They look cool! Max scoffs, turning away. You’ll understand when you’re older!

Haruki rolls his eyes, putting the weapon away, moving over to the many different fabrics lying on shelves, some of which look like they’d look great in his vigilante costume.

“You know, Haruki, you understand me like no other person ever could, and you’re funny about it too. A+”

Haruki didn’t respond; he was already a few pages deep in drawing his costume down just so that he had a reference image for making it out of better materials.

The drive back home was peaceful. Haruki wasn’t used to driving in cars; the last time he had ever been in one was a memory he had promised himself he would’ve forgotten by now. It was funny to him how everything that he ever forgot never truly disappeared from his brain. It was always sitting there, like a dog, waiting for its owner when they were at work.

And every time that he came back, he was there against his will.

He had his new costume in his bag. During his short time at school, he did notice that he was the only person without an actual backpack. He didn’t have anything better to use; the messenger bag was the only bag he had. And he had it since he got out; it was a little shocking to him when he realised that he hadn’t bought anything bigger in two years.

Still, he didn’t need more space. U.A didn’t have a lot of books, and he just used one notebook for each class.

Haruki looked out the window. The streets were full of people, he was glad to go home with Eraserhead and Mic. It would’ve been a nightmare trying to get past all of the people. Still, he missed being out on the rooftops, and he hasn’t seen Eraserhead as Filius since the day of the exam, so he should probably go out again.

‘Tomorrow, ’ he told himself. He was too tired that day; he was starting to feel Izuku’s (?) quirk again, which significantly reduced his urge to go outside.

He didn’t sleep much that night.

Maybe Max got better at fighting, or it may have been because he already slept for a few hours at U.A. He didn’t care.

When he woke up, he was finally free from his headaches. And thankfully, Izuku didn’t live that close to Aizawa. He would have to ask him about his quirk, though. And he’d have to do it soon.

“GOOD MORNING, HARUKI.” Mic burst into his room, surprised that he was already awake. “Ah, you’re not sleeping. Sorry! I was supposed to wake ya. You have your first class with All Might today, you think you’re gonna be okay? I think his quirk counts as the ‘too powerful’ category.”

Haruki sits up, leaning back against the bedframe. The truth was, he had no idea whether he would be fine. Yesterday, he obviously wasn’t, but there was still a small chance that his quirk was malfunctioning, and Midoriya doesn’t actually have All Might’s quirk. Sadly, as much as he’d like to convince himself of that, even his brain isn’t believing him.

He left his room to get breakfast; the smell of pancakes filled the entire apartment. Mic and Eraserhead make their food extra sweet, and Haruki wouldn’t have it any other way.

Aizawa looked up at him from the couch, a plate with pancakes lying next to him on the coffee table. He looked tired, which isn’t anything different for the man, but this time, it looked like a different type of tiredness.

“Mornin’.” He mumbles before focusing on Haruki again. “Is Fil okay?”

“Yeah? I- … he’s good. Just… busy.” Haruki answers, hoping that the slip-up wasn’t something that raised concern in the hero.

 Keeping his identity private was beginning to be a bother, but he had no other options. He’s probably going to slip up many, many more times in the future, and he thinks that it’ll be interesting to see how many times he can speak in first-person about Filius before they realise. So far… It’s been more than it should’ve been. If this is how Aizawa was with trying to figure out the identities of actual criminals, then it’s no wonder why the crime rate in Musutafu was so high.

It’s gotten lower in the past few months, probably because word has spread of All Might coming to U.A. So now, people don’t commit as many crimes as they used to. It has also seemed to erase the rumours about Hawks’ secret love child. Still, sometimes Haruki sees random posts online speculating about his identity and who the mother is. They’re pretty funny. And somehow, reading found family fanfics about himself and Hawks has now become a part of his daily routine. He obviously sends all of them to the hero, just to remind him of how things never truly leave the internet. He’s definitely getting blocked soon, but he doesn’t care.

“Hey! Haruki! What did you get for question 4?” Midoriya leans back in his chair, whispering the question.

Haruki looks down at his empty notebook. He wasn’t used to going to school again, and he was distracted the whole day. He knew that he probably should’ve been taking notes, but he can speak English. Even if he cannot tell what Present Simple is.

He looks at the board again. “It’s C.” He whispers back to Izuku. In his defence, in comparison to being threatened with expulsion on the first day, English was boring. No matter how much Present Mic tried to make it interesting.

Lunch was interesting; the person who made the food seemed to greet every first-year student. Haruki didn’t really see the point of doing that, but his rice tasted amazing, so he was glad that he was able to tell the chef that.