What's Wrong With You?
“What’s wrong with you?” Hitoshi grabbed his wrist and gently tugged him to the side of the hall, keeping Izuku from running into the wall.
“Nothing! I’m perfectly fine, as you can see,” Izuku gestured to himself in a way that ignored the cuts and bruises around his nose from a punch from the night before.
“Izukkun,” Hitoshi deadpanned and pulled him along to the bedroom.
“Hitocchi,” Izuku mocked in the exact same tone.
Hitoshi guided Izuku to their bed and plopped him down, crawling to sit at his designated spot in the back corner of Izuku’s bed. The two of them had snagged an old blanket at the thrift store and hung it from Hitoshi’s bunk to make a private area for the two of them to talk. Hitoshi had even stuck some posters and fairy lights to the wall to give it ambiance, even though Izuku had reminded him that he literally couldn’t see any of that so it shouldn’t matter. Hitoshi had then made a few braille posters at the library for Izuku of his favorite bands. Izuku liked to run his hands over the braille when his anxiety was especially high, a reminder that he still had someone in the world that loved him.
But now, it seemed like Hitoshi wanted to have a serious conversation and not one of their usual chill hangouts.
“Spill, Izukkun. You look like you got hit by a bus,” Hitoshi brushed his fingers across a bandage on the back of Izuku’s hand.
“That’s a good one, maybe I should tell people that one,” Izuku laughed.
“Izuku,” Hitoshi sighed exasperatedly.
Ah, the first name. Hitoshi really was really serious about this.
Izuku leaned down off the side of the bed and pressed the palm of his hand to the floor, taking a deep breath to center himself. There wasn’t anyone in the room right now. It was a Saturday afternoon and most of their roommates were taking advantage of the fact that they weren’t required to be cooped up inside. The closest person was walking down the hall and up the stairs, no longer truly close to the door of their room. Feeling decently safe and sure that he could hear Sato-sama coming if she decided to check on them, Izuku decided it was time to confide in Hitoshi.
“You know those walks that I’ve been taking since my, uh, “mentor” decided he didn’t want to train me anymore?” Izuku started.
“Yeah, the bullshit lie you’ve been telling me for the past month and a half that I absolutely don’t believe?”
“Hitocchi!” Izuku smacked his arm.
“Hey, don’t do that, you’re all buff now and it actually hurts!” Hitoshi laughed and rubbed his upper arm like it genuinely hurt.
“Alright, alright, I’ll avoid hitting you for now,” Izuku teased before taking another deep breath. Hitoshi was going to kill him for this, but he’d rather not keep it a secret anymore.
“So, those walks. They’re not really walks,” He started again.
“Duh,” Hitoshi said under his breath but waited for the other to continue.
“I’ve been participating in some questionable nighttime activities that may or may not involve beating up criminals in back alleys,”. Izuku rushed out before he lost his confidence.
“You’re telling me this entire time you’ve been out at night beating up criminals like some sort of vigilante?”
“No, as an actual vigilante,”.
“Izuku,”.
“I’m sorry,” Izuku whined and buried his face in his hands.
“You specifically said you didn’t want to be that type of hero! That you didn’t want to go around beating the shit out of people like he taught you. That you didn’t want to become some mindless drone in his war against hero society!” Hitoshi had grabbed Izuku’s shoulders while talking and shook the boy back and forth slightly as he talked.
“Yeah, well I may or may not have saved this woman from being robbed and it all just spiraled from there,”.
“I don’t have words for how stupid you are,”.
“I’m technically not a vigilante because I don’t have a quirk! So it doesn’t really count!”
“Quirk or not, you are still assaulting people illegally. With a hero license, it would at least be legal!”
“Ok, but Hitoshi, what if I can’t be a hero?”
Hitoshi didn’t respond, instead of breathing out heavily through his nose. He didn’t speak for several moments like he was searching for the right words to say to Izuku. After several tense minutes of silence, the boy finally spoke again.
“Izuku, you are the most capable person I have ever met. You analyze people, quirks, and fights like it’s as easy as breathing. You’re a thousand times smarter than anyone I’ve ever met, in fact, I would have thought you had an intelligence quirk if it weren’t for the extra toe joint thing. And you fight like a fucking demon. I can’t even touch you in training and it’s been over a month! If anyone could be a hero, it’s you. I don’t have a doubt in my mind,”.
“Yeah, well how would the blind, quirkless kid explain that he’s able to hold his own in a fight? How would I convince someone to even let me show them? I can’t be a hero in a typical way, I just can’t. At most I could be an analysis hero, but I really don’t want to play man-in-the-chair for the rest of my life! So, what if I followed my plan to go into general education at UA and then college for law, but just be a vigilante at night while I’m at it?” Izuku rubbed the back of his neck as he talked through the little plan he had been putting together in his head, “I can be a hero, just in my own way. We could even work together after you graduate!”
“You would have to avoid being caught Izukkun. You can’t avoid the police forever. They’ll catch on eventually and then you’ll end up in jail. No UA, no law school, no more playing vigilante at night,”.
“But-”
“No, Izuku.” Hitoshi clapped a hand over the other boy’s mouth, “You’re smart and capable and slippery, sure, but you’re also human. You’re going to make a mistake and someone will figure out who you are. Just, why don’t you at least try the hero entrance exam? Just try the traditional route?”
Izuku pushed Hitoshi’s hand off his mouth, flinging his arm hard against the wall next to them. “Because they’re not going to let the disabled kid into the exam Hitoshi! If my quirklessness didn’t make me a liability in their eyes, the whole being fucking blind thing would!”
Izuku loved Hitoshi for his sarcasm and dead-to-the-world personality, but he also really loved the boy for how incredibly intelligent he was. The two had had many late-night conversations on societal issues, philosophical debates, and even discussions on weird conspiracy theories. Some of those conversations had been on discrimination, both based on quirks and physical ability, how Izuku saw himself as perfectly capable but the world didn’t. How Hitoshi knew he would never be a villain, but because everyone around him said that he would become one he was terrified he would be easily swayed. Izuku knew that saying out loud what he was really worried about would upset, maybe even anger Hitoshi.
“You told me that your blindness isn’t a disability,”. Hitoshi growled.
“Yeah, to me.” Izuku shoved his index finger into his chest, already frustrated with where this conversation was going, “I don’t see it as a disability, but the rest of the world does. No one is ever going to look past that and at how much I can do. I will only ever be seen as blind first, quirkless second, and a human being last,”.
Hitoshi goes quiet again. Both boys are tense, arms crossed and muscles straining like they’re both about to either bolt or get a swing in at each other.
“Fine,”. Hitoshi finally says quietly, his tense posture melting away.
“Fine?” Izuku rears back incredulously, surprised he wasn’t going to have to fight more to get Hitoshi to understand.
“Yeah, fine. But if you’re going to do this we can’t stay here,”.
“Hitoshi, we’re minors” Izuku pointed out the obvious, “We can’t leave the foster system. Also, we’re very broke and have no steady source of income to guarantee ourselves enough food let alone rent for an apartment,”.
“Yeah, well I have been working on something during your little late-night adventures,”.
“Wha-”
Hitoshi is already slipping out of their fort before Izuku can finish asking him his question. The boy scrambles up to his bunk, digging around in the little pocket that he had created to keep his more valuable items under his mattress. Izuku can hear the rustling and the creaking of the mattress springs as Hitoshi lifts the bed up and digs around for whatever he’s looking for. He comes back down a few moments later and is sitting back in his spot before Izuku can fully process what he’s doing.
His brother places something in his hands, letting Izuku run his fingers over it so he can understand what it is.
“It’s a cat mask. It’s white plastic with purple whiskers and a purple nose. There are little slits for eyes, so that’s all you can see of my face. I also wear a beanie so my hair doesn’t give me away,”.
“Wear a beanie for what?”
“I’m getting to that, hold the fuck on,”.
Hitoshi snatches the mask back from Izuku’s hands and sets it to the side.
“So,” Hitoshi starts, “ I may have started a youtube channel, don’t laugh I know it sounds dumb, but hear me out,” He grabs Izuku’s hands where he had already begun to start laughing at him, pulling them towards him and holding tightly to keep the vigilante from interrupting again.
“I started a youtube channel talking about some of the conspiracy theories, issues with hero society, and other things that we’ve talked about and it has taken off. Someone fairly famous, IceBearConspiracy, shared my video and now I’m gaining tons of followers. I’ve started to make money from it and even have a sponsorship deal in the works. It’s small right now, but I’ve been putting that money into savings. I have enough for a security deposit and about a month of rent for a small one-bedroom apartment for us to share. I thought maybe if I kept at this youtube thing, you could possibly start an analysis blog, we keep up doing odd jobs on the weekend and such, we could get out of here.”
“Hitoshi you are bat-shit crazy,”. Izuku pulls his hands out of Hitoshi’s grasp and crosses his arms, raising one eyebrow over his sunglasses to show his displeasure with the idea.
“I know, it’s why you love me, but think about it! Thanks to all the training we’ve done, I can use my quirk to help us fake memories that we’ve been placed with a foster family and you can fake the paperwork. Bada-bing, bada-boom, we’re out!”
“That sounds about as much like a pipe dream as me being a vigilante for the rest of my life,”.
“Look, we try it out, see how it goes, and if we crash and burn we just brainwash Sato-sama into thinking that the foster family sent us back. Easy peasy,”.
“You’ve really thought this through?”
“Yeah, I have an apartment picked out and everything. With you being gone I haven’t been able to sleep, so I took a 3 am crack idea and made it into an actual, feasible plan,”.
“And you say you’re not smart,”.
“Shut up!”
Izuku breaks into a slow grin, hands folded in front of his face in the way that he knows terrifies Hitoshi. “Absolutely not, because this is genius. It needs some tweaking, but I think we could do this,”.
“Together?”
“Together,”.
---
It takes a couple of days, but the two of them realize how incredibly easy the process is once they get started.
Izuku steals the foster forms out of Sato-sama’s office while muttering that it was like taking candy from a baby. The security was terrible. Nights of vigilante work and intelligence training with Stendhal may or may not have helped as well.
From there, Izuku and Hitoshi spent time packing their meager belongings. Again, it was a task that was fairly simple. The foster home required they be able to pack in leave in an hour at most, so gathering their few possessions took barely any time.
Lastly, Izuku and Hitoshi visit the small apartment that Hitoshi had found. It is indeed tiny, just like Hitoshi had said, a one-bedroom in the back right corner of a run-down apartment complex. There was no front desk or lobby, just open breezeway balconies with doors from the outside. It was one on a large block, so it would be rare that someone stopped and questioned the two boys.
Looking at the floorplan online, it’s actually a loft-style apartment, with a small space for their futon up a ladder, a living room large enough for a heated table thing, a small bathroom, and a tiny kitchen area on one wall of the living room. It comes with kitchen appliances and the table, everything else Hitoshi and Izuku will have to buy. That’s alright, the boys had understood they would have to buy a few things once they moved in and they had already spotted two small futons that could fit next to each other at the thrift store down the street.
All in all, it’s perfect for just the two of them.
---
“He’s a kid,”.
“Fuck,”.
The thunk of Tsukauchi’s head hitting the desk would normally make Shouta laugh if he didn’t also want to slam his head into the desk.
It had been a few days since he had settled the vigilante, Mask, after a panic attack and then lost him while on patrol.
“He called me a liar,” Shouta grunted.
“Why?” Tsukauchi lifted his head off the desk just enough to take a sip of his now cold coffee.
“Because I lied, dumbass. I’m not sure how he knew, but I said I wasn’t going to bring him in when I was planning on wrapping him in my capture scarf and the kid jumped off the roof,”.
“Eraser,”.
“Detective,”.
Tsuckauchi sighed in exasperation. Shouta apparently got attached to the child vigilantes very easily, which is why he normally was taken off the case immediately, but most child vigilantes didn’t escape the top underground hero.
“I can’t arrest him in the usual way, he very clearly doesn’t trust adults. Not only did he call me a liar and bolt off the roof, but the moment he calmed down from the panic attack he nearly launched himself across the roof to get away from me,”.
“Is it because he doesn’t trust adults, or because he’s a vigilante near a pro hero,”.
“No, I don’t think so. Well, I’m not sure yet, I need more time with him,”.
“Eraser, no,”.
“Eraser, yes,”.
“You cannot try to get this vigilante to trust you and then bring him in. You won’t get to the bringing him in stage, not with your soft spot for kids,”.
Shouta scoffed and took a sip of his own coffee. “I can separate myself from my feelings for work, Naomasa,”.
“Can you? Because the last kid vigilante we had, you fostered them for the few months after we caught them until they turned 18. You then set the kid up to enter an adult vigilante rehabilitation program. He’s now an underground hero. That you work with personally,”.
Shouta sat back in his chair with a huff, raising an eyebrow at the detective over his glorious cup of caffeine. The detective was right, he had made sure that Nightengale ended up a hero, but that was nearly 6 years ago. He was softer at 25 than he is now at 31.
“That was a while ago, Mic and I agreed no kids like that again, especially ones like Mask because he can’t be more than thirteen. We don’t have time for a thirteen-year-old now that ‘Zashi works three jobs and I work two. When we took Nightengale in, I only worked as a hero and it was an emergency foster placement. This kid I can put a plan together for, maybe even bring the rat in on it,”. Shouta tried to argue.
Tsukauchi pinched the bridge of his nose, his face frustrated, but it was already looking like he would give in if Shouta just pushed a tiny bit more. “You’re going to end up attached. I can’t let you have this one,”.
“But I already have a relationship with the kid,” Shouta pointed out, “He may not trust me just yet, but he already knows who I am. If you put a new hero on this case you’ll only alert the kid that you’re trying to catch him. I can gain his trust, he has to have the tiniest amount in me after working through a panic attack with him,”.
“He jumped off a roof to escape you,”.
“Semantics,” Shouta waved his hand and leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees, “I’m the best hero for this Naomasa and you know it,”.
Tsukauchi looked like he wanted to slam his head into his desk again, but he also looked ready to give in.
“Fine, the kid in the mask case is yours. Don’t adopt him,”.
“Not planning on it,”.