Chapter Text
Yamada Hizashi: <erasercat_coloured.png> ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Aizawa Shouta: where’d you find that?
Yamada Hizashi: would u believe me if i said i drew it?
Aizawa Shouta: . . .
Yamada Hizashi: there’s a blog called hero cryptids
Aizawa Shouta: . . .
Aizawa Shouta: why do I have fanart
Yamada Hizashi: because ur fantastic?
Aizawa Shouta: ugh
Yamada Hizashi: yooooooo! theyve got fan theories about your scarf
Aizawa Shouta: I’m not even going to look. Bus is here.
Yamada Hizashi: HAH like half of them think its part of ur quirk
Yamada Hizashi: lmao there’s this one guy arguing about practise and skill
Yamada Hizashi: hoh my god his entire blog is dedicated to you
Yamada Hizashi: he has three followers poor kid lmao
Yamada Hizashi: now he has four followers 😎
Yamada Hizashi: im screaming his cat is named eraserhead
Yamada Hizashi: oh ull like this. he goes on rants about how important it is to respect the secrecy of underground heroes. totally ripping these other people to shreds for publicly theorizing the mechanisms of your quirk
Yamada Hizashi: babe does it take you this long to get on the bus
Yamada Hizashi: fuck you didn’t run into another villain attack did you?
Yamada Hizashi: shoutaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Yamada Hizashi: SHOUUUUUUUUUTAAAAAAA
Yamada Hizashi: shouta shouta shouta shouta shouta shouta shouta shouta shouta
Aizawa Shouta: can you pick up some cat food?
Yamada Hizashi: . . .
Aizawa Shouta: <image0.jpg>
Yamada Hizashi: B A B Y
Aizawa Shouta: looks like a bengal. having issues walking but seems amenable enough to me. we’ll be at UA in fifteen minutes.
Aizawa Shouta: she seems to like salmon flavour.
Yamada Hizashi: ive dispatched an intern
Yamada Hizashi: im screaminggggggggggggg
Yamada Hizashi: does she have a name?
Yamada Hizashi: u already love her more than me dont u
Aizawa Shouta: also can your intern drive me to school?
Shouta nods at Hizashi’s intern before sliding out of the car. The massive spotted cat in his capture weapon mer s at the movement.
“Don't worry.” Shouta strokes her behind the ear. “We’ll get you settled into the staff room.”
“Sensei!” Kaminari waves a hand at him.
“CAT!” Ashido immediately screams from his side.
“Where?” Kaminari yelps.
“ SENSEI HAS A CAT! ”
A second later, Ashido grins from ear to ear, bouncing in front of Aizawa.
“Is that your cat?” she exclaims.
Aizawa sighs. “Found her on the way to school.”
“Ehhhhhhhhh?” Her voice shoots up.
“Class starts in five minutes, you should be on your way.”
“Do you know if she’s a stray? Maybe she belongs to someone.”
Aizawa starts walking to the gate. “She looks like a purebred, so she’s probably a runaway or got dumped.”
Ashido trots after him. "Dumped?!"
“Has a bad leg. People who buy purebred cats sometimes care about that.”
Ashido’s eyes go wide. “But she’s so nice!”
“We don’t know for sure that’s what happened.”
“If it is, are you going to keep her?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“I’ll make the choice if it comes to it.”
“If her owners did abandon her you won’t let them have her back, right?”
“Obviously. Get to class, Ashido.” Aizawa eyes the wary Kaminari hovering several feet behind them. “You too.”
“Okay, Cat. This is Yamada Hizashi. He’ll hang out with you while I'm away.”
Hizashi glides a hand along the cat's cheek, and she throws her body into it. “Are you really just calling her Cat?”
“Don't wanna get attached.” Shouta pulls the bag of treats out of his pocket and passes it to Hizashi. “She can have no more than six.”
Hizashi pffts. Pffts. “Cat isn’t even a name. Try picking a random foreign word. That’s always easy.”
“Cat.”
“You realize cat is just cat in English?”
“Thought you liked English.”
Hizashi presses his mouth into the cat’s forehead and whispers: “I’ll get you a nice name by the end of the day.”
“ Hizashi . We don’t know if we’re keeping her.”
“Oh, you go teach your heroics.”
Shouta grunts. “Cat. I’ll be back in a few hours. And then we can go find out if you have a home.”
Aizawa pops out of the staff room and heads down to class 1-A just as the final lunch bell rings.
The class is assembled by the time he arrives.
“Now for today’s basic hero training,” Aizawa says. “This time, All Might, myself, and one other will supervise.”
“This class,” Thirteen says, “will show you a new perspective! You will learn how to utilize your quirks to save lives. Your powers are not meant to inflict harm. I hope you leave here today with the understanding that you’re meant to help people.
“This is all! I thank you for listening.”
“They’re awesome!” Uraraka exclaims.
Iida starts clapping. “Bravo! Bravo!”
“Great,” Aizawa begins. “First off—”
Zwrp .
Aizawa glances behind himself to see a swirl of black fog poofs into existence. A hint of fingers pokes out. Then a hand. Then a face with a hand on it.
“Huddle up and don’t move!” he yells. “Thirteen! Protect the students.”
“What the heck’s that?” calls a student. “More battle robots? Like during the entrance exam?”
“Don’t move. Those are villains !” Aizawa steps between his students and the intruders.
A deep voice seeps out of the fog. “Thirteen . . . and Eraserhead, is it? . . . According to the staff schedule I received the other day . . . All Might is supposed to be here. . . ."
“Of course,” Aizawa mutters. “That whole incident was this scum's doing.”
“Where is he? . . .” another villain crones. “We’ve come all this way. And brought so many playmates. . . . All Might . . . the Symbol of Peace . . . is he here? . . .” He lifts his head. “I wonder if some dead kids will bring him here?”
Aizawa’s eyes narrow and he grasps his capture weapon.
“Villains?” one of the kids yells. “No way! What villains’d be dumb enough to sneak into a school for heroes?”
“Sensei!” comes the calm voice of Yaoyorozu. “Aren’t there intruder sensors?”
“Yes,” Thirteen responds. “Of course there are!”
“Are they only here, or also at the main building?” Todoroki questions. “Either way, if the sensors aren’t working . . . it has to be one of their quirks that’s doing it.
“This place is far from the campus. And they picked a time when few people would be here . . . so maybe they aren’t as dumb as they seem. They must have an objective. Because this is a well-coordinated sneak attack.”
Well, Todoroki sure is proving to have a brain.
“Thirteen!” Aizawa shouts. “Begin evacuation! And try calling the school! One of these villains must be jamming the sensors. There’s a good chance one of their electric-types is causing the interference.
"Kaminari, try using your quirk to signal for help."
A nervous “got it” stumbles out of Kaminari's mouth.
“But sensei,” Midoriya calls, “you can’t fight them all alone.”
If Aizawa does one thing right in his life, it’s gonna be making sure his son isn’t murdered on the third day of school.
“Against that many. . . . Even you can’t nullify all their quirks!” Midoriya says. “As Eraserhead, your fighting style involves erasure and a quick binding capture. Head-on battle isn’t—”
“No good hero is a one-trick pony.” Aizawa takes a breath. “Thirteen! Take care of them!”
And Eraserhead leaps into the fray.
“Ranged squad!” a voice yells. “Let’s move!”
“Our intel said it was just supposed to be Thirteen and All Might!” one of them moans. “So who’s this?”
“Dunno,” scoffs another. “But he’s coming at us all alone.”
Eraserhead would be tempted to smirk if the lives of his kids (and his kid) weren’t on the line.
“A dead fool, then!” someone yells.
Hair up and eyes glowing, Eraserhead scoops up the three villains with his capture weapon and slams them into the earth.
“You dumbasses! He can cancel out your quirk just by looking at ya’. That’s Eraserhead!”
A hulking crystalline man looms over him. “He cancels quirks? Heh heh heh. Let’s see if that trick works against us heteromorphic types!”
“No, it doesn’t,” Eraserhead explains with a fist in the man’s face. “Only against operative or transformative types.” He swoops around his leg with a coil of capture weapon. “However.” Dodges into a backflip. “Statistically, guys like you tend to shine in close-quarters combat.”
And Eraserhead yanks, smashing the man into the ground. “Which is why I’ve got countermeasures for you.”
“He’s good at hand-to-hand . . .” leers one of the villains, “and his goggles hide his eyes, so we don’t know who’s quirk he’s cancelling. Even a whole mob of us isn’t slowing him down. . . . I see.”
Eraserhead pinpoints the villain speaking; the one clad in hands .
“I hate pro heroes,” Hands says. “Ordinary villains don’t stand a chance against them.”
Midoriya exclaims in the distance, “Wow! He can hold his own even while outnumbered.”
Kid . . . get . . . out . . . of . . . here.
“I won’t allow that,” comes the deep voice of the mist.
The mist villain. In the blink of an eye he transported over a hundred people into one of the most secure places in Japan. He . . . he may be the deadliest of all of them.
“Greetings,” announces the mist-man. “We are the League of Villains. Forgive our audacity, but . . . today we’ve come here to U.A.—this bastion of heroism—to end the life . . . of All Might, the Symbol of Peace. We were under the impression that he would be here today . . . but . . . it seems his schedule was revised? Well, no matter. My role remains unchanged.”
And then Aizawa hears the telltale explosions of Bakugou Katsuki and can only pray that the kid didn’t just do something stupid.
“Begone!” Black mist shrouds the kids, and Aizawa holds his breath.
And when it dissipates . . . half the class has vanished.
All Eraserhead can do is knock more villains into the ground while the creep with the hands watches. He can hear Iida and Thirteen speak in the background.
The mist booms: “Aside from the fact that you have no hope . . . what sort of fool discusses strategy in front of the enemy?”
Kids who need explanation and persuasion because they haven’t even been officially training for three fucking days yet, that’s who.
“You can’t stop us!” Thirteen screams, and all the voices are drowned out by the whirr of their blackhole .
Eraserhead thrusts out his capture weapon to his sides, simultaneously slapping two villains into the ground. A third leaps into the air with animalistic legs while Eraserhead dings a fourth with a kick to the knee. He twirls with a coil of his capture weapon, looping it around the airborne villain and slamming him into the ground.
Then he leaps over an out-swung blade, coils his weapon around its attached villain, and clanks her against another villain before returning to the ground—just to dodge a hand of literal tongues wrapped in blades. Eraserhead throws on his quirk and digs an elbow into the guy’s face. The tongue villain bites into the fabric of his sleeve, and Eraserhead uses his free hand to chop against his neck.
The flood zone erupts into a mass of screams. It’s not his students. It can’t be his students. It’s only been three days they can’t be dead yet.
The villain clad in severed hands cocks his head, mutters, “Twenty-three seconds,” and lunges forward.
“So, you’re the boss.” Eraserhead hurls a coil at him.
“Twenty-four seconds.” Hands grabs the capture weapon. “Twenty seconds.”
Eraserhead slides past the tongue villain.
“Seventeen seconds.”
Eraserhead yanks his capture weapon and drives an elbow into Hands’s abdomen.
Hands hurls over. “It’s hard to tell when you’re scampering around, but . . . there are moments when your hair falls in front of your eyes.” He grips Eraserhead’s elbow. “Every time you finish a given move. And your max duration’s getting shorter and shorter.”
Then pain sears through his arm.
“Don’t overdo it now, Eraserhead.”
Glowing energy spills again from Eraserhead’s eyes and he launches a punch along Hands’s jaw. He leaps back and takes a fraction of a second to brace himself.
Bits of cloth and skin and blood flake from his arm. His elbow was disintegrating.
Eraserhead throws himself backward to dodge two converging villains, coiling them with his good arm.
Hands peels himself off the ground. “Your quirk . . . It’s not good in long group battles, huh? This is kinda different from your usual work, yeah? You specialize in quick sneak attacks. Yet you jumped right into this fight. Hoping to make the kids feel safe? So cool. So cool.”
Hands coos maniacally before continuing: “By the way, hero . . . I’m not the boss here.”
It only takes a second.
A massive black creature with an exposed brain looms over Eraserhead, and snatches his bad arm with its massive fingers.
Eraserhead's arm shatters and any pain he felt before sears away in a numbing agony. His face stings and burns and aches and pulsates.
“Meet the Anti-Symbol of Peace. The bio-engineered . . . Noumu.”
Cracks fill the air around him, and all he feels is screeching nerves.
“Tch! Cancelling out quirks. Pretty cool, but nothing special. Up against Noumu’s crazy strength, you might as well be totally quirkless.”
Eraserhead pries open an eye and blinks away the blood.
Midoriya. Of course. It’s always Midoriya. Midoriya and Asui dance around a dozen villains, and Midoriya is definitely favouring his right arm.
The creature grabs Eraserhead's other arm and splatters it into the ground. He grits his teeth, willing the pain to exist. Stay conscious. Stay present. Stay alive.
Even with his quirk erased, this “Noumu” snapped his arms like twigs. Which means . . . this is his base strength. He’s easily as strong as All Might. Fuck.
Aizawa’s taught hair pulls him up and he
slams
into the ground.
And then there’s blunt force on his back and Er as e r he ad' s i n t h e g r o u n d .
“Shigaraki Tomura,” comes the deep voice of the mist villain.
“Kurogiri. Is Thirteen dead?”
“Thirteen is incapacitated. But . . . there were some students I couldn’t warp away . . . and one of them escaped.”
A pause. “Oh?” A scratch. “Huh . . .” A scrape. “Kurogiri. You . . . I’d turn you to dust if you weren’t our ticket out of here. We won’t stand a chance against dozens of pros. It’s game over, man. . . . It’s game over . . . for now. We’re leaving.”
Eraserhead breathes—
“But before that, let’s leave a few dead kids.”
—and blindly throws out his quirk.
Midoriya. He”s there. He’s fighting. Asui. Shigaraki has Asui. Need to keep Erasure activated . . . need to . . .
And then everything stops.
Shouta wheezes. He opens his eyes and he can't. He moves his fingers and he can't. He wiggles his toes and maybe maybe maybe .
Then he inhales. And he inhales. Then he exhales. And he exhales.
He tries again. And he breathes again.
He's alone. He's alone he's alone he's alone .
His mind tugs at itself. The edges blur. He breathes .
He is alone.
And he lets himself float away.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to teach Izuku.”
He shouldn’t—
“I believe that my teaching methods are a better fit for the instruction he needs.”
“You don’t know him.”
—He doesn’t—
“You aren’t his father.”
—He isn’t;
“But I’m a good teacher.”
He wants to be.
“I . . . I’m willing to give you a chance.”
“Do you have any other questions?”
“You will keep Izuku safe.”
He will.
"Yes."
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