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Shouta Aizawa comes home one day to find a child bleeding out in his living room. The sight should disturb him, but his mind doesn’t find it all that strange. He’s a pro-hero and foster father to a child vigilante, situations like this aren’t so much an odd occurrence as they are a fact of life. He’s a father; children make dumb decisions; it’s his job to handle it.
Simple.
The only part of the entire situation that does disturb him is that the child is not his.
Hitoshi looks up at him the second Shouta enters the room, eyes wide. He’s not scared and he’s not panicking from Shouta’s presence, yet there’s something in the way the boy’s breath hitches with each inhale that tells Shouta that something has shocked Hitoshi to his very core.
Shouta looks to the kid on the floor, the one whose blood is pouring over the tile floors and whom Hitoshi is currently giving first aid to. He’s small and pale from blood loss, but entirely conscious despite his injuries. He’s holding onto Hitoshi’s shirt like it’s a life-line.
Shouta immediately calls 119. Hitoshi doesn’t argue, but the child does, attempting to sit up with a weak, “N-no—“
“Shh,” Hitoshi cut him off, laying the kid back down on the floor and coaxing him to relax. “He’s just trying to help. You need a hospital, Tenzo.”
Shouta takes note of the name. He’s not sure how Hitoshi knows this “Tenzo” nor why the child is injured, but those answers will come around once the boy doesn’t look to be minutes away from death.
He makes the call, gives the dispatcher his address, hero information, and the details of the situation before hanging up and moving closer to assist Hitoshi in the first aid efforts.
“What happened?” Shouta asks first and foremost, surveying the injuries. He tries not to let his own mounting panic show as he realizes that this child is even younger than Hitoshi, probably by about two or three years. Seven or eight then. Jesus.
“Yakuza,” Hitoshi says darkly. “Multiple puncture wounds. Two on his left arm, one in the thigh, the worst in the stomach.”
Shouta notes that Hitoshi has already tied a tourniquet around Tenzo’s left shoulder and leg, slowing the bleeding from his arm and thigh drastically. He was in the midst of treating the stomach wound when Shouta walked in.
He doesn’t ask why the kid was in a situation in which getting stabbed four times by the Yakuza was an option, instead he just works with Hitoshi to staunch the bleeding and comfort the kid.
With the amount of blood around them, he’s not sure the kid will make it.
The paramedics arrive in time to treat Tenzo. An on-the-spot blood transfusion from a doctor with a blood-related quirk brings more color back to his skin and soon he’s loaded up into an ambulance with Shouta and Hitoshi following by car behind.
The ride is tense. Shouta has a million questions to ask, but each time he opens his mouth, he sees that shell-shocked expression on Hitoshi’s face again and finds himself unable to voice any of them.
He knows it’s not the blood or the injury that has Hitoshi so rattled. He knows it’s not the ambulance or the shadow of the grim reaper that had been hanging over the boy the entire time he laid on Shouta’s floor. He knows it’s not all of the things that would bother any other child, because Hitoshi is not any other child.
So what is it?
While they sit in the waiting room, Hitoshi finally speaks.
“Have you heard of any other children… like me?”
Shouta stiffens at the question. Any other children like him? Is Tenzo someone like him? A child vigilante?
He shakes his head. He hasn’t, despite constantly trawling online forums and keeping up to date with police reports to ensure that his own problem child wasn’t picking back up on old habits.
Hitoshi hums and slumps a little in his seat.
“Is Tenzo like you?”
Hitoshi takes a moment to answer, clearly rolling his response over on his tongue and thinking hard about it before saying:
“Yes.”
The child’s name is not Tenzo. Shouta has no idea where the name came from, nor why Hitoshi would assign it to this child, but Tenzo is, by all legal accounts, definitely not the kid’s name.
His name is Omori Hiroki. Eight years old. Quirk: Green Thumb, an ability that gave him immense control over plant-life ranging all the way from drifting seaweed to entire forests. He was born to a single-mother in Jaku City, a woman who hadn’t reported him missing until three weeks after the day he’d initially packed up and left. When asked, Omori said she was a wonderful woman, however he had no intention of going back to her. His face was stone cold when speaking. Shouta couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. Neither could Tsukauchi Naomasa, a man who can tell if anyone is lying.
Shouta’s not sure what did it. Either it was Omori’s size and quiet, kind demeanor, the injuries he was still recovering from, or perhaps the way Hitoshi clung to the kid and the boy clung back that made Shouta and Hizashi buckle.
Their apartment wasn’t big enough for two children, and yet here they were, adding a new futon and a second desk to Hitoshi’s room and promising to make better arrangements later on. Hitoshi and Omori—or rather, Hiroki, as he insisted they call him by his given name—didn’t mind the arrangements at all. In fact, they seemed to like the proximity to each other.
Shouta didn’t know Hitoshi knew how to like other kids his age.
Then again, Hitoshi was correct in what he’d said back at the hospital. Omori Hiroki and Shinsou Hitoshi were very, very similar.
Hiroki doesn’t test boundaries the way Hitoshi does. While Hitoshi is incredibly late to everything he does, Hiroki is punctual and responsible. While Hitoshi reads eroticas in public and embarrasses the shit out of Shouta, Hiroki reads books on architecture and makes their apartment look like a custom rainforest with his quirk.
The two might be polar opposites, if it weren’t for the way they acted in every other regard.
The four of them move to a new apartment a couple of months later. This one is still two bedrooms, but the room for Hitoshi and Hiroki is much bigger, meaning they each have space for themselves now. Shouta likes the new apartment more, as it’s closer to UA and his favorite coffee shop.
He also likes that the new apartment doesn’t have the near imperceivable, but certainly still there, remnants of blood stains from the day Hiroki made himself known in their lives.
Hiroki likes the apartment because of the natural light the windows bring in. Shouta comes home one day to find the boy talking Hizashi’s ear off about the importance of natural light to both plants and humans.
Hizashi later insists that Shouta needs to get more sunlight.
Nearly a year after they take in Hiroki, Shouta hears word of a duo of vigilantes up in Eishu City. Quirks: unknown. Appearances: unknown. Ages: unknown. Nothing on them is concrete… though there is one rumor circulating around online forums.
Apparently, they both have blood red eyes with black patterns imbedded within.
Shouta can’t help but look over at Hitoshi and his singular red eye and think, now, doesn’t that sound familiar?
There’s a crow in his living room.
Shouta stands at the doorway to his bedroom, the bird and himself locked in a stand-off.
He’s not sure why he feels that if he takes his eye off the bird, he’ll lose, but he does. So he doesn’t move. Decades spent training his quirk ensure that he is very, very good at staring contents.
When Hitoshi walks into the room and spots the bird as well, the crow gives up on its staring contest with Shouta and instead flies directly at Hitoshi’s head. It’s only the kid’s sharp reflexes that keep him from losing an eye.
Neither Hitoshi nor Shouta mention the encounter.
Hiroki is starting to test boundaries. Shouta blames Hitoshi. The two of them start disappearing for hours after school, and sometimes they even skip school entirely. Shouta worries that Hitoshi is slipping back into old habits and bringing Hiroki down with him, but when he follows them one day, they do something he never would have expected.
They take the train to Eishu City. Shouta doesn’t follow further.
Shouta is losing his mind. When he and Hizashi had first taken in Hitoshi, he’d noticed numerous traits alluding to the idea that the kid was once a child soldier. With the addition of Hiroki, the theory only strengthened.
But now? Now there are two more kids in Shouta’s living room sitting alongside Hitoshi and Hiroki. One of them has long, jet-black hair and a crow sitting on his shoulder that Shouta swears is the same from the stand-off incident. The other looks remarkably similar to him—Brothers? Cousins?—though his hair is short and curly and he’s sharpening a knife while talking to Hiroki.
Hiroki, who is usually so kind and calm, is also sharpening a knife. His shoulder leans against that of the first boy’s, occasionally making a playful jab with the knife in the boy’s direction. The other doesn’t so much as flinch.
Hitoshi lounges there as well, twirling a knife around his finger while reading one of his damn eroticas. The others don’t seem to mind at all. In fact, the curly-haired boy occasionally leans over to read a passage, humming along to the text as though it were a scientific article and not full of obscene content no child should be reading.
Shouta wants to be glad Hitoshi and Hiroki have made friends, however he’s a bit too concerned about the knives and erotica to find genuine joy in it.
Instead of commenting on the matter, he backs out of the living room and dials Tsukauchi, needing the man’s professional opinion on the likelihood that Shouta’s home is being used as a base for a gaggle of ex-child soldiers.
Tsukauchi’s opinion does nothing to quell his anxieties.
The other two boys don’t show up that often—usually Hitoshi and Hiroki travel to them—but when they do, there’s always a crow in the room, watching Shouta’s every move, and each of the boys is more than well aware of Shouta’s presence despite not acting like it at all.
Shouta listens in on their conversations when the opportunity arises and picks up the names of the boys. The eldest of the two is Shisui and his younger cousin is Itachi. Shisui’s quirk is teleport, which is shown when he pops up right next to Shouta in the kitchen in order to get a glass of water. Itachi’s quirk is related to the crow, though Shouta has yet to determine the extent of Itachi’s control over the bird.
The two slip up on occasion all call Hiroki by the name Tenzo. They don’t correct themselves, and neither does Hiroki or Hitoshi.
Itachi calls Hitoshi by the name of “Kakashi” once. He is swiftly corrected and the mistake is not made again.
When Shouta looks the two boys up later, he can find no record of anyone named Itachi who has a crow-related quirk nor any record of any Shisui capable of teleporting.
What he does find, though, is two brothers from Eishu City with quirks and appearances that match those of the boys in his living room.
Their names are Kimoto Yasu and Kimoto Ritsu.
“Did you ever watch that one American investigative show?” Hizashi asks him one afternoon when Hitoshi and Hiroki are still out and about with their new friends.
“No,” Shouta answers as he pours over stacks and stacks of papers regarding Hitoshi, Hiroki, Yasu, and Ritsu.
“You should,” Hizashi says, running a hand along Shouta’s shoulders as he moves to sit down next to him at the table. “It’s called Buzzfeed Unsolved. These two American guys investigate ghosts and demons and whatnot in an attempt to prove the supernatural, except at the end of each episode, they say their case still remains unsolved. They even did a bunch of true crime videos.”
“Uh huh,” Shouta grunts noncommittally. He’s not really listening. He flips the page he’s reading over and looks for any connection at all these four kids could have in common.
“Yeah,” Hizashi places a hand over the page and draws Shouta’s attention to him. “You’re falling a bit too deep into your Buzzfeed Unsolved era, sweetheart. I think it’s time you take a break from the child soldier theories and instead look at the facts.”
Shouta squints at him. “And what, pray tell, are those?”
Hizashi smiles. “They’re happy.”
Shouta tries to let it go.
He really, really does.
But then there’s a fifth child in his living room with a senbon hanging out of his mouth, lazy expression on his face as he tells the other four about his own vigilante exploits, and Shouta nearly flips a table.
Where the FUCK are they all coming from?!?!