Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“This is never going to work,” Twice muttered, fidgeting with his gloves. Magne grunted, rubbing her arms in a clear show of nervousness. There weren’t any members of the Shie Hassaikai in the hallway with them, which was likely the only reason the two of them were willing to show their disconcertion. Shouta flicked his tail against Magne’s cheek and tilted an ear, listening to the closed door behind them.

It was a power play, to make the three – technically four, if you counted Shouta – of them wait out in the hallway like this. They’d had to walk for almost twenty minutes through the labyrinthine underground passageways that the Shie Hassaikai used as their first line of defense, and then once they’d actually made it to the meeting room, their masked guide had vanished through the door and left them alone in the bare, unadorned hallway.

Shouta could hear voices through the door. No coherent words, but certainly more than any of the other three could hear. Several voices, most unfamiliar but one he recognized as Overhaul. He was in there. From the only occasional exchange from inside the room, Shouta suspected that there was no one else who was really important in there.

Which meant them waiting outside was exclusively a power play, and Shouta did not appreciate it.

“I don’t like it either,” Toga huffed, folding her arms and pouting at the wall across from them. “What he did to Compress, and Magne...”

Magne shrugged, and Shouta shifted his weight slightly so he wouldn’t fall off her shoulders. “Nothing actually happened,” she said, tone stiff.

“Because Demon got there in time,” Twice pointed out nervously. “There’s no way to be sure that will happen every time.”

“You know what Shigaraki said,” Toga hummed, rocking forward away from the wall to bounce distractedly on her toes.

Shigaraki had said a lot.

Shouta had heard it all, too, for all that Shigaraki hadn’t wanted him to be there. But Kurogiri was on Shouta's side, and he was the one who brought them places, so Shouta had sat behind a mostly-rotten wooden crate near the place that Shigaraki had met Overhaul and listened very carefully.

Shigaraki had never considered the yakuza their equals. He was planning to bait them from the inside. To do that, he had comited Toga, Twice, and Magne. Shigaraki had freely admitted that he knew the exact reason Overhaul had asked for Toga, Twice, and Kurogiri. To cut down on their mobility and subtlety. Especially with Mr. Compress mostly out of the picture – at least until his prosthetic could be perfected and his physical therapy began to be effective – those three were the League’s most vital members when it came to infiltration and relocation.

Shape changing, even as limited as Toga’s, was a quite powerful ability, especially when it came to the subtle sneak attacks and subterfuge that the yakuza thrived on.

Even beyond that, though. Beyond what Shigaraki had said about their plans or their goals, he had said something much more important. Something that would get him killed or worse if he ever tried to make it as a proper Villain mastermind, but that was cornerstone and keystone to a successful Hero team. He’d said that he trusted Toga, Twice, and Magne.

Sure, context might have led to the conclusion that he’d meant that he trusted them enough to fulfil the mission he was assigning, but Shouta had a lot of experience with people who didn’t like admitting their emotions. He could read body language, and he could read between the lines. Just the fact that Shigaraki had taken the disembodied hand on his face off in front of a relative stranger, the prosthetist that Overhaul had sent as a show of good faith, was enough for Shouta to know that those simple words, that brief admittance of trust, was important.

Likely, more important than even Shigaraki realized.

All For One would never stand for that trust. To trust like that was to set yourself up for betrayal. Worse – in All For One’s eyes, at least – to trust like that was to have someone else to fall back on. To have someone other than him, and to therefore undermine his perfect control over his perfect pawn.

The instant All For One caught wind of just how much Shigaraki cared for and relied on the League, they’d be worse than dead.

Which meant that, no matter what else happened, Shouta had to make sure that information never made its way to All For One.

Somehow.

“This is boring,” Toga whined, sliding halfway down the wall.

“Better boring than deadly,” Magne grumbled, and displayed with that sentence alone more forethought and logic than every single entire class of first-day Hero students that Shouta had ever been burdened with put together.

Twice was fidgeting with his hands, pulling on the fabric of his gloves. “I don’t like it,” he muttered under his breath, “I don’t like this, I don’t like him.”

“The whole point is-” Magne’s impatient retort was cut off by the door finally opening, and she immediately went quiet. Shouta swiftly dropped his head against her shoulder and withdrew his tail into the coils of Spinner’s borrowed scarf, watching the newcomer intently through a gap in the scarf.

It was the little puppet person they had seen in their first meeting with Overhaul, the overconfident, proud one.

“Come inside now!” he commanded in his shrill, irritating voice, “the boss will see you!”

Toga pushed away from the wall with a pout, and Twice followed her through the door. Magne hesitated for only a moment before reaching two fingers under the scarf she’d borrowed from Spinner to catch Shouta’s tail in a gentle, reassuring grip. Then, she followed them into the room.

Overhaul was sitting casually on a worn but spotlessly clean gray couch. He looked almost exactly like he had at the warehouse, but under the pushed-up sleeves of his bomber jacket, his right arm had a long black sleeve over it, while his left arm remained bare. Shouta was sure that, if the black sleeve were pulled up, underneath it there would be a prosthetic forearm not unlike the one Mr. Compress had just recently been fitted with.

“Welcome,” Overhaul said casually, “Thank you for being here. I am Chisaki Kai, the leader of the Shie Hassaikai.”

Toga had lost all her bouncy lightheartedness, staring at Overhaul with a sharp sort of attentiveness. “I had no choice. I was ordered to come here. I’m Toga.”

“Long time no see, birdman,” Twice practically growled, “I can’t forgive you for doing that to Compress! I look forward to working with you!”

“All of us are only here because Shigaraki told us to be,” Magne said bluntly, “and we already know who you are.”

There were several responses from the yakuza members – excitement, curiosity, threats of violence – all of which were ignored by Overhaul.

“What happened to Mr. Compress was a terrible accident,” Overhaul said, tapping gloved fingers against the back of his false hand, “I didn’t want to hurt him.”

“Then why did you?” Magne pressed, taking half a step forward to loom over Overhaul, looking seconds away from vaulting over the table and strangling him with her bare hands.

Overhaul was unphased.

“Simple self-defense,” he said, shrugging fluidly with his left shoulder, his right notably still. He must still be working on his own physical therapy.

Since Mr. Compress had a neat, already mostly healed injury caused by Overhaul, his physical therapy would hopefully progress quickly, especially if Overhaul’s doctors provided the promised Quirk-boosted healing and strengthening. Even if Overhaul had received that same treatment, it had only been about a week and a half, and his injury had been much messier than Mr. Compress’s. If he was willing to use his Quirk on himself, he could cut down on that recovery time – as well as any potential complications stemming from the messy break – but he would have to balance the neatness of the injury with how much of an arm he had left when all was said and done.

“I understand why you’d hold a grudge,” Overhaul said, “but now we’re working together. I want your assistance in carrying out our mission.”

Twice seethed, trembling with rage and cursing at Overhaul under his breath, then abruptly stilled, brightening. “So, what do you need?”

“You’ll just need to follow my instructions, like everyone else in the Shie Hassaikai,” Overhaul said smoothly. “But to properly issue instructions, I need to know the details of your Quirks.”

“No, thanks!” Toga smiled sunnily. “I’ll tell you if there’s an emergency, but I don’t trust you guys yet!”

“You should just tell us!” the shrill-voiced puppet man interrupted angrily. “Don’t underestimate the yakuza!”

There was a moment of tense silence.

“No, no, that’s no good,” Twice motioned as if he was waving the idea away, “Unacceptable, really. I’m not telling either.”

“What is your Quirk?” The words seemed to ripple through the air, hitting Shouta like a physical force, like a shockwave from a distant explosion. And they weren’t even directed at him.

Information spilled out of Twice, and he went through – in excruciating detail – the exact requirements and drawbacks of his Quirk. Details on the information he needed to clone someone, the weaknesses of the clones, and even his own personal holdups about cloning himself.

The fur along Shouta’s spine prickled, and his ears pulled all the way back to flatten to his skull. There was a difference between Naomasa's truth-detection Quirk and this forced admission. Sure, it would be useful in the right hands, and Shouta could think of a dozen different – legal – ways to use it in Hero work. But in the wrong hands... that sort of ability could force anyone and everyone to spill every secret they had. Personal, corporate, even matters of national security.

And it belonged to a member of the Shie Hassaikai.

And they were using it on Shouta’s students. That, more than anything, made him mad.

That sort of compulsion was incredibly violating, and the last thing any member of the League needed was someone else digging around in their head. Some of them couldn’t even bear to do it themself.

Shouta forced his hackles down as Overhaul’s minion pulled the details of their Quirks out of Toga and Magne, too.

“Tell me one more thing,” Overhaul’s masked minion said, and then another wave of force slammed into Shouta. This one was more forceful, more real, as though it was actually pointed at him. “Did Shigaraki instruct you to betray Overhaul?”

“No!”

“Nope.”

“Nah.”

“No,” Shouta added to the three other answers, the word spilling out of his mouth automatically. It came out as a soft nyaa, but that was enough.

Overhaul stilled. “What was that sound?”

“What sound?” Twice demanded, “I didn’t hear any sound! You’re going crazy, birdman!”

Overhaul tipped his head slightly, waving his right hand in a ‘carry on’ gesture. His truth-Quirked subordinate spoke again, with shockwaves of power echoing in their words.

“What was that sound?”

“It was Demon, he’s hiding under Magne’s scarf,” Twice blurted.

Shouta sighed and dropped his head down on Magne’s shoulder. Spilling secrets.

“Oni?” Overhaul asked, “that’s not someone I’m familiar with. Magne?”

Magne reached up to her borrowed scarf, and Shouta tilted his head to glance at her face. She looked conflicted. Shigaraki didn’t know that Shouta was here; he never would have greenlighted it in the first place, and it was never a good idea to give your enemies information that your allies didn’t have.

“If you’re going to be one of us, you’ll have to follow orders,” Overhaul said, just casual enough to be dangerous.

Magne’s hand closed into a furious fist around the scarf, but she took a subtle deep breath and slowly unwound the coils from around her neck. Shouta took advantage of his newfound freedom to stand up on her shoulders, stretching out his paws. He’d been lying in the same frozen, coiled shape for almost an hour at that point, and it was starting to get irritating.

“A cat?” Overhaul asked.

“You’ve met,” Magne scowled, reaching up her free hand to lay it across Shouta’s back. He allowed it, closely watching Overhaul’s face as microexpressions flicked across it.

Confusion, realization, shock, and a split second of furious hatred before it was smoothed away to his usual neutral baseline.

“How... interesting,” Overhaul observed dully. “What’s his Quirk?”

“Even we don’t know that!” Toga grinned, “he can change sizes, sometimes, and he never stays where he’s supposed to be!”

“I stay exactly where I’m supposed to be,” Shouta huffed, stretching one final time before draping himself over Magne’s shoulders again, “That’s just not where you put me.”

Overhaul looked from Shouta to Toga, then back. He was silent for moment, then seemed to make up his mind.

“Very well,” he said, moving to stand. “We will accept you as members of the Shie Hassaikai, but you are still wanted criminals. We cannot let you roam around freely.”

Overhaul started towards the door, not even looking at them as he pulled it open. “If you don’t have any other instructions, do not leave these underground facilities.”

“You’re putting us under house arrest?” Twice demanded, and Magne and Toga were moments behind him, objecting loudly to Overhaul’s orders. Shouta remained silent, watching the other yakuza members shift subtly as Magne took a furious step towards Overhaul. A fight, here and now, with these people, would be a bloodbath. Shouta didn’t know if he’d even be able to help, what with his transformation being so unpredictable.

“Once I trust you a little bit more, I can let you do what you want,” Overhaul said, not even glancing back at them. “It’s up to you.”

The door closed with a click.

“That means,” the irritating puppet person said shrilly, “that you can’t keep acting like that! You guys have got to lose the attitude and get used to following orders. We’re yakuza. Don’t underestimate us!”

They were a failing, faltering yakuza who needed to piggyback on the renown and reputation of the new up-and-coming Villain group to get even a fraction of their power back.

“We’ll rise up from the shadows and take over society! The restoration of the yakuza is coming, and our triumphant return will bring to fruition the longstanding ambitions of our bedridden boss! You should be grateful you have the chance to be part of our greatness, you wretches!”

Sometimes, it was difficult to figure out the weak point of any given enemy. Exactly where best to hit them to make them crumple. For some people, though, it was obvious. Shouta didn’t know exactly how he’d manage it as a housecat, but if he ever ended up in conflict with that specific member of the yakuza, all he’d have to do was target his pride.

Oh, who was he kidding. Shouta was already in conflict with him and every single other yakuza member.

Shouta yawned widely in the yakuza member’s face, popping his jaw and automatically digging his claws into Magne’s shoulders. She didn’t even twitch, but Shouta gingerly pulled his claws out of her sleeves.

While the yakuza member got irritated and huffy, Shouta jumped down from Magne’s shoulders and started poking around. People rapidly began to disperse once Overhaul left, vanishing out the door to return to whatever duties they had been drawn away from for the meeting. From what Shouta knew, he was pretty sure that every noteworthy or high-ranking member of the Shie Hassaikai had been there.

As the yakuza with the answer-enforcing Quirk left, Shouta slipped out the door with them.

Magne, Toga, and Twice could handle themselves, and, worst case scenario, watch each other’s backs. Shouta needed to get the lay of the land, map out anything that might be important in an emergency. Defensive areas, locked doors, dead ends, crossroads, fatal funnels, exits. Places that could be exits with the right force applied...

Shouta glanced both ways down the hallway. He’d come from the right, but it had been quite a while of wandering through winding, complex hallways before they’d actually made it to the door. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if there had been some walking in circles and doubling back that he’d missed from his position under Magne’s scarf.

Just as Shouta was about to start off down the hallway, the door opened once again, and someone stepped out. It was the yakuza in the yukata, with the long hook-beaked mask that only covered his nose and mouth.

“I was hoping to catch you here,” he said calmly, stepping off to one side of the door and dropping into an easy, practiced crouch. “You look quite lost, Oni.”

“’Lost’ just means you haven’t bothered looking yet,” Shouta grumbled, eyeing the man dubiously.

“Come here,” the man said, not unkindly, and offered Shouta his fingers.

Shouta obliged, leaning forward to sniff the man’s hand. It smelled of leather and disinfectant, ink and paper and polished metal, along with his own personal scent that Shouta stowed away in the back of his mind. In addition to granting Shouta a small insight into the man’s lifestyle and previous activities, the motion put his hand in prime biting range.

Shouta sunk his teeth deep into the yakuza’s fingers, but he only flinched slightly and gingerly pried his hand from Shouta’s grip.

“Not very friendly, are you,” the man observed, tucking his now-bleeding hand into the opening of his yukata. “Or, perhaps, simply wary of strangers.”

He stood fluidly and glided away down the hallway. Shouta absently licked the tiny drops of blood off his teeth and watched him leave. He had to admit, that wasn’t the sort of reaction he had expected from a member of the Shie Hassaikai, all of whom until this point had proven to be hotheaded and uncontrolled, with more sensitive triggers than anyone in the League. Honestly, probably more sensitive than any of Shouta’s students, Bakugou included.

It was interesting. Shouta wouldn’t be surprised if there was some tension between this seemingly more level-headed member and the other spitfires. That would be something else he could capitalize on, if he needed to.

Shouta twitched an ear, flicked his tail, and put that thought out of his head for now. He didn’t have a lot of room for error at the moment – not surrounded by enemies and with no way to ask for directions even if he wanted to – so he needed to focus solely on his exploration. Having an understanding of where he was and what was around him at any given time could be the difference between life and death, and Shouta had always preferred to be overprepared than under.

Chapter Text

Shouta was quite familiar with the phenomenon of cats constantly trying to get through any doorway they were not allowed through. Even if they didn’t want anything on the other side. Even if they were just going to turn around and come back into the old rooms they were allowed into, they always wanted to get into forbidden places.

Now, Shouta understood.

Over the past few days, Shouta had built himself a mental map of the Shie Hassaikai underground facility. It was a veritable labyrinth, not least because Overhaul – and possibly a few of his allies – apparently sometimes reshaped whole areas, putting walls in new places and moving the doorways that connected rooms.

But the purposes and general locations of the rooms mostly stayed the same, and Shouta now had a decent understanding of where everything important actually was. He just had to keep up with the constantly shifting routes to get there. There were several well-guarded exits that actually led outside the compound, but the stairs that led up to them were always moving around and changing shape. The exits – and, as far as Shouta could tell, everything on the ground floor – never moved.

In his time in the facility, he’d also become somewhat familiar with the Eight Bullets, the primary executives of the Shie Hassaikai.

Tengai Hekiji, the one Shouta had met on the first day, was the most reasonable and calm of the entire group. If he didn't know better, Shouta would have said that Tengai was some kind of monk or priest. He was so level-headed and calm, he seemed bizarrely out of place among others like the hotblooded Rappa Kendou and perpetually intoxicated Sakaki Deidoro.

Second to Tengai was Hojo Yu, who almost matched Shouta’s own serious, straightforward outlook. He went about it a bit more violently than Shouta tended to, though.

Hojo always smelled like blood. Most of the Eight Bullets and Overhaul himself – not that Shouta willingly got close enough to tell – smelled like blood. The only exception was Sakaki, because any other scent he might have picked up was completely disguised by the overpowering reek of alcohol.

It left Shouta on edge in the way the League of Villains never had. Even in the first two weeks, before Dabi’s Quirk meltdown, he had been wary and alert, but not quite truly paranoid.

Now, he was paranoid.

The walls, he was sure, moved sometimes. It felt like everywhere Shouta went, there were eyes on him.

As both a teacher and a solo Underground Hero, Shouta had developed a sixth sense for when someone was watching him. Sometimes, it was obvious. Like when Overhaul tracked Shouta’s path across the room with a vaguely offended look on his face. Or when Tengai watched him saunter closer with no emotion in his face but a subtle sort of hope in his eyes, like he expected that someday, he might be permitted to pet Shouta without getting his hand clawed open. Even the longing eyes of Katsukame Rikiya as Shouta gave him a generous two-meter berth.

After the first time Katsukame had managed to touch him – and promptly sucked Shouta almost completely dry of what little energy he had – Shouta had elected to keep quite the distance between them.

There were also the other members. Not Eight Bullets, but subordinates of the Shie Hassaikai. They had few defining features, all wearing the same dark clothes and with faces covered in unimaginative dull brown masks, but everywhere he went there was someone there, lingering in the room, watching him through the mask they probably thought was hiding their attention.

The only place Shouta had found a tiny measure of solitude was inside the room the Shie Hassaikai had offered to Twice. It was small and a bit cramped, and Shouta knew for a fact that the little black ‘screw’ in the air vent cover was actually a button camera, but under Twice’s bed, there was nothing and no one who could see him.

Unfortunately, there was also nothing he could see or do.

Shouta had spent probably too much time poking around the facility. He’d even run into Mr. Compress a few times, coming in to visit with Overhaul’s doctors, who were working on getting him a functional prosthetic. He already had a sleek metal arm made of interlocking plates and bars. It looked a bit too fiddly and steampunk for Shouta’s preference, but it fit Mr. Compress’s dramatic personality to a tee.

Hopefully, Mist was doing well enough with the League members that he was looking after. When Shouta had given him that quick crash course, he hadn’t expected it to be so immediately applicable. But Shouta had needed to be the one in the thick of the conflict with the yakuza. He had the experience and the intelligence to know what was going on, and in a pinch, there was a decent likelihood that he’d end up as a full-sized meter-tall deadly wildcat with his human knowledge to back up his physical power. Plus, it was better to have more information than less. Shouta never knew when anything he learned here would be useful in the future.

Either way, among his exploration, Shouta had run across exactly three doors that he had not been able to get through. One he was pretty sure was the old Yakuza boss’s office. It was on the ground floor instead of underground as most of the other important rooms were, and through the generous crack between the door and the floor, Shouta could see the edge of a desk and a traditional page of decorative calligraphy on the wall. It also smelled like paper and dust. Not the dust of Shigaraki’s Decay or any kind of Quirk biproduct Overhaul might produce, but like the old, settled dust of a room that had gone unused for too long.

The second door Shouta had concluded was an emergency exit. Nobody ever went through it, but the door never moved, and there was an incongruous glass ‘EXIT’ sign over it that he’d thought was a trick at first.

The third... well. He had his suspicions about the third door, and he didn’t like them one bit.

In his time, Shouta had experienced a lot of persistent cats. Cats who wanted treats, cats who wanted pets, cats who wanted only to irritate him.

Cats who wanted to get through doors they really shouldn’t go through.

Shouta had not left this door in seven hours.

Not even a Quirked cat could possibly compare to the dogged persistence of an Underground Hero fueled seventy percent by spite and stuck in a housecat’s body.

Chronostasis, whose real name Shouta still hadn’t managed to catch, appeared at one end of the hallway. Shouta barely even reacted, slumped on the floor just beside the door with the tip of his tail twitching. Chronostasis returned his apathy and smoothly fitted a key into the lock and turned the handle on the mystery door.

The key turned with the doorhandle, which meant that the door could likely only be unlocked with a key, and not a knob on the inside. Shouta tucked that information away in the back of his head as he stood and stretched up into a languid arch before sauntering around the edge of the door.

Despite his casual air, Shouta was laser focused. He took in and processed information in a snap. Usual things, like the visual appearance of the room he was entering, but also things unique to Heroes and things unique to cats. The room had narrow dimensions, cold tile floor, pale blue walls, a bed in one corner and a dresser in the other, and no handle at all on the inside of the door. It smelled of laundry detergent and disinfectant and the faint but unmistakable scent of blood and medicine. There were boxes pushed up against the floorboards, what looked like children’s toys, dolls and stuffed animals and coloring books, all in their original, untouched packaging. There was a little girl kneeling on the bed, fear on her face and pain written in every line of her body.

Before Shouta could catch any more than that, he was sidling up against the wall, sitting silent and motionless between a huge fluffy stuffed elephant with a price tag still clipped to its ear and a doll with half a dozen accessories packaged in bulky cardstock and plastic.

In situations like this, people saw what they expected to see. Chronostasis knew what this room looked like, and Shouta’s presence was only a few days old in his subconscious. Even if he happened to glance in Shouta’s direction, Chronostasis wouldn’t see him. His brain would fill in Shouta’s presence as another stuffed animal among the scattered toys and other enticements.

Chronostasis had entered the room with a thin plastic case, which Shouta watched him open with slitted eyes. It was full of needles and syringes, one of which Chronostasis carefully prepared before brusquely unwinding the bandages that wrapped up the girl’s arm, pulling her arm towards him to reveal the hollow of her elbow, and sliding the needle through her skin.

Shouta watched the syringe fill with dark blood as the little girl on the bed visibly bit back tears, and he tamped down hard on the writhing fury that threatened to spill out of his chest.

Now was not the time to pick fights. Even as a big cat, Shouta couldn’t assure the safety of himself, his students, and now this new variable of the little girl, and so he wouldn’t risk starting a fight that didn’t need to be started. But oh, how that furious creature in his chest seethed, and if it weren’t for the necessity of staying still and silent to avoid detection, Shouta likely would have already had his teeth in Chronostasis’s throat.

After what felt like endless, patience-fraying hours, Chronostasis capped his syringes and settled them back in the case, wrapped new bandages around the girl’s arm with tight, efficient motions, and walked out of the room as swiftly and confidently as he’d entered.

The door shut with a click, and Shouta let out a slow breath.

The little girl had curled up against the wall as Chronostasis left, drawing her knees to her chest and cradling her head in her arms, shaking with silent sobs. She didn’t see Shouta unfreeze and slink away from the wall, stretching briefly and flicking his tail.

He hesitated for a moment, then concluded that the best and most efficient way to determine how the girl would react to him was to trigger that reaction directly.

“Hello?” Shouta called softly, by now used to the ‘nyaa’ that came out instead of words.

The girl startled, her head shooting up so fast she almost smacked it against the wall. She stared at him with huge red eyes, like she’d never seen anything like him before.

Maybe she hadn’t.

Shouta pushed that thought out of his mind, because dwelling on it too long would make him furious enough to transform, and he was trying not to scare the little girl. Instead, he tilted his head at her and nyaaed softly again, taking two steps closer to the bed.

She gasped, then clamped her hands over her mouth, still staring at him with eyes full of wonder and shock.

After a moment, she moved her hands away and whispered, “kitty?”

Shouta took that as a cue to jump up onto the bed and pad easily over the bedspread to where the girl was sitting against the wall, watching him with wide eyes.

He bumped his head against her leg, and she started to reach towards him. Then hesitated, her hand freezing in midair. Shouta propped his front paws up on her leg and flicked the tip of his ear against her hand. Just a gentle brush along the curve of her palm. If she had a dangerous five-point Quirk, he didn’t want to activate it unintentionally.

The instant the fluff at the tip of his ear brushed her skin, the girl flinched away, jerking her hand back like she’d been burned.

“I’m gonna hurt you,” she gasped, pulling her hands away and pressing them to her chest.

She hadn’t reacted to him butting his head against her leg, so either her Quirk was based on skin contact or specifically from her hands. Or she labored under the impression that she was the sort of person who naturally hurt small creatures a lot, but that seemed unlikely.

Either way, Shouta could work around her worry. He gingerly clambered onto her lap, careful to avoid touching any of her bare skin. She watched him with eyes full of awe, hands still clasped to her chest even as she gazed at him wonderingly. The loud purr practically sprang into his throat, and Shouta settled into the steady vibration and flicked his tail against the girl’s leg.

Slowly but surely, as Shouta did nothing but lay still and purr, the girl started to relax. She dropped her hands to her sides and leaned back against the wall, though she didn’t take her eyes off of him.

She looked at him like he was something rare and amazing, something unbelievable, like if she even dared to blink, he would vanish into a shadow of a dream.

That look made Shouta’s heart ache for her, and he flicked his tail and purred harder.

After a moment, the little girl tentatively lifted her hand. She kept her hand balled into a white-knuckled fist held away from him, but gingerly touched her wrist – still covered in bandages – to his spine. Shouta curled his tail around her wrist as she pulled it away, and she gasped in delight.

“Soft...” she marveled quietly, tentatively pressing her other wrist to his back as well. Shouta took that as his cue to stand up in her lap, bracing his front paws against her shoulders and rubbing his head against her chin.

She froze as he moved, then tentatively wrapped her arms around him. Shouta curled his tail around her arm – tiny, thin arm, so young and small, even compared to Shouta’s cat body – and purred harder.

They sat there together for what felt like hours, Shouta moving nothing but his flickering tail as the little girl slowly gathered the courage to run her bandaged arms down his back, then brush his fur with her uncovered wrist, then the back of her hand, then finally a feather-light touch of her fingers.

When nothing happened, she grew bolder, tentatively sinking her hand into his fur, and Shouta willed himself to be cuddly and soft and comforting. Apparently, he was doing something right, because the girl relaxed with him in her arms, tucking her nose into his fur and letting out a low hum of contentment.

Gradually, her grip went limp. Her head began to nod, dipping down to touch his forehead with her chin, and Shouta merely flicked his tail and twitched an ear, settling deeper into her hold. He didn’t want to move and risk waking her up.

On the other hand, he also didn’t want to fall asleep himself.

Shouta lashed his tail again, harder this time, trying to snap himself out of his own doze. After several days of not feeling anywhere near safe enough to sleep properly, he was fighting a losing battle against his own exhaustion and the dim lights, still room, and soft, even breaths of the little girl holding him.

He could hear her heart in her chest, beating steadily against his sensitive cat ear, and her breath ruffled the fur on his head as her chin dipped towards her chest. Her arms were still wrapped around him, hands buried in his fur, knees drawn up slightly to hold Shouta in her lap, and three weeks ago he would have died from shame in this position, but now he was almost glad. Glad that the little girl had something she could hold onto. Some minor comfort in whatever hell her life was.

So, Shouta stayed awake and vigilant, doing no more than flicking his tail and twitching his ears to keep himself that way. It was a battle, with exhaustion dragging at him, but it was a battle he’d fought and won many times before, and he would win it this time, too.

Shouta was still and silent for hours, time that slipped slowly away as he waited, aware and listening. For footsteps in the hallway that slowed at this door, for voices that might refer to the little girl, for anything that might even possibly register as a threat.

And for hours, nothing came. Footsteps passed outside, muffled and quiet enough that he was sure he wouldn’t be able to hear them with human hearing. The occasional snatch of conversation, most of the words unintelligible through the heavy door.

Finally, the little girl began to stir. She shifted, grip tightening on Shouta, and clenched her eyes tightly shut, then snapped awake with a stifled jerk, almost hitting her head against the wall.

“You’re going to hurt your neck, sleeping in a position like that,” Shouta said dryly. By that point, his own spine felt compressed, tense and unhappy from being held in the same position for too long.

The little girl shushed him nervously, drawing him closer to her chest, and Shouta went silent, listening. There was nobody in the hallway, but he wouldn’t be surprised if this room was being monitored by audio or video.

“You should go, kitty,” the little girl whispered, barely audible. Her words were somewhat belied by the tight grip she still had on him. “They’re gonna come for me soon. If Aniki finds you with me, he-” she cut herself off, lips wobbling and whole body trembling, eyes glistening with barely held-back tears.

Shouta suspected he knew how that sentence ended, anyway.

“So, you need to go,” the little girl ordered, voice shaking. “Go hide, or- or go back wherever you came from, okay, kitty?”

She pulled away, fixing him with a heartbreakingly desperate red-eyed stare, and Shouta nodded easily.

In general, Shouta avoided saying things that were not true. Not only was he good friends and essentially coworkers with Naomasa, who there was no real point in lying to anyway, but in most cases, lying just wasn’t the most logical course of action. Unless he was hiding classified information or trying to teach his students a lesson, Shouta avoided telling lies.

He did make some exceptions, though.

Besides, he wasn’t even saying anything, so you could argue that he wasn’t necessarily telling a lie. It would be a ridiculous, semantic argument, but you could argue.

At the moment, though, Shouta was slithering out of the little girl’s arms and retreating under her flimsy low-slung bed. He blended into the shadows there, peering out from underneath and listening intently.

After only a few minutes, Shouta heard footsteps slow to a stop outside the door. The key jiggled in the door lock, and Shouta went completely still, his eyes barely slitted open as he watched the door swing open. He could only see the newcomer from the knee down, and less as he approached the bed. He wore dark pants and black boots, spotlessly clean in keeping with the Shie Hassaikai’s operating procedures that bowed to Overhaul’s germophobia, but the hems of his pants were worn and threadbare, and the toes of his boots were scuffed, the laces so frayed and broken that they didn’t fit into a double knot anymore.

“Come, Eri,” the newcomer ordered. His tone was strict and commanding, and the little girl, presumably Eri, said nothing in return, only sliding quickly off the bed and hovering at the man’s side. The two of them turned and walked towards the still-open door, and Shouta slunk hastily after them, slipping through the door right before the man turned around to close it.

He let go of Eri’s hand for a moment, fighting with the key that was apparently jammed in the lock, and Eri curled and uncurled her fingers, glancing at Shouta with tears swimming in her eyes. Her gaze flicked from him to the man still fighting with the lock to the long, daunting corridor stretching away from them. Shouta pressed himself against Eri’s legs and looked up at her, trying to somehow tell her with his eyes that he would protect her. No matter what happened, he would be there for her. Nobody would hurt her on his watch.

Either she had somewhat understood what he was trying to say, or she took strength from his mere presence, because she sniffled quietly and blinked the tears out of her eyes, staring forward as the yakuza member grabbed her hand again.

“Stupid cat,” he muttered, aiming a kick at Shouta that missed by about a meter. Shouta shot him a dark look and slipped away to walk on the other side of Eri. He had a feeling he was about to see exactly why there was a little girl in the middle of the yakuza compound, covered in bandages and kept in a room that couldn’t be opened from the inside. And he knew he wouldn’t like it.

Chapter Text

Overhaul and Chronostasis met them a few hallways down, taking over from the lower-ranked yakuza member, and Shouta was immediately on high alert. No matter how many times Overhaul almost stepped on him – accidentally or intentionally – he refused to let Eri walk directly beside Overhaul. He inserted himself between them and didn’t give up that position.

Overhaul was irritated by his presence, but nothing more, and Eri seemed marginally less terrified, so Shouta counted it as a win.

And then, Overhaul opened a door, and revealed a cold, clinical room where the scent of cleaning agents was almost powerful enough to hide the lingering scent of old blood. And at the center of the room was a child-sized operating chair surrounded by cables and tubes and cords, and Eri quailed away as Overhaul waved her in, a barely-hidden expression of thrilled anticipation festering in his eyes.

Eri stepped over the threshold, her hands clenched to her chest and her whole body shaking, and Shouta had enough.

He knew what was happening in this room.

He knew what that chair was for. What Overhaul and his lackeys were doing to this girl. He didn’t know why or for how long, but he knew in his bones that Eri was only here to be hurt. Overhaul, Chronostasis, they didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Eri was here, a child no older than six, shaking with terror and flinching away but being forced towards what could be perpetual torture or a swift, agonizing death, and nobody but Overhaul knew for sure which one it would be.

All that mattered was that Shouta could stop it.

The fury felt different this time.

Magne was one thing. Shigaraki was one thing. They were older, adults by age, though Shigaraki didn’t have the experience to really claim the title. And for Magne, it had been a one-time thing. A threat that was brief, for all that it was deadly.

This was long. Drawn out. Likely all Eri remembered from her short life. And she was young. Still a child, and even younger by inexperience. Her brain was still growing alongside her body, and Overhaul, the Quirk and the person, would mark her forever.

Shouta saw Chronostasis start to unwind the bandages on Eri’s arms, revealing thick ropy scars that rivaled Midoriya’s, and his vision went red.

In a split second, with no time for slowly changing forms or shifting his center of mass, Shouta went from an angry housecat to a huge shadow creature of pure protective fury.

Chronostasis was flung away by a single blow of his paw, ripped off of Eri and tossed against the doorframe. Overhaul was flinching on instinct, shying away from the one thing in the world that had ever managed to permanently injure him. Eri, on the other hand, stood stone still as Chronostasis was batted away from her and Overhaul was backpedaling.

She stood still and watched with wide red eyes as Shout wrapped himself around her like he had draped himself over Magne’s shoulders, but this time his shoulders were at level with Eri’s head, and his thick, fluffy tail was longer than she was tall. He completely consumed her with his bulk, a huge shadow protector that curled around the pale spot of fear and desperation he was protecting.

Shouta bared his long, razor-sharp fangs and growled low in his throat, lips peeling back and ears shoved forward, his mane bristling and his tail fluffed up as thick as it would go, almost twenty centimeters around and wrapped protectively around Eri.

Overhaul snarled back, his face going pale and splotchy as he stumbled away, almost hyperventilating.

Rumors of his hypochondria were not entirely exaggerated, it seemed.

Chronostasis peeled himself off the floor and steadied himself on the wall, filling the doorway with the edges of his long coat brushing the sides of the doorframe.

Overhaul was inside the room, about two meters away, but Chronostasis was just outside the door, hand hovering over the grip of his gun, but not pulling it yet. Shouta would have to go straight through him to get out of the room.

“Call the temps in,” Overhaul ordered, tugging on the cuff of his glove in a subconscious fidgeting motion. His eyes were a bit too wide, pupils too narrow, and Shouta hooked a paw around Eri’s chest, claws carefully stowed so only his paw pads and soft fur touched even her dress, and gently drew her back, further away from Overhaul and Chronostasis.

They were locked in a stalemate, with Shouta unwilling to try to make a break for it with the door blocked by Chronostasis, but neither of them willing to take him on even together.

Shouta lowered his head and watched Chronostasis as he pulled out a phone and quickly speed-dialed a number. It rang, and Shouta could pick up the irritating voice of Mimic on the other end.

“What is it?”

“Send the temps to examination room alpha,” Chronostasis said curtly. “It’s the cat.”

“The cat?” Mimic scoffed shrilly, “you can deal with a stupid cat.”

“Come see for yourself, if you think so,” Chronostasis said, “just send the temps.”

"Fine,” Mimic said, and Chronostasis’s phone beeped as Mimic hung up on him.

Shouta snarled and set his chin on Eri’s head, purring low in his throat, low enough that only she could hear him. She was shaking again, from fear or exhaustion or shock he didn’t know, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it until they got out of this stalemate.

Fortunately, it appeared that opportunity would soon present itself.

Toga arrived first, skipping down the hallway without a care in the world. Shouta automatically felt better with her there. One person on his team meant twice the protection for Eri, twice the awareness of the battlefield, and infinitely more capacity for communication.

Not only was Toga incredible at reading the body language of the humans they were up against, but she could interpret Shouta’s own body language better than anyone else who had tried.

“What’s going on?” Toga asked, throwing on a guileless, deadly smile.

Chronostasis stepped to the side and Shouta eyed the doorway consideringly.

“Oh, hi, Demon!” Toga chirped, “who’s this cutie?”

“Eri is an important asset,” Overhaul butted in coldly, “control your creature before it does something unwise.”

Someone scoffed in the hallway, and Shouta’s ear twitched.

“You can’t control Demon,” Magne huffed, shoving her way into the room, “but I’d pay good money to see you try. How’d that go last time, Overhaul?”

Overhaul seethed at her behind his mask, clutching at his prosthetic arm, and Shouta growled in agreement, ears pinned.

“If you can’t control it, we’ll be forced to take action,” Overhaul said stiffly. Shouta bristled, a snarl growing in his throat again.

He knew where Overhaul was going with this.

He was looking for a method to control the League members that were, supposedly temporarily, working for the Shie Hassaikai. He wanted to force them into his service properly, and at the moment, he was feeling them out to see just how invested they were in Shouta’s health.

“I’d like to see you try,” Magne snapped back. She stepped towards Overhaul, towering over him with her bulk, and he scowled and tugged at the cuffs of his gloves again.

“Chronostasis,” Overhaul ordered, and Shouta’s attention was so pinned on him and how close he was to Magne that he almost missed Chronostasis pulling a gun out of his coat and pointing it at Shouta.

He dodged the first bullet – one of the yellow, Quirk-erasing capsules – by the skin of his teeth, but that left him not quite as tightly wound around Eri, and when Chronostasis fired the second time, it was all Shouta could do to intercede his own bulk between Eri, staring motionless and pale down the muzzle of the gun, and the dart it had fired.

The dart hit him in the neck, a sharp prick like a spider bite, and Shouta shook himself hard, trying to dislodge it. It fell out of his skin, clattering to the ground, and Shouta growled furiously at Chronostasis.

“Give it five minutes, then contain the cat,” Overhaul ordered coldly, “call me back when the girl is ready.”

Overhaul swept out of the room with uneven red splotches creeping up his face, and Shouta was left with only Toga, Magne, and Chronostasis. And Twice, appearing a moment later.

“What’s going on?” Twice asked, poking his head through the door.

“Demon’s big again!” Toga said.

“Overhaul’s being a-”

Shouta yowled sharply at Magne before she could finish her sentence, wrapping his tail around Eri’s ears.

“Watch your language!” Twice scolded, “there’s a child present! Why is there a child here?”

“Eri is an important asset for the Shie Hassaikai,” Chronostasis said tonelessly, “If your pet harms her beyond repair, I cannot say what Kai will do.”

“Aw, Demon’s really a big softie,” Twice assured him, “He won’t hurt a kid! It’s yourselves you should be worried about!”

Correct on both counts.

Chronostasis took another step away from the door, but now Twice was standing in the way.

Shouta watched him with eyes and ears as he knelt beside Eri like a horse, putting his shoulders at her hip level. He nudged her with his tail, one ear occasionally flicking towards her as he gently prodded her over his shoulders. First sitting astride, then laying down over his back with her hands clutching at his mane and her face hidden against his neck.

“It should be taking effect now,” Chronostasis said, entirely ignoring Twice’s input.

“What should?” Toga put in.

“The temporary Quirk canceling round,” Chronostasis said, absently checking his watch.

Shouta frowned internally, tentatively tugging on Erasure. Nothing happened.

Ice crystalized over his spine, and Shouta shivered slightly, baring his teeth.

Of course, Shouta had grown up feeling his dad’s Quirk Drain, and there had been a bizarre incident a few years ago that had included, among other things, feeling the effects of his own Erasure, but this was different.

Quirk Drain and Erasure made his Quirk somehow impossible to reach. Like whatever muscle or tendon he pulled on to activate it wasn’t there, but the Quirk itself still was. Like when you were so tired that you couldn’t move your limbs properly, but they were still there. Now, though...

It was like Erasure was just gone. Nothing coiled behind his eyes, no lingering snag thanks to the injuries he’d sustained from the attack on the USJ, no red light in the back of his head that he could shove out into the front. It was just... empty.

“It’s taking quite a while to work,” Chronostasis said, and Shouta could hear Eri's breaths stutter from where her face was buried in his mane. Tears leaked into his fur, and Shouta flicked his tail over Eri and snarled low and furious at Chronostasis.

“Maybe...” Magne started, peering at Shouta over the rim of her glasses, “the panther’s not the Quirk. Maybe the cat is the Quirk.”

Chronostasis went still. Twice gasped in shock, then gasped again in delight. Toga grinned, squished her cheeks, and squealed.

“Ohmygoshohmygosh!” She shrilled, grabbing Twice’s shoulders and shaking him hard, “Demon’s a wildcat!”

“That explains so much,” Magne grumbled, but Shouta was barely paying attention. He was watching Twice, who was staggering under Toga’s excited attack. He stumbled once. Twice. One more time, faltering as Toga continued to shake him, and he left a gap through the door that was just wide enough for a nimble Bengal tiger to fit through.

Shouta moved.

It was second nature to both Shouta and the wildcat he took the shape of to run silent and smooth on steady paws, moving like a shadow flickering over the ground, and he was as stable and swift as a bullet train under Eri, who only gasped and tightened her hold on Shouta’s mane as he took off.

Shouta rapidly checked his position against his mental map of the underground compound. There were three flights of stairs up to the ground floor in the central compound, without checkpoints and long underground passages to get to them. One was clear on the other side of the compound, but there were two relatively nearby.

He was hyperaware of the footsteps and shouts behind him, the overdramatized gasps of Toga and the anything-but-sincere apologies of Twice as they managed to completely impede Chronostasis’s progress. He tried to weigh his options, filtering through pros and cons, how crowded the corridors were between stairs, who he might run into, where the stairs came out.

Just as Shouta reached the intersection and had to actually choose, Eri yanked to the left with a breathless, “This way, kitty, this way.”

Shouta turned left.

No time for second guessing or slowing down. The wing of the compound down the left hallway was more crowded, practically swarming with yakuza in plague doctor masks and thick with the scent of disinfectant. They saw Shouta coming, but by the time anyone registered the little girl desperately clinging to his back, he was already past them.

Shouta made it to the stairwell door with a dozen yakuza hot on his heels, mostly low-level grunts, although one of the Eight Bullets, Hojo Yu, was also in the throng. Fortunately, the door was hanging half open.

Eri’s grip tightened on his mane as Shouta tore through the door, flinging it against the wall with the force of his flight, then shot up the stairs half a dozen at a time. Shouts of dismay and fury followed him as Shouta skidded into a turn on a single paw, crouched low to the ground with his tail swinging like a pendulum to act as a counterweight, claws tearing deep grooves into the old hardwood floor.

Three yakuza ran straight into the wall at the top of the stairs, and all the others had to slow down to turn properly, and Shouta was already gone, bouncing off of corners and digging his claws into the wooden floor to build up speed he wouldn’t have dared maintain in the stone-floored underground corridors.

He finally skidded to a stop just long enough to flip the lock and yank the lever doorhandle down, sparing a single fleeting thought for being grateful he was even tall enough to reach it, and then took off again.

There was a wall all around him, maybe three meters tall at most. Shouta raced along the side in a steady, ground-eating lope, but all he found was a guarded gate with a sturdy-looking electronic lock. Shouta cursed, flicking his ears back and forth. What were the odds he could force the guard to let him out? Would it be possible at all with Eri on his back?

“This way,” Eri whispered hastily, a tiny hand pulling on Shouta’s ear, “down here, quickly, kitty, quickly.”

Shouta followed her urging, turning around and darting into the shelter of a huge ornamental bush growing against the wall. Eri pressed herself down tight along his back, and a trio of yakuza hurried past their hiding spot a moment later, steps hurried and guns in hand.

Now that he was mostly hidden, Shouta took a moment to catch his breath and think.

There were guards on the gate, which had an electronic lock. But why would you need a key to get out? If he got rid of the guards, he could probably figure out how to open the door mechanism and let himself out.

Could he afford to bank on that, though?

Shouta flicked an ear, his tail skittering over the few leaves scattered on the dirt, jittering with indecision.

“There,” Eri whispered directly into his ear, and a pale, scarred hand reached into Shouta’s vision to point forward and to the side, at a mound of earth and dead leaves that had collected against the wall. Shouta followed the motion, staring at the leaves for a long moment. Something seemed... off.

Shouta was no wilderness expert, but that didn’t seem like somewhere leaves would naturally collect. In fact, he would have expected a lot more where he was currently lying, in the thick of the bush. Certainly not a substantial pile clumped up against the wall.

Shouta bellied forward, cautious to stay in as much cover as possible, even if he couldn’t hear any pursuers at the moment. He pawed at the mound of leaves and packed dirt that was, at a closer inspection, clearly intentionally created. Once the leaves were cleared away, he found a cracked and worn hole at the bottom of the wall.

“They’ve never found them,” Eri whispered, “no matter how many times I run, they never find the holes.”

Shouta was going to carefully pack that information into his ‘to discuss later in students’ therapy’ box and keep going. In the meantime, he started up a low purr in his throat and considered the hole.

It was large enough that Shouta in his current form might fit through it. His cat instincts said he would, and they’d never been wrong before. He definitely wouldn’t fit with Eri still draped over his back.

Shouta slumped awkwardly onto his side, half spilling Eri off onto the ground. He craned his neck to look Eri in the face and jerked a paw imperiously at the hole in the wall. She nodded, pale and shaking but with grim determination in her scared red eyes. With careful motions, she propped herself onto her hands and knees and crawled through the hole. Shouta waited for a moment, scanning the area he could see through the leaves, then followed behind her.

There was a brief instant where his hips stuck in the opening, and a jolt of panic shot through him. But he managed to wriggle his way through a moment later and then turned around to scoop the leaves and dirt back up against the hole as much as he could.

There was a conveniently placed bench just over the hole in the wall, and Shouta slunk out from underneath it and immediately nudged Eri, who was curled up in a tiny ball on the bench. She startled at his touch, but immediately calmed down, and all Shouta had to do was dip his chest down onto the ground for her to slide onto his shoulders and grip his mane again.

The sky was thick with clouds and the air smelled damp, shallow puddles already standing on the sidewalk and a narrow stream of water running through the rain gutter. All other scents had been swept away by the rain.

Shouta waited for a moment to see if Eri had any input, but she seemed as lost as he was. Well, when in doubt, better to get away from the yakuza base. Shouta picked a direction and started moving. The moment he spotted a side street that led away from the imposing walls of the Shie Hassaikai compound, he turned towards it.

He ducked into the narrow alley and immediately felt much more secure. There was still a chance the Shie Hassaikai would come after him, and with Eri on his back he wouldn’t exactly blend in anyway, but at least he wasn’t standing out in the open anymore.

Although… Shouta scented the air and flicked an ear back. There was another soft sound, like the faint scuff of a shoe on concrete, and a confusing, unfamiliar scent. Someone was following him.

Chapter Text

Whoever it was that was following him, they thought they were being discreet.

They walked quietly, but not too quiet for Shouta to hear them, especially with his own paws not making a single sound, and Eri keeping her tears heartbreakingly silent and muffled in his mane.

Not to mention, they smelled downright bizarre.

A dozen different unrelated scents mingled and blended together in a concoction that made his nose wrinkle. Rot, rubbing alcohol, oranges, salt, burnt oil, petrichor, yeast, cedar, cinnamon, sulfur, wet dog, sour almonds, spoiled milk, and more he couldn’t pick out individually. The scent followed Shouta even as he made it to the end of the alleyway and paused, surveying the wider and more crowded street beyond.

It wasn’t a main thoroughfare, but it also wasn’t nearly as cramped and abandoned as the alleyway he was in now.

Shouta hesitated, and there was another almost-silent footstep behind him. He huffed a heavy sigh and forged onward.

People gave him strange looks as he passed, and several felt for their phones in their pockets, but from what Shouta could tell, nobody actually dialed 110.

It didn’t take long for Shouta to ascertain that they were in Musutafu, though closer to the outskirts. Not anywhere near UA.

Shouta turned towards UA for the moment and chewed on the problem for a bit. Eri was scared and hurt, and Overhaul likely knew she had escaped with Shouta. If he hadn’t already realized they had left the grounds, he would soon. Shouta couldn’t take care of Eri on his own, especially not while dodging the yakuza, but he’d left behind all his allies in the Shie Hassaikai compound.

He needed to either get her to someone who could make sure she got the help she needed, or find a way to get back to his allies without running up against the full force of the Shie Hassaikai.

The issue was, there weren’t a lot of people Shouta would trust with Eri at this point. Maybe a few Hero agencies who would be fully prepared to give her all the help and support she needed, but even most good Heroes would leave her to the foster system, which wasn’t terrible, but also just wasn’t built for someone in Eri’s situation. Especially since Overhaul would undoubtedly still be looking for her.

Nedzu would be entirely capable, so long as he was actually willing, which would require Shouta being able to convey that Eri’s health and safety was important to him personally. Hizashi or Nemuri or pretty much anyone else from UA had similar caveats.

If he had it his way, Shouta would stick with Eri himself. At the moment, he was her only safe place, and to rip that away from her now would be extremely detrimental to her emotional recovery, both long and short term.

But even if he didn’t have students to think about, Shouta certainly couldn’t stick with Eri as a random unexplained wildcat. Not if he wanted the comfort he offered her to be as effective as possible, and certainly not if he wanted to avoid all the confused, more than a little bit concerned looks that every single person on the street was shooting him.

And the unique scent of citrus and rotten milk and burnt oil that was still following him like a smog.

Shouta flicked an ear behind him again, eyeing the people around him. Surely one of them could smell that. Quirks that enhanced the senses weren’t necessarily common, but they also weren’t really rare, and with as many people as he’d passed, one of them must have smelled something strange.

As he started looking to the people around him for clues, though, Shouta noticed something else. Most people would glance at him, startle, and then look at something a few meters behind him and visibly relax. Shouta narrowed his eyes and swung his head over his shoulder to glance behind him.

Eri made a small noise of surprise but didn’t lose her balance, and Shouta saw nothing at all out of the ordinary.

He lashed his tail and faced forward again, ears pricked for any unexpected sound.

“There’s a lady following us,” Eri whispered into his ear, “She has blue skin and hair, and she keeps smiling and waving her hands at me.”

Shouta flicked an ear and ducked his head in acknowledgement. He wished he could ask Eri some clarifying questions, but he’d take what he could get at the moment.

Instead of trying to crane his neck over his shoulder again and risk unseating Eri, Shouta scanned the street for something useful. He found it in the spotlessly clean window of a ramen shop. It was a long, tall window that looked into the seating area, and even with the relatively dim lighting of the overcast day, the window was decently reflective from an angle. Shouta changed course to walk past the ramen shop, and kept his eye on the window even as he passed the door and carried on away from the ramen shop.

A very distinctive woman could be seen in the pale reflection behind him.

Blue skin and hair, as Eri had described, but also a dark blue and white crop top that barely covered her breasts at the bottom but went all the way up to her chin at the top. Dark blue gloves and skintight pants with a strange white-and-yellow article that might have been very loose shorts pulled on over top of them. She also had a visor that looked, from Shouta’s brief glance, like it was at least designed to be airtight.

It certainly looked like a Hero costume.

Shouta flicked his tail thoughtfully. What he had seen of her face looked young. Not a student, but certainly not a veteran Hero. He was more knowledgeable on the proper Heroes in the area, rather than sidekicks, but a bit of prodding at his memories produced a tentative conclusion that she was actually a Hero, and her mask and questionable pants seemed familiar, but Shouta couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

And then he caught another brief glance of her in the rearview mirror of a passing bus, and he realized what he’d missed the first time.

Her boots were huge, bulky white-and-yellow monstrosities that were even worse than Uraraka’s, and Shouta knew exactly who was doing a mediocre at best job of tailing him.

In her defense, Bubble Girl’s Quirk was centered around absorbing and recreating scents, and there was little she could do to mitigate the aromatic side effects of that. It certainly did make her a terrible choice for following an animal with an enhanced sense of smell, though.

If his mental map of the city was accurate, Nighteye’s Hero Agency was quite nearby. Shouta scanned the street again and rerouted, turning away from UA. Bubble Girl continued to follow him, but now that Shouta knew exactly who was there, she was easy to keep track of.

He took a few wrong turns on his way. It had been a while since he’d had to go to Nighteye’s Hero Agency on foot, and even in his larger wildcat form, his perspective and vision still weren’t what he was used to. Eventually, though, Shouta made it to the front doors of the Nighthide Hero Agency. They glided open in front of him, and Shouta stepped into the lobby.

There were a few things Shouta had expected on the first floor of Nighteye’s Hero Agency. Possibly ordinary civilians, reasonably put off by the sight of a wildcat carrying a little girl. Possibly a Hero or two, sidekicks or interns of the agency. Technically, he hadn’t been wrong.

He just hadn’t expected to recognize the two interns.

“Wha- Eri?” Midoriya gasped, and he took an aborted step forward. He stopped before he actually moved closer to Shouta, which was a point in favor of his presumed-nonexistent self-preservation instinct.

Eri gasped and sat up straighter on Shouta’s back, and Shouta obligingly knelt and let her slide off his shoulders and edge towards Midoriya.

She still had a hand clenched in his mane, so Shouta stepped forwards with her as she tentatively padded up to Midoriya.

Midoriya, predictably, immediately negated any self-preservation points in his favor as he dropped to his knees in front of Eri and swept her into a careful hug. Were Shouta an actual wildcat, Midoriya would be dead. Even as a human and a cat sharing a brain, Shouta was more than a little tempted to bite him for that. That was his kitten that Midoriya had just taken away!

Shouta shook his head and looked away, mentally berating himself. What was he thinking? Eri wasn’t even a kitten, she was a human child, and she wasn’t related to Shouta in the slightest. This was not the first time he had rescued a little girl, and it wouldn’t be the last. He couldn’t be thinking about her like this.

“Are you okay?” Midoriya asked Eri, “what happened to- to, um,”

“Kitty took me away from Aniki,” Eri told Midoriya shakily, her voice so quiet that Shouta likely wouldn’t have heard it without his enhanced hearing, even standing so close, “they shot him, but Kitty didn’t shrink, so he’s supposed to be big.”

“I- okay,” Midoriya stammered, clearly too confused to come up with a coherent response.

Shouta sighed and flopped onto his side right there in the middle of the lobby. He was tired. First the hyperaware paranoia of existing in the Shie Hassaikai compound, then staying alert for hours with Eri, then the horrifying realization of what was happening to Eri, the escape from the Shie Hassaikai compound, and the long walk to the Nighteye Agency. Not to mention, he was sure that the transformation from normal housecat to giant wildcat drew on his own energy reserves somehow.

However you chose to slice it, Shouta was exhausted, and with good reason, but he couldn’t relax yet.

Shouta closed his eyes and laid his chin on his paws, one ear tilted towards Eri, the other flicking towards any and all sound in the room. This sort of audible awareness was so much easier and less stressful with ears that could move independently and that caught every single tiny sound in the room.

Bubble Girl came in and tried to talk to Eri about Shouta. Eri refused to speak to her, instead hiding her face in Midoriya’s costume. When Midoriya tried to repeat Bubble Girl’s questions in hopes that Eri would answer him, she pulled away entirely and Shouta tracked the pitter-patter of her footsteps rushing towards him until she practically tackled him. He slitted an eye open the peer at Bubble Girl and Midoriya, who had both gone concerningly pale.

Shouta just wrapped a protective arm around Eri and let her lean against his side.

“Uh,” Midoriya started nervously, “do you- um. Cat. Do you want to… go to another room?”

His question ended in a nervous squeak, and Midoriya’s face flushed with embarrassment. Shouta took pity on the poor kid and smoothly levered himself to his feet, making sure Eri didn’t fall over as he moved. She clung tightly to his mane as Shouta allowed Bubble Girl and Midoriya to lead them into what looked like an interview room for nervous witnesses or victims.

“I can get you, uhh, a blanket? Maybe? Food? Water? Do you- what do you want?”

Shouta huffed in amusement and nudged Eri with his nose. She ran a hand over his ear, not looking up at Midoriya. Her mouth was a wobbly line, and she looked seconds away from bursting into tears.

They would need water, certainly, and something for Eri to eat. Something light, because Shouta didn’t know what Overhaul had been feeding her, but he suspected it wasn’t the most optimal diet for a little girl. A shock blanket would also not go amiss.

Shouta couldn’t tell anyone any of that, though.

“I’ll get you some water, and a blanket,” Bubble Girl said, shooting Midoriya a meaningful look as she backed out the door. Midoriya shot her a terrified one in response, and Shouta let out a little huff of laughter. He couldn’t read minds, but Shouta was about ninety-eight percent sure that Midoriya’s terror was not because he was being left alone with an angry tiger, but because he was being left alone with a scared little girl.

“U-um, hi,” Midoriya stammered. Eri’s hand tightened on Shouta’s mane.

Shouta pulled a purr out of his chest, rumbling reassuringly even as he slumped to the ground again, leaving Eri cupped between his paws like she was his kitten.

“Hi,” she murmured.

“You, uh… that’s… quite the kitty you’ve got.” Midoriya observed weakly.

“Mhm,” Eri mumbled.

“Where’d you find it?” Midoriya asked awkwardly. Eri shrugged. Shouta was hardly aware of social awkwardness at the best of times, but this was making him embarrassed.

Not for the first time, he wished he could talk.

Blessedly, before Midoriya could dig himself any deeper, someone else appeared in the doorway behind him.

Togata took Midoriya’s red-faced stammering in stride and chivalrously offered Eri a blanket. She glanced at the blanket, then at Shouta, then at Midoriya and Togata. Shouta sighed, reached over Eri’s head, and gingerly pulled the blanket out of Togata’s hands before Eri could fret too hard. It was a bit tricky to shake it open and spread it over her shoulders with just his teeth, but Shouta had gotten used to working with his teeth in the past month. He managed.

Once Shouta had tossed it over her, Eri clutched at the edges of the blanket and drew it tighter around her. It was blue and yellow and suspiciously red-and-white striped like a particular number one Hero that Shouta knew Midoriya, Togata, and Nighteye all had a soft spot for, but Shouta could let it slide for now. Eri had a blanket, and she had Shouta as a subaudible purring presence at her back, so she needed water and something to eat that had some amount of grounding flavor, but not too much.

“Here,” Togata said, setting a bottle of water on the ground within Eri’s reach, but far enough away that Togata himself wasn’t actually close enough to touch either of them. “I got you some water; can you tell us about your kitty?”

Good. Remind the victim of their support while also fishing for information, but information that they would likely be willing to give. Pets and family members were a six-year-old’s favorite thing to talk about when they were scared, and it would have worked wonders in any other circumstance.

But Eri had known Shouta for less than a day. She had no proper family members. No one who was willing or able to object to her treatment by Overhaul at least, and she called him aniki. Shouta had heard of very few six-year-old girls who called even their much older brothers aniki. It proposed some serious questions about their relationship. Shouta sincerely doubted Overhaul was actually her older brother, but did she call him that because he’d told her to? Or had she come up with it as the only thing she could think of? The most insulting thing she could call him while also avoiding whatever punishments Overhaul or his underlings would see fit to dish out in response to an actual insult.

Shouta nudged Eri with the side of his head, rubbing the silky fur on his jaw against her cheek, and she sniffled and wiped her eyes, burying one hand in his mane as the other played with the half-open cap of the water bottle.

“I don’t know,” Eri whispered, “I- Kitty found me in my room. When Aniki- when I-” She sniffled again, wiping her arm over her eyes. Her forearms were still bare, and Shouta saw Togata’s gaze catch on the thick, ropy scars over her arms. Not scars from restraints or Quirk controlling devices, not even from more ordinary things like cuts or scrapes. Deep, ingrained scars from being Overhauled, paired with fields of tiny pinprick needle scars.

Shouta flicked his tail against Eri’s elbow and nudged her again, purring louder.

“I didn’t want to be hurt,” was what she managed to choke out next, “and Kitty- Kitty took me away.”

“That’s good,” Togata said softly, “I don’t want you to be hurt either, Eri. Do you want us to bring Kitty some water or food?”

Togata was clearly taking well to his rescue training. He’d noticed that Eri had latched onto Shouta and was following suit by running every request through ‘Kitty’ first, framing things to be for the benefit of Eri’s support structure.

“Um,” Eri mumbled, clutching Shouta’s mane tighter. “Kitty, do you- do you want…?”

Shouta nodded slowly, his purr rumbling steadily in his throat, and he saw Togata and Midoriya share stunned, mildly horrified looks. They had no doubt come to the conclusion that he was a human with a cat-shifting Quirk, which was… not exactly untrue.

“I’ll, um, see what I can find,” Midoriya stammered, and Shouta suppressed a snort of laughter as Midoriya left the room so fast he practically left an afterimage behind him.

Togata settled onto his knees with a soft breath, his oversized white boots acting as knee pads as he knelt.

“We met the other day, Eri,” Togata said softly, “do you remember?”

Eri nodded cautiously, “You were- on the street, and-” she looked down, and said in a bare whisper, “Aniki.”

“I met… someone who claimed to be your father,” Togata added.

Eri nodded, then shook her head.

“I don’t think he’s actually your father, though,” Togata tacked on gently.

Eri nodded again, and Shouta gingerly eased the water bottle out of her grip before she could slosh any more of the water onto his fur. Eri let him take it and instantly latched onto his mane with her now free hand.

A little bit awkwardly, Shouta managed to set the water down on the ground and then gave in to Eri’s tugging and let her pull his head closer so she could run her fingers up his ears. They flicked automatically when she touched the tuft at the top, and on her face Shouta saw a brief flash of shock, then guilt, then finally tentative amusement when he didn’t otherwise react.

“I think,” Togata said, “that he’s a bad man who was hurting you.”

Eri’s gaze skipped to him and then down again. She pulled harder on Shouta’s mane, and he fully gave in to his role as oversized stuffed animal and let Eri tug his head into her lap so she could get at his ears easier.

“Deku and I mentioned the other day that we’re Heroes,” Togata continued. “Well, that means it’s our job to help you. We don’t want you to stay with anyone who hurts you. Alright?”

Eri nodded slowly, though her attention was still fixed on Shouta and his apparently fascinating ears.

“So, we just want to make sure that Kitty isn’t going to hurt you.”

Oh, dear, that was the wrong thing to say.

Even if Shouta had been a threat, the last thing you wanted to do with a traumatized victim who was already almost at their limit was imply you might take away their sole remaining support.

Eri’s hand clamped tightly around his left ear and Shouta forced himself to not react to the unfamiliar pain. His tail lashed, but he didn’t dare even wince. Her other hand found his wrist, the pad of his paw wider than her hand fully spread, and she clung to him like he was going to vanish into nothing but mist if she let go.

Knowing Overhaul, that wasn’t entirely out of the picture.

Fortunately, Togata did actually realize that he’d made a mistake. His eyes went wide, and his smile slipped, turning to concern and consternation.

“I-” he glanced between Eri and Shouta, clearly unsure. He couldn’t promise that they wouldn’t take Shouta away, because they still didn’t know that Shouta wasn’t a threat, but he also couldn’t risk Eri reacting badly to anything else he might say. In the end, Togata made the safest and probably best choice. “I have to check on Deku. I’ll be right back.”

He stepped through the door – literally, with Permeation, not even bothering to open it – and they were alone. Well. Alone except for the cameras Shouta could see and likely a few he couldn’t, as well as some audio recording technology that he was sure was installed somewhere.

Eri relaxed all at once in the perceived solitude, collapsing against Shouta’s chest like a puppet with its strings cut, and Shouta let her drag his paw over her chest like it was another blanket. He picked his head up briefly to blink slowly at the camera almost dead center in his vision. He knew they were watching, and now they knew he knew, and they weren’t going to hurt Eri, and he wasn’t going to hurt Eri. This would all be so much easier once everyone was on the same page.

Chapter Text

They weren’t left alone for long. Barely five minutes had passed before the room was cut through with the unmistakable scent of summer rainfall and clean thunder. Shouta picked his head up, scanning the room with his eyes and swiveling his ears in every direction. He had thought that Kurogiri was smart enough to avoid appearing anywhere with cameras that would catch him arriving, and he should also be clever enough to figure out that this room had cameras.

It also had air vents, though.

There was a tiny twisting vortex behind the grate, and though it was quite far away for his nearsighted cat vision, Shouta was pretty sure he could see two miniscule dots of brighter, motionless mist.

Shouta flicked his tail and flattened his ears, trying to think.

He didn’t want to take Eri out of one Villain’s lair and into another. Sure, the League was better than the Shie Hassaikai, but there was no telling when All For One would come back, or what would happen when he did. If he risked leaving her here, there was a decent chance that Nighteye’s agency – who knew without a doubt that Eri had come from the Shie Hassaikai – would be able to look out for her properly. But Eri would be devastated if Shouta left without her, and there was a very real possibility that she’d blame the Nighteye agency Heroes for his absence.

At the very least, All For One wasn’t around yet. If he did ever show up… Shouta had Erasure, and he didn’t need to blink anymore, and there was little that could stand in Shouta’s way when he was in his larger form. Plus, Shouta would likely get a lot of warning before All For One arrived, since the League would have to break him out.

Mind tentatively made up, Shouta nudged Eri up onto her feet and rose himself, shaking each of his paws out before kneeling and letting Eri slip onto his shoulders. Shouta blinked slowly at Kurogiri, then made for the door. Kurogiri vanished with a swirl of scattering mist, and Shouta gripped the doorknob in his teeth and easily twisted it open.

Nobody stopped him as he made his way back to the lobby and from there to the street. Few people even gave him a second glance. Shouta followed the scent of clean thunder down the street and around the corner, to a street just wide enough to fit a tiger with a six-year-old on its back, cast into shadows by a burnt out streetlight and soaked by the busted rain gutter that was leaking like it was thunderstorming. Shouta hesitated at the downpour. Just stepping into the narrow side street would no doubt shower him with whatever rusty, dirty water was coming from the gutter. But Kurogiri was pretty far down the street, tucked against the wall to prevent anyone from catching sight of him, so Shouta grumbled under his breath and forged ahead, getting soaked in the process of making his way to Kurogiri’s pale-spot eyes peering out of the damp shadows.

By now, Shouta knew enough about judging Kurogiri’s ‘facial’ expressions to recognize the tilt of his eyes as surprise, no doubt for the unexplained little girl perched on Shouta’s back, but Kurogiri didn’t say anything. Shouta and stepped through the warp gate with his head high, purring deep in his chest to hopefully alleviate some of Eri’s fear and uncertainty. Her grip was so tight on his mane that it was making his neck ache.

The warp gate opened directly into the kitchen, and the water soaking Shouta’s fur dribbled down into puddles on the cracked tile floor.

“Can’t you show up one day without being soaking wet,” Dabi drawled, hovering less than a meter away with a towel in his hands.

Shouta flicked an ear at him, backing away a few steps and kneeling to let Eri slide off his back. She was clearly nervous to do so, but it only took the barest amount of prodding before she complied, clinging to his soaked mane and her now sopping wet blanket like they were her only lifelines.

“Good afternoon, little miss,” Kurogiri said, having reformed back into a mostly humanoid patch of mist in a suit, “My name is Kurogiri. This is Dabi, Sako Atsuhiro, and Shigaraki Tomura. Would you share your name with us?”

“Um, I’m Eri,” Eri whispered, staring wide-eyed around the room.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eri,” Mr. Compress said with a gentle smile, “I see you’ve met our friend Demon.”

“That’s me,” Shouta said, bumping his head against Eri’s. It came out as a low, contented rumble.

“Oh, he- he’s yours?” Eri asked, crestfallen.

“We’re friends,” Mr. Compress reiterated gently, “any friend of Demon’s is a friend of ours.”

Now that, that was a very dangerous thing for him to promise. Shouta had quite a lot of friends who he was sure Mr. Compress would not approve of. Unfortunately, there was nobody around to properly appreciate the irony, so Shouta suppressed his own snort of amusement and softly urged Eri forward.

It took only a bit of prodding before she was willing to trade her soaked blanket for the clean dry towel Mr. Compress was holding, and Shouta took a single step to the side to rub his head against the towel in Dabi’s hands. He didn’t necessarily hate being wet in cat form – it wasn’t especially comfortable, but he’d felt worse – but water in his cat ears was infinitely more aggravating than water in his human ears had ever been.

“Oh, hold still,” Dabi grumbled, “why do you have to make everything so difficult?”

“It defines who I am,” Shouta drawled, but obediently held still while Dabi toweled off his head. By the time he was halfway down Shouta’s mane, his towel was practically soaked through.

“You are so fluffy,” Dabi grumbled, slinging his towel over the back of a chair, “why is your fur so thick?”

“Lions have manes as a form of armor to protect their throat against bites,” Shouta said absently, “but wolves have capes as a part of their cold-weather insulation. Your guess is as good as mine.”

There was a soft nyaa from the couch, and Shouta turned to find Mist staring at him with lamplike eyes.

“It’s a long story,” Shouta sighed, flicking water off the end of his tail, “I needed to get Eri out of there.”

Mist blinked slowly and flowed down from the couch and towards Eri.

“Oh!” she gasped, starting back. “Another kitty?”

“This is Baby Demon,” Dabi introduced drolly, “he’s Demon’s kitten.”

Why were they introducing Mist like that? Could they not? They didn’t even know that for sure! If anything, Dabi himself was more Shouta’s kitten than Mist was!

Ah. Okay. Shouta was going to ignore that thought.

Eri seemed simultaneously thrilled and terrified to find Mist there. Not unlike how she’d looked when Shouta had arrived in her cell in the Shie Hassaikai compound.

“Hi, kitty,” she whispered, drawing the towel around herself tightly.

Mist purred and rubbed his head on Eri’s leg, and she backpedaled with a terrified gasp.

“Eri?” Mr. Compress asked gently, “are you alright? Baby won’t hurt you. He just wants to say hi.”

“No, I- I’ll hurt him,” Eri gasped, “my curse-”

“What!?” Shouta and Shigaraki demanded simultaneously.

Eri stumbled back against Shouta’s side, bracing a hand on his damp fur, and went worryingly silent.

Shouta purred at her, craning his neck to bump his nose against her cheek. Eri stared down at her feet, an expression of pure resignation on her face and not a single word escaping from her mouth.

Shouta wanted to scream. He wanted to talk to Eri, tell her she wasn’t in trouble and they weren’t going to hurt her and if anyone ever did try to hurt her, he would personally rip their throat out with his teeth. He couldn’t say anything at all, though, because he was stuck as an artist’s rendition of a lion if the artist had never seen a lion before.

Instead of screaming, Shouta licked Eri’s cheek.

She jumped, startled by the unexpected touch, and he licked her again, more insistently.

Breath still fast and shallow, Eri dragged her gaze up from the floor and onto Shouta.

He bumped his nose against her forehead in as close as he could get to a kiss and purred louder.

“We are not going to harm you,” Kurogiri said gravely, “no matter what you do, Eri.”

“Yeah, people who hurt kids are absolute-” Dabi cut himself off suddenly and finished with a stilted, “…ly the worst.”

“I’m going to my room,” Shigaraki said abruptly, shoving himself out of his recliner to do just that.

Shouta flicked a glance at him as he left. He seemed mildly upset and concerned, but more nervous than anything.

“Ah, why don’t I get you something to eat,” Kurogiri said, retreating behind the counter, “Just a small snack. I’m sure you’re hungry after your great escape.”

“I’ll grab Demon another towel,” Dabi volunteered, pushing off the edge of the table he’d been leaning against and casually following Shigaraki through the door.

Apparently, all of them had decided that Mr. Compress was the best bet to handle the scared little girl. In all honesty, Shouta agreed with them. Shigaraki had all the social grace and emotional awareness of a cinderblock, Dabi and Kurogiri looked a little too scary on the surface to really be good at comforting unfamiliar kids, and Mr. Compress had a lot of natural charisma that he usually knew what to do with.

Even if the others had been around, Mr. Compress might still have been the best choice.

“Why don’t you come sit down,” Mr. Compress urged, “Kurogiri will get you something to eat, and you and Demon can come talk to me, okay?”

With a bit of urging from Shouta, Eri complied, carefully climbing up into a seat at the table. She was a bit short for it, but not too terribly, and Shouta draped himself across the floor under her feet.

Mr. Compress slowly teased Eri out of her shell with a lot of gentle encouragement from Shouta and a break halfway through to eat some apple slices. The food alone was quite beneficial in improving Eri’s mood, and by the time Mr. Compress was done, Eri was almost looking at him and responding in a voice that other people could actually hear. Shouta made sure to provide the necessary encouragement when she needed it and positive reinforcement when she was brave, and otherwise left it to Mr. Compress.

At the moment, he was busy making a list.

Actually, he was making several lists. A list of information he’d need to pass on to Nedzu at the next available opportunity and a list of all the people and organizations who had wronged Eri. Those two had quite a bit of overlap. There was a list of things Eri would need if she was going to stay here and a worryingly short list of other, hypothetically safer places he could possibly take her to. A list of things he still needed to learn about Eri, her living conditions and stage of development, how much she knew about the world and how it worked.

The worst one was the long list of things Shouta needed to do before he could take a nap.

First and foremost, he needed to dry off. He needed to make sure Eri both felt safe and was safe, at least for the time being. He needed to find a way to get all the relevant info on was happening with Twice, Toga, and Magne. He needed to eat something himself, because for the past few days he’d been mostly surviving off of whatever he could steal from the Shie Hassaikai’s food stores or off of Twice’s plate. He needed to check on Mist and his progress with all the League members Shouta had left behind.

He needed a nap.

Oh, wait.

Shouta sighed heavily into his paws, the tip of his tail twitching and spraying an arc of water with every flick. The breath caught in his throat as a pervasive itch rushed over him, tingling under his fur like a swarm of bees and prickling at his bones in a nerveless ache. He pinned his ears back and gritted his teeth against the sensation as he rapidly shrank down into an ordinary black housecat.

“Oh, kitty’s small again,” Eri said absently.

Shouta snorted tiredly. Since he was so much smaller now, he had gone from damp to absolutely sopping wet. All the water that couldn’t fit in his fur was now spreading rapidly over the kitchen floor in broad running puddles. On the other side of the bartop, Kurogiri sighed, and Shouta snorted again.

He pushed himself to his feet and water ran off his fur and over the ground some more. He paused briefly to rest a paw on Eri’s leg, making eye contact and blinking slowly. Then, Shouta drip-dropped his way out from under the kitchen table, down the step to the living room door, and then through the hallway to the bathroom, leaving tiny wet puddle pawprints as he went.

Once he was in the bathroom, Shouta jumped into the tub. He was a bit too small to pull the curtain properly, but Dabi appeared only a moment after Shouta had arrived and pulled it closed for him. Shouta braced his paws wide on the slippery floor of the tub and shook himself hard.

Water flew. Impossibly large quantities of water sprayed everywhere, showering the walls and curtain, shaking out of Shouta’s fur in a wild deluge.

“I’m turning the shower on,” Dabi warned, snaking a hand past the curtain. “I don’t know where that water came from, but you should rinse off with clean water.”

Shouta didn’t object in the slightest, and shook several more times under the spray to let the clean warm water wash away the grimy, rusty water from the storm gutter.

Once he was mostly happy with it, he shook himself out one final time until he could get all the soaking, heavy, clinging water out of his fur and leaped out of the tub spiky and damp instead of sopping.

“Here,” Dabi said, proffering another towel, “Kurogiri’s gonna have to do laundry early at the rate you’re going through towels.”

“Like that’s my fault,” Shouta huffed, rubbing his ears hard against the towel. Being so wet was possibly the worst part about being a cat. His fur wouldn't dry for hours, even with Dabi’s vigorous toweling.

“I think that’s as good as you’re going to get,” Dabi said, pulling the towel away and absently dropping it over the towel rack.

Shouta shook himself once more and flicked his tail. His fur was still damp, but it did seem about the best he could get for the moment. He butted his head against Dabi’s leg in a brief thanks, then trotted back into the living room. Kurogiri had started mopping up all the water Shouta had got on the floor, and Eri had a mug sitting on the table in front of her. Mr. Compress was scribbling on a notepad that didn’t look like his usual magic-practice notebooks.

Mr. Compress barely blinked as Shouta jumped from the chair to the tabletop, but he glanced up when Shouta padded towards him.

“All dried off?” Mr. Compress asked distractedly. Shouta hummed in agreement and blinked at the paper Mr. Compress was writing on. It bore a striking resemblance to the list Shouta had started making about what Eri would need.

“It’s a shopping list for Eri,” Mr. Compress explained softly, and Shouta flicked an ear at Eri, who had looked up at the sound of her name. “She will need clothes and toiletries and other supplies.”

He was right, although his list was significantly shorter than Shouta’s. In addition to something to wear, Eri would need somewhere to sleep, some sort of enrichment, and possibly school supplies or workbooks for her learning level. She would need therapy, certainly, and Quirk training, and a dozen other things that Shouta could neither provide nor coordinate while stuck as a cat.

Perhaps… he should reconsider his plan to stick around here.

Shouta slumped onto his side, draping himself over the table and settling down to think. He didn’t want to rush into a hasty decision and miss something important.

Eri was young. Five or six, most likely six. Shouta didn’t know a lot about how she had been raised, but it was highly unlikely that it had been in a healthy environment for her to grow and develop. Now that she was out of the Shie Hassaikai, she needed to be put in a healthy, stable environment as soon as possible. These were some of the most formative years of her life, and every day counted.

On the other hand, the League of Villains. Now that he had seen them – truly seen them, the hurting, broken kids at the heart of the villains – it would be hard to leave them behind. He’d started them on the path to recovery, both mental and physical, but Mist alone couldn’t keep them on that path. Inevitably, if Shouta left now, he’d only ever see the League again on opposite sides of the battlefield.

Unless…

There was nothing that said that, once Shouta found Eri a stable support structure, he had to stay with her. A few days easing her into it, making sure she was comfortable and safe with whoever was watching over her. There was nothing even saying that Shouta had to track down the kid who had started this all by turning Shouta into a cat in the first place. He could stay a cat. Could leave for a week, stick with Eri long enough to know she was getting the help she needed, exchange information with Nedzu, and then return to the League.

First, though, Shouta would have to make sure that Mist had done a good job looking after them while he was gone – and could therefore continue to do a good job when he left with Eri. Preferably, he’d also be able to find some way to let the League know that he was going to come back. There was also the risk of running into the Shie Hassaikai when he was making his way all the way back to UA.

Best case scenario, Shouta would be able to transform into the wildcat form if any potential unfriendlies appeared. But that just wasn’t in the cards. He couldn’t rely on an ability he couldn’t control, and while he would prefer to leave with Eri as soon as possible, it was better to be safe than sorry.

So, in the meantime, he’d focus on shoring up the League’s mental and physical health while he was here and start working more dedicatedly on controlling the shift between housecat and wildcat.

He’d also need to somehow acquire the money for public transport, at least for Eri, since a person – even a six-year-old person – wasn’t going to go as unremarked on as a cat would. She’d need tickets for the train and money for the bus, and if Shouta was planning to spend his time in his wildcat form, which seemed the wisest decision for both protection and reassurance, he might also be required to pay for transport.

An ordinary black housecat wouldn’t be begrudged a free bus ride, but a clearly unnatural wildcat wandering around the city with a little girl was more likely to be a person with a shapeshifting Quirk or even the result of a creation Quirk which could be required to pay for transit.

“Demon, your tail is still wet,” Mr. Compress said, pushing it off his notepad. Shouta swiped it over the paper again anyway, just to spite him. They better take him on that shopping trip to pick up supplies for Eri. There were some very important things that Mr. Compress had completely overlooked.

Chapter Text

Shouta coughed hard. Twice. He shook himself roughly and coughed again.

“My apologies,” Kurogiri said, and in his defense, he did sound genuinely contrite. But Shouta was petty and spiteful, so he coughed again. Pointedly.

“This is your fault,” Shouta informed him hoarsely. He was technically correct, even.

It was a bare few minutes into their shopping trip for Eri, and Shouta had learned several things.

He had learned that, under the suit, Kurogiri sometimes had no actual physical body. Shouta had no idea when or why, and he was sure that there was certainly sometimes a human body under all the mist, but also, when in a pinch, Kurogiri could apparently stick things – or unfortunate cats – into his chest cavity.

Shouta had also learned that such experience was not fun. In the slightest.

His tongue tasted like bitter ozone, and it felt like there was a small thunderstorm’s worth of static stuck in his throat. It had been all he could do to not erupt in a coughing fit while clinging to the inside of Kurogiri’s vest and waiting for him to distract Shigaraki with something else. The whole experience was awful, and he didn’t like it, and it didn’t help that it felt just like when he’d walked face first into one of Oboro’s storm clouds one of the rare times that Oboro was upset enough for his Quirk to act up and sprout spirals of hurricane-twisting thunderclouds around him.

Shouta coughed one more time, rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and shook his head to clear the memory away. He glanced down at Eri. She was staring at him, wide-eyed with concern, and Shouta nyaaed a soft encouragement and flicked his tail cheerfully, determinedly swallowing another cough that tried to crawl up his throat.

Life was a struggle.

In a smooth leap, Shouta crossed from Kurogiri’s shoulders to Dabi’s. He was the one holding the list, and Shouta peered down at the paper in his hand, tail wrapping distractedly around Dabi’s throat.

“Okay,” Dabi said, “we’ll start with clothes and other personalized things, since that’s what we need Eri for the most, and then we can move onto other stuff.”

Shouta bobbed his head in agreement, leaning over more to read the list better. Mostly, he’d stopped being seriously inconvenienced by his messed-up cat vision, but reading things that were farther away than about ten or fifteen centimeters was just not really in the cards.

“What, are you trying to read the list?” Dabi laughed, pulling it closer as if he was offering it to Shouta. It was a joke, but Shouta immediately capitalized on the opportunity, squinting at Mr. Compress’s clipped handwriting.

There were a few things added to the bottom that Shouta hadn’t seen the first time he’d looked, but it was still missing a lot of important stuff. Dabi and Kurogiri could handle things like finding clothes that fit. Shouta had his own shopping list to attend to.

He stuck around just long enough to make sure that Eri was as comfortable as possible with the two scariest-looking members of the League, and that Kurogiri and Dabi weren’t overwhelming her with too many choices, but were allowing her some agency. Then, he bounded from Dabi’s shoulder to the shelf to the ground. He paused to rub his head against Eri’s leg and trotted away down the aisle.

The signs over the aisles were completely incomprehensible from Shouta’s position on the floor, and he could climb shelves to read them properly, but that pretty much defeated the purpose of having signs over aisles in the first place, so instead he initiated a simple search pattern to check each aisle and area for various things he was looking for.

 The first thing Shouta managed to find was in what he was pretty sure was the self-care aisle. A jar of external keratin polish for horns, hooves, beaks, and scales. Unfortunately, he couldn’t pick it up on his own, so he made a mental note of where it was and kept searching.

Next, only an aisle down, he found the Band-Aids. Ordinary, boring Band-Aids, but also Hero-themed ones and ones with stars and puppies and, yes, unicorns on them. On the other side of the store there were coloring books and colored pencils and then, finally, something Shouta could actually pick up and carry.

Shelves upon shelves of stuffed animals towered over him, and Shouta flicked an ear and started searching. A huge swathe of the aisle was made up of merchandise of all shapes and sizes. Hero plushies, cartoon characters, animes, videogames, and even some GanRiki Neko items. The top shelf was dominated by giant plushies bigger than Eri was, some as big as Shouta would be in his human form. Other than that, it was sheer chaos.

Shouta felt ridiculously like a stuffie himself as he waded through the jumble. Like he was one of the fluffy glass-eyed stuffed creatures that had decided to stand up and look around. He found dogs and bears and foxes, penguins and aligators and dolphins, dragons and gryphons and more unicorns than he could count, and cats of every size and color except solid black.

After combing the shelves and coming away with a cheap, somewhat sad-looking tuxedo cat as his closest match, Shouta finally jumped back down to the floor with a sigh. Either he’d have to go for something a bit less on-the-nose, or he’d have to look again and hope he’d missed something.

He scanned the shelves again, tail lashing in irritation, and his gaze caught on something sitting on the merch shelves. Squished between a Miruko-inspired stuffed bunny and a creature that even Shouta recognized as Pikachu was a floppy black cat plushie with wide yellow eyes and a ribbon tied around its throat.

Shouta dropped the tuxedo cat back on the bottom shelf and scrambled up onto the shelf with the cat.

It turned out to be exactly what it had looked like. A decently-sized plushie, big enough for Eri to be able to squeeze it but not too big that Shouta couldn’t carry it, with somewhat heavy, floppy legs and tail. It was solid black with wide yellow eyes and a little pink triangular nose and a ribbon around its throat that Shouta could tell was bright red even with his muted cat vision.

Shouta carefully fit his teeth around the ribbon and picked the stuffed animal up. He bounded to the ground with it firmly in his grip and started the long process of finding the group again.

Fortunately, with two members with very distinctive Qurk scents, it didn’t take long for Shouta to track them through the racks of little girls’ clothing. Kurogiri was trailing slightly behind while Dabi carefully and gently guided Eri through picking out a long-sleeved dress.

“Nyaa,” Shouta said around the plushie in his mouth, and Kurogiri glanced down at him.

“There you are, Demon,” Kurogiri said, “I had wondered where you got off to. What do you have?”

Shouta held up his head, showing off his find.

“What’s this?” Kurogiri held out a misty hand, and Shouta dropped the plushie into his palm. “A stuffie?”

He paused for a second, then held up the stuffed cat next to Shouta. “This looks like you.”

“Incredibly observant,” Shouta said dryly.

“We can’t buy you random stuffies just because you found one that looks like you,” Kurogiri said sternly.

“I know for a fact that Heroes do it all the time,” Shouta said absently, then added uselessly, “but it’s not for me.”

He jutted his head towards Eri, pointing his ears and flicking his tail meaningfully.

“For her?” Kurogiri realized, peering down at the stuffed cat. His eyes curved into a slow smile, and he gently set the cat in the cart. Shouta flicked his tail again, vindicated. Then, he gripped the cuff of Kurogiri’s pant leg in his teeth and pulled.

“What do you need?” Kurogiri asked. Shouta rolled his eyes and pulled again, pinning his ears back. “You want me to follow you?”

There it was. Shouta let go of Kurogiri’s cuff, turning and taking several steps away, looking back with a mew of encouragement.

“Dabi, I’ll be leaving the cart with you,” Kurogiri said, only waiting long enough to receive a brief acknowledgement from Dabi before starting after Shouta.

Shouta immediately led Kurogiri to the self-care aisle, where he pinpointed the horn polish once again and patted at the jar with a soft chirp.

“What’s this?” Kurogiri asked, sinking into a crouch, and mist coiled around Shouta and made the air smell wild and stormy. “Horn polish?”

Shouta blinked slowly at Kurogiri, who stared at him for a long moment before blinking slowly back.

Shouta’s eyes went impossibly wide, and he gaped stupidly at Kurogiri. As far as Shouta had known, Kurogiri was incapable of blinking. His eyes were always just… there, paler streams of mist on his dark face. They changed shape, swirled faster or stretched shorter sometimes, but they never left.

Except, apparently, when they did.

“Very well,” Kurogiri agreed, pulling the horn polish off the shelf. “What else?”

Band-aids with unicorns and stars on them. Colored pencils. Brightly-colored hair clips. A pair of high-quality children’s Quirk-protection gloves. A collection of fidget toys, tangles and stress balls and infinity cubes. Those ones weren’t just for Eri. Shouta had tried and failed to find them at the konbini he’d frequented previously, and Shigaraki was desperately in need of something to do with his hands that was less destructive than clawing his own skin off.

Shouta and Kurogiri ran into Dabi and Eri in the shoes section, where Shouta had been hunting down socks with bright, fun patterns on them. Dabi was, impossibly gently, explaining how the Brannock Device worked to measure her foot.

Eri had just tentatively put her foot in the little kid-sized device, and Shouta jumped up onto the bench next to Eri.

“Perfect,” Dabi said, settling back onto his heels. “Now we know your size, we can check your foot against the forms to see if you need specialty shoes.”

He pulled the form off the rack on the end of the aisle and showed it to Eri. Shouta had known since he was old enough to understand it that his own feet were built differently from other people, and he’d always just ordered special-made shoes directly to his measurements, so he’d never had to check with the molds. He had only a vague idea of how it worked, but it appeared that Dabi knew, so Shouta settled onto the bench and wrapped his tail around his paws, tilting his head curiously.

“This is the seventeen-centimeter one,” Dabi explained, showing Eri what he was holding. It was a piece of glittery blue plastic in the shape of a shoe sole, and Dabi showed Eri how he dusted the plastic with a special chalk brush, then guided her foot into the fake sole.

“See,” he said, showing her the plastic after she’d removed her foot, “these white spots are where your foot didn’t touch it, and here’s the picture of what it should look like.” He proffered a laminated sheet of paper with several pictures of the same or similar molds as the one he was holding. There were a few pictures of various permissible baselines as well as some examples of what a heteromorphic foot shape would look like and when it would be considered necessary to get a specialized shoe for it. The text printed on it was big enough for Shouta to read, and it seemed simple enough.

“Your footprint matches this one closest,” Dabi explained, pointing at one of the pictures at the top of the page, “so you can get wholesale shoes.”

“Okay,” Eri said, quietly intrigued.

“That means you can walk around and look at the shelves, and anything with a seventeen on it-” he pointed to the ‘17’ on the blue plastic mold, “-should be able to fit you. Do you want to find a few you like the look of, or do you want me or Kurogiri to suggest some?”

Eri shrugged, tilting her head down to look at her feet.

“You can pick either one,” Dabi said, and, in a feat akin to Shouta looking inviting and approachable, his smoke-hoarse voice almost sounded gentle, “You won’t be in trouble, no matter what.”

“I- can you choose?” Eri asked softly, “or- or Kitty?”

“What do you think, Demon?” Dabi asked.

Shouta stretched, paused to butt his head against Eri’s shoulder and, paced along the bench scanning the shelves he could see. He knew next to nothing about shoes, especially shoes for little girls, and from his perspective he could barely see what most of the shelves held. By now he had a decent enough grasp on his color vision to somewhat muddle out what color everything was, even when the reds blended into the yellows and the yellows turned white, but that still didn’t make him an incredible judge of fashion.

But Eri had asked, and Dabi had asked, so Shouta would at least make an effort.

Shouta finally spotted something that looked reasonable – sturdy, comfortable, and not too boring – and then was faced with the issue of actually getting to it.

He managed to jump from the bench to the second shelf, then awkwardly clambered up onto the third shelf, ducking his head and tiptoeing over the shoes to get to the box he wanted. The he nyaaed for Kurogiri’s attention and patted the shoes, which Kurogiri helpfully pulled off the shelf.

In the time it took Shouta to get his hands on a single candidate, Dabi had chosen two options off the shelf, and he presented all three to Eri with a flourish.

“Here’s what we found in our first check,” he said, “We can look again if you want us to, but do any of these look good to you?”

“Ummm,” Eri kicked her feet slightly, looking down at the selection in front of her. Dabi had found one pair of black canvas high-tops that looked almost exactly like his own and, on the complete opposite of the spectrum, a pair of white sneakers with glittery rainbows streaked and woven across them. They both looked decent; sturdy, good quality, nothing too complex. Although, if Eri struggled to tie her own shoes, the short laces on the rainbow shoes wouldn’t help.

“I like, um,” she glanced up at Dabi cautiously, and Shouta pressed himself against her side in silent support. “I like the… brown ones?”

‘The brown ones’ were the ones Shouta had found, short thick-soled ankle boots that he’d only been about ninety percent sure were light tan when he’d picked them out.

“Alright,” Dabi said easily, “why don’t you try them on?”

When had Dabi become good with children? Was this something that had been hidden the whole time, and activated like a sleeper agent when faced with a traumatized six-year-old? Shouta wasn’t really one to judge, since he had learned time and time again that he had the same sleeper agent hidden in his brain somewhere, but it was still… noteworthy, he supposed.

“Oh-um, okay,” Eri said nervously.

“Here,” Dabi said, and he knelt down to help her pull a pair of socks on – ones that Shouta and Kurogiri had just returned with, blue with yellow stars – and then slip the boots on over top. Eri gasped when he pulled the laces, and Dabi paused, concerned. “Too tight?”

“No- um. It’s… warm.”

When was the last time Eri had worn shoes, Shouta wondered. It was unlikely that Overhaul had ever given her any. She likely didn’t remember anything before that.

“It is,” Dabi agreed, his voice rough in a way that wasn’t from too much smoke inhalation. “It’s to protect your feet and make sure they’re not cold.”

Eri watched him with wide eyes as he carefully tied her shoelaces into neat double knots.

“It’s supposed to be snug, but not hurt,” Dabi said, “do they feel alright?”

Eri nodded tentatively, kicking her feet, marveling at her new footwear.

“Your toes don’t feel squished?” Dabi prodded, and Eri shook her head.

“Alright, go ahead and give them a try,” Dabi said, “stand up, walk around. If walking makes them rub somewhere strange or catch on the back of your heel, tell me, alright?”

Eri pushed herself off the bench, putting her feet on the ground. Wearing a real dress and shoes, hair tucked behind her ears, and curious instead of scared, she looked almost like an ordinary little girl.

Eri, Shouta had to admit, was not like other little girls he’d saved before. Likely, she was unlike any he’d save in the future. She was unique. Somewhat in her trauma, somewhat in the exact circumstances of her rescue, but certainly unique. Something special.

The look on Dabi’s face mirrored Shouta’s thoughts almost exactly.

A large part of Shouta’s reason for being a teacher was to make up for all the ways his own teachers had failed him. He knew what it was like to be put down, ignored, and directly hurt by people who were supposed to be helping and guiding him. He had taken that knowledge and used his own experience to become the exact opposite of the teachers who had seemingly had it out for him and his sisters when they were in school.

There was something innate to humans that way, where either you became exactly what you always hated, or… you did the reverse.

Shouta didn’t know a lot about Dabi’s past. He knew some things, and he could infer others, and he knew everything he needed to nurse a bone-deep hatred of Endeavor, but he didn’t know any specifics.

He knew Dabi had suffered as a kid. Knew that he’d been hurt and abandoned by people who should have been his greatest advocates and supports. Shouta suspected that Dabi had been veering in the same direction, hurting other people for no particular reason, other than that he was angry and wanted revenge on a person who was, at the moment, untouchable.

But his Quirk buildup meltdown had jarred Dabi momentarily, and Eri had arrived at just the right time to supply a second knock to his plan for blazing revenge that was, at this point, mostly just habit. Shouta would likely only have to supply one more definitive blow, and Dabi would be thrown all the way off the destructive path he was treading.

Shouta flicked his tail, watching Eri pause and stare down at the fluffy tops of her boots, marveling at them once again and peering at herself in the slanted mirrors. Dabi was watching her too, a dozen different emotions warring for dominance in his eyes.

It wouldn’t take much of a blow at all.