Then
In a forest is a group of cats that live and help one another. They share their food, they heal the sick and injured, they take care of problems that may affect them, such as fox and badger sightings.
But as any large group there are also disagreements. Fights can break out and well, that's not quite the spirit of their group now is it? They need to work together to survive. Petty squabbles and being at each other's throats won't do the trick.
That's where the Leader comes in.
The leader will resolve and prevent cats from tearing their own fur out. They will listen and decide, and their decision will be followed. Any big news goes straight to them as they figure out how it will best affect the group. Oh, it's a big job sure.
But she absolutely loves it.
Leader loves being there to help out in any way, offering a paw. She does her best not to turn any cat down, from the youngest kit to the oldest elder, she will find a solution to best fit their needs.
And the others will dip their heads in thanks, ever grateful.
Leaf-bare is when Leader is stretched to the limits, however. Especially this current one.
Prey is scarce. Water is frozen deeply.
And it is so, so cold.
Cats will go out in search of prey, hoping to find something, anything. But more often than not, come back empty pawed.
Moral is low, and cats are tired, starving, dying.
Leader cannot do much about this, other than to continue searching.
And speaking of searching...
The two-leg child that has been sharing their camp since two green-leaf's ago, has been missing for a quarter moon.
Leader knows why he is. The others are secretly relieved.
The child has become a great hunter, splendid really!
But the child eats so much, it needs to.
Feeling guilty, the child slipped out of camp one night to where leader is sure, the other side of the forest where its hunting shouldn't affect her group. Sometimes leaving a few pieces of prey behind in an area they patrol daily, a way to be sure they come across it to take back to camp.
Leader admits it is very helpful.
But she's the one who let it into the camp those two green-leaf's ago, which puts the child in her responsibility.
And she's worried for the child.
Hence why she is currently making her way to the part of forest where she is sure he is hiding.
Snow crunches under paw as she lifts her nose up to scent the air, keeping her senses open for prey to take back as well.
Leader freezes when the overwhelming stench of blood floods her nose, too much blood and under the smell of it she can detect the child's scent as well.
For a moment it feels as if her body was plunged into an icy lake, thinking for the briefest of moments that it was her child's blood the was staining the air.
But the she picked up another two-leg's scent.
Leader steeled herself and rounded a bush and towards the clearing where the source is coming from.
There, several feet away lays the remains of some foolish two-leg, blood sluggishly dancing around its corpse, bone visible is some areas poking out to meet the cold air nipping at them, some broken and crunched, large teeth markings littering their surface. From her nose Leader can tell it has been dead for a few days before being gorged upon.
Taking her eyes off the corpse she spots the clearing covered in giant paw prints that she is very familiar with by now, leaving no doubt of who was behind this.
She looks up when the sound of shifting snow and dirt catches her attention. She walks towards the bush it originated out of and poked her head inside it.
A large hole greeted her. And inside that hole was the child she had been searching for, messing with what she recognizes as a blue pelt cloth the two-legs wear.
Leader loudly meows to get his attention and green, wide eyes snap up to her. The child lets out a delighted shout and makes quick work of jumping out of the hole.
["Leader!"] He beams, tail swishing behind him in obvious pleasure.
Despite this being the child's second leaf-bare with her group, his two-leg form has yet to grow any bigger than when she first offered her paw forward. Still so tiny compared to the grown two-legs she seen walking in their settlement. Just how long does it take for them to grow up? The child's second, beastal form has no qualms with growing larger by what seems the moon.
Leader's eyes soften as she purrs in greeting. ["I missed you, my child. Just what have you been up to?"] At this, she flicks her tail at the dead two-leg.
A sheepish smile makes its way onto the child's face, twisting the fabric in his hands slightly. ["Oh! Well, um."] The child squeaks, high-pitched ["There were others, other two-legs like me! A few days ago. They were making a lot of noise and shouting around so I thought that they wanted to play?"] Shifting from foot to foot the child continued.
["So I stalked up to them and started a game of tag!"] He proudly puffs his chest out at this statement, ears twitching upwards.
["I caught one really quickly! And then the others ran away, so I chased them! They were pretty slow, actually.] He informs with a tilt of his head. ["So I tried going easy on them by going slower too."]
He pauses at this, and Leader dips her head in a sign to continue as she sits down.
Snow softly crunches under his clawed toes as he drags them in slow circles as he looks down to watch. ["I might've gotten carried away, but it was fun! They all went away later, but... when I came back the first two-leg was still here."] Something flashed on his face for a brief second before passing.
["I think I broke him."] He reveals. ["He was broken and I didn't want to waste food."]
Now
Papers are scattered across the surface of a wooden table, information and low-quality photos taken by street surveillance cameras of a certain group of people.
Traffickers.
Three days after chasing a villain into the Musutafu forest and encountering the beast that lives there, U.A. was alerted that a second-year support student had gone missing.
The student's mother calling the school several hours after it had let out, wondering if her child was perhaps still working on a project and forgot to inform her. Receiving a negative that they were in on school grounds she called in to the police with worry.
And so, police and detectives start looking into the matter. Upon they discover through a street camera that the student had been nabbed on his way to school that morning, by what they recognized as some traffickers that keep on slipping from their grasp.
Before this, the group kept a rather low profile in terms of who they kidnapped.
Sticking to the homeless at first, before moving on to neglected children where parents wouldn't bother to call in their missing status until too late, and adults living on their own in shabby neighborhoods with weak doors and windows.
Suddenly kidnapping a student from one of the most famous hero schools in the world?
It was a huge leap from their usual thing and a very obvious spotlight now resides on their actions.
Several heroes have signed up to look for them and rescue the child and any others that had been kidnapped.
Aizawa Shouta is one of those heroes.
Flipping one of papers over, Shouta examines it.
Shochu Nagaaki stares back at him with sunken eyes. This man is one of what the police believe is the main reason this particular group has been able to effortlessly capture and slip away from scenes.
A gas quirk that once inhaled, messes with a person's senses. Clouding their minds, limbs becoming heavy and cumbersome, and blurry vision. A very bothersome quirk to defend against.
Shouta has been carrying a small gas mask in case he comes across the man, best to be prepared.
Putting the paper down back on the table to his left, he turns his attention to a rough map that contains sightings and previous kidnapping cases, with Hirota Eiichi's, the missing support student, circled in bright gold. Previous kidnapping cases circled in green, and any others after Hirota's circled in red.
Two more had gone missing after Hirota, an adult woman and a middle school boy. Both in possession of a form of shock absorption quirk, most likely the reason they were targeted in the first place. The odds of it being a coincidence are slim.
But why that sort of quirk?
That was the question.
The missing student was easy to guess. Their quirk allowed them to transfigure other materials into something different, including gold. A get rich quick scheme to fund themselves.
Shock absorption was handy if you needed a durable bodies for hard labor.
With most of the cases before the quirks were leaning more on the mutation side, with some random scatterings that don't seem to collate.
Noises of a pen scritching on paper as Shouta writes down more and more, the paper soon brimming with information.
It seems likely that they were hired long term by another organization in search for these certain quirks, the mutant ones at least. Whether the others a grouped in with them or someone else is still uncertain.
Shouta taps taps taps, the pen tip in thought. Bouncing it onto the table's surface.
Catching the traffickers would only be the start of it. From there they would have to search and interrogate the members to pry to information from them on where exactly they would have sold off the missing people. And from there another searching game.
Sighing, Shouta leans back in his chair and sets the pen down. He swipes his thumbs over his eyes with a groan.
It has been nearly two weeks since he put himself on this case and it's been an endless juggle of teaching, research, and patrolling. So busy he was, he sometimes forgot to eat throughout the day. He was almost completely living off of jelly pouches to Hizashi's disgust.
Not to mention sleep was something that he has been ignoring. Leaving it out on the side of the road as it waits eagerly for him to come back and embrace it with open and grateful arms.
But sleep will just have to be disappointed. He's got other things to attend to.
Looking at the clock Shouta notices the time is nearing midnight.
He hefts himself up and shuffles to the coffee machine for one last cup. He swiftly downs it ignoring his burning tongue, gathers his hero gear, and heads out of his apartment room.
The last two kidnappings had been in the southern part of Musutafu, seemingly traveling farther down. So, for the past three days he had been searching along that area thoroughly and taking care of his other hero duties when the time calls.
Another night, another neighborhood to investigate and,
Huh.
His hand pauses on the lobby doorknob. That'll be near the forest.
Perhaps I'll stop and retrieve my googles while I'm nearby. He muses.
Opening the building door, and the hero Eraserhead is off.
Feet flying from passing rooftops, Eraserhead observes his surroundings.
A few hours have come and gone, and he has nothing to show for it other than stopping a shifty drug deal.
He lands on a roof and pauses to catch his breath, looking out across the street.
Three people stumble out of a bar giggling to each other as they drunkenly try to call a cab. Slurred words reaching his ears, as he continues to gaze at them through half-lidded eyes.
He looks away and up at the bar they came from and the hero contemplates if he should go inside for a sign or whisper of his targets.
Leaping from the building, he maneuvers himself in the air and lands safely onto the ground. He dusts himself off and saunters to the bar, hands lazily in his pockets.
He is about to open the door when he catches a flash of green in the corner of his eye and snaps his head towards it.
But whatever it was, it had already ducked into an alley and out of sight. Shouta wonders if he should follow and investigate.
At that moment, however, came two people quickly turning the corner. Both were donning a police uniform and seemingly out of breath.
They stopped and paused, gasping for air. One looks up and around and curses. The officer takes a step forward and catches sight of Shouta and waves him over.
Looks like his decision was decided then.
Hand slipping off the door, Shouta strides over to the pair of them as they rush to meet him in the middle.
"Have you-" One starts, panting. "Have you seen a child run by?"
"It's dangerous for them to be out so late, but they ran from us when we tried to help." His partner added in.
Shouta's lips thinned. Dangerous indeed.
Stepping slightly to the side, Shouta points with his thumb towards the alley. "I saw someone run down there." He informs them, and then looks back to the pair of them. "I am a hero, allow me to help."
They seemed relieved a that fact and accepted his offer with gratitude.
Dipping into where he saw the blur disappear into, Shouta sweeps his eyes into the dark. If the child was trying to get away, then they most likely wouldn't hang around here.
A quick climb up a fire escape and the erasure hero was back to the roofs.
Following along the alley, Shouta keeps a careful eye for any signs of shadowy movement. It soon opens and splits up into two more paths.
A loud metallic crash rings out from the right as Shouta lands on the corner of a building.
Following it towards its source, however, only led him to a knocked over trashcan and a stunned bob-tailed cat that hissed viciously at him before scampering away. Leaving Shouta to stand in the middle of a dirty alley as he fingers his temples.
He turns around continues searching the twisting and turning paths of behind the city without seeing a single hair of a child or well, anyone.
"C'mon kid, where are you? I have other people to look for, you know." He grumbles under his breath as he comes to yet another dead end.
Shouta considers the possibility of the kid slipping into their house after a night of being chased by law enforcement. With any luck that will hold true and he will have one less potential missing case to deal with as he continues his current mission.
Of course, that won't stop him from keeping a careful eye out just in case.
Slipping his phone out of his pocket he takes note of the time. Four A.M. is when Shouta will have to head back to his apartment and get ready for the school day. With any luck he'll be able to squeeze in an hour's worth of sleep in the teacher's lodge before homeroom.
But he still has roughly forty-five minutes until then.
It was at that moment a piercing scream rang sharply throughout the night.
Eraserhead wasted no time in jumping into action, straining his legs to race faster as another pained yell makes itself known.
Over there?! Turning hastily on his heel he sprints to his left, the rooftops becoming a blur as his feet flies beyond the concrete.
The shouting and yelling grow in volume as he gets closer, and closer, until finally he skids to a stop and takes in the scene below.
It's there that he sees a small child. Long rabbit-like ears pressed firmly behind their head as they painfully back away, a tail swishing behind them in distress.
From his angle he can make out the child wearing a hoodie several sizes too big on his small frame, and that they were clutching their side firmly. A sign of injury.
And he can see the cause of what might have happened.
Four adults, although one was still howling off to the side, snarling curses to the child while holding his limp arm.
The other three were slowly stalking up to the little kid who was attempting to escape.
And low and behold from the back of the pack he can make out Shochu, the gas user who has been a key factor in the recent kidnappings.
He'll be damned if he lets them get away with another one.
Eraserhead jumps from the building and lands directly behind the injured kid, who stiffens immediately, along with the villains.
"Who the hell are you?!" The women of the group snarls.
"Shit- a hero?" Another mumbles. He shares a look with the gas user, who nods slightly.
Eraserhead reaches into his scarf and slips the gas mask over his lower face as he activates his quirk on Shochu. From the corner of his eye he can catch sight of the kid trembling violently, on the verge of hyperventilating.
"My quirk isn't working!" Shochu wailed, "That bastard is blocking it!"
"Then charge him!" The villain with the broken arm snarls. Still griping his limp arm, he shoves at the other. "We can't afford to have a hero on our asses!"
"Get out of here, kid!" Eraserhead demanded, grabbing at his capture weapon. The kid gives no signs that he heard the hero, however. Not moving an inch from where he stands, shaking.
The villains hesitate, but are soon howling battle cries and surging forward, brandishing daggers.
And the kid. Still. Doesn't. Move.
Shit!
Shouta jerks his arm to his side to grab the kid by the back of his hoodie and to yank him out of the way of danger. His fingers barely touch the fabric however before the kid flinches to action with a small gasp.
And the kid starts to grow.
The transformation takes less than a second before Shouta hears something snap and he is suddenly slammed by a large whipping tail. He is flung across the air and hits a wall with the force of a truck, his shoulder shrieking with absolute agony.
From his ringing ears he can hear a garbling roar and the terrified screams of the villains. One suddenly cuts short sharply and Shouta forces his eyes open.
It was as if he had suddenly gone back in time. Before him was the monster of the forest he had encountered just two weeks ago.
This time however, it looked every bit of a corner animal.
Crouched low to the ground, as it slowly lowers its forepaw to the ground from where it was stretched out, claws curled. The fur along the beast's neck bristled to twice its usual size, giving the creature a twisted look with its scaly half. Blood coats and drips from its side, trickling slowly. It's tail thrashes once more as it whips a snarling face to three of the villains, electric green eyes flaring.
The villains who look very, very pale. Faces painted in pure shock, as the women wails in pitched volume.
"He killed- he killed Gai!" She chokes out.
The creature shifts as it now turns its full attention to the others and as it does, Shouta gets a full view of Gai collapsed onto the cold concrete. Blood gushes thickly out of three long gashes lining along his torso. The brick above him spiderwebbed in his impact.
At the beast's glare the remaining villains flinch back. Shochu whimpers to himself as he turns on his foot and books it in the opposite direction, seeking escape.
With a crack, the beast leaps after him with outstretched claws. The other two villains scrambling to move out of its path of destruction as it blurs through, paws scarcely touching the ground.
Shochu gives one last look behind him and screams at the sight of what pursues him.
Jaws snap around the gas user and his screams turns into shrieks of pain as he gets jerked from side to side, over and over, its teeth digging, farther, deeper. A horrible squelching filling the alleyway as droplets of blood sprays out and stains the walls, the ground.
Shouta needs to stop this. He needs to stop this creature- no child from killing his leads. A child that was backed into a wall and cornered. A child that was injured.
Supporting himself on the brick wall, Shouta hefts himself upwards. His shoulder protesting. "Kid-" he starts, but at that moment the child flings Shochu towards him at terrifying speeds, forcing him to push off and away from the wall.
He stumbles to one knee and whips his head back to the rogue child, quirk ready.
Only to find the alley beast-free.
Shouta holds for a few seconds more, but no signs of teeth, claws, or fur reveals itself.
Letting his hold on his quirk drop, Shouta runs for the end of the alley and stops at its entrance, hand gripping the corner of the wall.
But the child wasn't on the streets either. If it weren't for the mix of curious and scared faces glancing in the same direction, necks craning, he would have thought him to disappear entirely.
And if he is not mistaken that direction is...
Turning back into the alleyway, Shouta observes the damage.
The women's back is pressing against the wall as if hoping to merge into it, gasping sobs wrecking through her body. Unseeing eyes focused on Gai's unmoving body.
The villain with the injured arm catches sight of Shouta returning and shakily attempts to stand up.
Eraserhead glares at him.
"I'd sit back down if I were you." He growls. "Unless you want your leg to match that arm of yours."
The villain flops back onto the ground, defeated.
The hero makes quick work of binding the two with zip ties. Once bound, he digs out his phone and slips the mask off his face. He Sends his coordinates and a request for an ambulance. He then turns his attention to Gai.
He crouches down and puts two fingers to the villain's neck and purses his lip when no pulse makes itself known.
Standing up, Shouta rummages through his utility belt, pulling out a thick white cloth and bandages as he makes his way to Shochu.
The villain whines and gasps, hands clenching and unclenching, hovering uselessly over his abdomen.
Shouta stoops down and presses the cloth to his wound, blocking the bleeding. He makes quick work of patching him up, the alleyway quiet save for the sniffling of the women and Shochu's cries.
Soon he can hear sirens growing louder as they arrive towards his location. Three paramedics flood around him, pushing past him as two of them sets up a gurney and hefts Shochu onto it.
Shouta looks away from the remaining paramedic checking over the deceased villain, as something catches his eye.
Padding towards it, he stops. He leans down and gently picks it up to observe.
In his hand laid a yellow item. The strap had been snapped in half, but the item itself was undamaged. If he flipped them around and looked inside, he would see the name of its previous owner. There was no mistaking it, these were his hero goggles.
"Eraserhead!" A familiar voice calls out. Shouta's dark eyes follow towards the source and finds Naomasa.
The detective jogs up to him, he blinks in shock as the paramedics wheel the two injured villains away.
"Are they...?" He hesitates.
"There was a situation. One is dead, and another critically injured. The other two are relatively fine outside of the male having a what seems to be a broken arm." Shouta lists off. He slips his goggles into his pocket as he continues. "All four of them are a part of the trafficker group we've been tracking down."
Naomasa nods, looking lost in thought. "Right. We'll have to bring them in for questions once they're checked over."
He then looks back at Shouta. "And what was the 'situation'?" He asks with a raised eyebrow.
"I'll have to get back with you on that," He gruffly replies, "I still have one more thing to take care of, take care of those two for me."
With that, the erasure hero leaps off, leaving the detective behind exclaiming with confusion.
Before, Shouta couldn't leave the villains on their own. But now that they are no longer in his hands, he needs to reach out to the child.
The wound on their side wasn't a pretty sight and a flash of concern races through him.
He runs through the streets, turning when necessary, remembering the direction to which they disappeared.
And really where it was made sense.
When a child was scared and hurt, they would go back to what comforts them, to where they know they would be safe.
Back to their home.
The forest looms overhead and Shouta slows down to a stop.
He sweeps his eyes and quickly spots blood and twigs carelessly crushed.
Following that trial into the forest, he continues onwards. The path was quite clear, having no thought in sneaking or covering their tracks in the hurry, growing more and more sloppy, desperate.
Shouta pulls back the branches of a bush and pauses.
Laying haphazardly onto their side, in a blood of their own blood- lays the child in their beastal form. The sides of their chest rapidly heaving, tail feebly twitching.
As Shouta releases the branches and allows them to snap back into place, an eye snaps open and hazily watches the hero with a lifted head.
Placidly putting up his hand, he tries to reassure the kid with a soft voice.
"I'm not going to hurt you. I only wish to help."
Clouded eyes study him for a moment longer before slipping closed, head falling back to the earth. And before he can take a step forward, the body shrinks back down to the form of the small child he seen before.
He steps in and applies pressure to their still bleeding wound, and lifts them up into his arms, weighing hardly anything to him.
"Now lets see if we can get you fixed up kiddo."