Chapter Text
The morning started out good. Normal. He had expected everything to go just as it always did. Eat breakfast. Walk to school, carefully avoiding Kachaan. Get in the classroom seconds before the bell rang, to avoid his morning beating as best he could. It was all normal. Until the bell rang at the end of the day, and as he was packing up. HE said those words. Words that he never thought he would hear come out of his childhood best friend's mouth. Yes, he had heard similar words come from others. The last person he ever thought he would hear them from, was Kachaan, or Bakugo Katsuki.
“Y0u wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time saving idea for you.” He had said, turning away from him to face his buddies, “If you think you’ll have a quirk in your next life… go take a swan dive off the roof!”
Those few words spun around his mind as he walked home that afternoon. What would Bakugo do, if he had decided that that would be what he would do with his afternoon. What if he had decided to go and take that dive off the roof. He knew that the door would be unlocked. He always ate his lunch on the roof, as it was the only place that bullies had yet to come looking for him.
Midoriya Izuku had thought that it would be a good day. How wrong he had been. He heard sirens blaring, the closer he got to the run down apartment building he and his mother called home. It was probably a villain attack. They were getting more common lately in his area. The heroes would handle it like they handled everything else that went wrong. He almost wanted to follow the sounds of the sirens to see who would show up to this fight and save the day, but he knew that he needed to get home. His mother would be wondering where he was. She was his favorite person. With her warm soft hugs, long green hair that matched his, only in color, and her round face set with green eyes, just like his. They looked so similar to each other. The only thing that was different was the fact that Izuku had curly hair, something that he had gotten from his father, whom he had never met, due to having been called away to work in America, mere weeks after he was born. His father had never returned, never called, and never sent letters.
He was barely a block away from home when he realized that the sirens he had been hearing on his walk home had gotten louder, and that he was walking towards them. He picked up the pace, hoping to see a glimpse of whichever hero had come to deal with the issues. When he rounded the corner however, his stomach dropped. The apartment building, actually all four in that area, that he had left this morning, with his mom inside, because she had the day off. Was destroyed. There were police and heroes surrounding the area. He started running before he could stop himself.
ERASER POV
It had been a long day. He hadn’t needed to go to his teaching job today as he had expelled his assigned class this year. He had picked up an extra shift from HeroNet, as the hero that did this patrol normally had gotten himself injured.
It was a rather calm patrol. That is, until a gigantified villain had run through the residential area that made up a good chunk of the patrol route. The villain had been captured by Mt. Lady earlier that day, but he now needed to attend to the apartment complex that had been crushed by the villain. It wasn’t the only thing that had been damaged by the incident, but it was the only one that had had people still in it. A building had been destroyed a couple blocks away, but that building had been condemned and abandoned years ago.
The complex he was at had been four sets of apartment buildings, with eight apartments for each building. They had pulled out 13 bodies so far, and most everyone was accounted for that lived in the buildings. The only one they had yet to locate was a fourteen year old boy named Midoriya Izuku. It was likely that he had not been in the building when it came down, but there was a chance. He attended Aldera middle school, who when called, said that he was no longer in the building, and had left for home. They had already found the boy's mother in the wreckage; however, she was in critical condition, and even if she survived would have terrible brain damage, and would no longer be able to care for him. The hero hoped the boy's father was in the picture, even if he did not live with the family.
While overseeing this, he heard some of the officers behind him start shouting, “Stop, you can’t go over there, it’s not safe!” He turned to see a young boy, running towards the buildings with this look of absolute terror. Eraserhead knew who this boy was, how could he not with how much he looked like his mother, with the green hair and freckled face. Moving quickly, he grabbed an end of his capture weapon and caught the boy before he could get too close to the destroyed remains of what had been his home. Eraser brought the boy close to his chest wrapped in the scarf, and started talking to the boy, reassurances and calming words. He knew that his words likely didn’t have much effect on the boy.
“Your mother is still alive, she is in the hospital.” He told the b0y, trying to calm him, holding him close. “Come with me, I’ll bring you there, and we will figure things out for you okay?” He tried, he wanted to get the kid out of here, as the media was starting to arrive, and he knew that this boy would likely not want his grief for his home shown on television. The boy nodded against his chest, shock evident on his face. This boy was supposed to be fourteen? Something wasn’t right, as from what he could tell, the boy didn’t look older than ten, and even then would be small for that age. Almost as if this boy had not been eating properly, for years.
Eraserhead stood up, moving his scarf so it was no longer holding the boy in place, and picked the child up in a princess hold. Making his way to the ambulance that was sitting out of the way in case they had found more living victims, he deposited the boy on the gurney. “This one's mother was in the building and is at Musutafu General. He needs to be treated for shock. I’ll be riding with, I need to get statements from the victims, as well as check with Tsukauchi,” he told the paramedic, who got to work pulling out a shock blanket f0r Midoriya, as well as telling the driver to get going.
Eraser sat back on the bench in the ambulance, and looked at the shell shocked boy in front of him. He needed to get information on this boy, see if he had any family to take him in, and if not, he was going to need to contact child services to get him into foster care. He hoped the kid wouldn’t need to go into foster care.
They arrived at the hospital, the paramedics taking the boy into the hospital for intake. He got himself out of the ambulance and went into an offsides waiting area.
Pulling out his phone, he scrolled through his contacts before pressing one, it only rang twice.
“I thought you were on patrol?” The man answered.
“I was. That Gigantic villain got in the way, I’m on my way to Musutafu General with one of the Victims children. I wanted to let you know that I would be late for dinner tonight.” He told the man, upset that he would be missing his husband's wonderful cooking again tonight, as he had been late for dinner the past three nights.
“Again? Can’t someone else handle the follow-up so that you can come home? I miss you. The cats miss you,” he whined, sounding upset.
“I would. If it weren’t for the fact that I need to find this kid's family, or call Child services to take him. I really don’t want to do that. His mom is alive, but she won’t ever be able to properly care for him again,” He told his husband, “Not that I think she was doing a great job of that to begin with. This kid is fourteen, and looks like a very small ten year old. Almost like he hasn’t been eating properly.”
He heard Hizashi gasp on the other end, “You think this boy has been abused?”
“Yeah.. I do think that. I hope that I am wrong. I’ll let you know if and when I get more information.”