Chapter Text
The night is silky smooth and moonless. Not a ripple as of yet. On nights like these, Shinsou loves to perch high on ledges like a gargoyle looming the side of a gothic cathedral and watch over people coming home late from the office. The neighbourhood he’s been assigned to patrol is bougie and clean, the kind of uneventful that can only spell out total boredom.
Shinsou’s not getting caught slacking on the job, though. He can’t afford it. Not when he’s finally broken into Japan’s top ten.
“Snakecharmer, sir?” comes a voice through the static of his communication device.
Shinsou presses a finger to his ear. “This is Snakecharmer.”
“There’s an altercation down by Yoyogi-Uehara Station.”
The voice belongs to Echo, a third-year UA student with a soundwave detection quirk much similar to Earphone Jack’s. She’s also working with Shinsou for the sole and simple reason being Aizawa. He’s been bitching him for years to take on a work study, and Shinsou could only refuse him for so long after everything the man’s done for him.
“Can you give me a threat level?” Shinsou asks as he unhooks the capture weapon from his shoulders and launches himself off the side of the building.
Silence for a moment, then, “I don’t know,” she says.
A quick flick of his scarf and an acrobatic landing later, Shinsou makes smooth contact with the ground. “You don’t know?” he asks.
“Not much of a threat, I guess.”
“You guess,” he says, deadpan as all hell.
They’ve been working on her assertiveness. It’s not going very well.
Echo sighs through their comm line. “Well, sir. I don’t know what their quirks are. They look like ordinary bullies to me, but I could be wrong. I know you’re a badass, so I guess this won’t be much of a hassle for you, but in the case where one of them has a monster quirk and ends up kicking your ass… Also, there are four of them, so…”
She’s also a world-class word-vomit who could easily put Midoriya Izuku to shame.
“Alright, alright. Breathe,” Shinsou tells her with a chuckle. “Nobody’s kicking my ass tonight.”
“That’s not–” She stops herself, takes a breath. “Are you going or not?”
“I’m on my way,” Shinsou says, putting an end to the teasing now that she’s given him the attitude he’s so clearly requested.
“I can give you their exact location once you’re there,” she adds as he straddles the leather seat of his motorcycle and revs it to life.
It’s just a short ride from his perch to the station. Of course, it helps that while wearing his Snakecharmer persona and behind the handlebar of his custom hero bike, Shinsou can legally omit traffic regulations. Learning to drive at impossible speed through Tokyo’s rush hour was part of his extensive training to compensate for his quirk, and compared to some other flashy heroes he’s not going to name, Shinsou’s had a lot to compensate for. His inability to get his ass airborne is one example.
This used to bother the fuck out of him, made his blood boil way back when.
He’s over it now. For the most part.
Of course, it helps that he’s got mad driving skills to show for it now.
Once he gets to the station, Echo guides him to an alleyway, and he leaves the bike behind, opting to make his entrance from above, choosing the cautious route as always and giving himself time to assess the situation.
He spots four perpetrators—rugged-looking men, loud as fuck—harassing a lone woman cornered by a dumpster.
Standard fuckery.
Shinsou uses his capture weapon to slide smoothly down the wall, pushing his boots against the damp bricks to prop himself at an angle and out of sight. He secures his voice modulator over his mouth, waits to hear their voices and speech patterns so he can properly use Persona Chords if the need comes to it.
“We’re not gonna hurt ya, little dove,” perp number 1 is saying to the woman, all leering and deranged.
“Leave me alone!” she screeches, panicking, clutching her purse to her chest and taking a step back.
“Not a chance,” says perp number 2, clearly in the mood for violence. Number 2 is big too, the biggest of the bunch, meaning he'll have to be restrained first. “I wanna see how pretty you’ll look without any teeth in your whore mouth.”
Numbers 3 and 4 both laugh crassly from the sidelines.
“No,” she pleads, and Shinsou’s had enough.
He slides further down the wall and uses his own voice when he says, “Shit if that isn’t the most cliché threat I’ve heard tonight.”
Like a charm, Number 2 turns to him, dumbfounded. “Who the fuck–?”
Shinsou does not let him finish. He uses his quirk to take total control of his brain functions. Number 2’s eyes go entirely white and blank as he freezes into an antagonistic stance. “Grab this one for me,” Shinsou commands and Number 2 turns to Number 3, overpowers him as expected and locks him up in a rather crude headlock.
“What the fuck! Let me go, man,” Number 3 shouts, thrashing wildly to get out.
There was a time in Shinsou’s life when this kind of impact—a shove, a kick—would’ve nullified his quirk’s hold on the target. He’s learned to work around this weakness by quirk training against Midoriya of all people. Hours after hours of fighting against Japan’s greatest—Midoriya always so infuriatingly enthusiastic in helping him improve while Shinsou was always deadset on defeating him out of pride. Good old teenage rivalry turned useful.
Shinsou scales the rest of the wall and plants himself firmly between the woman and the two perps left loose.
“Oh, shit! I know this guy. That’s the fucking hero with the villain quirk.” Number 4 turns to Number 1. “Whatever you do, shut the fuck up.”
Fighting the urge to roll his eyes into his skull, Shinsou adjusts his voice modulator and says, using Number 1’s voice, “What did you just say to me, asshole?”
Number 4 falls for it. “I just told you–”
“You’re making my job kinda boring,” Shinsou says in his own voice as Number 4 freezes under his quirk. “You wanna play too?” he asks Number 1 and is unsurprisingly not gifted with an answer.
Downside of becoming so successful is everyone and their mother now know about the voice trigger of his brainwashing quirk.
Aizawa was the first to caution him against this. “You’ll lose your edge,” he said, over and over. Like a fucking broken record.
The thing is, fighting against Midoriya first year of the Sports Festival gave Shinsou relative fame. It was already downhill from there. That’s why he worked so hard mastering the capture weapon and voice modulator, after all. That’s why he spend hours after boring hours lifting weights and bulking the fuck up like some kind of brainless gym rat since he was a teenager. Just to be able to gain that edge back.
But now that he’s at the top of his game, number ten on the chart, Shinsou can finally say that having a “villain quirk” is just part of who he is as a hero, his brand. Makes him real popular with the edgy crowd, the queer community and emo kids alike.
Number 1 grits his teeth and takes a sloppy fighting stance, spikes protruding from his skin. Shinsou sighs as he pulls on his capture weapon. “Nice porcupine quirk,” he teases.
Nothing again.
Number 1 won’t even look at him. A common occurrence. The mere idea of being brainwashed always makes people hesitant to engage whether it be in a fight or just socially. Sometimes it’s a pain. Sometimes, an asset.
Shinsou unleashes the full potential of his capture weapon, and Number 1 gets sausaged in one quick flip of the wrist, the fabric squeezing him into a bundle impossible to escape.
“Echo?” Shinsou calls, a finger to his in-ear. “Call the cops for me?”
“Already on their way. Two minutes out, sir.”
“Good job.”
Now, onto the most difficult part.
The victim is sitting on the ground behind the dumpster, her knees hugged tight to her chest. She’s crying.
Shinsou drops into a squat because he knows from experience his sheer height and build do not work well to reassure people. He removes his mask because, as gaunt and villain-looking as his face is, he knows it’s better not to hide half of it behind leather and metal.
He knows better than to ask her if she’s okay.
“What’s your name?” he asks instead, his own low voice pushed to the softest it can go.
“Oh, um… Mina,” she says, all shy and snivelling. She’s young, tiny, the skin of her face sparkling with blue glitters like a constellation of freckles clearly a result of whatever her quirk is.
She’s also avoiding eye contact. But that’s to be expected.
He knows better than to say something cheesy like, “I’m not gonna hurt you.” or “It’s gonna be okay.”
Instead, he says, “Oh, I know a Mina.”
It happens to be true, but he would’ve rolled with any name.
She’s still clutching her knees, not looking at him, but she manages a faint, “Really?”
“Oh, yes. She’s the absolute worst gossip. Back in highschool once, I made the mistake of showing her my precious Hello Kitty keychain, and the whole class made fun of me for an entire year after that.”
“What?” She looks over to him like he’s lost his mind, and he’s gonna take that any day over fear and apprehension.
“I swear.” He enhances the display of his fake discomfort with a hand rubbing at the back of his neck. “Makes class reunions total nightmares to go through still to this day.” There’s a mix of truth in that, funnily enough. The important part is that it works.
The woman all but unfurls. The glitters on her face fades from blue to a warmer purple, and Shinsou takes it as an improvement. Call it instinct.
Shinsou’s long since stopped trying to smile at strangers. He knows how he looks; creepy, battle-worn and ever-tired with a weird volley of purple hair that matches the intensity of his eyes. It’s not for everyone. But he’s learned to work with it. As with everything.
“You’re joking?” Mina says, barely louder than a whisper.
“Cross my heart. If I still had the keychain, I’d show you.” He schools his features into something serious. “But I had to burn it.”
She gives him an honest-to-good snort.
He extends her a helping hand.
She takes it, shyly. “Thank you,” she says, as he helps her up to her feet.
“You okay?” he finally asks.
She nods. “I will be. Because of you.” The glitter-freckles turn bright red. “You’re Snakecharmer, aren’t you?”
“That’s me.”
Her eyes scan the scene in the alley; the big fucker still under Shinsou’s quirk holding down one of his own, Number 4 still frozen in place and Number 1 squirming against Shinsou’s capture weapon on the ground. “Thank you,” she repeats.
“You’re welcome,” Shinsou says with a tiny bow.
Then, they both hear the sirens. Cops are taking over.
Shinsou guides Mina out of the alley and into the professional care of the police force. She gives him another smile as she’s escorted to an ambulance, and Shinsou lets go of the metaphorical breath he was holding.
Sure this was a rather routine event. Still, always a success when the victim does not run away from him in fear.
“You’re so good at that, sir,” comes Echo’s voice as she touches down somewhere behind him. She sounds awed. Which she should be. But also—
“Of course, I’m good,” Shinsou says.
Echo’s a tiny thing of a young woman. Twigs for arms and legs with two leathery wings poking out of her back—too frail for now to enable her to fly great distances but still useful. She’s often mistaken as way younger than the eighteen she’s growing up to be in a few months, and Shinsou still has trouble getting it through her head that people’s misconceptions can be a real good asset in a fight.
“Where to next?” she asks, tucking a heavy strand of her dark hair behind one of her long, pointy bat ears.
The cops are asking questions and bagging the perps. It’s all routine and future paperwork for Shinsou. He knows how to dance the dance by now.
“Nowhere. You’re going home,” he tells Echo dismissively.
Echo does protest at that, but he shuts her out completely and goes to shake the officer in charge’s hand instead. Then, his comm line screeches back to life with a very familiar drawl. “Snakecharmer, this is Eraserhead.”
Shinsou freezes mid-handshake.
Something’s up. If not only for the oddity of having his old sensei tag his private comm line on a night patrol, then the tightness of Aizawa’s tone is enough to tip him off. Shinsou excuses himself from the officer and, despite all the glaring red flags, opts for the casual snark he’s well-known for, “Shouldn’t you be in bed at this hour, old man?”
All straight to business, Aizawa answers, “I know you’re on patrol, but I’m gonna need you to come down to Shibuya Police Station ASAP.”
“Why? You need someone to bail you out?” Shinsou says, trying again and failing to rile up the man. Not that he expected anything else.
“We have a situation. I’ll explain once you’re here.”
“We?” Shinsou inquires. Aizawa is not exactly the easiest person to read, but Shinsou’s had plenty of practice. Years, in fact, and so he knows he’s hiding something from him. Vital info.
“I said—“ Aizawa cuts himself with a long-suffering sigh. “Dynamight called me in on an emergency,” he finally admits.
Bakugou.
Bakugou called Aizawa?
“And what?” Shinsou asks, a little drier than he wants it to sound. “He made you call me? Couldn’t do that himself?”
Of course, he couldn’t. Shinsou knows exactly why.
“Are you gonna be unprofessional about this?” Aizawa asks. He sounds suddenly exhausted.
Unprofessional about Bakugou?
Undeniably.
Aizawa knows that, already. Probably knows more than Shinsou ever told him, in fact.
As it turns out, Bakugou and Shinsou have a stark mutual understanding ranging several years now that they wouldn’t intervene in each other’s professional lives. They’re too much alike. Or that’s the reason Shinsou gave Aizawa when he prodded him on the subject. And, as much as it is a fact—egos the size of Japan, deep-rooted insecurities, abrasive personalities, well-established rivalries with Deku—it’s also not the total truth.
The reality is that they’re both too compromised to ever be good backups for each other in the field.
“Listen, kid,” Aizawa says after a moment. “Just the fact that my retired ass is down there at ass o’clock on a weeknight should be enough of an incentive. You either get here by yourself, or I’ll send Japan’s number two to drag you back by the skin of your ballsack.”
“Oh, I’m scared.”
“Well, you’re good. But you’re not that good. Dynamight would destroy you.”
Shinsou feels himself frown. That one stung a bit. It also speaks of Aizawa’s patience running thin. “Fine, I’ll come. But just because I don’t want you to use your dad voice.”
“Don’t be gross.” And with that, the comm line falls dead again.
“Oh, can I come too?” Echo asks with all the enthusiasm of the Dynamight fan he totally knows that she is.
“No.”
“Oh,” she says, her face falling. “Why not? I could help–”
“You have school tomorrow. Go get some sleep.”
“I have a bat quirk,” she says like he’s stupid for insinuating that she should sleep at night—which it is, but Shinsou’s not having it.
“And I have a brainwashing quirk,” he says. “Either way, you’re getting your ass to bed.”
She doesn’t look intimidated in the least and it’s all fine. If Shinsou’s made one thing clear—and all jokes aside—it’s that he’ll never use his quirk on her for any purposes other than training.
He’s her boss, though.
“Fine,” Echo says, clearly unhappy. She spreads her wings and takes off, and Shinsou can’t help but smirk when he hears her grumble, “Hypocrite much coming from a world-renowned insomniac, but okay.”
***
As expected, Shinsou is greeted by all the fury of one Bakugou Katsuki the second he steps through the police station’s front door.
“Hey, Sunshine,” Shinsou says with a casual wave. “It’s been a while.”
“Don’t you fucking start,” Bakugou says, crowding his space with a snarl reminiscent of his highschool days. “Where were you tonight?”
As confusing as the question is, Shinsou doesn’t miss a beat. “At your mom’s,” he says, smirking. “You know she gets lonely when your dad’s outta town.”
“Shut the fuck up,” is Bakugou’s very predictable answer, one of his gauntlets tangling into the scarf around Shinsou’s neck to try and pull him down. “I could kill you.”
Shinsou doesn’t budge. Of course, he doesn’t. This is nothing new. Bakugou’s murder threats are something of a well-established precedent at this point. In fact, Shinsou finds it comforting in a way. If he’d feared the latest development in their somewhat relationship—going from “horny and messy” to “bitter and distant”—would make this situation even more awkward than it already is, he’s proven wrong.
Trust Bakugou to always be true to himself.
“Why am I here?” Shinsou asks, using his height advantage to look him down through his eyelashes.
As he looks at him huffing and puffing mere inches from his own face, Shinsou thinks it would be so easy to fall into old habits, just lean down and bite into the sharp line of Bakugou’s jaw. So easy and not at all appropriate considering the number of dumbfounded police officers staring at them.
Thankfully, Kirishima intervenes. “Take it easy, man,” he says to Bakugou, prying him away from Shinsou with enough strength to make it impossible to deny him. “You really should’ve let the EMT take a look at your head.”
And now that there’s some distance between them, Shinsou sees the streak of dried blood crusting the side of Bakugou’s face, the way most of his gear seems to have taken a beating.
Predictably, Kirishima is pushed away. “I’m fuckin’— fine,” Bakugou grumbles before disproving himself by nearly faceplanting without the support. Kirishima’s back by his side in a flash even as Bakugou turns sharply to Shinsou. “What have you done?” he asks, voice hushed, face all pinched like he’s in pain—which, considering the state he’s in, okay. Legit—but that’s not it. Something’s not quite right. Because Bakugou is always shamelessly loud—even more so now that he’s become hard of hearing from all the explosions—and Shinsou intimately knows what Bakugou uses that tone for.
It fucks with him a little. So Shinsou turns to Kirishima instead, “I’ll guess a concussion,” he tells him, matter-of-factly.
“No shit, Dumbass,” Bakugou says, back to full volume. “Got facelifted by a fucking car.”
Shinsou hears the accusation loud and clear. “And it’s my fault, how?”
“Well,” Kirishima says with a pitying smile. “You’re not gonna like it.”
“Anybody tell you you have horrible bedside manners?” Shinsou asks him blandly.
“If you boys are done jerking each other off,” Aizawa interrupts. He’s leaning against the doorframe of the chief’s office, looking bored as always, but Shinsou knows better. “I think we should take this somewhere more private.”
With that, he’s off down the hallway leading to the interrogation block, and Shinsou follows. No point in arguing now. He just wishes someone would explain what the fuck is going on at this point.
Bakugou seems to regain enough composure to be able to walk straight without aid. Kirishima stays close just in case, as he does.
If there’s a thing Shinsou has a hard time admitting to himself it’s that he’s kind of a control freak. Because he’s always hated defining himself by the very nature of his quirk, but also, well, that’s one big vulnerability right there. The fact remains that he needs to be one step ahead of everyone. He needs it for his work as a pro hero and he needs it in his life in general. Unfortunately, here in this shitty, stuffy, off-white hallway under the flickering of fluorescent lights and in the presence of the closest thing he’s ever had to a father and the closest thing he’s ever had to a boyfriend, he feels the furthest he’s ever been from “in control.”
Aizawa should be at home grading papers, and Bakugou should be doing whatever the fuck he does at his agency. And the three of them should not be in this hallway together.
“I’ll play only if I know the rules, old man,” Shinsou warns, growing nervous by the second.
Aizawa opens the door to one of the interrogation rooms and ushers the three of them inside. “This is Magnetic,” he says, pointing to the kid sitting at the table behind the glass of the one-way mirror. “Or Kaneko Haru. They’re a work study of Bakugou with a very strong quirk that gives them the power to control metal.”
“Hence the car to the face,” Bakugou grouses from the corner of the room where he’s decided to go sulk.
Magnetic makes for a pitiful sight despite a stylish tuft of silver hair and a face like an angel. Tear tracks are running down their face, dirt covering everything else. Both their hands are restrained by quirk-suppressing handcuffs over the interrogation desk. They look distraught, lost, staring into nothing. Not much of a threat to anyone.
“I know how much of an asshole Bakugou can be,” Shinsou says, slowly. “But this kid doesn’t scream trigger happiness to me.”
“They’re not,” Aizawa confirms.
“Did they lose control over their quirk?”
“Tsk.” Bakugou glares at Shinsou like he just spat in his face. “They’re my student.”
Aizawa shakes his head. “Kaneko here has been top of the class in everything since first year.”
Of fucking course.
“Well, I’m gonna have to ask to see their report cards–” Shinsou starts before getting rudely interrupted.
“Can you just stop being a smartass for one fucking second?” Bakugou barks at him.
“Then, what are you saying to me?” Shinsou spits back, all composure lost to the sharks.
Aizawa steps between them. “Shinsou,” he starts, careful. “What we’re saying is that earlier tonight, this perfectly sane and talented future hero.” He pauses, driving the point home. “Jumped Bakugou out of nowhere during routine patrol and nearly got him killed.”
“Oi. Don’t push it, Teach,” Bakugou grumbles from his corner. “But, also. Yeah. And they were all blank-faced and white-eyed at that.”
Shinsou startles out of his skin. “What?”
“Are you stupid?” Bakugou says. “Do you need me to spell it out for you, Eyebags?”
“You think I’m responsible,” Shinsou says. What the fuck? “How? I wasn’t even there. That’s not how my quirk works–”
“We know,” Aizawa says. “That’s not everything.”
“Why am I here?” Shinsou asks, dread seeping right into his bones.
“Shinsou…” Aizawa tries to do something compassionate with his face then, Shinsou sees it and yet doesn’t quite… compute.
“Sensei,” he presses. “Why am I here?”
"Because they swear you're the one who made them do it."