Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains

Chapter seventeen

Izuku POV

It's been a few weeks since the encounter with Eraserhead, since he tried to catch me. The UA entrance exams are in less than two weeks, something that I'm actually glad that I don't have to go through if the study coma that Hito has been in lately says anything. I've been keeping up with patrols during this time, but I would be lying if I said that I didn't actively avoid the areas that I knew Eraserhead would be patrolling and when.

Which was how I found myself in the red light district on the first day of the week that Mom was out of town for a business trip.

The red light district is an Andrea of the city that is all but abandoned by the general populace, being completely overrun with small-time villains and crooks too foolish to know that banding together like this would only serve to put targets in their backs.

The place was more of a training grounds than anything.

The authorities tended to station teams of rookies and their mentors to staking out different parts of the district, waiting for whatever dealing was in the works that night to go down, using it as a learning opportunity.

Handcuffing the third small time dealer of the night with a pair of zip ties, I walked down the street in a relaxed manner. If someone was going to attack me while I was here I was prepared to fight them off, using the skirmishes and such as a way to learn street fighting, seeing what moves work and what doesn't in a somewhat safe environment. No one here is dangerous enough to require pro hero intervention, so with my tranquilizer on hand in case something went wrong, I was able to all but go wild.

However, I wasn't prepared for the all too familiar swirling purple gate to appear beneath my feet, nor the sinking feeling in my gut as my body suddenly seemed to lose all of its weight while an inky darkness took over my mind.

—-

Shigaraki POV

My fingers clawed at my neck in an angry manner as annoyance took over my movements. Kurogiri had left on some errand or something for Master close to an hour ago that neither Master nor Kurogiri would tell me the details of. The misted man simply told me that he would be back later, something that I really didn't have the patience for.

After almost dusting my gaming console twice in aggravation, I threw it aside, stalking into the empty bar. Reaching behind the bar, I was careful to keep a finger off of the table top, and snatched the nearest bottle that I could touch, not caring what it was.

Twisting the cap off of the bottle, I almost dropped the thing altogether when a disembodied voice suddenly spoke.

"Tomura," the voice, Master's voice, spoke through the television hanging from the ceiling of the bar, "I have someone for you to meet, a vigilante of sorts."

The bartender's signature warpgate opened up in the middle of the bar as a small green haired boy no older than fifteen stumbled through, collapsing onto the floor as if the ground had been taken from him. The warpgate user appeared only seconds later, scooping the small teen up into the arms hidden beneath the dark mist, laying the boy down carefully on the couch.

Looking at the boy, he didn't seem like any kind of fighter. The most he seemed to have in the way of weapons was a small gun and a knife at his side, which seemed to back my assumption up. I really didn't understand what was so special about the freckled teen to bring him here where I have to deal with him.

"Vigilante of sorts?" I asked, finding Master's wording to be stranger and more cryptic than normal.

Isn't being a vigilante like being a villain, you either are one or you're not?