#yyyyyyeah he's done some very serious shit

[crsinclair]

Enter Eraser

FINALLY I have the next installment for What a Villain Deserves. This piece takes place pretty much directly after Cliché Hero Versus Villain, which was mostly Present Mic being confused.  In this one we only see our beloved Eraserhead for a small bit, but we learn a LOT about him!

“Ah, Thanks for coming, Present Mic.”

Hizashi gave Tsukauchi a smile.  “Not a problem!  Though I wasn't really expecting to get a call about this,” he said, nodding his head towards the back of the station.  More specifically, the interrogation rooms.

Tsukauchi gave him a tired smile.  “Honestly, we weren't expecting to be calling you, either.”

Hizashi raised a brow at that, frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. What exactly did that mean?  When the detective directed him towards his office instead of the back rooms, the confusion he felt only grew.  The two of them walked down the hall, a few officers stopping to greet the two of them before Tsukauchi was closing the door to his little office and directing the Hero to take a seat. “So, why did you call me?  Other than the fact that I'm cool.”

“Coffee?” the detective asked after he was done chuckling, moving to help himself to the coffee machine he kept in the corner of his office.

“Ah, sure, thanks.”  Alright, not getting an answer to his question right away.  Got it.

Tsukauchi nodded and pulled out a spare mug and got to pouring.  “It took a bit, but we managed to get some indentification off the villain,” he started explaining, turning around to place a steaming mug in front of Hizashi along with a container holding packets of sugar and creamer.  “Very smart of him to burn his fingerprints.”

“That doesn't last forever, though,” Hizashi said as he started dumping in as many creamers as he could into the mug.

“True – from what our specialists could tell, he burns his fingerprints off regularly.”  Tsukauchi sat down in his chair with a small sigh of relief, clutching his own mug close to him.  “Plus he wears gloves, keeps his hair bound, face covered, and from his equipment we've been able to tell he's very, very thorough in getting blood stains cleaned up.  He's been avoiding law enforcement for a long time.”

Hizashi hummed, dumping in several packets of sugar into his mug.  “So who is this guy?”

Tuskauchi took a sip of his coffee and pulled the folder on top of the stack closest to him open.  “Aizawa Shouta.  30 years old, lives alone in a small apartment complex in Musutafu, job title he has down in his apartment application as 'freelance contractor',” he says dryly.

Hizashi rolled his eyes.  “I guess that's one way to describe villainy.”

A smile flit across Tsukauchi's face.  He turned his eyes towards the information in the folder, skimming the lines.  “We got a team to check out where he lives,” he continued, pausing to take another sip.  “We're pretty sure half the apartment was dedicated to his equipment.”

“Well, I've got a room at home for just my Hero gear.”

“Mic, I'm not exaggerating.” Tsukauchi tugged some pictures out of the folder and slid them across the desk for Hizashi to look at.  “I mean that he had a single sleeping bag for furniture, some juice and jelly packets in the fridge, some hygiene products, and then the rest of his entire home was covered in various tools and equipment.”

Hizashi's eyebrows shot up as he leaned forward to take a look at the pictures. Indeed, there was a single sleeping bag next to a window, and then shelf after shelf after storage cabinet stuffed full of all sorts of things.  Knives, caltrops, poisons, lockpicks – so many lockpicks – what Hizashi could only assume were smoke bombs, and many more tools crammed into what looked to be a very small apartment.  “Well then.” He cleared his throat.  “Half of his apartment dedicated to his, ah, career choice.”

“There were also a number of cats,” Tsukauchi said.

“...Cats.”

“Cats.” Tsukauchi shook his head.  “We had to call in animal control to get all the cats out of the apartment.  Fifteen in total.”

“Fifteen cats?”

Tsukauchi tossed him a grin.  “Fifteen cats.”

The grin slid off his face after a moment, giving him a serious look.  He leaned forward, placing his coffee to the side to pull another picture out of the folder.  “My team also found these in his apartment.”

He slid the picture over.  Hizashi squinted at the detective, confused, and peered down at the small photo.  With a single look, staring at the object depicted, the Hero knew exactly why he'd been called into the precinct to have a chat with Tsukauchi about this particular villain.

“Hey,” he laughed, a little anxious but doing his best to not let it show. “You guys found my headphones.  Nice.”

“Mic, can you tell me why your headphones were in with his equipment?” Tsukauchi asked, folding his hands together in a calm steeple.

Hizashi cracked a grin.  “Oh, come on, you really gonna question me about that?”  When the detective simply blinked at him, he sighed. “Okay, you are...

“Look, it's nothing big.  Nothing to worry about, really.”  He shrugged, swirling the coffee in his mug and doing his best to calm his nerves. Because this wasn't something he needed to worry about.  'Just tell the truth and you'll be fine,' he thought to himself.

Yeah, because the cops thinking he had some sort of connection with a Villain that had a known connection with a group that wanted All Might dead was totally fine.

“I've had a few run-ins with this Villain while on patrol,” Hizashi explained.  “Never managed to catch him – can't tell if it's because I haven't been on patrol in a while or if he's just a slippery bastard – and during one of our encounters he stole my headphones.  That's all.”

Tsukauchi stared at him for a moment longer, one of his fingers tapping over the knuckles of his opposite hand, and then relaxed.  Hizashi could feel the tension drain from his own shoulders seeing Tsukauchi pick his coffee up again.  “Really?  You've never managed to get him? Wouldn't your quirk make it so most people can't even crawl away?”

Hizashi pouted.  “Normally, yeah, but.  I dunno, Tsukauchi, I think it has something to do with his quirk.”

“Ah, yes.”  Tsukauchi shuffled a few of the papers in the folder around until he found the one he was looking for.  “According to his file, he's got a quirk called 'Erasure'.  It allows him to erase the quirk of anyone within sight, so long as he doesn't blink.”

Hizashi hummed at that.  “Interesting.  Man, if he'd been a hero that would be dead useful against Villains using their quirks against civilians.”

“Well, now he's using it to take down Heroes,” Tsukauchi said.

“Wait, really?”  Hizashi frowned.  Well, sure, the guy was hanging out with the League of Villains, which couldn't be good news. The League of Villains, who brought a Noumu to a school field trip and attempted to murder the number one hero and nearly killed him.  But during any of his encounters on patrol the man hadn't really done anything...villainous. Nothing extreme anyway, if one didn't count fighting a Hero and stealing from him as villainous.

Tsukauchi nodded.  “After we managed to identify him and get his information, we ran the few things we had through records to see if perhaps there were any matches for crimes or other incidents.”  He reached for another folder and flipped it open.  “Nothing recently up until the other day when we caught him, but his hair matches perfectly with evidence found in unsolved cases that other precincts and mine have been trying to get leads on for years.”

Hizashi's mouth ran dry, looking down at the folder the detective was flipping through.  It was...thick.  “Years.”

“Yep. And what with him showing to regularly burn away his prints and the careful way he seems to keep traces his his presence away from scenes, I'd wager that there are many, many more crimes he's been apart of.”  Tsukauchi frowned down at the folder.  “With this information, we've been able to link him to heists, grand-theft auto, severe battery, kidnappings, murder...”

Hizashi felt his blood run cold.  The mug in his hand was warm, but with this new information he could barely tell.  Murder.  Kidnapping.  Years. This man, who'd been casually pranking him over the past several weeks during patrols, had murdered people.

Hizashi was a Hero.  He's seen some pretty messed up people.  Villains with bombs strapped to their chests and threatening to blow up a mall. Villains madly laughing as they slaughter the innocent people in front of them.  Villains diving into the sewers to get away after brutally beating a Hero within an inch of their life.

But...

“No. We're not hurting the kids.”

It was hard to picture the man who had saved Asui's life as someone who could take another's.

The phone on Tuskauchi's desk rang once before the detective picked it up.  “Tsukauchi.”

Hizashi listened numbly as the detective talked business with whoever was on the other line, sipping distractedly at his over-sweet coffee. Honestly, he wasn't entirely sure how to feel about what he'd just learned.  It was like the person in the files was a separate person from the asshole he'd kept running into on patrols.  If they were the same person, then that meant that this Aizawa was...well, it meant that Aizawa had a soft spot for kids, for one.  Maybe?  

Man, he felt more confused about all of this than he'd been before running into the man the first time on the streets.

“Mic?” Hizashi jerked his head up and found Tsukauchi standing from his desk.  “I was going to go watch Aizawa being questioned.  Would you like to join me?”

“Uh, sure.  Why not, right?”  He raised the mug.  “Mind if I take this with me?”

“Not at all.  This way.”

The walk back to the interrogation rooms was a short one.  Hizashi waved at the officers in the halls, both to be polite and to get his head on straight again.  The past few minutes had been weird, and he didn't like how all the new information was conflicting with what he'd observed himself.  Better to smile and be cheerful to get himself back together than dwell on it too much.

Of course, given that he'd heard all this new info and it was conflicting for him, Hizashi really should have thought about how actually seeing the man in question would affect him.

The viewing room for interrogations was dark, an officer sitting at the computer in there nodding at the two of them when they walked in. Hizashi heard the woman say something about how she wasn't expecting a Pro to come in, but he wasn't paying attention.  His eyes were looking through the one way mirror at the man sitting alone at the table in the other room.

Aizawa Shouta.

Long dark hair feel in messy waves around a scruffy, tired face, body slumped boredly in the chair.  His hands were cuffed to the table, a finger tapping occasionally on the wooden surface in no rhythm in particular.  The man had been put into a clean uniform, orange on white – a prisoners uniform.  And two dark eyes, bloodshot and bags underneath them, were staring unerringly at the mirror.

Hizashi couldn't help feel like those eyes were staring straight at him.

'Unnerving.' But he shook it off, jerking back to the conversation happening around him and greeting the officer with a smile and a handshake. “So!  Are we ready to get this show on the road?”

Tsukauchi smiled.  “I'll tell them to get started.”

Within just a couple minutes an officer walked into the other room, files under one arm and face impassive.  Hizashi stood behind where the detective took a seat, idly sipping at his coffee and watched the interrogation begin.  Old case after old case were shown and explained to Aizawa, and charge after charge were piled up in front of him as well.  It seemed never ending.  And the more time went on, the more Hizashi watched, the more he could tell that the man sitting cuffed to the table?  Was barely paying attention.

He frowned, tilting his head and pursing his lips.  The man was basically going to be in prison for life, maybe the next ten lives if he was lucky, and he was just...sitting there?  Hizashi liked to think he was pretty good at reading people – he had to be, as a teacher and a Pro and as an entertainer – and the vibes coming off this guy were not that of a villain that knew he was caught.  He legitimately didn't seem to care.  He seemed bored, like this whole interrogation was a waste of his time.

How could a man charged with all these things not care about the turn his life was about to take?

For a moment, Hizashi debated saying anything.  But it wouldn't leave him alone.  He stepped forward, turning his eyes down to look at the detective sitting just in front of him“Hey, Tsukauchi, I don't think – “

“Wait a second, what's he doing?”

Hizashi snapped his eyes back to Aizawa.  Who was now angling his head down just a bit, as if he had something stuck in his back teeth and was trying to get at with his tongue.  Why would he – “Oh, shit, Tsukauchi, get a medic in there now!”

Aizawa tilted his head back up, smirking, and said his first words in the room to the confused officer with him.  “They call me Eraser.”

And then he swallowed.

Hizashi could only watch with wide eyes as chaos happened around him.  Aizawa started convulsing, officers and medics swarmed the room, and everyone was shouting.  The interrogation was forgotten.  Aizawa was pulled onto a stretcher and carried swiftly out.  No one was sure why the man had done it.  It all happened so fast, and all he could do was stare in shock.

Eraser.

Somehow, no matter what happened next...Hizashi had a sinking feeling he'd be seeing the man again.