The bartender

2- Tomura. A year later, Hanta and Rappa. And now Aizawa.

Mitsuki was free. She did it ! Both Katsuki and her were safe. Masaru couldn't hurt her anymore. But they were also on the street, with no family to contact nor ask for help. They didn't have money, Mitsuki didn't have a job, Katsuki was barely five.

But Mitsuki was a strong woman. She never gave up once in her life, and she wouldn't start because they were homeless.

Katsuki and her were rescourceful enough that they ate at least every three days, whether it'd be by stealing or with the little money Mitsuki managed to earn.

A few month in their new life, anyone on the street would have assumed they were born in their shady neighborhood. Mitsuki did any job that didn't involve protitution. The last persons to ask her this kind of service had been found beaten up in a corner days later. Katsuki's work, probably.

Not even five, and the little guy already had his ways to corner you in an alley with the wrong persons, usually someone he convinced to help him. That was how he met Tenko.

"Hey ! Get out of here, dimwit ! It's not safe right now."

As a five years old, Katsuki had a less colorful language that what you could hear from his mouth not even a few years later - courtesy of not meeting Tenko nor his next parental figure yet - but still had enough in his repertory to scare off at least most kids stranger to the streets.

Katsuki never hurt anyone purposeless - he did so with shitty excuses sometimes, but most of his victims were scumbags getting what they deserved - and under no circonstances would he hurt another struggling kid like him. Tenko was nine, visibly not apart of the dickheads category, skinny and pale, more than Katsuki himself, which was saying something.

"Why ?"

The wide open eyes of the older boy were almost the same shade of red as Katsuki's, contrasting against his skin. His hair was blueish, shoulder lenght, dirtied by mud.

"Because there's a scumbag that's gonna get beat up here like - real soon. Everybody 'round here knows it."

"Well, I didn't. I live here, actually, so if it's really not safe for me I'd rather not spend the night wandering around just to find a body and/or bloodstains tomorrow"

Katsuki glared. 

"Great, so what do you want me to do about it ? It's not like I have twenty-three empty rooms waiting for you to live in, do I ? Plus, the guy who's getting beat up will probably attack you when he arrives here so... Best of luck, I guess."

And Katsuki left.

Except that the older kid was following him. Even as Katsuki's many attempts at losing him, going as far as to jump from building to building toward his place, were he stayed with his Mom.

Eventually the boy lost sight of Katsuki, or had given up. At least Katsuki didn't hear anything else than their neighbors' careless chatter and his mother's uneven breathing from the disease she caught a month ago.

He opened the door, the little apartment quiet in the dark of the evening. Mitsuki was fast asleep on the couch, curled up what little warmth the blankets could provide. He sighed, going to prepare dinner for her when she woke up. He still had some things to finish before he could go and maybe crash at a friend's place to get the smaller of sleep.

He looked over to his Mom, barely acording a glance to the other kid in the house.

Wait, that was not right. The other kid ?

"Why are you here ?"

"I don't want to be alone."

"Aren't you older than me ?"

Long story short, Katsuki did not succeed in kicking out the older boy. So he took care of him, because that boy could have been Katsuki had Mitsuki given up. Probably because Katsuki simply cared, but you could trust he was never going to say that out loud.

"Katsuki, there's a kid your age in the alleyways."

"We're not adopting him."

"I just wanna see if he's okay !"

So they both entered the alleyway, after a lot of bitching from Tomura. There was indeed a child with shoulder-long black hair and dark eyes playing with three younger children. They looked enough like him to assume they were his siblings, two boys around four years old and a girl around three. The scene would have looked normal if not for the battered body of the first boy.

"The hell happened to you ?"

"Do you need help ?"

Asked simultaneously Katsuki and Tomura, earning an amused look from the boy, followed by a wince. Katsuki was not one to let someone down, even if he did things in his own strange way. Which lead them to this situation : the black haired boy apparently called Hanta on Katsuki's back, his siblings guiding them toward their house.

"What are you doing, kids ?"

Tomura and Hanta's siblings flinched at the booming voice of Katsuki's neighbor, someone he never bothered to get to know after making sure he would not be a threat. For his family, at least.

"You look pretty roughen up, kiddo. You'd be up for some help ? I got a medical kit somewhere."

Katsuki snarled.

"We're not going anywhere near your apartment, you scumbag."

"Of course not. I'll bring it there."

That's how they met Rappa as well.

Rappa was their new parental figure a trusted adult. He often offered Hanta a ride back home, was the guy teaching Katsuki how to fight (and beating up assholes until Katsuki could do it on his own), Tomura's second most trusted adult (Mitsuki being the first) and the one treating Katsuki's mother's disease.

(The one retarding her death.)

Shouta was a cop in the city's shadiest neighborhood, and as that, had seen many, many strange things. Which meant you technically couldn't surprise him anymore. Technically. But a fucking child beating up the criminal he was previously fighting, the kid having jumped in after Shouta got flung into a wall. And the child (he couldn't be more than seven, holy shit-) was visibly winning. Over Hedoro Viran, the same criminal that never used any weapon, yet had a body count higher than the fucking sky.

Shota couldn't do anything that watch, really, feeling that if he got up, the kid - it was a kid, not some supernatural being, right ? - would somehow disappear.

"You okay, old man ?"

The child is standing over him, offering his hand to help him get up. He looks at him, ruby eyes glaring into dark ones. The messy blonde hair is strained with a sticky substance - is that blood ? - and clothes slightly burned. Shouta takes the hand.

This night, when he come home, his husband doesn't believe him.

"Shouta, there's just no way a kid beat up the criminal you were tracking for nearly a week. You master like twelve martial arts. How could a kid beat up a criminal better than you ever did ?"

Less than a week after that, Hizashi met Katsuki too.