MHA Stories i find on Ao3

Little Soft Paws Patter Across Your Back

By: RossBlood

Many people had soulmarks, special tattoo-like drawings that were exceptionally precious to them.

There were two kinds.

There  was one with the kanji for "protect" or "guard"; the parental mark. And  there was one with the kanji for "child"; the aptly-named child mark.

Most  didn't have both, plenty had neither, but often enough, a person had at  least one of either kind. People with the child mark typically had  theirs appear when they received their quirk, or didn't, in the cases of  quirkless children. Those with the parental mark received theirs when  their "child", and in the occasional case "children", were born.

It  was called the parental mark, but it was always accompanied by a  smaller mark for each child, referred to as a signifier. If someone's  mark was a bird, they might have feathers; a tree might have scattered  leaves on their body; a horse might have hoofprints.

But never  before had Shouta heard of someone receiving their parental mark and  twenty signifier marks over the course of about a year.

At the ripe age of fifteen going-on sixteen.

One  morning, Shouta was getting ready to go to school, barely into his  first week at U.A., when he saw it. The only reason he even noticed that  morning rather than when he went to bed was because he'd decided to  brush his teeth without a shirt on in his sleep-deprived haze.

He blinked a few times as his heart caught in his throat.

There on his chest, placed over his heart, was a sleeping black cat with the red kanji for "protect" placed in its center.

Shouta finally had a mark.

He  never received one as a child and distantly thought that he wasn't  parent or guardian material, so he would be doomed as someone without  that kind of connection. It was the kind that bound people by fate and  was even more powerful than blood relations in the eyes of the law when  it came down to it.

But after staring at the cat for a few moments  longer, he immediately disregarded his need to go to school and began  to search his body for the signifier.

It took him a minute to find it as it was placed at the base of his spine, just above the hem of his pants. A pawprint.

A black pawprint with a white starburst in its center. Like a tiny firework.

Shouta damn near smiled at it but chastised himself as he took a photo in the mirror of the mark then the signifier.

Who  knew when he would meet his kid, or if they would accept the bond given  to them? There was always the possibility they rejected their  fate-given connection.

He would treasure it either way.

As Shouta walked to school, he mulled over his plan once more.

He may have been placed in General Studies at U.A., but he'd always planned on getting to the Hero Course one way or the other.

Now that he knew he might have someone to protect in the future, it simply increased his determination twofold.

The Sports Festival was coming up and he'd be damned if he didn't make it.

Roughly  two weeks before the Sports Festival, Shouta received another pawprint.  It was slightly tilted and stacked above the other with a white line  that curled into it.

Another picture.

Then two days later, another pawprint.

This one with a pair of white sparkles on the pad.