#of course people jump to ''oh he got there in only 2 weeks through dodgy means'' when they believe Thor's prison speech was true

[hey-hamlet]

BNHA AU Ideas: Alleycat

Also on AO3! 

TL;DR:  

The story of the Erasure villain: Alley Cat and his heroic kittens. Aizawa, a rather nomadic villain, accidentally acquires two teenagers and a four-year-old. It's not the most conventional family, but it'll do.

villain aizawa: hes incredibly brutal and efficient, kind of an antihero type. he shuts down some things the heroes dont see, patrols the sketchy areas, looks out for children

he kinda,,, accidentally adopted some children

shinsou and izuku were runaways from a terrible foster home that tracked down the 'villain' alleycat and basically said

"are we worth anything to anyone?" and aizawa sees these kids hurt by heroics and takes them under his wing

eri is a kid izuku stumbled upon while out with shinsou before they met aizawa, and izuku basically adopted her straight out, came back to shinsou like "hi we have a little sister now" they are like 12, eri is 4

so aizawa accidentally gets 2 teens and a lil kid and he finds out they lowkey wanna be villains like him bc they wanna help and heroes dont help people like them. aizawa's heart breaks bc he doesn't want these kids to have the life he's had, so he promises to train hitoshi and izuku only if they try for the hero course

they agree. a villain begins to train heroes to enter the very thing that hurt them, with hopes of changing it from the inside out

ok also: in this au whatever horrible thing happened to shirakumo,,,, didnt. and he's 1A's homeroom teacher. hes bright, bubbly and cheerful, with the same expulsion rate aizawa has

so, shirakumo's hero name is cloud nine, hizashi's is feedback, not present mic. they both think aizawa is dead, and separately have to deal with the villain 'alleycat' as his territory intersects w ua's zone

aizawa, as alleycat, is a lot gentler to shirakumo and hizashi, more polite when speaking to them, less brutal with his takedowns. hizashi notices, but says nothing

hitoshi and izuku, with their baby sister eri, end up living with aizawa, training to be heroes to improve them fucked up society that taught them they were worthless in the  first place

he takes them on parkour routes in the early morning, teaches them how to disarm people with knives, to use an opponents size against them.

izuku hones his ability to analyse, hitoshi learns how to push peoples buttons. there is no such thing as a fair fight for them. they break each others noses, chip a tooth or two, get black eyes. there are no hard feelings, they are together through everything

the 4 of them live pretty rough, only on what aizawa can get as a villain/working day shifts in a dodgy bar. aizawa pretends to be their dad for anything legal, says they had two different mothers. it works, somehow.

Some minor cosmetic changes:

Izuku, Hitoshi and Eri all dye their hair black. It started as them quietly wanting to look like their ‘dad’ for sentimental reasons, but they quickly worked out that it made the lie a lot easier for others to swallow.

They all take the surname Aizawa

Eri’s hair is cut into a messy bob – she loves getting Izuku to give her pigtails with the little sparkly hair ties Shouta stole for her. Izuku’s hair is shorter at the back and longer at the front, obscuring his eyes a bit. Hitoshi’s hair is shoulder length and growing, he ties it back in a low bun.

All three of the kids have scars. Eri’s are like canon but a less extreme because her quirk only just showed up. Izuku and Hitoshi have some from bullies, horrible foster parents and reckless sparing. Izuku has a few more little ones because he developed his not-dad’s love of cats and is unafraid of getting bitten – on top of his lack of self-preservation.

they go to aldera middle school, bakugo is still a little shit. to be honest, izuku hates it the most when bakugo burns his uniform - they cant afford to buy extra. there have been a few weeks hes just had to where shinsou's spare and roll the sleeves up

izuku and shinsou have a bit of a spat the afternoon of the sludge villain. it's nothing either of them remembers in a weeks time, but it means shinsou leaves school first, without izuku

bakugo corners him, notebook, allmight, etc

izuku has to ask

all might says no

izuku crumbles, such a dramatic shift from the calm but nice boy he'd been before. you can see the moment his heart breaks. all might feels terrible, but izuku has jumped down the fire escape before he can say anything.

to be honest, izuku is moments away from a full-fledged breakdown. He shoots shinsou a quick text about the villain, but pauses when he hears explosions. He knows the chances its Katsuki are tiny but he’s never been a lucky guy, so he runs towards them

basically the rest of the episode plays out like canon, izuku goes home and meets with his whole ass family panicking because he sent a vague text about a villain then was totally AWOL for 2 hours

hitoshi hugs him really tight while aizawa mumbles something about a tracking chip.

Izuku tells hitoshi about all might, but just tells aizawa vaguely that hes getting a quirk, no he isn’t in any danger, yes he’ll be safe, no he can’t tell you how.

Izuku and Hitoshi both pass the entrance exam with a mix of hero and villain points.

Izuku still doesn’t his whole bone breaky routine but he also manages to take out a few robots by himself before that. He ends up with the highest score.

Hitoshi takes out a few more robots but spends a fair bit of time pushing people out of the way of robots, yelling at people to be more careful about the others around them, and controlling people to get them out of the way of debris. He gets into the top 10.

Nezu is very very interested in the two ‘brothers’ with very different quirks that both did so well. He resolves to keep and eye on them.

Shirakumo is a riot as a teacher but boy is he stressful to be in a class with. The first insult out of Bakugo’s mouth and hes kicked him out of his class, telling him to try class B or get out of the school. (Blood King takes him. Bakugo is a little less horrible to izuku, at least where others can see)

Izukus having a quiet panic attack because Bakugo is going to kill him, and Hitoshi is caught between respecting the balls on their teacher and being pissed at the guy for putting izuku in a terrible position.

No quirk test, they do actually go see the opening ceremony. Hizashi and Shirakumo chat in sign while the principal’s speech drags on. Hitoshi and Izuku watch on, trying not to laugh when they start signing that they want to go to sleep.

Then they do the quirk test bc shirakumo’s a bastard. They end the day with Bakugo kicked out and Hagekure hanging onto her place by a thread. Izuku and Hitoshi come 4th and 5th respectively, despite not being able to use their quirks in the test. Shirakumo is interested.

Skipping to the interesting bits:

The USJ is just as terrible as canon, with the added fact that some of the thugs totally recognise izuku and hitoshi. Izuku works out how to use one for all at 1% during the attack. Hitoshi ends up with a scar on his eyebrow from a person with a claw quirk, Izuku gets a broken arm. Hitoshi sees all might in his skinny form for the first time and is suitably surprized

The sports festival goes a lot like canon in the first round, the second round features a team-up of just Hitoshi as the horse and Izuku as the rider bc they are so used to working with each other they felt it’d be more trouble to have extra team members. They arent exactly wrong and that round ends with them still in control of the 1’000’000 points band – along with a fair few teams just sitting on the sidelines with no idea how they got there.

Tournament round has izuku fighting Todoroki in the second round like canon, but in this universe, he wins (after helping him because whats izuku without a saviour complex). Hitoshi beats Tokoyami and Sero, but loses to Bakugo. The final round is Izuku vs Bakugo, they tie.

The stain arc is a riot. Izuku is interning w Gran, Hitoshi is with Nighteye who happens to be looking for ‘Alley Cat’. Hitoshi is so done with this.

Izuku finds Iida about to be attacked by stain and swoops in. Stain recognises him instantly

“Oh, you’re one of the cat’s kids, aren’t you? Let me deal with this fake hero and you can show me what your dad's taught you.”

Iida is confused – resolves to ask about it later

“You step away from him.”

“What?”

“I said. Step away from Iida. He’s – We’re going to be heroes. We’re both going to be heroes and I won’t let you hurt him!”

Stain pauses, then smiles.

“Lets see if the apple falls far from the tree, hm?” And he launches himself at Izuku

Izuku can dodge with the best of them, but he can’t get close enough to hit stain while protecting Iida. He manages to escape paralysis, but by the time Todoroki arrives stain has barely taken damage.

Todoroki isn’t the only person that responded to that warning. 1 city over, Hitoshi is franticly begging Nighteye to do something, because his brother is in danger. Nighteye is shocked at the fear in the previously apathetic child’s voice. He alerts heroes in the area, and makes his way over with a nervous Hitoshi in tow. On the other end of the city, where he’d been trying to keep an ear out for his kids, Aizawa gets the text and his heart drops. He begins running over.

Stain is taken out before any more help arrives. Without ropes, Todoroki freezes him solid in a block of ice. Endeavour arrives, as does Nighteye with a panicked Hitoshi. Aizawa arrives soon after, perched on a nearby rooftop, ready to whisk his kids away to safety should they need it.

The nomu swoops down, grabbing Izuku. Stain can’t help – trapped in his block of ice. Aizawa runs after Izuku. The nomu drops Izuku off at Shirgiraki’s feet, who is rather delighted to have the annoying boy from the USJ delivered to him out of the blue. He’s not, however, so happy with the knives he finds flying towards him. Kurogiri redirects them and the portal fades just in time for them to come face to face with the villain ‘Alley Cat”

“Well that was a cheap shot Alley Cat, what crawled up your ass and died?”

Aizawa places himself in front of Izuku, teeth bared. Izuku is clutching the leg of his costume. “Don’t hurt him and you won't lose a hand.” Kurogiri goes to attack, but Shigiraki waves him off, letting Aizawa take back Izuku.

“Sir?”

“Don’t you see? There are villains in the hero course. I smell a side quest, don’t you? We might even get some new party members out of it.

#bnha #bnha au #alleycat au #dadzawa #aizawa shouta #eraserhead #midoriya izuku #shinsou hitoshi #eri #bnha eri #Midoriya #shinsou #izuku #shirakumo oboro #shirakumo #present mic #yamada hizashi

[miminomadic]

Hello Vietnam, Hi Asia!

First Stop: Saigon

This is probably one of the first times that I take a day flight at a convenient time. I would usually take a night one heading to the airport directly after work in a desperate attempt not to lose any holiday minute and arrive to the desired destination as fast as possible. Not having to wake up in some unearthly hour and taking it easy as my flight was at 11 in the morning, I was well rested and fully in travel mode after breakfast at Heathrow airport. It was one of the longest flights for me so far - almost 13 hours, which is not a problem for me in the majority of cases as I can sleep for pretty much most of the time. In fact, once a guy sitting next to me on a flight from Caracas to Düsseldorf told me that he had never seen a person sleep so much on a plane. This time however I did not feel like sleeping so much so I was listening to the random music selection they had on the plane entertainment like lots of Elvis Presly and Jonny Cash. I even watched The Wizard of OZ and then dozed off for a while while my partner in crime, also known as Bambino, was watching movie after movie as, unlike me, he cannot sleep on planes.

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh at dawn. Formerly known as Saigon, the city’s name was changed after the late revolutionary general Ho Chi Minh when the communists took power over Southern Vietnam. As it was too early to get into our hotel room and the weather turned out to be too shitty to hang out by the small pool on the 12th floor, we just left our backpacks at reception and went exploring the city straight away.

We are staying in the so called District 1 which is the central city area with the most sites to visit. The moment we walked out of the hotel situated on a large busy road overlooking the river, we were drawn into a kind of dynamics I had never experienced before. Neither had I seen so many motorbikes in my life! They were literally everywhere passing on millimetres from all sides of me under constant beeping. Having up to four five people on one seemed like the most normal thing. Since the pavement area of many streets in District 1 is transformed into a market and motorbikes are passing even through the tiniest free spaces between buckets of half alive fish, frogs tied to the legs, piles of meat, fruit and people sipping the notorious pho on tiny chairs, walking was quite a challenge at first. There was a fish that managed to escape jumping out into a dirty puddle on the street. This little rebel’s head was cut off soon after that. Everything here is happening so fast! The street, the people, the scooters, the bicycles, the animals sold still alive moving around, the beeping and screams of the sellers all merged into one huge moving CHAOS - a fascinating new world I was about to explore for the next three weeks. Yayyy!

The Old Quarter of Saigon is supposed to have a French feel left behind from colonial times of which to be honest I felt Zero. There are indeed some town houses with jalousie windows, facade ornaments and balconies that look a bit Mediterranean one might say but those were all surprisingly tiny and narrow so the Asian touch definitely predominates. There were also a couple of French bakeries but we certainly did not cross half the world to have a croissant so we headed off to one of the biggest and oldest markets in town called Ben Thanh to try out something local. Oh boyyy, it was even more chaotic in here. A labyrinth of tiny isles where you could fine everything: from T-shirts and scarves to all types of handicrafts, local foods and fake Weasel coffee beans. Overall, the vendors were quite unpleasant basically forcing me to buy half a kilo of coffee and then frowning or screaming when we were kindly trying to explain that we really just arrived and are not going to carry extra luggage in our backpacks from day one. 

Reaching the food section, we chose a stall after a commotion of about five vendors were trying to convince us to chose their food stand although they all looked exactly the same. The vendor we chose seated us on tiny chairs literally grabbing our hands and ordering us to sit down in quite a military style. It was only about ten in the morning so we decided to go for a local cold soup called Chè and a durian smoothy. Both turned out to be an interesting new experience never to be repeated again :)

I always wanted to try the famous smelly durian that is the subject of so much controversy in Asia. Strictly forbidden to bring into hotels and airplanes, accompanied by heavy fines in case of violations. It is indeed quite a weird fruit. I smelled a cut one first and it did not actually smell bad. It was a nice, particular fresh and not very strong scent of an exotic fruit but it was the aftertaste in your mouth following the first sip of the freshly blended juice that brought its real flavour to light. It felt like having eaten something rotten mixed with old socks and exotic fruits. I could feel the smell now too, which seems to intensify as you consume. I gave it a few more tries but could not finish my glass. Durian did not win me and neither Bambino but apparently plenty of people do like it. As for the Chè, not really impressed either. It is a mix of coconut milk, which I adore, but with too much sugar plus black-eyed peas, beans, and some jellied fruits and plants like papaya, aloe vera and possibly cucumber. Quite an awkward mixture overall. I had thought that the fruits inside would be fresh but they were jellied, which I hate. Beans in sugar are also not a great culinary idea. The whole mixture was too sweet and kind of artificial. I drank the fresh coconut blend only as coconut is one of my favorite fruits ever and I had been longing for it for months. Then, I could not wait to get out of this place as soon as possible since the harassing vendors were starting to give me a proper headache.

It was still really early and were not sleepy at all so we walked to one of the main sites in the city - The War Remnants Museum containing relics of the Vietnam War, which is in fact known here as the American War. Makes sense considering the circumstances. The visit turned out to be quite heavy. The saying “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words” felt very true in this place. I have never seen so many disturbing images at the same time. I had read a bit about the Vietnam War and I have seen Apocalypse Now but somehow I did not know or had simply forgotten that the US was bombarding this poor country for more than 20 years with Vietnamese casualties of 4 million and possibly more. I was wondering why I never realised before that this was an actual genocide similar to what Hitler did to the Jews in Europe and got even more furious about the continuous bragging of US governments about how they are the “greatest nation in the world”. Even Obama said it the other day in his farewell speech as president: “we are the greatest and one of the most respected nations in the world..” I actually like Barack Obama but this is some serious bullshit and it is a disgrace that he should dare say such things without feeling embarrassed. If we start counting the amounts of destruction caused by the USA from South America via the Middle East to South East Asia, it probably amounts to Hitler multiplied by 20. Somehow, as he went along making historical references about democracy, he forgot to mention the US crimes against humanity and nature, they all do..

There were many images displaying marches from around the world against the Vietnam War. Quite a few of them were taken in Bulgaria to my surprise showing communist solidarity and friendly head of state visits from back in the days. There were a lot pictures of public executions too but the most shocking and disturbing ones were the photographs portraying victims of Agent Orange. The deformities this chemical weapon caused in humans are really beyond imagination. Crooked heads, bones, open wounds on the skin, eyes looking as if they were going to burst out of the pupils any second, missing legs, wrists and feet..it felt almost almost surreal, like taken out of some Hollywood science fiction but the amount of human suffering that every image transmitted served as a reminder that this was all real. The saddest thing of all is that this nightmare is still far from over in Vietnam. As Agent Orange poisoned much of the farmland, there are second and third generation children born with disabilities and it is not even clear until when this might continue. I left the museum almost in tears and hating the United States as it often happens when I travel. The fact that no American Government was held accountable for this horrors or at least bothered to offer an excuse is beyond shameful.

After this visit , we started feeling mentally and physically exhausted already. We walked back to the hotel exploring some new streets along the way. Everything was happening on the street, from making dumplings to repairing motorbikes and shaving. I was of course photographing like crazy. It was only about 2 pm and we had seen quite a lot from the city already almost straight from the plane which felt pretty cool. It was now definitely time to check into our room, take a shower and fall asleep like babies.

A few hours later, we were ready to explore Ho Chi Minh by night - most importantly proper local cuisine after the original disappointment at the market. We chose a restaurant that was mentioned in our guide called Cyclo - a family run local business also offering typical Vietnamese Cooking classes. It was in a tiny dodgy looking street we reached walking. Staying in District 1 is not particularly fancy but practically everything worth seeing isnwithin a walking distance. The place was completely empty except for another foreign couple. This was a bit suspicious at first but the food turned out to be really excellent. Mekong fish in one of the most delicious sauces ever - a mix of the famous Vietnamese fish sauce with lemon grass, honey and other herbs unknown to me, accompanied by a soup, fresh spring rolls and other mixed veggies with a dip. The secret were definitely the sauces which gave the food a strong and exotic but not very spicy taste. As a finish, we had another traditional specialty - Vietnamese coffee with egg instead of milk, aka Vietnamese cappuccino, served in those cute cups with a tea light to keep it hot. The perfect ending to my first proper Asian dinner in Asia.

It was not even 10 pm so we went to the sites that we had not visited during the day like the opera house, the post office and a church called Notre Dame like in Paris. We took another Vietnamese coffee, this time without an egg though, at a cute roof top coffee shop. It was one of many on a fancy boulevard with boutiques like Gucci and Dolce & Gabana which felt totally out of place here.

To finish the evening, we decided to have a romantic walk along the river. There were many couples and loud groups of friends picnicking on the concrete ground at the river front, including some lonesome fishermen. It seemed like the perfect way to finish this day full of new impressions but surprise surprise, the riverfront alley turned out to be infested by rats! They were so many even hanging out in groups of five and more at some places. I ended up running and screaming around, trying to circumvent them. There were even some dead rats floating in the dark waters of the canal where people were fishing... So it was not a very romantic walk after all but definitely a memorable one. I was so ready to jump into bed after this. What an eventful first day in Vietnam! Tomorrow - Mekong Delta.