Chapter 28

"There Will be Doggos"

Internships were, so far, progressing. Not necessarily smoothly, but they were progressing. Midoriya, Todoroki and Bakugo had been interning together under one hero, and that was probably fun. It was interesting to Alarice any way.

Still, as each day of it ticked by, she wondered if she'd be staying for the next semester, or, if she'd be going home as soon as she was done.

There was also her inability to fully relax since Mic had been put into the hospital for being poisoned. She wasn't really proud of that but no one seemed to have questioned it to much. She had enough things to be tense about that this one thing seemed really sink into her skin but avoid the attention of others.

"Hey." Jiro's voice came through, but then she was leaning very close in.

"Hey yourself." Alarice responded, a nervous smile on her face. "What's up, I'm gonna have to head out soon for my internship." She gave a less than convincing shoulder shrug.

"Thought I'd come bother you, since you know, you don't look nervous at all." The other teased, causing Alarice to frown. She fiddled with something Alarice couldn't see behind the couch back. "You could always ask to stay, couldn't you?"

"I did, I messaged Sunshine this morning, and she just said ' I know ', I don't know if that means she's already working on it or what." Alarice gave another shoulder shrug and the faint sounds of Present Mic came out of her earbud in her hand. "I hope I can."

"Same. It'd be a lot harder to have any kind of session over the internet." Jirou commented, giving her own shoulder shrug. "But we could, I mean, if we had to, right?"

Alarice looked at her blankly for a second and red dusted her cheeks for a moment. "Y-yeah I mean, I'd do my best... Can I share something with you?" Alarice said, finally getting up from the couch. "I mean, if you don't mind."

"I don't. What is it?"

"Its uh, it's up in my room. I have it on my computer.. It's a Mix I made." Alarice couldn't keep the nervous ticks out of her voice. "Just, don't judge me for my room okay?"

That got a look from her friend, but the two punk-esque girls headed up to Alarice's room. Jirou, being graced with the gift of being the only one of her classmates specifically, to see her room. A step or two below Midoriya's in fandom heavy decoration, and of course, for a different hero. She took a few seconds after quickly shutting the door, to pull up a file on her computer, plugging in a headphone splitter, and then two sets of headphones. Her good over-ear ones, and the pair of earbuds. She gave the headphones over to Jirou, and used the earbuds for herself.

"I made it.. It's a remix I've had for awhile, but I ended up using one of our songs as a base, and some of Hiz—Mic's sound bites in it... and some other stuff." Alarice couldn't help but hope her friend liked it. It was finally at a state she was happy with. Finally, she also wasn't thinking purely about loosing something. Or Someone.

000

Alarice still found it difficult to keep the thoughts of her teacher's health out of her head. Even though she was sure he was probably going to be released soon. She let out a huff of air and put herself into her work and started people watching.

"Are ya still worried about yer teacher?" Fatgum asked casually having apparently heard and noted the huff.

"... Maybe." Alarice defensively tried not to admit to much. She was at this point a little ashamed of how worried she was. This wasn't a normal amount of worry was it? "Is that bad?"

"No. Not really." He gave a big shoulder shrug. "Just seems like ya have too much worry, are ya that fond of him or somethin?"

Alarice's cheeks immediately flushed with embarrassment. "Not like that!." She put her braid in front of her and fought down the urge to fiddle. "It's not that kind of... He just means a lot to me, I didn't realize how much till recently, I guess. It's kind of embarrassing to talk about actually."

He nodded his head and patted hers, startling her a little bit but she didn't resist. "So a childhood hero then."

"Yeah. I think he'd be really surprised about the old stuff I have."

"Ya got some hero debut materials huh?" Fatgum teased, "Those are rare."

"Nothing that old! But I have a really old poster my dad got for me on ebay. It's him. Like a couple costume iterations ago." Alarice laughed a little. "He has a different hairstyle, and there's like a million more studs."

Fatgum had a little laugh at that, and Alarice was smiling along side, as they walked, pausing as a person on the street stopped them to ask for some help finding a store. A small, tiny thing, but Fatgum knew where every place you could get a good meal was, and coincidentally, their adjoining stores.

Much like when she had been stabbed, it happened very quickly, but unlike that, she was allowed to react appropriately.

To her surprise it was another Hell-hound, who had tried to dig their fangs into her neck. He'd only gotten them around one of her arms, as she had transitioned to Werehound barely in time. Though his bite was no joke, he had pierced the thicker skin and was drawing blood.

She was aware of the gasp of the people around, and the following cries of alarm, but the sound of the other hound as they snarled drowned some of it out. He snarled viciously as he tried to rip the skin of her arms off. Or, perhaps the whole arm?

Fatgum made a move on the fiery colored, skull-headed dog. His snout was shorter than hers, but he was certainly packing more teeth. He dug all of them in, as Fatgum went for him. Simultaneously, all the hairs along the smaller hell-hound's back suddenly stood on end, and began shaking violently. Little white glowing hairs came out. Their purpose made itself immediately clear as the quills buried themselves into flesh, cloth, and even metal.

The bigger hero let out the smallest noise of pain, for the few burning barbs that had pierced his gloves, and gone right to the flesh. A few people standing by let out noises of alarm and pain, and a woman's bag caught fire, as did a man's pant leg. Fat-gum took care of that as best as he could.

"Clear out folks! Keep back!" Fatgum barked out at people around him, punctuated by the angry snarl from the attacking hell-hound. Turning back to his intern, who had a grip on the smaller hell-hound's jaw, trying to pry him off of her arm, but also not loose him. The tail-hand grabbing at one of his legs.

Fatgum steeled himself for the pain he was about to experience, and grabbed at the smaller hound's ear, and wrenched it back. Same time, punching the thing in the throat, which forced it to choke, and let go of Arariel. It lashed at him with its tail instead, trying to get him to let go of it's ear.

Technically it succeeded, at the cost of some of its own ear. Gum's own glove was smoking from the heat of the quills.

Despite this, Fatgum went to flip the villain onto his back. Succeeding almost by chance as the hell-hound jumped back from him, twisting in the air, but still getting hit by one of the big hero's punches.

Then, by one of Alarice's bigger hell hound feet. Her bigger, much more intimidating giant hell-hound, full form. Her tail hand was held passively, her own front paw, even as a juvenile, big enough to hold the other down, without crushing him it was noted, given how much noise he was making. Arariel's own deep growl was hardly perceptive to those not close enough to hear it.

"Got him, Arariel?" Fatgum asked, beginning the process of calling it in, while bystanders watched. She nodded her big head, but kept her focus on the smaller hell-hound.

The quilled hell-hound dropped his form, revealing himself to certainly be a guy. Alarice, thankful that she was not bothered by this, grabbing newspaper with her tail hand to cover up his nudity, though he seemed very against that fact. Shouting all kinds of things at her despite her not moving to change her position.

"You're a betrayer! Turning your back on your real family!" The hound beneath her foot barked up at her. Her twitching ears the only indication she was even acknowledging him. The Police showing up to arrest him, already.

"If you don't join with Manticore then you're better off dead! You giants are supposed to protect us! Not them!" he continued to spit to her lack of reaction as she lifted her foot only when he was dragged out from under it, by Gum, to ensure he was restrained securely. He was still hurling insults, throwing a fit, and generally being an unruly villain resisting being taken away.

Eventually though, he was gone, packed away in the vehicle, and the nearby folks being treated for the wounds. Including the Pro hero and his intern. A medic looking at Fatgum's hands, and treating them for the burns and needle-sized holes. Another was treating Alarice's bite, though she didn't seem remotely bothered. Sitting there while they applied stitches after flushing and cleaning the torn flesh and bloody pits.

"There you go, all stitched up, just hold still a little bit while I wrap it!" The chipper male paramedic stated, while they got out the gauze wrap. Seemingly ignorant to the blank look on his patient.

"Ya did good not reacting to what that guy was sayin'." Fatgum started, looking at her with a definite bit of concern. "an keepin' him pinned."

"All I did I was put my foot on him." She responded, a little dull in tone.

"Sometimes that's all ya gotta do! You've seen me use my big ol' body to stop people on the fly." He smiled proudly and gave himself a more gentle pat, given that his hands were wrapped up right now. "That's just as simple. Simple works well!"

Alarice just sort of looked at him, at the ground and then thanked the medic as he finished up wrapping her arm. "I'm just.. bothered."

"By what he was sayin'?" He asked her, as she pulled her sleeve down. She nodded not really looking back up when she explained more.

"I think I do know who Manticore is." She stood up from her spot and just kinda stood there. The sinking feeling from the start of the verbal berating she'd taken was bothering her.

"Well... Good thing, apparently a detective wants to talk to you about what he was sayin' " Fatgum's voice was booming despite being quieter than normal. Alarice could kinda tell he was a little bit concerned for her. She wanted to be comforted but instead she just felt guilty.

They were moved from the incident site, most people involved were gone or had already given statements. For the most part people had returned to their lives' responsibilities, now that the villain and hero fighting was done and it was all boring again.

Arriving at the police building, and walking in, a rather kind faced Detective greeted them. Soon she was in a room quietly with them explaining that she was pretty sure, Manticore, was her sister. Following up that, she was unaware of anything else, learning afterwards, that she had to wait there for her escort.

Her internship she found, was now over, something Fatgum wasn't any happier about than she was. Though he did at least state that he'd take her back on when the opportunity presented itself if she still wanted to learn from him. Something she gratefully accepted.

000

Once Alarice was back in the dorms, everything had calmed down. The sound of heels on the tiled floors dominated the hallway. Aizawa's steps were dead silent as he came up behind the golden woman.

Quick as could be, the gray cloth of his capture weapon had her bound tightly, and jerked violently backwards towards the wall. She let out a grunt and then an annoyed sigh as her instinct to defend herself with her quirk failed to respond.

"Aizawa, really?" Sunshine asked, a fairly irritated look on her face. Aizawa was a picture of exhausted fury. Despite the fact he closed his eyes, releasing his erasure, hair flopping back down around his head, his fist was still tight around his gray capture weapon. Rather it tightened, just a little bit on the opposite hero. "Isn't this a bit forward, even for you?"

"There are no cameras in this section." Aizawa growled out. His dark eyes were penetrating. "I want to know the real reasons, right now, for bringing Stone here. I'm done being a pawn for whatever game you're playing."

"Is this about that Hell-hound attacking her?" Sunshine raised only an eyebrow at him, He jerked at the cloth and she winced. "Hard for me talk if you crush my ribs with that thing."

He narrowed his eyes, and released it only a bit. Watching her carefully, as if she was a Villain herself. His trust for her had been eroded away, and he was ready for her behave in any manner of ways.

"Fine, I'll tell you the truth, since you're so desperate to know." She said with some heat in her voice. "I'm working with international police, to break up and stop the killings of hell-hounds globally. My lead suspect, for awhile, has been Parasus Stone, whom I now have confirmation is Manticore."

She shuffled-off the weapon from her arms anyway, as she continued. "They have been massively elusive, and difficult to catch for numerous and complicated reasons. I needed a way to prove my theory that Manticore is Parasus, and draw her out. Alarice is her half-sister and while I was pretty sure she had interfered with Alarice's schooling after she left, I never had any proof or was able to catch her. So, since her schooling was failing, and I needed a way to draw Parasus out enough, to prove she was Manticore..."

"You brought here to use her as bait?" Aizawa hissed between his teeth. His anger was not getting any better.

"Of course." Sunshine responded, cocking an eyebrow at him. "Either UA would catch her sister, and/or we'd be able to confirm her as Manticore. Or even find where they've been hiding themselves."

He knew he was gripping the cloth too tightly, but it couldn't be helped. " Are you not aware of the danger you're putting her in!? She could be killed by this game you're playing!"

"I know." His stomach felt cold, as she continued. "Would it matter? UA was perfect for this. It really is safer here, than her previous schools, her sister would come for her one way or another; that was always the case. Her chance of living is better here, than elsewhere, and if not? Then, her last months of life are her learning to do what she wanted, getting to be around her favorite hero, and either way, do the rest of the world a service in stopping the mass murder of others like her. She'd be-"

"Shut the fuck up. Don't you dare." He was struggling to keep his voice down in the hall way. Sunshine seemed unphased by his glare. "She's your goddaughter, how can you justify putting her life in danger like this, and the lives of the people around her in danger!"

There was suddenly pain in her eyes, not guilt or shame but just pain, pure and simple. "I can because she is my goddaughter. It's just one life, to potentially save more lives. Isn't that what we do? Every day?"

For a brief moment Aizawa didn't think she was asking him that question. He was the only one to respond, however, so he did. "So you lost your friend, and that makes it okay to sacrifice her kid? Is it easier for you, because of her quirk?"

"I don't know why your having such a problem with this Aizawa, it's a completely logical plan." Sunshine countered, her gaze still distant and not quite looking at him. He just glared at her for it, unable to deny that, as cold-hearted as her plan was... it was working. Manticore was now confirmed to be Parasus Stone. Who was still in Japan, she hadn't let left at all, but she hadn't been caught yet, either. It was a plan that was getting results. "Are those the answers you wanted?"

Aizawa didn't answer, stepping back, allowing her to walk away from him.

"Well, if you're done attacking your fellow hero, I have paperwork to do." Sunshine managed to sound curt despite the situation. Picking herself up mentally as they'd only had a minor squabble. The golden rose had thorns, and she had already drawn blood on those around her.

"Sunshine." He barked after her as she started to walk away. She turned around to look at him, as he managed to look intimidating with his weapon gathering back up onto his shoulders. "Stay away from 1-A while you're still here."