Rumi prowled through the carcass of the Golden Cat. Half the building was gone, consumed in a blaze some years ago, judging by the height of the weeds on the ground floor. The charred remnants of floorboards crunched noisily under her boots. The kitchen was entirely gone. It looked like the fire started there, at the gas line for the stove. Had it been set intentionally? Did anyone die? The thought of wiping someone's ashes off her boots later was... sobering.

Like the kitchen, the stairs were gone. At least partially. Looking straight up, she could see daylight where the ceiling should be. A series of hops had her balanced on a blackened beam, fifteen meters above ground. Following it to the wall, she stepped up to the narrow remains of the third-floor hallway. Memories came, unbidden.

"These floors better be spotless by the time I come back, or you're not getting dinner. Understand me, brat?"

"Yes, Miss Marguerite." Rumi scrubbed away at the third-floor hallway on her knees, stripping years' worth of accumulated grime off the smooth hardwood. The little pink tip of her tongue poked out of her mouth. Her fluffy white tail twitched with frustration. Sweat dripped from the tip of her nose. The water in her bucket had gone cold an hour ago, and her arms felt like they were going to fall off, but she still had half of the hallway left to scrub.

She had to get it done tonight, because tomorrow she was supposed to help change the linens and the day after she was to scrub the hallway on the second floor. The work never stopped, so neither could she. Rumi was determined to never spend another night sleeping on the street again.

Back in the present, Rumi snorted. What a cantankerous old bitch Marguerite had been. With one last hop, Rumi stood at the door to her old room. Hesitating, she pushed it open. Flakes of heat-bubbled varnish fell off the door like snow. They clung statically to her fingers. The inside hadn't changed much in the near decade she's spent away, only it felt so much more cramped now. Same dusty old bed, same ruined dresser, same cracked window. Everything was covered in layers of dust and soot.

Curious, she walked around the bed and looked down. Carefully blowing away the dust revealed a crude, yet unmistakable, drawing of All Might. She laughed.

She pawed around under the bed, until she felt something soft. All Might's winning smile beamed up at her in the form of a plush toy. She could hardly believe he was still here.

"Ha! Hey All Might. You're a lot smaller than I remember." Sitting against the wall, she idly turned the plushie this way and that. She could still make out the stain of mystery goop on his right arm – Rumi had rescued him from a dumpster – and one of his eyebrows was falling off. Miss Sally had stitched his shoulder back together with emerald green thread, which stood out sharply against the blue of his Silver Age costume. His smile though, that hadn't changed a bit.

Nine Years Ago

Rumi heard a lot of things in the weeks that she had lived here. It was hard not to with ears like hers. People in the Golden Cat – workers and clients alike – weren't very inclined to steer away from sensitive subjects when they thought no one else was listening. She wished she could ignore them sometimes, but being able to hear through the walls, floors, and ceilings made that difficult.

For instance, Miss Sally's real name was Yuuna Iwamura; she ran away from home when she turned fourteen. Marguerite was a French-Mongolian expat and she spent much of her time watching Latin soap operas in her office on the first floor. Mr. Wakimoto, a frequent client, considered his son a disgrace and wanted to divorce his wife. Right now, Shiori was crying in the second-floor bathroom. She was pregnant. Tamiko was trying, and failing, to comfort her. Often, she didn't fully understand what she was hearing, but she was smart enough to tell what was bad or good by the general context of things.

The bed in the room next door began to crash against the wall. Every bang ricocheted off the inside of her skull, setting her teeth on edge. The desperate grunting and moaning made her feel gross. "Ick, ick, ick!" Rumi hopped from the bed to the dresser across the room and urgently stuffed a pair of socks in her ears. She flopped back in bed with a huff. All she wanted to do tonight was listen to Vox Populi's show but she could barely make out what he was saying now. He was supposed to have a secret special guest tonight and Rumi really didn't want to miss it; he'd been hyping it up all week! She cranked up the volume and burrowed under her pillow.

"All right folks! That just about wraps up today's round of 'Sorry, I didn't Hero that!'. If you called in with a winning answer, don't worry, we'll get those two VIP tickets to DEEP DOPE on February 3rd mailed out to you A! S! A! P! Up next: we've got Two Hours of Power, an uninterrupted two hours of awesome music made by awesome Heroes, all without a single commercial. It's been a real pleasure, g'night Tokyo!"

What! Had she missed the guest interview? Rumi sat bolt upright and looked at the clock. Ten o'clock, on the dot, the interview should be happening right now. But Vox Populi signed off and a pop-y song was already playing. It wasn't fair, she had been looking forward to this all week! She tried to melt the radio with a look, but just went cross-eyed in the attempt. The song stopped playing with a crackling record scratch.

"Ha! Got ya! Man, the phones in the studio are ringing off! The! Hook! Do my dear listeners really think old Voxy would leave them high and dry? Apparently so, ha! Don't worry dear Populi, it is time! Time for our super-cool, super-special, super-secret, super-celeb interview! Miss Bass, give us a drumroll, if you please!" His introduction tonight came with way more fanfare than usual.

Overcome with excitement, Rumi nearly crashed her head into the ceiling when she sprung out of bed. Bouncing around the room, her feet drummed on the floor in time with the snare. She was practically vibrating.

"Dear listeners, I give you the man, the myth, the legend-"

"I AM HERE! ON THE AIRWAVES!"

"-All Might himself!"

It was All Might. It was All Might! Rumi couldn't believe it. She snatched her Silver Age All Might plushy off the bed and hugged it so tightly one of the seams popped.

"Now, Mr. Might, sir, – I'm a huge fan by the way – we've only got about five minutes so let's jump right into it."

Rumi hung onto All Might's every word, basking in their warmth. She didn't move a muscle. Surely if she moved, she would miss something of critical importance. So, for the entire interview she stood in the middle of the room, cramming the radio up against the sock she lodged in her ear.

"Alright we've got less than a minute left, so here's one last question. A lot of good people are struggling to get by out there, with work or with school, or even hero duties. So many of these people look up to you All Might. Do you have any words of advice for those people that are going through a tough time right now?"

"Of course!" All Might boomed, "a true hero will always find a way for justice to be served! Why? Because a true hero never gives up when the going gets tough! So, when the world throws its worst at you, give the world your best smile and declare 'I AM HERE!'"

"And that's it, we're officially out of time for the evening. Thank you All Might and thank you dear listeners! Goodnight!"

A true hero will always find a way.

A true hero never gives up.

Rumi stood, dusting herself off. Fondly setting All Might on the bed, she made to leave. "Take good care of the place for me while I'm gone, yeah?" She shut the door, hopped down to the ground floor, and made her way out into the streets of Kamino. There was information to gather and she wasn't about to find it in the dusty bones of the Cat.

Absently chewing her lip as she walked, Rumi dug around in her memories, looking for any hint of where Kurogiri's bar was. She'd only been once or twice, and never for long, so not much stuck with her over the years. The distant roar of jet turbines drew her eyes to the sky. A fat commercial airliner, taking off from Haneda International, jogged her memory. The Bar was close enough to the airport that she could hear the jets from inside the building. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Her best bet would be to get to the nearest station and hop on a train to the airport. From there she'd find lodging, outline a search grid, and start looking. "God, this is going to take for- ever."

The people at Manda station, mostly salarymen and students, carried a nervous tension with them. She had noticed the same energy out on the streets, though it wasn't nearly so… intense. The staccato beating of over a hundred hearts dizzied her. She pulled her hood up and sat on a bench, metering her breathing, centering herself. Slowly, the thunder in her ears became a rolling drumline with a semblance of rhythm to it. It wasn't a real melody, but one she forced herself to hear to make sense of the noise. It made things easier.

Roughly fifteen minutes later saw Rumi hopping on the Keikyu Line to the airport. She eased into a seat by one of the doors, listening to the clack-clack of the train car rolling down the tracks. Soft humming caught her attention. Unsure if she was hearing correctly, Rumi fiddled with the rubber funnels in her ears. They were made of silicone and kept her ear canals open, letting her wear a hat or a hood without impairing her sense of hearing. They were terrible, always itchy, and if she left them in too long the cartilage at the base of her ears ached.

But no, there was nothing wrong with the funnels. The odd thing wasn't the humming itself, but the sense of raw excitement she got from it. It clashed with the tension on the air. She scanned the train car casually, eventually singling out a student in a navy-blue uniform.

This student, a girl, wore her blonde hair up in two sloppy buns. The waistband of her uniform skirt was rolled two or three times, somewhere between fashionable and scandalous. Bobbing her head and kicking her legs as she hummed, Blondie met Rumi's gaze and smiled – fangs, sharp, caution – before going back to her own little world.

Rumi's nose twitched: Blondie stunk of blood. Fuck me, that can't be good. The train rolled to a stop and the doors hissed open. Blondie vanished into thin air the instant Rumi lost line of sight on her. That raised every red flag that wasn't already up. Worse still, she couldn't hear blondie. Anywhere.

All those little red flags were now on fire. "Oh, fuck me running." Rumi stepped onto the platform. It was tempting to drop her hood and yank those stupid funnels out, if only to find little miss Blood and Sunshine. It could be that she was mistaken, and there was nothing wrong here, but every little thing about Blondie just felt so goddamn wrong. Hawks whispered in the back of her mind: 'Trust your gut, it'll save your life.'

The importance of finding Blondie dropped sharply when two cops ascended the platform stairs. They moved from traveler to traveler, briefly questioning them as they filtered out of the station. "Excuse me sir, have you seen this girl? She's gone missing and was last seen one week ago, in Musutafu." Rumi Usagiyama beamed out at the world from the officers' photograph.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. FUCK! Rumi hid behind one of the concrete pillars which supported the awning over the station. She could just jump off the platform, but the edge was too far to hop over without getting some serious air first. There was no way the cops would miss her flying through the air, and the absolute last thing she needed was nosy cops. Hawks couldn't run interference for her out here, and commission jurisdiction didn't overlap with that of the local precincts.

"Psst! Hey, pssst!" Blondie was back, hiding behind the adjacent pillar. She flailed her arm to get Rumi's attention, and her whispering was far from quiet.

Oh, if only looks could kill. "Shut. Up. They'll hear!" Rumi hissed. This was fucking unbelievable. She'd been formally working on this case for less than a week and here she was, about to be made by the cops because some psycho blonde that used blood as perfume couldn't whisper. She wanted to scream.

"No, no, that's terrible! you're doing it all wrong." Blondie kept flapping her goddamn arms, one of the cops noticed, and started walking over.

Rumi weighed the pros and cons of saying 'fuck it' and going full villain on the spot. She tensed, about to make a break for it, when the strangest thing happened. The officer walked around Blondies pillar – facing away from Rumi – and looked right through the girl. He adjusted his cap with a frown before returning to his partner, all while Blondie stared up at him like a lovesick puppy.

Rumi listened carefully to the officers.

"See something?" That was the one who hadn't come over, a woman with green hair.

The one that somehow missed Blondie standing an inch from his face sounded confused. "Err, I thought… no… No, it was nothing."

Rumi deflated. How in the hell had Blondie pulled that off? Was it her quirk? She wanted to ask, but it looked like the girl had vanished again. Laying her head against the tile, she blew out a sigh. What the hell was wrong with people in Kamino?

"Hi!" Blondie slapped her palms on the tile, on either side of Rumi's head.

It was a small miracle that Rumi didn't punt her across the station on reflex.

"I'm Him-I-Ko To-Ga!" The girl, Toga, batted her lashes, blushing heavily. She panted in a terribly indecent way. "Did you run away too?"

Rumi stared into Toga's open mouth. What. The. Fuck?

Toga's tongue wriggled wetly against her pearly fangs.

"So… how d'you do it?" Rumi kept her eyes and ears trained on Toga as they walked together.

Toga, slurping on the bubble tea Rumi bought her, froze for a moment, as though she had forgotten Rumi was there.

"The vanishing act thing. Is it your quirk?" A burning curiosity had taken root in her. Part of her hoped it was a learned skill. It would be so stupidly useful to know, plus Hawks would never see it coming. Literally. The unflappable Hawks gawking like a fish out of water was a warm and fuzzy though. She sighed happily at the mental image.

"Oh, that!" Toga chirped. "It's not related to my quirk, so you can do it too. You just gotta hold your breath and clear your mind, it's suuuuper easy. Here, watch!" Toga closed her eyes, her face went slack, but nothing else happened.

In Rumi's periphery, a startled bird took to the air in a mess of feathers. When she refocused on Toga, only a fraction of a second later, she was gone. "How the hell…" There was a hot breath on her neck, opposite from where Toga had been standing.

Toga giggled, "See, Mirko? Easy."

"Holy shit. I can't even hear you when you do that."

Toga tilted her head cutely, rolling the end of her straw between her fangs. "Uh, well yeah. That's kinda the point of erasing yourself. Why would you be able to hear me? Do you have a hearing quirk or something?"

Rumi would consider Toga a normal person if not for that sea of burning red flags. Still, she was rather good at moving around undetected and she claimed to be a runaway too. Toga could be a great asset, potentially making her job much easier. Or not… depending on why she had run away from home. Rumi shivered.

Toga poked Rumi's cheek. "Hello? You in there?"

"Oh! Sorry." Rumi simply dropped her hood, pulled off her beanie, and finally, finally pulled out those silicone funnels. Her ears stood up straight for the first time all day.

Toga erupted. She squealed, set her tea on the ground, and lunged. Cooing and giggling, Toga ran her fingers all over Rumi's ears. "Oh my god, you're so fricken' cute." She slid her hands all the way down, kneading at the fluffiest parts around the base. "Ooh, ooh, do you have a tail too? Oh my god, you totally do! Is it fluffy? Can I see it? Pleaaase?" Toga hopped from foot to foot like a rambunctious toddler.

Rumi thought it was kind of cute, until she caught a flash of steel tucked into the waistband of Toga's skirt. A snap knife. Great. Just another drop in the Things Wrong with Himiko Toga bucket. Rumi groaned, carefully prying Toga's hands off and taking a step back. "Easy, they're sore. And yes, I have a tail, and no, you can't see it."

Toga pouted for a moment before retrieving her tea. "Soo, I guess those are pretty sensitive?"

Hmm, how much to reveal? On one hand, Toga knew a valuable skill that Rumi wanted to learn. On the other hand, this bitch was fucking crazy. Rumi worked her lip between her teeth for a moment. "I can hear your heart beating from across the room usually."

A tremor swept through Toga's body. "W-wow. A heartbeat? Isn't that really… intimate?" Her breaths came a bit more raggedly. The ice in her tea rattled softly as her hands shook.

"Uh… I guess?" Okay, this was getting a bit too weird for her. Time to move on. Before she could say 'Goodbye, and please don't keep in touch.' Toga wrapped an arm around hers.

"I'll teach you! Only… can we be… friends, Mirko?" Toga fluttered her heavy lashes up at Rumi. She was panting again. "Let's go somewhere more private though. It'll be so much easier."

Aw, fuck. The cops are going to find my dismembered torso in a suitcase floating in Tokyo Bay, aren't they. "Sure. We're, ah, friends. Lead the way?" She finished lamely.

Toga's idea of somewhere private was a public restroom, the entrance to which was in an alley. It was on the ground floor of a condemned parking structure, barely half a kilometer from the train station. The pair of officers from earlier were probably still looking for her. There was a chance, however small, that they'd find her here. She didn't know if she wanted to be associated with Himiko Toga if that happened. That could be… problematic.

Rumi eyed the bathroom with disdain. The mirrors were shattered, there was graffiti on the walls, and pulverized tiles were scattered across the floor. Only one of the lights worked, and it was an old fluorescent fixture that tinted everything an eerie blue-green. A rat the size of a terrier skittered through a hole in the wall. Rumi was definitely going to be murdered to the desolate hum of fluorescent bulbs. Fucking great. That snap knife tucked into Toga's waistband was at the forefront of her mind, along with her weird oral fixation, and the way she kept sneaking glances at her ears. It was fucking creepy.

Toga actually did attempt to teach her how to 'erase herself' though, true to her word. Sitting on the floor at the clearest spot she could find, Rumi half meditated, half listened to Toga's coaching. It was bizarre, sometimes the girls voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Sometimes she felt Toga's lips brush against the shell of her ear, and that totally threw her concentration off every time. No goddamn concept of personal space. They went at it for about an hour, by Rumi's estimation. She was getting frustrated. Both with her seeming lack of progress and with Toga's… everything. She cracked an eye open, peeking at the blonde.

The girl didn't seem remotely bothered by how much time they'd spent in here. "Hey, I think you're starting to get it!" Toga was starting to slur her words. She'd undone a few buttons of her uniform top, exposing a fair bit of cleavage. Her skin was flushed pink, from her forehead down to her sternum. "Can… can you hear my heart, Mirko?" The words squirmed into Rumi's ears.

The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Rumi carefully watched Toga, taking care not to blink. "I can."

Toga slowly ran a trembling hand from her collarbone, down to her inner thigh. She hesitated at the snap knife. "W-what does it sound like?"

Rumi sighed. Looks like there's going to be a fight after all. "Fast. Erratic."

Toga actually fucking moaned at that. She was getting off on stalking Rumi, and that's exactly what this was, no doubt about it. The girl was trying to teach her, sure, but all the repeated demonstrations, all the times Toga had moved around the room while erased, it was all a fucked-up game of cat and mouse. Only she was playing with Rumi's senses in lieu of physically chasing her. Himiko Toga was a predator. Fuck this, fuck everything about this. I'm on to you, and it's going down on MY terms, not yours. Rumi rolled her shoulders and closed her eyes.

Toga was there, like magic, wrapping her arms around Rumi from behind, nibbling at the base of her ear. She ground her body into Rumi's. A hand slithered into her top to paw at her chest.

"Himiko."

Toga swore and raked her tongue up the side of Rumi's neck. "Oh, god, y-yeah?"

Rumi endured the sharp nipping at her jawline and let Toga tilt her head back, exposing a smooth stretch of throat. That long, wet tongue traced up Rumi's jugular before plunging into her mouth. Toga's other hand wormed its way inside Rumi's leggings. It was strange, kissing a girl. Kind of nice. She supposed she'd be more… flustered, if she weren't waiting for the inevitable back stab – literally, in this case. Maybe she'd be more wound up if Toga had green hair and freckles.

"Romantic, physical, and platonic attraction are all solid avenues for human intelligence work. If you choose to exploit these opportunities, you need to compartmentalize. Detach yourself from it. All those emotions you're going to feel, they're valid. Never avoid them, but you cannot let them rule you in the moment. And most importantly, there are many ways to skin a cat. Don't force yourself to do something you aren't okay with. Please." The conversation in which Hawks said that was one of the few where he cut the bullshit. She appreciated him for it.

Maybe Rumi was okay with this situation in a way. She felt no thrill as Toga quite literally crammed her entire tongue down Rumi's throat. But Toga's lips were soft, and her tongue did feel nice. Shame she was a fucking sociopath. Rumi slid her right hand up Toga's belly, lingering at her chest – when did her bra come off?– before moving up to her throat.

Rumi hissed when nimble fingers pinched and rolled one of her nipples. "Himiko."

Moaning, Toga pulled away. The end of her tongue hung from her mouth. She pulled her hand out of Rumi's panties. Conspicuously, it didn't land anywhere else, despite her other hand staying busy.

"Are you going to kill me with that box cutter?"

Toga's pupils shrunk to slits. There was no longer anything remotely human in her face. The knife clicked in her hand.

Rumi caught Toga's wrist firmly with her left hand, just centimeters from her jugular, and squeezed Toga's throat with her right. She stood, smoothly hurling her into the nearest stall partition. It crumpled under the impact. The razor sat firmly in Rumi's right hand. "Yeah, I can't let you do that, Toga. Dying's not on my agenda." As it turned out, the racket of the stall collapsing was enough of a distraction for Toga to use her little magic trick. Rumi was ready though.

Fabric rustled softly behind her. She pivoted and rammed her knee into Toga's gut, sending her crashing against the wall. Rumi dragged her to the sinks and threw her ass first into one of them, pinning her to the broken mirror by the throat. It was one of the only well-lit spots in the bathroom. With Toga positioned so awkwardly Rumi would have plenty of time to react if she did something stupid. Again.

Toga wheezed. "Oh, what are you gonna do to me, Mirko?" She raised her knees and spread her legs. Toga wasn't wearing panties. Yet another drop in the fucked-up bucket. Snaring Rumi with her legs, Toga pulled her in tight and ground against her. "Fight me? Fuck me? Bleed for me?"

Rumi sneered, squeezing until the blonde's face purpled. "None of the above. Sorry, but we're done here." Rumi tossed the knife onto the tile. It bounced over to the door.

"What! B-but, but you said we were friends! You can't- "

"Friends don't stab friends, Toga."

"Hey! What's going on here?" Oh fuck, it was the green haired policewoman from the station. She stood in the open door, peering into the dimly lit bathroom. "Come out where I can see you, wait… Himiko Toga?" The officer swore and went for her sidearm and her radio at the same time. She glanced down at her holster.

Toga snarled and flickered out of existence.

No, no, FUCK, neither of us were looking at her! "Toga, stop!" She was too slow. Why had Rumi put her in the sink again, to slow her down? Well it didn't fucking work at all.

'When you have to fight someone, put them down hard.'

"I've spotted Himi- ghhk!" The officer dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Little droplets of blood sprayed from her jugular, travelling all the way across the room to spatter against Rumi's face.

"Do NOT make me stab you again, it's wasteful." Toga greedily slurped at the officers slashed throat.

"Toga! What the fuck are you doing?"

'Put them down fast. Cripple them if you have to.'

Rumi recognized that she was panicking. She needed to call the police, more police, or call Hawks, or someone, anyone! "No, no, no, Toga, goddamnit, stop. STOP IT!"

'Lives depend on it.'

Toga's skin melted, swirling into some nightmarish canvas of distorted features. In the blink of an eye the goopy mess reconfigured, and Toga had become a perfect clone of the dying officer. "He he, sorry I let her interrupt us Mirko." That voice, it wasn't Toga's. She stood and stepped over the officer's body like it was little more than trash on the sidewalk. "Ta-ta for now, we'll have to meet up later, when things have cooled down." She vanished out the door.

Rumi scrambled over to the cop and put pressure on her wound. Her stomach clenched and roiled – she was going to be sick. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't want this!" Hawks had warned her about this exact thing, and she didn't fucking listen. A single gunshot and a scream echoed through the parking structure. Rumi closed her eyes. Breath in, count to four, breathe 'd gotten in her own head and didn't treat Toga like a real threat. Two people died because of that.

The officer – Lt. Ishikawa according to her name tag – didn't move. She had gone still before Rumi ever touched her.

Numbly, Rumi peeled her hands, sticky with blood, from Ishikawa's throat. Grabbing the radio, she numbly called in to dispatch, reporting two men down. Told them Himiko Toga was responsible. They demanded she name herself. She didn't. She sat by Ishikawa's body until she heard sirens. Then she ran.

She used everything Hawks taught her to slip past the police and the heroes she'd summoned. The blood on her was damning, so she stopped under a bridge to scrub off what she could in the river. Eventually, she returned to the ruins of the Golden Cat. Only when she was safely inside the walls of her old room did she allow herself to cry.