Hey guys! Sorry its been so long, but there was a family tragedy so updates won't be as consistent as they used to be. I really appreciate everyones care and patience.
We finally have our new chapter here! Complete with a halloween twist on one of Suzume's old cases.
TW for death, ghosts, mild gore, mentions of homophobia and prostitution, and basically anything you'd hear in a true crime podcast.
Suzume doesn't need encouragement to rise with the sun.
She's probably the only one of her classmates who's actually awake when they all stumble out of the 'inn'. Her classmates look like extras from the Walking Dead, all shuffling and exhaustion and whining complaints. 1-B is somewhere else, she assumes, or doing a different kind of early morning exercise.
Suzume has added more weights to her harness, ankles and wrists, and she can feel it in every step she takes outside. She's awake, but Suzume has this problem ; she does not want to listen to her classmates complain this early in the day about training.
So she does her best to block out all the noise and instead lines up with the rest of them in front of Aizawa, who could have slept 16 hours or 16 minutes for all he looks the same as ever. That is to say, exhausted beyond what could possibly be healthy.
Suzume doesn't comment. She's too busy stretching her now heavier arms out to either side and trying to figure out how much she can do before she exhausts herself.
It occurs to her that one of these days she needs to fight without her weights on, and see exactly how different that is. It's probably a bad idea to do at random, Rock Lee style. She could misjudge and punch someone's head off or -
Something.
She doesn't know that she'll ever be that strong, but you never know! And she's getting stronger and stronger with each added weight. Even if she feels like an overcooked noodle for a few days after each new weight is added.
And so this overcooked noodle finishes her stretches, along with a few of her classmates who also know how to stretch, and they all take off at a run. It takes them miles going up and down hills of various inclines.
Suzume is horrified to find that slow inclines are actually harder than simple climbing up walls like she normally does. Shouldn't it be easier?!
But no.
By the end of the run her legs are aching and she has a mantra of 'you'll be stronger after this, you'll be stronger after this, you'll be stronger after this' going.
All of that said, Suzume was still the best off out of her entire class. Even Iida looked ready to drop. He was fast, but he needed more endurance. Shinsou looks ready to drop into the dirt, but he'd still run faster than a good half of her class.
She was surprised he had been invited along, and then less surprised when she actually thought about it. He'd proved himself in the sports festival after all, and everyone knew he deserved to be here just as much as they did.
After the 'jog', still in the pale pink lights of dawn, they all gathered together in front of Aizawa for a speech of all things. Suzume could already feel her bangs sticking to her forehead with sweat and her pony tail stuck to the back of her neck.
She wished her other was here, to tie it all back in a spikey knot.
But if wishes were fishes and all that.
"Good morning, class."
There's a light in his normally dark eyes that Suzume isn't sure she completely trusts.
"Today we begin training in earnest. Our goal is to increase your skills exponentially so that each of you earns a provisional license in the fall. More specifically, there's a growing hostile force out there. Through this, you'll be prepared to face it. So stay sharp, and work hard, kids," he looks each of them over in turn and Suzume feels her spine straighten under his gaze. It's intense, but there's… faith? In it?
Faith in them.
Aizawa goes on.
"To start with, here Bakugou. Try throwing this."
He tosses a softball at Katsuki, who catches it and looks it over. "This is from the first day of class...?"
Aizawa nods.
"Last time, right after school started, your record was 705.2 meters. How much have you grown since then?"
Mina punches her fist into her hand. "Ohh! We're testing to see if we've improved?"
Kirishima grins sharply. "We've been through a lot these last three months! I bet he can make it a whole kilometer! Throw that sucker Bakugou!"
Bakugou shifts his footing and winds up. Suzume is close enough to hear him mutter, "Here we freaking go…"
Suzume braces herself for his scream of, "GO TO HELL!" and the blast that follows it. Smoke, smelling like burnt marshmallows, billows back towards her before dissipating. The ball goes soaring and…
"That was 709.6 meters." Aizawa holds up the measuring screen to show everyone the numbers.
Only a few meters more.
Suzume can see Baku- Katsuki's face frozen in fury. Aizawa ignores him and moves on with his lecture.
"You've had a single semester at UA, and thanks to everything you've gone through, all of you have definitely improved. But those improvements have mostly been limited to mental prowess and technical skill, with a slight increase in physical strength as well. As you can see, your quirks have not improved much. That's why we're now going to focus on trying to improve them here."
He smiles, so wicked Suzume has to wonder if he's not a villain in disguise. But no. He's just an asshole, and she's fine with that.
It does make her shift minutely. If the training here is specifically for quirks, just what is he going to do with her?
"This will be so harsh you'll all wish you were dead. So let's hope you all survive."
Suzume hears Toru gulp beside her, but she ignores the invisible girl entirely. All her attention is on Aizawa and he goes around and starts to assign tasks to her classmates. Katsuki shoves his hands in boiling water and blasts huge explosions that threaten to crack his arms to open his sweat glands. Shouto sits in a barrel of water and alternates between flash freezing and boiling it. Iida runs like a mad man up and down the harsh terrain in his full suit of armor. Ururaka and Aoyama both use their quirks until they throw up. Yaomomo and Sero produce toys and tape until they actually bleed from the strain of it all.
1-B rolls in about the same time Aizawa shuffles Midoriya towards Tiger, a massive man who seems to have no issues wearing his skirt and kicking the shit out of people at the same time. Suzume eyes him. She can respect that.
Aizawa turns to Suzume.
She looks up at him, waiting.
And he turns sideways to reveal a head of violet hair standing next to her own equipment case and a small box opened to reveal a familiar gray scarf.
"At this point, you don't need our help getting stronger or practicing fighting. You're doing that well enough on your own, outside of class."
She thinks it's praise, but he says it completely matter of factly.
"And you said you're going on a training trip after this one as well, to enhance that. So instead of working on fighting, you're going to work with your equipment instead. And so is Shinsou."
Suzume stares at him.
"... really?"
Aizawa stares back.
"Would you rather go fight Tiger with the others?"
She looks back to where Midoriya is being joined by a few members of class 1-B. The exercises are all the same kind she's been doing for years. The mock battle against someone twice their size is the same. She's spent a decade learning to fight against every kind of quirk her teachers could find, she's spent over half her life getting as strong as she can as fast as she can.
She rubs the strap of her chest harness through her t-shirt.
"No," she says at last. She wouldn't learn anything new if she went and joined them, and she doubts she would refine herself more that way either. It would give her a chance to work up to her next weight but…
No.
Working with her equipment will be better. Aizawa is right.
So she follows him over to Shinsou, and puts on her gear. The goggles are the part that are the hardest for her to use, at this point. She almost never uses them in the field because if she hits the wrong button she's going to give herself a headache or worse.
But this time, she pulls them on, secures her harness, and looks at Aizawa.
He gestures to the woods.
"There are orange flags that will lead you through the woods. Navigate without touching the forest floor."
Suzume secures the rest of her gear, her harness and her vambraces, and takes off into the trees.
She really should have expected it, but the traps that start flying at her from all sides still take her by surpise.
The sound of Shinsou shouting behind her at least means that she's not the only one who almost gets their head smacked in. Not that thats much of a comfort. Shinsou has only been doing this since the sports festival. She moves on, as fast as she can, as paintballs dart at her and the ground rises up to try to rip her from the branches.
If she thought it was going to be an easy day, she was very, very wrong.
Suzume finds herself in charge of slicing all the vegetables at dinner. She and Bakugou are apparently the only people in their class who can do it without cutting a finger off. 1-B is more well rounded (read as; mildly less fucking weird) and split their half of the dinner preparations up between Kendo, mushroom girl, and Monoma.
It's a good thing too, because Suzume would have absolutely kicked Monomo in the head if he went on too many if his ridiculous rants.
As if they wanted to keep getting attacked by villains!
…
Okay, so she could maybe have stopped at least one of those attacks if she had spoken up, but she had chosen the safer option at the time, and if she ended up fighting the future King of Ashes? Oh well! It all turned out okay.
Mostly.
She's pretty sure Tomura's arm still hurts him sometimes, although he won't admit to it.
Suzume lets herself get lost in her thoughts and suppositions as she slices and dices mechanically. She doesn't notice the red eyes narrowed at her as the night winds on and the food comes together.
In the end its just a simple, filling curry. She doesn't know about Ida's weird ranting about feeding the souls of the weary, but whatever lets him sleep better at night is fine by her in the end.
She's too busy scarfing down as many calories as she can get her hands on.
She's pretty sure she bites Midoriya at some point.
Then, someone drags in a bunch of wood and calls for Shouto to make a bonfire. The smell of woodsmoke is hot on the night air, and it doesn't come from where she expected it too.
She sits on a log and stares at the burning fire as conversation whirls around her.
She only realizes she's been addressed when an elbow drives into her ribs.
"Ow!"
She turns to glare at Mina, who is naturally unrepentant. Toru is next to her, probably beaming.
"Go ahead, come on!" Mina coaxes, and Suzume stares at her. Go ahead an what?
"No thanks?" she says slowly.
Toru whines.
"But, come on! We all know you have the best scary stories!"
They want her to tell them a story?
Suzume stares at the two for a long time, and turns her head to see the rest of the students, and even Aizawa and Mandalay staring at her expectantly. The little kid, Kota, appears from wherever he'd run off to (the mountain, she knows instinctively. Dust on his shoes, a scrape on his hand, and a twig in his hair. His cheeks are flushed and his finger tips and wrinkled from water, it's his quirk and-) and glares at her.
Monoma laughs, that high and annoying laugh of his.
He really does have a great quirk, but his personality has started to grate on her today.
She stares at him.
"See? 1-A is all talk, and nothing to back it up! A couple of villain attacks doesn't mean you know horror."
Suzume slowly turns to him. Her dark eyes glow in the fire light and for an instant Monoma shuts up entirely, and a chill runs down his spine.
Yusada Suzume smiles.
"Okay," she says lightly. "I'll tell you a story."
She'll have to change a few details, but…
"When you kill someone two people die; them, and the person you used to be. To take a life is to break a part of your soul off, however big, however small. In the city of West Chase, people were disappearing.
It was hard to notice at first. The people who vanished all lead 'at risk' life styles. The homeless, the down trodden. Run aways, sex workers, gang members. Folks who are hard to keep track of at the best of times, who really would just skip town now and again and never tell a soul. Running from something. Hunting for something. A mobile lifestyles means its hard for anyone to notice if you're in more trouble than usual, no matter how many people try to look after one another.
But someone was keeping track.
Adelaide Fox did her best to keep an eye out on the young people who worked the nights in her neighborhood. She couldn't do much, but she could try, in her own way. At the very least she could bear witness to those who passed through. Remember them as best she could. The folks who lived there lead hard, cold lives, and Lord knew no one else was watching over them.
But she wasn't a policewoman. She wasn't a hero. She was just a witness.
And right before her eyes they were going missing, and bodies were turning up but none of them were the ones she was desperately afraid to find out about.
(Polly, Daja, Antoine, Jasmine)
It was through a very short grape vine that amounted to overheard gossip at a ballroom competition that lead to a gentle knocking on Adelaide Fox's dressing room door after the last walk of the night.
She pulled it open and looked down to see a young woman, her hands shoved in the pockets of a leather jacket and running shoes on her feet.
She didn't look like she belonged backstage at any drag show, let alone a ballroom. But there she was, and her mouth was twisted in a facsimile of a smile.
"Miss Fox?" she asked, tilting her head up to gaze at the tall woman. "I'm Anna Hemlock. I'm a detective. I heard you've got some folks missing."
Well, Adelaide was no friend of cops. But this girl wasn't in blue and she didn't flash a badge, and she was a chance to find them. Even if she was a cop, whatever trouble they might be in the law could very well be the lesser of two evils.
So she brought the young woman into her dressing room, and told her everything she knew.
It took Anna Hemlock a week to find the house. It wasn't listed on google maps, and the only hard copy maps of the area that even showed the over-glorified deer path to the house in the woods were old and hard to read.
But she found it all the same. She got the license plate number and the car description from the last ones who had seen the missing people, and when she brought that to her friends in the police station that came up with a few more hits on it. A dented grey hatchback, that belonged to an instrument repair man.
Suspicious activity, a drunk driving record, reckless driving, aggressive behavior, solicitation. His wife Delores had reported him for battery, and accused him of abusing their son, Sam, but the charges were dropped and the pair skipped town. Anna hadn't found any other record of them after that. Probably (hopefully) they had changed their names and were living happily in canada.
She was surprised that the man hadn't been brought in already.
But with her list of missing people, it brought the number up to eleven. Eleven missing people over the years, and all of them either tied to this car or to the man who drove it.
Grover Kroll.
Adelaide Fox had given her the name of four working girls. Polly, Daja, Antoine, and Jasmine. And there were more who were 'last seen' with him. Moira, Mary, Trevor, Sarah, and Kim.
Anna parked her bike around the side of the house. The dented car was missing, and the house was quiet and still in the rustling trees. They loomed above her, bore witness to the horrors that were to come.
She found a window in the back unlatched, and slipped inside.
There was a gun strapped to her hip, and she had made a call to the police station on her way out to the house, but a fire in the dockyard was taking up most of the resources.
It would have been smarter to stay in the city and wait until she could get back up. Real police officers, preferably, instead of Private Investigators like she was.
But here she was.
And really, she had always been a tad too reckless for her own good.
The climbed in through a side window, and kept a level eye on the drive way, where no beat up car was sitting. She didn't know how long he was supposed to be gone, but she wanted to make sure that he was the right person.
She knew he was the right person, of course she did. But she needed concrete evidence or else he could get out of jail and flee. And she absolutely could not let that happen.
So she crept in.
She knew the kind of person he was. He was someone who beat his wife and son and who preyed on the most vulnerable members of society. Someone who was, at this moment, tuning a piano at a church that had mysterious gone completely wrong.
(Anna didn't know a lot about instruments, really, but she figured if she undid enough screws something was bound to happen)
She picked her way around the house. It was only one floor, with two bedrooms. One bedroom still had dust covered childrens toys, and a broken hole in the wall beside the window. There were red stains smeared across one wall, at roughly head height.
Anna wasn't a very tall person. It would have been shoulder height on most people.
Brown. Red brown, actually. The color of old blood.
Anna moved on.
The kitchen was a mess, full of take out containers and trash that needed desperately to be taken out.
And a whole pantry full of protein shake powder and pedialyte, for some reason.
A look at the expiration date and she knew that they weren't old purchases either. He'd bought them recently.
What did he need with pedialyte without a kid?
Anna's stomach twisted in worry. Air blew, cold around her. She rubbed her arm and looked around, but all the windows and doors were shut tight.
Weird…
The house wasn't in good shape. There was probably a crack in the walls or gaps in the doors.
From the kitchen she checked the bedroom, which reeked of sweat, unwashed sheets, and bleach in an unholy combination that made ever her own stomach churn.
Anna was no stranger to bad smells and horrific sights, but the combination set her teeth on edge and made all the hair along her arms stand on end.
The bathroom was the only clean part of the house, and the smell of bleach made her yes water it was so intense. Every surface was scrubbed white and there wasn't a single towel or any soap or shampoo in sight.
The place was awful, but there was nothing here to prove that he was a murder. The dried blood on the walls wasn't proof, the freaky bathroom wasn't proof, and the cold air that kept pushing against her only proved that the house needed some serious work done.
None of it was proof.
She needed to find his dumping ground.
She needed to-
Leave.
Anna bit the inside of her cheek. The word struck her so hard it was like someone had shouted it in her ear.
Something was telling her she needed to leave, and now.
She looked out the window.
The car wasn't in the drive way, but the sun was starting to set.
She turned back to the house and rocked on the balls of her feet. Cold air rushed across her. Leave.
She shivered, and took a step back-
The floor creaked.
She stopped, and looked down.
There, in the floorboards, was an almost invisible line between one and the next.
A trap door.
Leave. Leaveleaveleaveleaveleaveleave-
She ignored the hissing in her mind, against her ear, and crouched on the floor. She was shivering. It was so cold. Colder inside than it was outside.
She prodded the edges, looking for a latch or a catch or anything.
She finally managed to get the wood to give and there was a creak of hinges. A loud creak.
She pulled the trap door open and looked down at the gaping, shadowy maw that awaited her. The scent of unwashed man and bleach was immediately overwhelmed by the horrible smell of chemicals, overpowering urine, rolled flesh and stagnant water.
Down there.
Something horrible was waiting for her down there.
Her hands shook. Anna stared at them, bewildered. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't sick to the stomach.
She was goddamn freezing.
Anna grasped the edge of the door and slowly stepped down onto the staircase. She groped at the wall with gloved hands until her fingertips brushed the bump of a light switch.
She threw it, and light flooded a workshop.
Very carefully she pulled the trap door down, but didn't let it shut all the way. She didn't know if it opened from the underside, and she wasn't willing to find out.
She very carefully crept down the stairs, keeping to the sides to avoid them creaking under her weight. Her running shoes were quiet on the staircase. She barely made a sound as she stopped on the hard cement floor and looked around. There were windows, but they were all either boarded up or painted over to keep any light from coming in. She hadn't seen them on her way into the house. There was only a single overhead bulb to offer her any light to see.
The walls were lined with instruments. A hanging violin, a viola, guitar and cello. A small harp, a thin pan flute, a full sized flute, maracas and a drum with sticks. She saw tambourines, a xylophone of all things, and against one wall was pressed a piano.
There was something weird about the instruments too.
Anna picked her way through the room, avoiding small buckets that smelled like urine and one that held smeared matter that looked suspiciously like a liquified brain.
She stopped in front of the violin. The strings were taught and thin, and they didn't look like the metallic string she was used to seeing. They looked… organic.
And the pegs, at the top of the instrument? Were pale ivory. Each one had a strange marking engraved on it. Hanging beside it was a bow made with long, straight black hair. Not white.
Above it was a bronze plaque. Engraved on it read a single word.
Daja.
Anna chewed the inside of her lip.
Leave! Shrieked the same voice in her head. It sounded like it was in her ear. And along with it? Was the high ringing of a violin.
She made her way down the line of instruments, reading each name in turn.
A viola with finely polished wood and long leather strings read, Polly. A guitar made of fine white material held together by glittering gold like a macabre kintsugi belonged to Antoine. The cello, with a peg extended from the bottom made of the same white material as the pegs was called Moira. The panflute? Mary. The full sized flute, all polished white and gleaming, was Trevor. Maracas, tambourine, and xylophone were titled Sarah, Kim, and Amara respectively.
Amara.
She didn't even know who Amara was. And with each name she read, each instrument she looked upon, the chorus playing behind her grew louder. Leave, set to the whistle of the flute and the howling of the strings and the clash of a tambourine.
The piano keys were far too white, and a peak inside revealed the strings had the same leather look to them.
The drums looked small. Smaller than anything else, and the skin stretched across the top was thin and light and cracking. Like it was poorly done.
And it said Sam.
Drums pounded in her head. Rhythmless. Frantic.
Like a little boy beating against a locked door.
Like a heart stuttering its last.
There was a name missing.
Jasmine.
She turned from the wall of instruments and stopped when she saw the bed.
It was a cot in a corner, and there was a body laid on it. Emaciated, more skeleton than flesh, lay what had once been a woman. Her hands were bound to the headboard and her legs were spread and tied apart. Her mouth was taped shut. There was a tube leading into her nose, and on the other side was an empty plastic bag hung from a wall.
Anna walked forwards, slowly, stepping around buckets and over tarps, and past a bass propped against the wall. It had no strings, and the bow beside it was naked. There were no pegs.
She looked down at the body.
Jasmine.
She didn't know her last name. Adelaide Fox had never said, if she even knew it herself. The girls had been pretty once, with strong features and straight teeth. Here, her black hair was even longer than it had been in the one picture Anna had seen of her.
Long and well cared for, she realized. And there was a basket of oil and lotion beside the bed,
Jasmines wrists and ankles were clean, but she could see where they had been cut into by the rope and rubbed raw.
The frantic drumbeat was a sharp contrast to Anna's steady heart.
A dead body was nothing new to her.
Her father had told her once, When you kill someone two people die. Them, and the person you used to be. How many times had Grover Kroll killed off little pieces of himself? Was there any humanity, and soul left in him?
She looked at the empty bass, and Anna had her answer.
It was so cold in the room that fog was starting to gather in the corners of the room.
Gravel crunched outside under tires, and the rumble of a car came distantly through the ceiling.
It wasn't the fast, skidding roll of someone coming to catch a serial killer. It was the slow roll of someone coming home after fixing the piano in a church.
This time, her heart did change beats.
Her hand moved to the gun at her side.
She had never fired it at a person. She knew how to, and she was a good shot, but Anna had never shot someone. Never taken a life.
When you take a life two people die. Them, and the person you used to be.
Leave! Leave! Leaveleaveleaveleaveleave-
Thumb-ba-dum-thum-ba-ba-dumb-ba-ba-thum-ba-ba-ba-
Her fathers voice. Someone telling her to leave. Sam's drum.
She held the heavy gun in hand and the air was so cold that it shook.
The from door creaked open. Heavy footfalls beat against the floor overhead. She hadn't left a single trace of herself upstairs, had replaced every single thing she had touched.
But she was in the basement.
With a cracked trap door.
And the light was on.
And the footsteps stopped.
Anna held the gun in both hands, her finger was on the trigger and she put her back to the wall. All of her attention was on the door, and the unsteady, frantic beating of the drum in her head (in her ears?) matched the frantic thumping of her heart in her chest.
She couldn't leave. There was nowhere to run.
If she shot, what would happen to her? How much if her would die with Grover Kroll?
He deserved it, surely he did. The evidence was all around her.
But her own soul?
Could she splinter it for the dead?
Could she kill for the sake of her own life?
The door in the ceiling opened. Heavy boots came down, step by step and each one creaked and groaned under the weight of Grover Kroll.
He was a big man, and he held a tire iron in one hand. He held it like he knew how to use it.
His hair was cropped short, and his jaw was set tight. He was still dressed in his repairman's uniform.
Kroll stopped when he turned and saw her there, small and quiet and holding a gun.
Her teeth were bared in a facsimile of a smile.
It was so, so cold.
Maybe she could kill Kroll. But could she kill herself?
Her back touched the cement wall. Kroll turned to her.
He looked deceptively normal. Plain brown eyes, brown hair, clean shaven. His hands were steady and his fingers were calloused.
He looked like any other person on the streets.
Except his eyes.
There was something very, very wrong with his eyes. She couldn't see a man looking out at her through them. She saw her own reflection, and the flashes of fog around her.
Like a mirror, set in a skull. There was no soul left beind those eyes.
He looked between her and the unfinished bass. Wet his lips.
"You're not supposed to be here," he said slowly. His words sounded precisely chosen. Exact and purposeful. "I don't need fourteen instruments."
"I'm not here to play," she said in turn. Her attention stayed fixed on the tire iron in his hand.
"You're wrong for it all anyways," he looked her up and down. Not seeing a person. Seeing parts. Pieces of instruments he could make. Skin, sinew, bone, hair.
"All wrong."
She kept her hold on the gun, but ice was creeping into her veins. She breathed out mist. Why didn't he look cold?
"Everything you did here is wrong." She tried to listen past the beating drum and the screaming orchestra. Prayed to a god she didn't believe in that a car would come screaming up the driveway with the cavalry inside.
But the fire.
No one was coming. Not soon enough for it to matter.
Two people die.
Kroll took a step towards her and she kicked out, knocking a vat of reeking fluid back at him. He stepped away, and the chemicals hissed against the tarps and spread, noxious and overpowering across the covered floor.
"I needed that! Do you know how much it cost?" he looked irritated.
She should shoot him. She knew she should.
Her fathers voice in her head. Drums in her veins. Violins and voices in her ears.
Anna's words puffed out with fog.
"Ask me if I care."
There was a gurgle from the bed.
Anna glanced over, just for a second. Just long enough to meet eyes that her suddenly turned towards her.
And then a tire iron smashed into her ribs.
The gun went off, blasting a hole into the wall and another into the ceiling. It took out the lone overhead light and plunged the room into darkness. Another strike hit her opposite arm, sending her tumbling while the gun went off a third and forth time. A window splintered and exploded, showering the room with shards of glass and moonlight.
She was left on her hand in darkness filled with white fog and strange music.
Glass cut her palms and chemicals stung into her skin, and she tensed, ready for the tire iron to come down again.
It didn't.
The music sang, no longer disjointed and frantic.
Instead it swelled in a crescendo of fury and she realized that it really was coming from all around her. It was no longer echoin in her head.
It came from the walls.
From the instruments made of flesh and bone and death.
Anna looked up to see the mist swirling.
There were faces in it. Men. Women.
And a single little boy.
Her fingers found the cold steel of her gun.
Kroll stared at himself, and tried to cover his ears, but it was no good. The music was everywhere and Anna no longer heard, leave.
She heard denial.
Heard refusal.
Not again.
And the moonlight glowed across mist and spirit, and the music swelled and sang while a man without a soul tried to fight his own sins.
Anna didn't fight the phantom woman, nearly identical to the single little boy, when she took the gun from her hands. It hissed and Anna smelled iron faintly where it touched the womans ethereal skin.
Delores lifted the gun and fired it twice.
And Grover Kroll fell with a hole in his head and his already empty heart.
The report of the gun cut through the music, and the instruments leapt from the walls and crashed into the ground, shattering wood and exploding shards of bone.
Moonlight and mist swirled and broken music screamed until everything went silent.
And dark.
Anna stayed crouched in that silence, as heat slowly came back to her fingers one at a time. She couldn't hear anything.
She didn't even heard it when the front door was kicked down and footsteps pounded down the stairs. Didn't hear someone shout for an ambulance.
But she saw the light when it burned in her eyes and felt the hands that grabbed her shoulders.
Someone carried Jasmine out in a stretcher.
Someone else dragged Anna away from the body.
The cold was gone. The music had vanished. Her fathers voice was quiet once more.
She sat in quiet moonlight, on the porch that had once belonged to a monster, and looked through dense trees and brilliant headlights.
Anna Hemlock had found the missing people of Westchase, for all the good that did most of them.
Each bronze plaque would live forever in her mind, along with the memory of strange music and moonlit mist.
Thus, was over, the night of the skin cabaret."
Suzume stopped and looked around.
Everyone was staring at her.
Monoma's mouth was shut and he was oddly pale.
Suzume blinked.
"What? You asked."
Pixie Bob cleared her throat, gathering all of their attention.
"What a, uh. Great story! Good job. It also time for bed so… sleep well?"
Everyone who was no Suzume did not, in fact, sleep well.