She wasn't exactly sure how Mina tricked her into going to Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall, yet here she was, riding an escalator to the third floor with Tsu.
"I'm surprised you decided to come."
That was the understatement of the century. She had nothing against shopping. She just didn't see the point in making a day out of it, "Eh, needed a few things," the mall was packed with stores catering to every type of Quirk imaginable, plus the usual stores, cafes and old-fashioned arcades, "What about you?" stepping off the escalator, Ryuko rubbed her fingers against the back of her neck. With spring semester finished and summer training not starting for another three weeks, she'd exchanged her school uniform for blue jeans and a black shirt with the Kanji for 'blood' graffitied across the front in bright orange and yellow, "You still looking for those night-vision scuba goggles?"
"Yeah, but they're still a little out of my price range," a white shirt hanging over forest green shorts and sandals contrasted Tsuyu with her friend, "I was actually thinking of checking out Aquatic Sunset. Bug spray would be nice. And since we're probably not going to be training in our costumes, maybe I should look for some new clothes," wide eyes blinked, "You have any recommendations?"
"Recommendations?"
Ryuko crossed her eyes, "Never gone camping, but there's probably gonna be thorns and poison ivy."
"Good point," stopping in front of Aquatic Sunset, Tsuyu croaked, "See you later, Ryu."
"Text me when you're done and we'll catch some lunch," despite the general sense of frustration she'd felt since randomly checking her email early in the morning, Ryuko pretended nothing was wrong, "My treat."
Coming to the mall had been a complete waste of time.
She already had most of the stuff Aizawa recommended for the training camp.
But spending a week in the wilderness at the mercy of heroes determined to squeeze every last drop of potential out of her blood wasn't the reason she felt miserable.
It was I-Expo.
She'd never cared about the world-famous exposition. Oh sure, she'd catch a few highlights of whatever Revocs or the other companies unveiled. Maybe watch a video demonstrating some cutting-edge support tech. But beyond that, it had been her dad's thing. The infamous Professor Isshin Matoi. Every year, down to the exact minute, he took the same flight to I-Island, checked out for an entire week and appeared on the news shaking hands with some of the greatest scientists and heroes from across the world. Including All Might. And now that was gone, some asshole genius decided to memorialize her dad's lifetime of achievements on the first night of the exposition with her as the guest of honor.
It pissed her the hell off.
And if that wasn't bad enough, according to that same email, the exhibitionist pervert was giving her dad's eulogy.
"Ugh, screw it," shaking her head, Ryuko refused to fall into that pit of emotional annoyance, "No point thinking about it," if she had no choice but to go, she might as well go. It didn't mean she had to like it. All she had to do was sit for the opening ceremonies, pretend to care about random strangers talking about her dad like they actually knew him and leave on the first available flight back to the country.
At some point she'd walked into a bookstore.
Why, she didn't know.
"Hi, how can I assist you today?"
The girl behind the register at Phantom Books greeted her with an overly wide smile. Forced cheerfulness. And a pair of horns sticking around the company-mandated blue hat. Ryuko didn't give her anything more than an offhanded acknowledgement. The bookstore was quaint. She could count the number of people on one hand with fingers left over. And smelled of scented candles, freshly printed paper and black ink, "Just looking around."
"Okay, but don't be afraid to ask if you need help."
She filed that away and promptly forgot about it.
Fiction. Non-fiction. Children. Comics. Education.
Phantom Books had everything.
She wandered the aisles with no clear destination or goal, pausing every so often to look at a particularly interesting book.
"Hey, you're from UA, aren't you?"
With the benefit of hindsight, experience and half a brain, she should have realized something was seriously off. But at the time, having dealt with four or five idiots cheering Midoriya and Todoroki as soon as they walked into the mall, she hadn't cared. A random stranger asking if she went to UA didn't set off any alarms in her head. And there wasn't the unsettling vibe whenever Couturier opened her mouth. There was something weird. A smell. An odor hovering on the tip of her tongue she couldn't immediately identify. But instead of thinking too hard about it, Ryuko refused to acknowledge their existence, hoping they'd eventually get the message and leave.
But whoever was standing behind her couldn't take the hint.
"Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's you!" now they were giggling, which made it really hard to read an already boring book on the first heroes, "I mean, I saw you earlier, but there were sooooo many people! Anyway, it's really great to meet you, Ryuko! I'm your biggest fan!"
Ryuko's eyes froze halfway down a page.
She'd long since learned how to feign interest. It was her standard reaction whenever Mina or Toru worked themselves into a frenzy about the latest fashion trends. The less attention you gave Mina, the more determined she grew in figuring out why you weren't listening. But pretend you care about some stupid hero popularity contest or whether a green skirt is cuter than a purple skirt and things quickly went back to normal. The same lesson applied to situations were random strangers – or more likely, stalkers – hunted you down. She just needed to pretend to care, maybe give them an autograph, act like it wasn't the creepiest thing imaginable and they'd eventually leave.
And that smell…
"Really?"
Her first impression of the stalker was relief. They weren't Couturier, although there were enough similarities that if the blonde bitch hadn't confessed to killing her dad, she might've weighed her options. And the second was vague unease. The same feeling as walking down a dark hallway. She didn't recognize the uniform, but the girl must've come straight from school. A beige cardigan only confused her more. And that was simply what she wore. Her actually appearing wasn't quite weird, but felt incomplete. Dirty ash-blonde hair styled into disheveled buns with equal-length bangs framing a face stretched so far into a smile she could see pairs of fangs. Yellow cat-like eyes shimmering with excitement. And a blush deep enough that she almost flinched.
It was creepy as hell.
"Uh…didn't think I had fans," the familiar smell intensified when the girl leaned forward.
"Are you kidding?" hands clenched in front of her face, the teenager bounced, "The moment I saw you on tv, I knew we were destined to be friends!"
The color drained from Ryuko's face.
Either she was dealing with another Mako or this stalker had more than a few screws loose, "What?"
"The UA sports festival!" the older girl wiggled again, her knees rubbing together and a blush clashing against pale skin, "I really didn't care, but when I saw the highlights of your fight against the weird ghost guy, I couldn't look away! It was amazing! You were covered in so much blood! Like, a heck of a lot of blood!" now the teenager she knew must have an entire toolbox of loose screws was pumping her arms up and down, "Your Quirk was just amazing and awesome! Can I see it? Please!?"
The number of questions asked in the same breath certainly rivaled Mako on her worst days.
But this stranger wasn't Mako.
And she wasn't born yesterday.
Because she finally recognized the smell clinging to the creepy stalker. It was something she'd known her entire life. From the moment she fell off her tricycle, skinning her elbow and activating her Quirk, she knew blood. The faint rusty smell. The way it turns rancid as it dries. The odor dripped from the psycho's hands. It stained beige sleeves. It splattered across a smile. And no amount of scented shampoo, cheap perfume and deodorant could cover that up.
"Nope, ain't gonna happen."
Shutting the dull biography shut with a little more emphasis than necessary, Ryuko pretended to yawn while counting the number of people in the bookstore. Other than the teenager at the front counter, there was a couple in their mid-twenties, a kid reading a comic book two aisles over, an old man choosing between two self-help books and a middle-aged mom talking to someone on her phone, "Sorry you came all this way for nothing," ninety-nine percent certain she was dealing with a serial killer, or an insane villain, or both, she arrogantly walked towards the back of the store, taking whatever might happen as far away from the other customers as possible, "But I ain't the sort of person to take requests from villains."
A serrated hunting knife stained with long-dried blood slid out of the psycho's cardigan.
Long-practiced fingers gripped the wooden handle marred by a jagged crack as excitement devolved into abhorrent fascination. Manic admiration burned in yellow eyes. Dress shoes slipped against green carpeting. The middle-aged woman screamed. The couple at the front of the store grabbed their son and ran outside. The old man moved faster than someone his age should. And with a deranged expression bordering upon fetishistic, the unmasked serial killer eagerly launched herself at Ryuko, who avoided her surprise assault without so much as a paper cut.
"Boy, you're fast."
The psycho sighed at her relatively clean knife, "Like, unfair fast. I was really trying to stab you, but you just moved too fast for me," she twisted the tip of the blade against her pinky finger, pressing hard enough to indent the skin but not draw blood as cat-like eyes bobbed alongside her head, "Think you could slow down? You know, just a little. I want our special moment to be fun!"
Ryuko opened and closed her fingers, knuckles cracking one after another, "How about you drop that knife so I can smash my fist into your face?"
"Hmm, tempting," swaying ever-so-slightly on her heels, the ashen blonde villain stopped playing with the hunting knife, "But I'd rather cut you wide open, Ryuko!"
The crazed teenager wasn't fast, but she was goddamn insane. If the smell of old blood clinging to the freak wasn't proof enough something was off, the ear-to-ear grin exposing pairs of fangs and the lustful blush tinting her cheeks crimson destroyed any remaining doubt. She kept moving backwards, avoiding the frighteningly accurate hunting knife doing its best to draw blood. Her shoulder. Her stomach. Her neck. Hell, even her arms. The psychopath wasn't swinging wildly and hoping she'd hit something important. She was aiming specifically towards her veins. She seemingly moved randomly while striking quickly enough to prevent so much as a moment's rest.
It was freaking annoying.
When her ass slammed into a table displaying the sixth installment in some stupid series about magical heroes fighting robotic dinosaurs or something ridiculous, Ryuko waited until the knife descended before dodging left. The table trembled, several books scattering as the knife stabbed through hundreds of pages filled with redundant characters and repetitive dialogue. On her back foot, skidding away from the serial killer student – or a villain wearing the clothes of the student she'd murdered on the way over, which was far more disturbing than she realized – Ryuko slid around the forward jab intending to stab directly into her jugular. The blade passed inches from her throat, brushing against her skin like a steel wind.
"Piss off!"
A pained gasp accompanied her knuckles embedded themselves into the psycho's stomach, knocking the wind out of the freak's lungs and sending her crashing into a bookshelf.
"Tch," shaking her wrist as the villain stumbled out of the pile of self-help books and biographies, swaying back and forth with crimson trickling down her forehead, Ryuko clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, "Who sent you? Was it those League of Villains assholes?"
"Nope!"
The psychopathic teenager flicked her thumb across some of the blood coating her face and licked it, "I heard about them when Mr. Stainy was arrested. Seeing him covered with his own blood, beaten and stabbed, barely about to walk without falling over, was really tempting! I wanted to cut him real bad! Like, super bad! I wanted to be Mr. Stainy!" as the freak ranted, her expression turned increasingly immodest, "But compared to you, Mr. Stainy's nothing! I could stab him all day until he was bathed in blood and it wouldn't get me nearly this worked up," voice trembling and knees visibly quivering, the psycho picked up her knife, "That's why I want to become you more than anything in the world!"
As the blood-drunk sociopath resumed her assault, Ryuko grimaced.
That settled it.
This girl was fucking nuts.