Suri and Eri get some time together. Suri comes to a decision.

It was a nice early fall morning and it had been decided by everyone that it was a great day to take some time on their last day off before the festival to relax. Everyone except for Suri of course. She'd stayed behind for a couple of reasons, the most important of which was that she was waiting for Izuku. Today they'd be going on a date to see Eri, something Suri was both looking forward to and was nervous about. And the other reason was that she was still up in the air about what she was going to do for the two competitions her lovers and friends had so egregiously signed her up for. And, while she waited on his call, she'd decided to take advantage of the great weather and practice outside on the front lawn of the dorm building.

So there she was with her small portable speaker blaring and working with the rhythm to fine tune her movements with her escrimas. She'd taken the advice of Mina and Izuku to work with them the same way she did her hand to hand fighting; to the beat and flow of music.

My bleeding heart might tip the scale

Cause I'm living life beyond the pale, yeah

Why'd you stop believing?

Look alive motherfucker it's killing season

For this she was trying out flips and twirls with the metal rods, rolling them around her wrists and forearms. She emphasized the staccatoed vocal lines by swinging the escrimas in hard strikes against the air. Backhand right, backhand left, downward strike, and then the first syllable of believing saw her go spin on knee before finishing the word with one hard strike from her left then right. The last line saw her spinning again, going back onto her feet as she snapped the thin, heavy rods together to create a singular pole. She spun on her feet and let the pole swing around her hips up over her shoulders and then emphasized the pause going into the song's final chorus by thrusting outwards in front of her. She held the weapon perpendicular to her body, firm in the air and glaring fiercely at the imaginary target in front of her.

Despite my running in place I'm making good time

And how can we make it to the top

If we're dying on the climb?

When the beat came back in she stomped forward and striked the air with each snare hit, first a left, then a right. The idea for the dying on the climb line had been to was to follow the last two snare hits with strikes of the full pole before spinning it back behind her, separating it back into the dual escrimas and making a series of fast strikes that followed the drum fill into the second half of the chorus. That was the intention. The execution however…

"Son of a fucking bitch!"

Suri yelped and hissed as one of her own weapons took the roll around her wrist too quickly and, instead of ending up back in her hand, connected with her face instead. In fact, the action had been so quick and caught her off guard so bad that she fell backwards, plopping her hard onto her ass. She sighed as she rubbed at her eye, feeling a small trickle or two of blood smearing across her palm.

"Oh no! Are you okay?" came a small but very scared voice.

Suri looked up to see a small girl with bright silver hair and wide eyes running towards her. Her boots clacked against the pavement until she reached the grass where she came to Suri. The beast girl stopped the small girl from getting too close to her, limiting the exposure to her blood, with an open hand and a laugh. Suri pulled her hand away from her eye, cleaning her blood off her hand in the grass before properly greeting the girl.

"Good morning, Eri," Suri said sweetly, grinning wide at the girl. "I'm okay, just a little cut is all."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Izuku asked as he came up behind the two of them. His eyes were just as wide as Eri's as he watched his girlfriend carefully. "That looked pretty painful."

"Yeah, I'm good," Suri chuckled. "This is no- oh."

Suri paused and froze mid sentence as she felt a cool sensation against her brow where she'd been struck. Eri apparently had whipped out a small bandaid and was applying it to the cut on Suri with extreme focus. Suri flexed her bow a little, ignoring the odd feeling of the adhesive on her skin as she watched Eri pull back her hands and inspect her work. It made her blink a few times to clear out the initial surprise and confusion to the situation and focused solely on the little girl in front of her.

"Thank you," Suri said with gentle sincerity.

When Eri realized that Suri was talking to her directly and just how close she was to the beast girl, she jumped back and retreated to Izuku. She hid behind him, carefully watching Suri and clutching to the back of his jeans as she studied the older girl.

"Guess the support items are still giving you trouble then?" Izuku said, taking both girls' attention from each other. It was a good method to help Eri concentrate on something else other than being nervous about Suri. "It looked like you had good control over them for a while."

"And just how long have you been watching me, hun?" Suri asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously up at him with a playful smirk.

"I-I wanted to watch," Eri admitted shyly. "I got Deku to stop so we could watch you dance with those stick things."

"Nah," Suri snickered, shaking her head. "That wasn't really dancing, kiddo. Well… I guess it sort of is but… I dunno if I really think of it like that. Ya know?"

Now that she thought about it; she synchronized a lot of her fighting movements to music. Even if there wasn't music present, her fighting style was always fairly rhythm based as she took the time to overanalyze herself. She blinked and pouted her lips in thought as the realization came to mind and then looked up at Izuku.

"I guess it is sort of like dancing, isn't it? But I'm guessing you'd already thought of that a long time ago, didn't you?" Suri smirked softly up at the boy.

He looked away and nervously scratched at his jawline in his usual sheepish tick as he quietly chuckled and stared at no one in particular. He totally had. In fact, she'd venture to guess it had been something he noticed and wrote down long before they were even together. Suri knew about his journals and the basics of what he wrote down, his sketches, and so on but had given him the privacy and not pried into what was in the journals. Now she was curious what else he'd written on her pages.

"Y-You can dance to this?" Eri asked, bringing Suri's attention back to the small girl and then to her speaker which was now playing something louder and heavier than the song before.

There were no longer melodic vocals and clean singing mixed with yells like Outline In Color had. Nope. Now it was now straight guttural screams and growls over chaotic guitars and drums of Brand of Sacrifice. Killing Season had now become Demon King and it was clearly not something Eri'd ever listened to before or really ever wanted to. She was somewhere between scared of the noise and intrigued by it.

"Sure you can," Suri nodded with confident a grin.

"Really?" Izuku asked with a sort of incredulous look on his face as he took a step forward and extended his hand to her. He'd finally thought to help his girlfriend up off her butt.

"Absolutely," she replied and took his hand. She hitched her breath as he pulled, easily yanking her upright onto her feet and basically right into him. She resisted the urge to kiss him and looked down at Eri who was watching her like a hawk. "Typically if you're at a concert watching a band like this you just mosh or hardcore dance. Personally I prefer moshing which is just jumping around, pushing people, and having fun. But," Suri took a few steps back then, closed her eyes and let herself find a steady beat. "You just have to find the right rhythm and go with the flow."

Suri let her body begin to move, locking onto a fast paced four count and focusing on the snare hits for the tempo. Her hips rolled and swayed as she let herself get immersed into the music and before they knew it, Suri was twirling and dancing in fluid motions that were both fast and elegant. During the chorus she threw in more arm and hand movements that were a combination of classical theatrical and ballet motions mixed with modern pop and hip hop dancing. Then came the bridge and the breakdown which dropped the tempo from being fast, upbeat, and chaotic to slow and methodical with crushing drums and guitars. Her movements mirrored the transition, going from high energy movements to more liquid and exaggerated gestures that accentuated her exposed torso, arms, and legs. It helped that she was able to strut and practically stomp forward with some of the beats and then dropped herself to lay on the ground as the breakdown came to an end.

"See?" Suri snickered as she picked herself back up, having now wasted Izuku's help to get her back onto her feet in the first place. The song was still playing, now coming to a conclusion as she grinned at both Izuku and Eri and came to stand in front of them. "Dancing is about finding a rhythm inside yourself and letting your body flow to it. Even if the music doesn't seem like it's made for dancing, if you know where to look, you can find the beat and have fun with it. All music is based on structures and movements so you can dance to pretty much everything and anything if you want to."

"That was so cool," Eri said with awe, clutching to Izuku tighter. It made Suri smile that, while she wasn't exactly smiling, Eri was showing some form of enjoyment. It showed that there was hope and potential for this little girl, who had been through so much trauma and despair in her short life, to be happy. "Is that what you and Deku wanted to show me?"

"Not exactly," Izuku answered.

"Oh?" Eri looked up with a curious look in her eyes. She was confused by the answer and was mainly looking to him for answers.

The look made Suri think of herself at that age and how she'd look at her dad with that same kind of look when she was discovering something new. The thought of Izuku being a dad popped into her head then and Suri had to stifle a squeal and quickly hide a sudden blush. She also had to smack Atiena inside their shared mind because she'd brought up a phrase that she'd never thought to ever cross her mind. Because the beast was way too smug with the way she claimed Suri was now baby hungry from the thought of Dadzuku.

"Suri, are you okay?" he asked curiously, noticing the sudden change in body language.

"Yep! Totally fine," she lied, trying to throw him off her trail of embarrassment with a smile. "But yeah, Izuku's right. I wasn't actually planning on any of that at all, I was just out here practicing cause he said he'd text me to go see you."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Izuku apologized and half chuckled nervously. "Mr. Aizawa said it would be better for me to come pick her up and walk around with just the two of us this time."

"Ah, well in that case lemme clean up and get changed," Suri nodded before moving to bend over and pick up her speaker, shutting it off and clutched it into the t-shirt she'd initially been wearing when she started practicing. She then bent down to grab her escrima sticks and stuffed them under her left arm with her shirt and speaker. "I was planning on meeting you at the hospital and just talking. I wanted to get to know you a little better since you've been stealing my boyfriend a lot lately."

Suri giggled as she said that which almost spread into full blown laughter as she watched Izuku flinch and begin flailing. He was adorable when he was flustered. Eri on the other hand let her eyes go wider and she looked like she was about to cry.

"I-I… I-I wasn't stealing," she exclaimed fearfully. "I promise!"

"No, sweetie," Suri laughed and then gave Eri a caring look as she cautiously began to follow Izuku inside. "I'm just joking with you. It's something I do for fun."

"For fun?" Eri asked innocently but with more thought than the word fun really should have required. It was a reminder of how hard she'd had it. "Also… what's a boyfriend?"

"Yup, for fun. I joke and tease my friends and people I love especially, because it makes us happy. I do it to Izuku cause I think he looks cute when me and the girls tease him. It's not the mean kind of teasing and joking though, there's a big difference," Suri explained as she led the way towards her room.

"There's a difference?" she asked again curiously.

"Y-Yeah, there is," Izuku answered this time, chuckling softly. "Some kinds of teasing and joking around can be really hurtful. It makes you really sad because you know the people teasing you and joking around with you are doing it to make you sad. With Suri though, she does it to play around and nothing she teases about is ever mean or hurtful."

"Oh. I guess I understand," Eri said as she looked forward. Her eyes were narrowed like she was thinking hard on what was being said and trying to make sense of it all.

"And as for boyfriend," Suri said as they arrived at her door and opened it to lead them inside her room. "It means that I'm in love with Izuku and I enjoy being around him, going out on dates with him, and stuff like that. It also means he can pick my outfit for the day if he wants to," Suri said, looking over her shoulder and winking at the greenette.

Izuku smiled and chuckled as he saw her wink at him and he instantly turned to the closet there in the doorway and opened it. He started going through her stuff as Suri went to set her speaker and weapons down on her desk and throw the shirt into a pile of clothes on the floor behind her bed. It was dubbed the not exactly clean but not dirty either pile in which you could get away with wearing it once more before you should absolutely throw it in the wash.

While that was going on Suri listened to Eri gasp in awe as she stepped inside and began looking around Suri's room, intrigued by basically everything she saw. She was especially fascinated by the fairy lights and all of the pictures on the wall interwoven with the strands of tiny light bulbs.

Suri let Eri explore to her heart's content as she returned to Izuku who had pulled out a couple hangers, both of which she gave him a sly smirk over. She quickly looked to make sure Eri wasn't looking when she stole a quick but eagerly deep kiss from Izuku, savoring the quick second or two his lips were locked with hers. It left him with his eyes fluttering and a little dazed as she disappeared into the bathroom and pulled off her workout clothes. Suri was quick to wet a towel and wash herself down, ridding her skin of any sweat or dirt she might have attracted while she had been outside. Once sure she was clean she pulled on the white denim jeans that Izuku had handed her on one of the hangers which Suri knew he and the girls loved because of how they fit on her. The surprise had been the red top he'd handed her because it was one that hung off of her shoulders and left them completely exposed. It meant that it left a lot of her scars in plain view as well.

Knowing that Izuku was far from bothered by Suri's many scars made her happy. She knew that other guys would probably prefer or even force her to cover them all. But not her emerald king.

Once changed, Suri returned back into the room and found Eri curiously looking over the altar against the short wall towards the foot of her bed. She leaned against the corner as she watched the girl explore and investigate the curious structure and its contents. She looked from the idols of Suri's gods and goddesses up to Suri herself and then back again before scrunching her brows.

"Aren't you too old to play with dolls?"

Izuku squealed in surprise while Suri snorted and spat in laughter. It was a hearty, full chested laugh that saw Suri practically doubling over as she laughed at the comment. Eri watched her with concern, unsure what was so funny or that she'd even really said anything funny at all. It took a long moment before Suri could breathe and had to wipe a tear from her eye as she calmed herself down enough to speak.

"No, honey, those aren't dolls," Suri explained as she came to sit cross legged in front of the altar. "They're idols of who I pray to and worship. They're all gods and goddesses that me and my family believe in."

"What are gods and goddesses?" Eri asked and it made Suri really think about how to explain the concept to the little girl.

"Well… the answer is different depending on who you ask and what they believe. It's a lot to go into and cover honestly," Suri said, looking over the figures and trinkets. "For me, they're my guides. If I'm ever lost and can't seem to find an answer myself or from like my dad and moms, I take time and pray. Sometimes they give me an answer and sometimes they just give me a nudge in the direction I should be going."

"So they can talk? But how? They don't move," Eri asked again.

"Nah, they're not just here, like, whenever," Suri chuckled. "These are… I guess it's kind of like a phone and I'm sort of texting them in my mind. If that makes sense. They're not here right now physically but when I pray, meditate, make offerings, or just ask them something, they answer later in ways that aren't talking like we are now."

"That's… I don't get it," she grumbled, her brows clenched tightly as she tried her hardest to understand a concept like religion.

"It's okay, kid," Suri smiled.

"So… if I ask them something," Eri began, letting what she was able to understand come to the front of her mind. "If I talk to them, will they help me?"

"Yeah, sort of. Like my primary goddess here, Angrboda, her way of helping is to test you. She throws challenges at you first but, if you can beat them, you come out a better person," Suri continued to explain.

"So… Can they help the man with the glasses? I think his name was Sir. He… He tried to save me and he died. Can they bring him back?"

The question made Suri and Izuku look at each other in shock. Both of their stomachs dropped and twisted relentlessly from the innocent sincerity. They both were incredibly saddened by the question itself but devastated that the answer was a resounding no. And that? That would hurt Eri more than anything.

"I-I umm… I," Suri tried to choke out an answer. Anything that might help the girl.

"I thought so," she replied sadly.

The answer and the matter of fact tone that Eri had in her voice brought tears to Suri's eyes. She stared wide eyed at the girl, stunned and left wordless while Izuku had to dip behind the corner so the little girl didn't see him begin to bawl.

"It's my fault. I wish I could see him so I could say sorry for causing him trouble," Eri said after a long moment of silence that had left Suri and Izuku reeling. "M-Maybe he'd be alive if I…"

That sentence hit home for Suri and she couldn't help but weakly smile and lean over to where Eri was sitting next to her and lay her head on the girl's head. Eri flinched from the contact at first but nervously accepted the sudden gesture.

"I know the feeling, and I know Izuku's right there with you, Eri," Suri sighed. "Actually, I've said that same thing a lot in the last year. More times than anyone cares to count."

"What do you mean?" Eri asked.

"Izuku and our friends know the story but I know how it feels to be responsible for someone being killed. Honestly, with you and Izuku, you should know it's definitely not your fault. Sir Nighteye did what he believed was right, he was a hero to the end, and I know if he was here now he'd tell you two to stop being so hard on yourselves. Hell, that's what Izuku and the others have done for me," Suri admitted with a sorrowful sigh. "There's a lot that's happened in the last year and I feel like a lot of it is my fault but I know I know better."

Suri giggled softly and then leaned up and touched her finger against the top of the head of one of the idols. She tapped on the woman's head and smirked softly as she turned to look at Eri.

"And I know I know better cause if I keep blaming myself for stuff that isn't my fault, I know she'd kick my butt," Suri said and watched Eri look at the statue with utter confusion. Suri had just told her the statues weren't real and then said that the statue would kick her butt. It was cute to watch her think about.

"Who is she?" Eri asked curiously, crawling up onto all fours to look at the woman closer.

Suri grinned wide and for the next twenty minutes told Eri all about her clan's patron saint, Queen Azunaihara. Eri was fascinated by the story of how the queen had led her village against opposing tribes for so long only to have another challenger come from the sea. She was intrigued by the story of how her and this king from the north challenged each other and then fought for hours. She was in awe with how the queen ended up winning and received her Quirk from him and how that same power had been passed down for hundreds of years. She loved the story in fact. It didn't so much make her smile as it did shock her and make her imagination wander to see it all in her own head.

It made Suri happy that Eri enjoyed the story, and that's what mattered.

The story nearly made her smile.

And that's what gave her an idea that maybe there was something she could do that might make the little girl smile. It wouldn't be much time but Suri figured, if she worked at it, she might just have something that would make Eri smile at the festival if the concert didn't do the trick.

For the next couple hours, Suri and Izuku walked Eri around the campus again and were more than happy to get to know each other. By the end of their adventure Izuku was getting the pleasure of watching Eri ride around on Suri's shoulders as they explored the campus more. They got even more excitement when Atiena came out and made her presence known so that she too could get to know the little girl and even more, Eri didn't seem to flinch. It made them happy that Eri didn't seem to be scared by the idea that two people were living in Suri's body. Honestly she was just as eager to get to know Atiena and she had been about getting to know Suri once they'd warmed up to each other.

Suri was all smiles when she and Izuku walked Eri back to Mr. Aizawa who was waiting for them to take her back to the hospital where she was staying for now. The lovers waved Eri off with big smiles and warm hearts before they headed home to the dorms. On the way back, Izuku finally asked the question that he'd been waiting to ask ever since he had seen the flash of determination in Suri's eyes hours before.

"So I guess you know what you're going to do?" he asked curiously.

"Yeah. Yeah I do," Suri grinned and chuckled. "If I can pull it off anyway. That'll be the big question but I think, if I can do it, I'm going to make her smile so big her jaw is gonna hurt. I just gotta figure out how to pull it all off and the beauty pageant is as good as mine."

"Good, I'm glad," Izuku chuckled. "And what about the singing competition?"

"Actually," Suri said, still smiling but the happiness in her eyes sank for just a moment. "There was something she said today that reminded me of a song. It's one I love a lot but dammit, it makes me cry sometimes. If I can get through it without crying, I know she and all of you will love it."

"What song?" Izuku asked curiously, tilting his head as he looked at his girlfriend.

"That, my love," Suri grinned with a purr, leaning in to lay a soft kiss on his cheek. "Is a secret."

And with that, Suri stuck her tongue out at Izuku and began jogging off, happily leaving him behind to chase her. She was happy with how the date had gone, happy that some of her questions were answered, and happy to have the greenette chasing behind her. All that was left to make the night better was to take him back to her room and fall asleep in his arms after some much needed extracurricular activities and make the final decisions on her performances.

It just left one last question.

How the hell was she gonna pull this off?