I wanted to have this out on saturday, but due to technical difficulties with my laptop that did not happen. I'm still working on getting Glory to the Vindictive updated.
Anyways, this chapter is the rough draft of the end of the forest camp arc. As you can tell, several things have changed.
Gray trees do sway in forgotten wind
She finds Kota on the mountainside, where she knew he would be. In his little hide away, where the rest of the world will never see him. Crying, screaming, throwing water at a rock until it cracks under the pressure.
Just like he inevitably will.
He's not alone. She had been hoping he would be, but of course that hope was in vain. She's not that lucky, no matter what changes have occurred.
The huge man is ungodly fast, even with all his bulk. It's sheer luck that lets Suzume fling herself at the boy, catch him in her arms, and vault them both off the cliff side before he can be crushed to pulp.
Some part of her is professionally offended by him.
What kind of two bit creep targets kids?
The same sorry sacks that target sex workers and homeless people, usually.
They drop into the darkness, with Suzume's hand clamped firmly around Kota's mouth. The trees. She needs to get to the trees, and the shelter they provide.
But she can't take the kid with.
"Keep quiet," she hisses. He clings to her, and she catches the cliff side with her free hand. Suzume shoves the boy between two boulders, and shrugs off her coat and snatches his hat. She has seconds, at best. "Do not move. Do not make a sound," she orders, brooking no room for argument.
She crams his hat on the bundle of her jacket and leaps, plummeting further. She feels rather than sees the hulking mass of muscle that follows her down into the shelter of the trees.
Suzume catches herself again, and swings into the branches. She lands lightly on her feet, catlike and quick.
Muscular crashes behind her like a bull.
His laugh rolls on her skin like oil.
"Well well. Two for the price of one. And you were actually on the list, little girl," he stalks towards her, nothing but blood lust in his one true eye. His face is a ruinous grin.
"I wonder if I'll get a reward for bringing in the person Shigaraki wanted most."
The- what?
Suzume narrows her eyes, and lets the thought go. She can puzzle that out later. Right then she holds the bundle of jacket-and-hat behind her protectively and steps away, slowly.
"Come on now. No use running. Show me what a hero student can do!" He lunges at her and she bolts, dodging back and twisting around trees that crack and splinter under the force of his blows.
"Make this worthwhile! Show me some blood!"
Suzume uses the trees as cover, but Muscular is fast. Too fast for someone so bulky, his quirk has to be helping him there too.
He can grow extra muscle.
Can he grow extra tendons? Ligaments?
She doesn't have a choice. She doesn't have a chance. All she can do is dodge, dodge, dodge. All of his bulging muscles, red and outside of his body, are on his arms. His legs, torso, and neck don't have them. He's not taking her seriously. He's playing with her, cat and mouse.
Except she's no mouse, now is she?
She can't afford to let him get a single hit on her.
She has to end this, fast.
Now!
His hand snakes out, lightning fast, and she makes a show of screaming as he tears the bundle from her arms. The shadows and her movements hid it before, but the jacket unravels and the hat falls into the other huge hand.
"What the…?"
Her knife slides as easily through his ankles as it did the pork chops. Knees. And the expanse of lumbar tendons, hidden just beneath his skin give way.
Suzume is lightning fast, but she barely has the time to jam the knife under his shoulder blade before a huge hand comes smashing at her from the side.
She barely blocks, feels her shoulder pop out of the socket, but it doesn't matter.
He's on the ground. Stuck, squirming with only one good arm to drag himself towards her with. He burns with fury, like something out of a nightmare.
"Looks like you're the one showing blood today," she drawls, and stands again. Carefully, she pops her shoulder back into place.
Well. That hurt.
She abandoned Muscular on the ground. She needs to find Kota. The kid was up on the cliff, barely halfway down and he can't fly anymore than she can.
She get's to the base of the cliff when someone appears behind her with a soft rustle of cloth.
A finger taps her shoulder.
"Excuse me?"
She turns, bewildered, and a white and black mask smiles back at her. The touch on her shoulder tightens and she feels a tiny 'pop!'.
The world is gone.
No color.
Black.
Empty.
Nothing.
Suzume gasps loudly. Color is everywhere and she can smell cigarettes and alcohol. She stumbles, her eyes suck in dining booths and a long bar, sepia tones everywhere and people staring at her.
There's a flash of black, and silver studs under blue eyes and a person moves in front of her, reaching to grab her, and she reacts before she can even think to stop herself.
Her leg smashes between Dabi's, and the man crumples to the ground in a heap, gasping frantically around the pain.
She steps back, knocking a TV off a stand behind her and sending it crashing to the ground with an electric buzz. Her boots crunch parts under her heels and she grabs Tomura by the shoulders and steps behind him. She peers at the man on the floor from over the taller teenagers shoulder.
"You know in a video game when you think you died, but right when you realize you didn't die you do something that kills you?"
Red eyes peer back at her. She can't tell if he's annoyed or amused, but her brain is screaming and she can't find it in her to freak out anymore than she already is.
You have run out of Freak Out Tokens, wait five minutes for one to spawn.
"Yeah?" Tomura says, his voice raspy.
"I think I just had the real life version of that."