I hope you guys see why I have to break this chapter up. It ended up being a monster lol.
Not sure how, but I ended up switching for past to present tense about halfways through? Whoops!
Idk if any of you have noticed, but between FFN and AO3 this fic has gotten over 2,350 reviews! That's insane! If we make it to 2,500 I'd like to do something special. Maybe I'll put a pole on my tumblr, Lo-55, and y'all can vote on what that is?
"I liked this shirt!" Suzume looked down at her puffy sleeved shirt mournfully. There was blood on the collar, too much for even a Yakuza girl to get out. Club soda and dish soap could only get you so far in life, and this was beyond their miraculous capabilities.
Toga licked her bloody lips, looking not the least bit repentant. If anything she looked disturbingly pleased by what she'd done.
"So pretty…"
"And so wrecked."
Suzume narrowed her eyes at the older girl pinned beneath her.
"Wha the fuck is even happening this month with older blonde girls?" she asked, "First Melissa kisses me, now Toga bites me."
What was next, Uwabami licked her?
No. No thank you.
"Who?"
Suzume looked up to see Magne watching the two of them from the other end of the bar, looking amused. Her sunglasses were off for once, and she had a glass of wine in hand.
"A girl at the I-Expo," Suzume said simply.
"And she kissed you?"
"Well, yeah. So what?"
Toga wiggled under Suzume's hold, but as slippery as she was Suzume didn't let her get out of her grasp.
"Oh! Did you have a crush?" Toga teased, grinning with sharp teeth.
Suzume's cheek twitched.
"What? No!"
"So you're straight then?" Magne asked without much care.
"What does that have to do with anything?!"
"Wait," Hitoshi cut her off, "Are you straight?"
"That is not the point here!"
"Well if a girl kisses you I'd say it has plenty to do with it," the older woman said, not unkindly.
They were being way too nice for villains. Shouldn't she be tied up, held in a cellar somewhere until Tomura was ready to give her whatever big speech he'd been preparing for however long? Why were they talking about girls?
Where was the other student, anyhow?
"Yeah!" Toga agreed, wiggling more fiercely. "Let me go! I wanna talk about crushes!"
"I'm not letting you go, you just bit me!"
"It was a love bite, I swear, now let- go! How are you this strong?"
"I hang off buildings by my fingertips for fun," Suzume said flatly.
Warily, she let the blonde girl up, but kept an eye out for her teeth. And her knife. What a pain in the ass. She liked this shirt!
"And!" Suzume added, poking Toga in the sternum, "You shouldn't bite people without asking! It's rude!"
Toga pouted, and crossed her arms over her chest.
"If I asked, you would have said no!" She whined, more like a middle schooler than the highschooler Suzume knows she should be by now. She was, what, Kaname's age? Seventeen?
Actually, how old was everyone here? She knew Shuichi was nineteen when they started talking, and Shigaraki was… about that old too right?
(Kurogiri was as old and Present Mic and Aizawa. That one was easy.)
Magne was probably in her late twenties, maybe thirty at best. Compress? 30 some-odd, hard to tell without seeing his face. Mustard… looked like he was her age? Probably in high school, but his attitude was so shitty, she would bet he was in middle school. And honestly quirk society made it hard to know sometimes.
So she gave up on that train of thought, and scowled at Toga.
"I would have said yes," if it saved her shirt.
Toga's eyes lit up.
"Then you'll let me have more?!"
"No! You just bit me! If you'd asked I would have said yes, but you bit me, so now its no!"
"Aaaaw, come on. What if I get you a new shirt?"
Suzume eyed her suspiciously. "Do you even have a shirt that isn't a school uniform?"
Toga looked offended.
"Of course I do! … Probably. Come on!"
This time, she grabbed Suzume's wrist, and dragged her towards the stairs to the side of the bar. Suzume had no real choice but to follow the crazy girl upstairs.
Toga led her down the hallway, one that was lined with doors and had a weird little common area that was crowded with gear and random belongings that probably belonged to the people in the League. She all but tossed Suzume into a room decorated with shitty posters of pretty people tacked to the walls, each one painted with red drips and splatters. There were knives along a thin desk, and a bed with too many pillow was crammed against a corner.
A wardrobe overflowing with clothes sat against the other side.
Suzume stared.
What.
The fuck?
Toga started riffling through the wardrobe, throwing clothes out at random and muttering to herself as she went.
There were clothes of all kinds. Big, small, mens, womens, western and traditional. It made Suzume dizzy trying to keep track of everything.
Right. Toga was a shape changer. She could look however she wanted, whenever she wanted, provided she had the right blood for it. A man, a woman, a child. She could be anyone at any time and the only give away would be her own tells.
(Suzume quietly slipped one of the knives off the table and into her pocket. Then she walked up behind Toga, and plucked her cellphone out of her pocket while the girl was buried in the closet.)
"Aha!" Toga cried, triumphant, and came away with a dress.
Suzume took one look at it and shook her head. There was no way she'd be able to run or fight in that.
"Nope."
"Oh come one! It'll look pretty on you!"
Suzume was starting to wonder if she was just here to play dress up.
"No way. I don't do dresses."
"But it's so cute! And it'll look cute on you! Put it on! Put it on!"
Suzume yelped as the dress was suddenly shoved in her arms.
"Hey! Fine, fine, whatever. Just give me some leggings to go with it."
Toga did so, and all but shoved Suzume into the bathroom.
It was honestly a surprise she'd done that. Suzume had expected to be watched while she undressed, for security reasons. Or weird Toga reasons.
But she took the opportunity while she had it, and dressed.
(While she did that, she sent a quick text to one of the only phone numbers she had.
Unknown : DO NOT REPLY
Unknown : Unharmed, no immediate danger. Kamino Ward beware.
She deleted the messages as soon as they were sent, and blocked the number she'd just texted for good measure.)
Suzume came out with the black dress draped regally over her. Toga was right. It wasn't bad looking, sort of flapper-esque without the glitter and ruffles and stuff. Not bad. And the leggings underneath were yellow, of all things.
"There, happy?"
"I knew you'd look cute!"
Suzume looked up and jumped in surprise. Toga had changed her skin while Suzume had been in the bathroom. Her blond hair was black, and spiked around her shoulders where it fell loose, although she still had most of it pulled into two buns. Light skin was flushed pink around the cheeks, and dark, serpentine eyes were set into a heart shaped face.
Suzume blinked at her once, twice, thrice.
"Thanks?"
The new look was vaguely familiar, but Suzume couldn't quite place it. Maybe someone else they'd gone to school with? Or a villain she wasn't thinking of? Suzume was normally very good with faces…
Toga beamed, showing off sharp teeth still, and Suzume let the older girl grab her by the arm and drag her downstairs again.
(Along the way, she slipped the cellphone back into Toga's pocket)
When they got back to the main room Shigaraki was back. He took one look at the two of them and pointed at Toga.
"No. Absolutely not. Take that face off right now, this is already a headache."
"What! But, I like this face! It's a cute face, and the blood was so-"
"Nope. No. Take it off, or I'll take if off you."
Suzume turned to look at Kurogiri.
"Do y'all have an HR department? Cause that sounded sus."
Kurogiri stared at her blankly.
"We are the League of Villains."
"Yes, and my in law is a Yakuza who takes health and safety guidelines more seriously than anyone else in the country. What's your point?"
Kurogiri considered her, then went back to rearranging shot glasses behind the bar.
Shigaraki was in the middle of arguing with a second black haired, black eyed crazy lady when the door burst open and two men dressed in black grundled their ways in. One of them handed Compress a marble, before he flopped onto a booth face down, ass up.
Suzume stared.
(She knew Dabi, of course, and he caught her eye for only the smallest of seconds. He tugged on his earlobe. To anyone else it would have looked like he was just getting annoyed with one of his piercings. But she knew the sign.
'Hear no evil'.
Keep your mouth shut.
She did, and turned her attention from the charred man who sunk into a chair and took a whole pitcher of water from Kurogiri, to the man(men?) groaning in the booth.
Twice.)
The marble wasn't lost on her. The other UA kid. Katsuki, she would bet. Maybe Midoriya, but that was unlikely.
"Why didn't you think it was me?"
"I don't know, you don't seem villainous enough to recruit?"
"But you think you are?!"
"I mean I'm gonna say no. But yeah."
"Is there some kind of pre-requisite for being a villain that involves being a dramatic ass bitch?" she asked no one in particular.
Magne laughed at her from the bar, and Suzume waved her hands around her, gesturing to the everything around them. A bartender made of smoke, a man in a suit whining and arguing with himself in a bar booth, another man in a mask and a top hat, two teenagers about ready to come to blows over one girls hair style, and a brooding, half burnt man in the corner. That wasn't even counting the kid with the revolver upstairs and the lizard in cosplay.
"Am I wrong?!"
"Seems like you'd been good for it then," Magne teased, her mouth pulled into a lopsided smile. "We all saw your little display."
"Yeah, yeah. Half the country saw it," she rubbed her face. "Lucky me."
"Take a seat and have a drink. They'll calm down in a few minutes," Magne advised, gesturing to the bar.
Suzume reluctantly obeyed, and took up her now slightly warmer Abstinence on the Beach.
She didn't know how long exactly they were going to be here, but she knew the longer she was here, the worse it was going to end up being.
(Because the truth was, she had a terrible moral compass, and she did like her friends.
And the truth was, as much as she wanted to tear Endeavor from his shitty second tier throne and cast him to the earth, she wanted to do as much, if not more to AFO for what he'd done. And what he would do.
Could she sit by and let Shigaraki be twisted into some horrific amalgamation of All For One and himself? Could she watch the destruction that would follow?
No.
No.
In all actuality, Suzume was not a good person. She was selfish. She was spiteful.
But she was not that cruel.)
Eventually, she watched the new face melt off of Toga, and the blonde girl went to sulk at Twice's side. The man finally righted himself to start regaling her with conflicting tales of his mission into the forest to catch their target, and how terrifying and not at all terrifying that had been, and their escape from police custody after being initially captured.
Suzume listened with half an ear to all the conversations around her, but eventually the night wore on too long.
Slowly, people filtered out of the room, off to bed.
Suzume nearly broke Toga's jaw when the girl grabbed her by the arm and tugged her to the stairs.
"Come on! We can have a sleepover!"
"Or I can wake up with all my blood intact," Suzume argued, trying to pry herself away from the older girl. Toga may have been older (sort of) but she was barely taller than Suzume, and she didn't have the raw muscle that the Yakuza girl had been building for years and years. So why was she actually pulling her across the hardwood floor?!
"Oh boo, I'm not going to do anything! We can stay up late, and talk about crushes, and how pretty they are and how their blood must-"
"I never said I have a crush on anybody!"
But Toga wasn't taking no for an answer, and Suzume's frantic waves for rescue were succinctly ignored by Shigaraki, who was one of the only people still awake by then.
"Don't kill her, Toga, we need her alive."
Toga dragged Suzume back to the mess that was her bedroom, and practically tossed the younger girl onto the pillow covered bed. Suzume grunted, and sat up to watch Toga change into pajamas before finding some for Suzume herself.
Suzume kept a careful eye on the blonde and all her knives, but it seemed that her impulse earlier had been… satiated.
So Suzume sat on the bed, and let Toga ramble about all of the bloody boys she'd seen lately. Including Izuku, who was apparently alive and well. If a little battered and bloodied.
It was incredibly surreal.
(She had to wonder. If she had chosen a different path, would she have ended up here anyways? A villain, instead of a hero-hopeful? Or Yakuza, like her father? She couldn't say.
After all, what she was doing wasn't even that far off from most of their goals.
I'm going to do what I want and the rest of the world can go fuck itself. )
Suzume listened, although she didn't have much to say in return.
She didn't have time for crushes.
(Though, hadn't she also thought she didn't have time for friends?)
Suzume let's Toga talk.
And then.
The talk turns to blood, and Toga's opinion of it.
(And hell, Suzume has spent a lifetime around blood. There's something awful and awe inspiring in death, there's a god of a sort of be found in bones and blood splatter and congealed arteries, and shit it's been a long time since she's been able to talk enthusiastically about mortality with someone who won't think she's off her goddamn rocker for being delighted in the picture every corpse paints.
A history in flesh under nails, a mystery in blank staring eyes, and a rush of vengeful glee in trapping the people who left bruises and cuts and answers in their wake.
It's not total understanding, but its an amalgamation of it. It's a person who loves frogs talking to a person who loves salamanders.)
Eventually, the night claims them.
(It claims Toga.
Suzume slips out of her room, silent as the grave. She could run, but she knows her classmates are here. Trapped somewhere. And she's a little insulted that they don't bother to tie her up, but she's done the math.
There are things she can and can't do. She can escape into the night, unguarded and underestimated. She can't take on the entire League on her own. Even with Katsuki, she doubts they can take all of them on on her own.
No.
She knows they can't. She knows well how dangerous Twice is, and Kurogiri, and Tomura. They haven't reached their full potential yet, but even then they have the two outnumbered and, as Shigaraki said, out gunned.
And if worse comes to worse?
If AFO himself gets involved? What in the fuck is she supposed to do then?
She's good at what she does. She's trained her whole life. But there are things that are beyond her.
For now, at least.
For now she sneaks down the hallways, listening to people puttering around, keeping her eyes out for light spilling under doorways or the telltale creak of floorboards. She can see light coming from the stairs. They're taking turns keeping watch on whoever they brought in earlier, or guarding the main entrance.
That's not where she's going anyways.
First stop is the bathroom. She searches it up and down, in every single light socket and wall plug in, in the pipes, and inside the well, under the heater and in the vents.
She finds one bug behind the air freshener on the back of the toilet that 'accidentally' gets dropped into the water.
It's a handy bit of detective work she hasn't had to do in a decade to figure out which room is Shigaraki's.
It's the one with the most worn out carpet in front of the door, and the one with the most well used doorknob. She listens at the door for a long minute, trying to catch the sound of any talking, typing, or the vague buzz of electronics.
Nothing.
She taps the knob twice, so she doesn't startle herself into getting disintegrated.
It takes a minute for the door to swing open, and an irritated Shigaraki pokes his head out.
"Wha- mph!"
She claps her palm over his mouth, her other hand reaching to cup the back of his head before he can pull away.
"Shh," she hisses softly. His red eyes widen in the darkness. Only then does she let go of him.
"What-"
"Tch!" she puts her finger to her lips, cutting him off.
Suzume tugs him out by his blue hair, slightly damp from a shower, and drags him down the hallway to the bathroom.
To his credit, he stays silent until the door is shut behind them.
"What. Is. It?" he hisses at her.
There's really not room for two people, so Suzume perches on the counter, her legs crossed, and looks at him with dark, intense eyes.
"I want to talk about All For One." )
"Wait, we've been here for two days?" Hitoshi asks, gaping at her.
Suzume runs her fingers through her bangs. "Yeah. They caught us last night, and it's about noon now."
Kurogiri appears next to them at the bar, replacing their now empty glasses. This has to be the most Suzume has ever said to anyone in one sitting.
"One in the afternoon," Kurogiri corrects her lightly. "Your other friend will be joining us shortly. Until then, please behave."
"Our other friend?" Suzume repeats, arching her brows at him.
"Bakugou," Hitoshi looks back at the door to the kitchen. "He's back there somewhere. I heard him earlier."
So he is there. Yeah, that makes more sense.
Suzume draws in a breath.
"Okay then."
Toga comes bouncing over then, cutting their conversation off entirely.
"Hey! Guess what they just announced one the news?"
"I dunno. Quirk olympics?"
Toga snickers at Suzume. "No! Your teacher is going to have a press conference. All about you. And, I guess some reporter figured out who your dad is. There's news articles about him too."
Suzume can feel a headache coming on.
"Shit."