We're back! You all owe uncreative_fool a thank you for reminding me it was today!
I feel like You will either love or hate this first chapter of season 3, but I hope you at least enjoy some of it.
Anri knew it was petty.
Being jealous of your best friend's boyfriend because you weren't getting enough attention? It was silly. It was selfish .
But she couldn't help it!
Kuroko had been dating Touzu for six months, and in that entire time she'd only gone out with Anri once, and it was to look for underwear that he would like.
For almost three years the point of contention in their relationship had been cleaning. Kuroko did almost none of it, to the point that Anri had given up even asking her to take out the trash. But she was her friend, so she put up with it. She was her only friend. And what was a little bit of trash, what was a few more dishes, in the face of crushing loneliness?
As if she wasn't now just as lonely as she started. She had barely seen Kuroko for months.
The not hanging out had bothered her in ways the not cleaning never could. Trying to get Kuroko to make and keep plans was always like herding cats. It was hard enough to get her to give a straight answer. Do you want to go to the city this weekend? What do you want to do for the holiday? Do you want to get lunch between classes?
Maybe. I don't know. Let me think.
Half of their actually plans fell through anyways.
But when it was just them, she ignored that too. Kuroko wasn't a people person, she liked to stay in their apartment. It was fine!
Except.
Apparently it wasn't.
Because Kuroko didn't seem to have any issues making plans with her boyfriend. She didn't have any trouble showing up for him on time, or answering the phone when he called, or going through with plans that Anri tried to make with her with him instead.
Even more salt in the wound was that Kuroko had finally started cleaning up, but not because Anri was on the verge of a breakdown because she'd been gone for a week and the dishes were piled up to her shoulders and rotting.
But because she didn't want her boyfriend to know who she was.
She was always out with him, except for at nights when they were fucking in her bedroom and early morning before he marched back to his campus dorm.
And he hated Anri. He wouldn't speak two words to her. He just watched her move around the apartment and shut up the second he realized she was in the apartment. He had to be physically forced to sit in the same room as her.
It.
Was horrible.
And it made her feel horrible. Horrible and unwelcome and like a coward for not telling him to get the fuck out. Who was he, to make her feel unwelcome in her own apartment? In the place that she paid rent, that she had put hundreds of hours of work into upkeeping? A place she was proud to live?
She didn't. Ever.
Anri felt pathetic and small and like the stupid little girl who had wanted so desperately to get Kuroko to be her friend in middle school.
She wanted to leave. If it wasn't so expensive, if she wasn't so terrified of being alone, maybe she would have. She could afford a studio, but Chuuya would hate a single room apartment, and he was the best thing in her life. She would go hungry before she ever let him.
Of course, there was also the fact that the lease wasn't up until nine months.
Anri could suck it up. She could bite her tongue and just clean her own stuff.
If it wasn't for the last straw.
Seven months ago she had asked Kuroko if she wanted to take a trip to celebrate her twenty-first birthday. Seven. Months. She'd offered plenty of options. Go on a cruise, spend a week in Tokyo, go to an Onsen. Kuroko had insisted she couldn't get enough time off for anything big, and Anri had waited months for her to suggest something small.
Instead, her birthday rolled around, she opened the presents Anri bought her, and then went to the city with Touzu.
That was-
Fuck.
That was all she could take.
Anri couldn't leave forever, but fuck she had to get out of the apartment and clear her head of bitterness and hurt.
Even if it was just for a weekend.
Anri didn't leave a note. She didn't add it to the calender she wrote her schedule on religiously. There was no time, if she stopped she'd chicken out. If she spoke to Kuroko and told her where she was going or why Anri would break down in tears, she just knew it.
She didn't.
Anri packed up her bag, grabbed Chuuya the Pom Pom, and fled before she could think any more about everything that was happening.
They only had to walk a few blocks to get to the train station, and she bought the first ticket going to Fukuoka. By some miracle Anri kept her mouth from quivering as they waited and then loaded onto the packed passenger car. She kept her phone in one hand, trying to look like she was texting, and the fluffy little puppy in the other.
Chuuya licked her cheek, even though they were dry today, and she cuddled him close on the train.
She booked the hotel on the way there, searching for something pet friendly and cheap even on short notice.
Maybe she just wouldn't come back.
That would show Kuroko. She'd be sorry she didn't pay attention to me when she could. 'Oh, but Anri, we live together, we'll always see eachother'. See what happens when you test that, damn it.
Anri pushed her sunglasses higher on her nose and took a breath.
She was not going to cry on the train.
Chuuya whined softly, so she pet him and fed him soft treats out of her pocket the rest of the way. The train was crowded, and she took an elbow to the side, before she turned them towards a window and put herself between Chuuya and any possible bumps and bruises.
The puppy finally got to stretch his paws when they got to Fukuoka. Her hotel should be within walking distance to the train station, most of them were.
There was a park across from it, when they finally found it, and a local politician giving a speech with a hero she didn't recognize at his shoulder and his wife at his other side.
Anri didn't care.
Finally, as she entered the clean but bland lobby of the Great Penrose, she let out a sigh of relief. Her room key was on her phone, so she didn't need to talk to the desk clerk or get a physical key card. But she did, just to hear another person talk to her. Just to get a smile, however paid for it was. The key card vanished into one of her pockets and she said goodbye after getting the breakfast schedule.
The only issue was that dogs weren't allowed in the elevator.
So Anri took the stairs, up, up, up with Chuuya trotting at her side.
Until he stopped dead and stared ahead of them. His already fluffy coat stood even further on end and his tiny teeth were bared.
Anri went still, and followed his small brown eyes up, up, up.
Her gaze met two blue eyes.
They looked down at her dispassionately from under a curl of red-brown hair.
Like dried blood.
The thought shivered down her spine before she could stop it. There was something cold about the man above her.
He was dressed plainly, in jeans and an unbuttoned brown shirt over blue. There was something leather on the side of his chest. He had a golf bag over one shoulder, with clubs sticking out.
He had two drivers, of all things, and one of the shafts was too fat for a golf club. She stared, too long, and the man shifted to face her better.
Anri dropped to her knees quickly, and hushed Chuuya. She gathered him into her arms again, and offered the man ahead of them an awkward smile. She couldn't meet those cold, icy eyes.
No way.
No how.
"Excuse us," she said. His boots, the kind you saw in movies about wars and stuff, scuffed quickly on the thin carpet. Hestepped to the side.
There was no part of Anri that wanted to turn her back on him. The idea of this man (was he a man? Or was he wearing the face of a man?) having access to her unprotected back in an enclosed space like this made her sick to her stomach.
With a dog trying valiantly to bark at this horrible creature still held in her grasp, Anri forced one foot in front of the other.
Climb.
Step by step.
She passed him by, and went up two more stairs. Four. Eight.
Only when she was half a flight above him did she hear the soft scuff of his boots behind her. Cold fear washed through her.
Anri reached her floor before it could petrify her entirely and exited the stairwell. She stopped just outside, and waited until she heard his footsteps. Soft whispers of boots stopped outside of the door. On the other side from her.
Chuuya had even gone silent, as if sensing what they were doing.
Then the whispers went on.
And she couldn't hear them anymore.
She fled to her room, and nearly dropped her phone trying to open the app. It took precious seconds for her to fumble it open and get the door unlocked.
Chuuya jumped from her arms and she had to slam the door shut to keep the brave little puff ball from going out and trying to protect her from whatever that was.
Surely it wasn't human. Humans didn't have eyes like that.
Anri sunk against the wall. She was shivering all over now, and her bag thumped solidly on the ground. Tears welled her eyes.
It wasn't fair.
She just wanted a day to be good.
No worrying about her absent friend and trying to pretend she was okay. No running into scary men in stairwells.
Just.
Good.
Just one day.
Maybe Anri was cursed. Maybe some horrible curse had latched onto her petty, vindictive heart and wouldn't let her go until she actually was a better person instead of just pretending to be one.
Chuuya, darling, wonderful, infallible Chuuya, climbed into her lap and leaned against her chest.
Anri held him tight, cradling his small body to her and desperately trying to soak in the warmth that emanate off of his fur. He needed a bath, he smelled like train and hot dog, but it was worth it to just hold him. To hold something living and breathing and know that she was loved by this one thing even if nothing else in the world did.
There was a sharp 'pop!' from somewhere above her head.
Outside across the street, people started screaming and shouting. The hero roared something and Anri held Chuuya tighter.
She didn't look.
She couldn't bring herself to look at what was happening outside. No part of her wanted to know about whatever horrible tragedy had just occurred.
Chuuya started barking again, louder and louder, a hard yipping in her ears that made them ring.
The door didn't shatter off its hinges. It didn't explode off the wall, nor did the knob burst with a flash of gunfire.
Instead it swung open with a soft click.
Anri looked up to see the man from before. The thing. It didn't look like a man out of the harsh lighting in the stairwell. No, here it looked different. It looked young. Like a teenager.
A teenager with something metal and cold in one hand.
The barrel of the gun levelled between her eyes and Chuuya howled in fury and fear and tried so, so hard to lash out of her grasp.
Anri held him in her lap tightly. She wouldn't let anything happen to him. Not as long as she breathed.
Tears dripped down her face as she looked up into those cold, soulless eyes.
Next time I feel lonely , she thought hysterically , I'm going to call my parents instead.
There was a flash of muzzle fire, and the softest gun report broke the air.
~
There are two simple words that every pro-hero, and to add to that every professional criminal, or anyone in the public eye, or anyone stupid enough to be caught up in one of the biggest televised hero-villain fights. Two words that could save your metaphoric, or even literal life.
No.
Comment.
They were words that needed to be memorized, words that needed to be beaten into the heads of everyone who ever went through any pro hero, or business school, words that should be the go to for every PR manage to stuff into their clients mouths.
No.
Comment.
Simple. Sweet. To the point.
Anything you say can and will be held against you in the court of public opinion, be that phrase 'I love puppies' or 'I think coolsville sucks'.
These two sweet, wonderful words were ones that Suzume was already intimately familiar with.
Without them, and without the intervention of lawyers and PR people she would have had an even worse childhood following the arrest of her father. It didn't get to become the media sensation it could have been, because it never had the option to become mysterious and amazing.
Even the most excitable true crime podcasts struggled to make more than a single episode out of her fathers life, because they had managed to make him very, very boring.
Mob man kills person. Short story about what little public information is available on this man. Brief history on the mob itself and its role in japan historically and currently. Gushing about heroes. Roll credits.
It was easy.
And Suzume said those words again now, as she was crowded by reporters on her way out of the hospital at the end of the week.
It was just a check up. She knew she was healthy, they knew she was healthy, but for the sake of the aid rendered everyone was quietly pretending that Rio hadn't used her quirk so much in that single, horrible day that she'd slept for a week in exhaustion afterwards.
So she trooped into the hospital early, and by the time she left someone had tipped the reporters and the camera crews off to the fact that one of the girls from the biggest fight in television history was at the hospital and they descended like vultures.
"No comment," she said firmly. Suzume wielded the words like a shield between her and the people that pressed in on all sides. They only kept some of their distance because they had seen her shoot a man in the head. The whole country had, and the opinions were mixed to say the least.
Some people supported her. Called it self defense and justified and whatever else. Others condemned it. Could they really let someone willing to kill be a hero?
(As if heroes never had to cross that line. It happened all the time, and she was making sure that people knew that Endeavor had an unusually high number of cross fire casualties)
The less Suzume said, the more desperate people became for a statement. Did she feel bad for shooting him? What had it been like to be held captive? Had her father taught her to use a gun?
"No comment."
Suzume pushed her way through the throng to the waiting police car only a scant few feet away.
She tucked into the side seat and officer Moto, a young man with dark skin who always tended to have sweat beading his brow, flashed the lights and started to pull away.
"God, is it always like this?'
Suzume grimaced.
"No comment."
She wasn't entirely sure when this media circus would die down, but she really hoped that it would soon. They weren't only circling her like vultures either. Katsuki and Hitoshi had been put on lock down just like her. Unlike her, both of them were being coached on their public persona's and exactly how not to be trapped by their own words.
Hitoshi was better at it, unsurprisingly. Katsuki was just furious and impulsive, for all he was smart.
He was a weird kid, and he couldn't look Suzume in the eye since he found out he had sent shrapnel into her side.
He'd get over it.
He had to.
They pulled through the city.
"I guess I'll be picking you up tomorrow and taking you to the airport?" Officer Moto broke the silence between them after several blocks. The streets weren't restful. People moved faster, they looked around and eyed each other like frightened rabbits, looking for a fox dressed in their own pelts.
Paranoia and fear was starting to grip the streets.
All Mights greatest battle had taken its toll, even though he was triumphant.
Society was changing, and it would never be the same again.
Suzume rested her head against the back seat of the car.
"I think you're supposed to take me all the way out to the runway. There should be a little charter flying to Kyushu."
"Oh yeah? That's kinda fancy!"
Suzume grunted.
"A little. It's paid for by my school."
Not UA, though. This one was being paid for by Shihan Tsushima was sending her to the master despite everything that had happened.
"I've only ever been to Kyushu once, but it's an awesome place."
Suzume considered the statement. An awesome place. She wouldn't exactly be a tourist, but the less Moto knew the better it was for him. People like the one she was going to learn from did not appreciate being sought out, and she'd rather not risk Moto's life.
"I'll be landing Fukuoka, and flying out too."
"Oh cool! Make sure you go to Fukuoka Tower, it's huge!"
Suzume nodded absently. She rolled her scrunchy around her wrist, and felt the lock picks carefully beneath the satin surface.
"I will. If I see you when I get back I'll show you pictures."
"I'd like that. You're a good kid."
She wasn't, but she would let Officer Moto think that for now.
They twisted through the long streets before finally pulling up in front of her house.
There was an unfamiliar car in the drive way.
And her mother was weeping on the porch.
Suzume stepped out of the passenger seat with every intention of shooting someone for the second time in three weeks.