For the first year after the wedding she sees them in passing. Everyone packs into Taka and Rio's condo for birthdays, Taka, Rio's, and the birth of their little daughter summons everyone again.
Suzume nearly shits herself when she peers into the cradle and sees a tiny, scrunched up potato looking face under a shock of white hair. There's the tiniest horn on her forehead, and her eyes aren't open but between Taka and Rio the only color she possibly has is red.
"Her name is Eri," Taka says proudly, while Rio sleeps in the other room. Apparently Eri had been up all night screaming.
Now she's quiet, and adorable, and sleeping.
"Kono Eri?"
"That's right. She's your very first niece," Taka ruffled her hair. "You're not the baby anymore."
"Does this mean that if I get scraped up Rio won't fix it for me?"
"No, no," Taka promises. "Rio loves you. She'll heal you if you ever need it, as long as you don't tell your teachers or anyone."
Suzume nods solemnly. She peers into the bassinet, her brows furrowed. This was… interesting. Not wholly unexpected, but it's been nearly nine years by then since she's seen a show that she wasn't paying all that much attention to in the first place.
She wasn't sure she even knew Eri was Kai's niece.
Fuck.
This also meant that the healing quirk that Rio possessed wasn't healing at all. It was a smaller time reversal.
"I like Rio," Suzume confesses.
Taka smiles softly at her while Kaname comes over with his freshly washed hands to try to hold little Eri.
It ends with her screaming, which isn't a surprise.
What is a surprise is a few months later when Sanjiro drops her off at the Yakuza compound in front of Kai Chisaki.
She looks up at him.
He looks down at her.
"Uh. Hi?"
"Come inside. Before you get dirty."
The big gate opens up into a courtyard of immaculately maintained trees. Office buildings rise up on either side of them and she just knows that they don't hold anything legitimate inside of them.
Not that she tells Kai that, of course.
She's all of nine years old, and not supposed to know about the Yakuza at all. Sanjiro doesn't talk much about it, and Ryuhei pushes her even harder than his other students, who are all probably mob born kids.
Like her.
Weird.
Kai leads her into one of the buildings, one that was clearly converted for somewhere to live. The first floor is all offices, but the second floor is made up of a massive kitchen, ball rooms, what she suspects might be a full sized movie theatre, and storage. Above that is apartments.
Kai takes her to his, where Kurono is waiting for them in a plain white hoodie, and a white mask.
Suzume squints up at him.
" 'm I supposed to wear a mask too? Dad didn't send me with one."
"You're cleaner than the rest of us," Kai tells her, and sits at the couch. "But if we go out, I'll find one for you."
"M'kay."
Suzume looks between him and an uncomfortable looking Kurono.
"So… what are we doing today?" She asks.
"What do you mean?" Kai frowns at her from under his mask.
"I mean. Dad said you're my baby sitters. Which is super weird, b t dubs. So what are we doing?"
"I'm baby sitting you because Rio won't let me see Eri until I can, quote, 'watch a kid without killing it'. And you were convenient."
Kurono looks physically pained by his bluntness.
Suzume blinks at him.
She's not totally surprised to be getting a new babysitter. Her brother's had locked her in the pantry and left her there until Mom got home last week, and that was following up The Incident where they packed her in a box and shoved her down the stairs to see how fast she could get going and she ended up shooting through the open front door and nearly sprawling into traffic.
But this was. Weird.
Honestly, her brother's are probably way safer than this man will ever be, even when she's the only one with a brain cell.
"You are… really not around kids a lot. You need to be nicer to them. Or else they'll cry."
"You're not counting yourself in that group?" Kai asks, arching a brow high.
Suzume said blandly, "I am a very weird kid." Neither of them argue with her.
"Fine," Kai spreads his hands out like he's surrendered something to her. "What do you usually do with babysitters?"
Considering they were mostly her brothers?
"Terrorize them."
"...Aren't you supposed to be trying to be a hero?" Kurono finally asks, his pale brows drawn together. He looks at her like she's a particularly confusing puzzle. She wonders if they have that human lie detector around here yet. How many Shie Hessaiki and the eight precepts (or was it bullets? Something to do with buddha?) are already on Kai's pay roll.
"Yes. And?"
"You'd fit in with the Yakuza better."
She knows he's right. Still.
"No thanks. But I guess what some babysitters have us do is draw. Mama doesn't like us watching a whole lot of TV, so they don't have us watch that much. There's also board games, and my favorite 'sitter likes to teach us songs and sing," she lists off, tacking ideas on her fingers. "Going to the park is fun, but you don't like other people, or outdoors."
"No, I don't," Kai grimaces.
"Actually… It's probably a bad idea for you to be alone with any kid. Especially real little ones. There's no way you're changing a diaper, or feeding them with your own hands."
"Fuck no."
"Don't swear in front of children."
"Right."
"But more than that," Suzume's brows furrow. "People need contact. Babies die if you don't hold them."
Kai looks physically ill at the idea. Suzume wonders what happened the first time around. If Kai got ahold of Eri, then something bad happened to Rio and Taka. Had her quirk misfired? Had there been an accident?
If she knew she was going to get isekai'd by her baby sister, she would have paid better attention! It definitely didn't help that she'd cared more about the League of Villains than the Shie Hessaikai.
Now if I had been reborn sorta-related-to one of them…
Kai and Rio had seemed close at the wedding, but there was a wedge between them in the form of their father. Their father who did not, and still didn't entirely, approve of Taka.
The Suzume who was not a former detective/mischief maker probably hadn't noticed him outside. Without that, would Kai have? Would he have convinced the old man to come see his daughter get married? Would anyone else have made a little speech about love? Or would that wedge have only grown bigger and the distance between their small family only grown larger?
Without all that, would Kai have even cared about seeing Eri before her quirk came in?
Would he have had the kind of network of emotional support/rage inducing companionship that came with siblings, or had that fallen apart entirely and left him surrounded by people who merely obeyed him, and let him spiral into a germaphobic madness?
"So," Suzume concludes. "You either need to get used to touching people, or you need to keep someone around who knows how to take care of kids. Got anyone like that?"
Kai and Kurono look at each other, sharing a silent conversation.
"Is there anyone who's dealt with kids before that we trust to do it again?" Kurono asks at last, looking lost.
Kai stands with a grunt. " I guess we'll find out. Come along."
" Kay."
Suzume is pretty sure that he's not supposed to lead little kids down into the belly of the beast, beneath the kitchen and the offices and into a hidden underground facility where the true nature of the organization comes to be obvious.
It's pretty familiar, all in all, although she doesn't see stolen paintings anywhere. Her first mother had had a fondness for Monet's.
This is much more sparse.
The Shie Hessaikai are a smaller Yakuza group, clearly, and with All Might sweeping up organized crime all over the place they're only going to get smaller.
Still, there's staff roaming around, men and women in nice suits tailored to hide weaponry, all of whom bow politely to Kai as they walk past.
Suzume makes a game of seeing how many guns she can count vs knives. It's more fun than staring at Kai's back the whole time.
They come to a stop in front of an office door, where Mimikyu or whoever the fuck he is pokes his weird puppet head out.
Suzume will give it to Kai, he cuts to the chase pretty quick after the typical 'Good morning's and 'how are you?'s.
"Who do we know who has kids? Or who interacts with them. Ever."
It's enough to make Mimikyu pause.
Suzume takes the time to poke Kai's leg. Both Kurono and Mimikyu freeze, and stare at her like she'd just rolled herself in honey and walked up to a grizzly bear. Which, she might as well have as far as they're concerned.
But Kai twitches and glares down at her.
"Don't touch me. What?"
"If I wash my hands can I hold yours? 'Cause if we ever go anywhere I'm gonna have to, and Eri will definitely have to, once she starts walking."
"No. Is that really what you want?"
"Well no, but I thought of it. I wanted to know who you're talking to."
Because 'Mimikyu' is definitely wrong.
"...ah. This is Irinaka Joi, our accountant. He signs checks and makes schedules."
"Pleased to meet you," he dips a nod at Suzume, who bows politely in turn.
"Same. I'm Suzume."
"And the reason we need someone who can watch a kid, I figure."
"E-yeah."
"Well. No one working today, sorry. Also, Kai, there's been some trouble at a store that we, uh-"
He glanced at Suzume, who did her best to look like she was interested in the base boards instead of the conversations.
"Well anyways. It's a bit more than the regular guys could take on. The call just came in."
Suzume quietly watched Kai out of the corner of her eye. Was she about to witness a murder?
Apparently even he knew that you weren't supposed to bring a nine year old to a crime scene.
"Find me the names, and locations. I'll take care of it once Suzume goes home for the day," he orders shortly. There'a flash in his eyes, a set in his shoulders, and Suzume get's a glimpse of what the others, those who follow Kai, see in him.
This was the Kai raised to be a Yakuza. Someone who fought for them, constantly and viciously. Someone who would commit any atrocity if it meant that their place in existence was cemented.
Steel in his bones, and darkness in his blood.
Suzume wonders just what she's gotten herself into.
Kai ends up being her regular babysitter.
Rarely will he take Kaname as well, and Suzume has started her own bastardized version of exposure therapy with him(Kurono calls it harassment and torture. She doesn't disagree). Poking his legs to get his attention, demanding her hold her hand at a crosswalk on the rare occasions they do go to a park, playing cards that she and Kurono have touched with their bare hands. It's small stuff, really, and if she had a quirk she's pretty sure she'd never get away with it.
But he doesn't raise a single hand to her, just snaps at her now and again.
Eventually he gets used to holding her hand outside, although he get's her a little owl shaped hand sanitizer holder to carry around in her tiny purse. She counts it as a massive victory.
Business can't always wait, so more than once she's left to sit in the car with Kurono while Kai disposes of someone crossing lines. It's during those times that she figures out how to perfect her lock picking skills in this new body, something that Kurono vehemently denies ever teaching her.
And if she's taken up pick pocketing? What are they gonna do? Tell the heroes?
When Eri is one year old Rio bathes her and dresses her in clean clothes, and passes her into Kai's hands for the first time ever.
He holds her for just a minute before giving her back and scrubbing his arms raw.
It's… progress, Suzume supposes.
And he is nothing if not stubborn. Eri and Rio have managed to light a startling fire beneath him. He visits them twice a month, that Suzume knows of, and holds Eri at least one time during those visits. It never lasts more than a minute, but whenever Rio speaks of her brother her eyes go soft, and the gap between her and Kai never grows like Suzume knows it could have.
Eri is his niece as much as she is Suzume's, and as twisted as it can become Kai is a man dedicated to his family.
The season's pass on.
More and more faintly familiar faces appear at Kai's heels. Shin Nemoto is the first, a tall man who looks for lies at every turn. He doesn't find any in Suzume, who might not talk about Before, but is a bit too blunt for her own good.
After him stumbles in Kendo Rappa, fresh from some kind of underground fighting circuit. He won't fight Suzume, he has some kind of weird honor system going on, but he plays tag with her and they only tear up a few rooms.
Then comes Rikiya, who Suzume doesn't care for and who feels exactly the same towards her. Deidoro is next, and he's just as distant, if it's by his own volition or an order from Kai is a toss up. She sees him on the rare occasions when he's sober.
(On one memorable weekend while they're staying over while her parents are out of town and the twins are on a school trip, he sits her and Kaname down in the living room with a bucket between his knees and gives them the most horrifyingly blunt description of alcoholism and addiction that even she's ever heard.)
Toya, Hojo, and Tabe come in from the cold so close to each other that if she hadn't been paying attention she would have thought Kai found them all crammed in the same cardboard box on the side of the road. Toya is all dark circles under his eyes and long sleeves, desperate for companions but waiting for betrayal. Hojo is expecting the same, to be used and thrown away again.
(He nearly breaks down when Suzume asks him why it matters if his crystals are worth money, when beauty has its own value.)
Tabe is an unfortunate test subject the week she decides she wants to teach herself how to cook and nearly caramelizes a crab. He still pats her head in his own strange praise.
They're all tragedies, rolled into nice suits and masks. She still sees Kai and Kurono more than anyone else, but even those visits grow further and further between as she gets busier with clubs and classes.
Rio and Taka end up moving across the country, along with their little daughter, all bright red eyes and her growing shock of white hair. Suzume had been conspiring to get her to say a swear as her first word, but instead she says 'wash' followed quickly by 'fuck'. Kai is succinctly blamed for everything.
The day that they leave Kai holds Eri for a whole five minutes before he passes her back to her parents so he can go scrub his arms red.
Shisui rarely calls home, but Suzume makes a point to email him whenever she has the chance. She doesn't mention his boyfriend, Touji. He'll introduce them when he's ready.
Satomi and Seiji enter high school, still thick as thieves and turning into just that.
They do their best to hide it from their family, Kaname and Suzume in particular, but there's not a lot that they can hide from Suzume once she's looking for it. They're not particularly subtle anyhow. Not by her standards. But their only brief run ins with officers don't end with anything heavier than a slight scolding that Suzume only knows about because she hears them talking about it when they think everyone else is fast asleep.
Kaname grows taller and taller, and applies for every hero school that he can possibly think of. His last year in junior high is Suzume's first, and it gives her enough clout that no one tries bothering her.
Spooky reading girl and villain quirk boy make quite the pair.
Kaname practices hard too, but he has friends, few and far between as they might be.
On top of going to a new school and getting new uniforms for it, she's also becoming a terror in Ryuhei's class, to the point that she's also started teaching the newer classes. Ryuhei recommends her to a friend of his, one who teaches Baguazhang.
So she's going to be a goddamn airbender.
He's started inviting in friends of his with dangerous, tricky quirks so she can practice countering them. The hardest part is figuring out the details on the fly, but she's getting good at that. Some days it seems like he actually thinks that she'll make it as a hero. If nothing else he knows that she's stubborn enough to pick fights, and not everyone is a play ground bully who will hold their quirks back in fear of legal retribution.
In junior high she also joins the track and gymnastics teams. She barely ever stops moving. Her reading is done on the track field itself, her book held firmly while she sprints in a long oval. It's not like she had a social life to begin with, so she's not sacrificing a lot. Her teammates are only competition, people to push her to be faster, to jump higher, to perfect her flips.
In the evenings she starts free running, whenever Kai isn't looking after her and sometimes when he is. He ends up buying her a pair of sturdy leather gloves so she doesn't get her hands dirty or hurt.
(She tries to ignore the fact that they treat her like she's not a hero-hopeful, because it means that they, like everyone else, think her dreams are mere delusions. There isn't a person alive who believes she can really become a hero without a quirk, other than her brother.)
One day there's a small explosion in the Shie Hassaikai base. It's not big enough to destroy everything but it puts a hole in the ground and Suzume and Kurono fall into the rubble. Her arm tears open on broken stone and twists at an unnatural angle, her knee snaps against metal supports, and her foot twists so far around its faced the wrong way. It hurts, in the numb way that things hurt when you're in shock, when you can't really feel anything at all but you know that someone is wrong.
Kurono is slightly better off, but his shoulder is out of place and blood drips out of his coat far too close to his ribs.
It's Kai who finds them, the rubble shifting and reforming around him. His touch on the stone and metal is featherlight, and she can see hives breaking out on the back of his hands.
His gold eyes zero in on the two of them, huddled amidst stone, and he crouches beside their broken bodies.
Rio had healed Suzume a hundred times, from small cuts to rolled ankles. The touch of her quirk is soft and buzzing, like bees humming under her skin while soft golden lightning danced across her skin. It's beautiful, and pleasant, and Rio is soft.
Kai presses a piece of leather between her teeth and lays his bare hands on her broken, bloody body.
"This will hurt," he says honestly.
Whatever pain she'd felt from her broken bones and blood is nothing compared to being unmade and reshaped under Kai's hands. Every cell ripped apart and pieced back together, every molecule rent asunder and reassembled.
It lasts only a second, but it's enough time that her throat is raw from screaming and tears stream down her cheeks.
It's nothing like being healed by Rio. Being unmade is so much worse than having her time rewritten.
Kurono manages slightly better than she does, if only because he doesn't start crying. He's Yakuza, and made of tougher stuff than a little girl.
That doesn't make him less pale when he picks her up and carries her on his back back to the living area. She's almost too big for it to be easy, but she's a bit shy of her growth spurt.
It's quiet. Kurono calls the twins to pick her up, doesn't give them much information, and Kai stays in the shower for the better part of an hour.
He re emerges in time to watch Satomi pile her into his and Seiji's second hand car.
Suzume waves goodbye to him.
It's one of the last times he watches her.
There comes the day when she ends up going home early for once in her life, her first period kicking the shit out of her, and there's a knock on the door. It's just Suzume and Sanjiro at home.
And by a knock, she means that the door is blown clear off its hinges, sending wood and stone flying all over the place, and Suzume is left sitting at the kitchen table, a sandwich halfway to her mouth, staring at it. A piece of the door cuts her forehead, right next to her temple, and blood drips slowly down her cheek.
She's not sure what she's expecting when the smoke clears. She should react. She should run. Instead she stares.
Stares at a man in a bright red and blue costume that comes picking his way through the rubble. Next to him comes a much less flashy man in a tan trench coat.
Oh dad. She thinks distantly, What did you get into this time?
She wants to lunge for her phone and call Kai, or Rio, or someone.
But they can't fight this. This man is a force of nature.
"Hello?" she asks, squinting up at them. The air around them changes when they realize that there's a kid sitting there, watching them.
She watches sweat break across All Mights brow.
"Uh hem. Is your uh. Your father home, young lady?"
At least he's polite? She wonders if her dad would have a chance in hell of running out the back and escaping but-
No.
All Might is number one for a reason. And her dad fixes roofs.
He handles the lowest level of all Yakuza business. Disputes between shell companies, people picking fights in bars, punk kids stealing from stores that pay for protection.
(Suzume isn't supposed to know about any of this, of course. She thinks he used to do worse things, more dangerous things, but he hasn't since Taka was born. Everything for the sake of his family.)
So why is All Might of all people coming to speak with him? Coming to arrest him?
"Yeah," she says finally. "Come in."
As if they aren't inside already.
There's no way out of this.
Well. She could stab All Might in the crotch when he's not expecting a junior high student to do it, but that might just make things worse. Tsukauchi probably has a gun.
The back door bursts open a second late and Sanjiro bolts in, his eyes wild. There's a knife in his hands that he's never willingly let Suzume see before.
"You-" His eyes dart between his daughter and the hero, and the detective of course. The viciousness in them changes. Before her very eyes she watches the fight leave his body.
"This wasn't how-" he stops, looks again at Suzume, then All Might, who's jaw twitches.
"We weren't trying to frighten your daughter," he says, apologetic. "We thought you were the only one home."
She's supposed to be at a fighting class. She's supposed to be out. If they'd been staking out the house they would know that she'd come home early. So they hadn't been. They'd just known her schedule. Which is creepy, but not unheard of.
Except that she didn't keep to a perfect schedule every single week. It changed, at least slightly, every time.
So.
They weren't watching. They just knew her schedule. Which they would only know if someone in her family told them.
And they didn't lunge for her dad either. Like he wasn't a threat. Like the Number One goddamn Hero hadn't crashed through the door, casual as you please, and made a big scene.
There's something not right here.
Pieces are clicking into place, but her stomach hurts and her headaches and nausea is starting to set in. Maybe if she throws up on All Might's shoes he'll fuck off.
"Just- Just give a minute. I'll come quietly," he promises, his red eyes on his only daughter. "Just. Let me."
All Might hesitates, but steps away from him all the same.
Not outside, but far enough that Sanjiro can step up to his daughter.
Heroes shouldn't do that. He could take me hostage, if they think he's really whatever horrible thing he's being accused of.
"Suzume, listen," he places his hands on her shoulders and she can feel tears prick at her eyes.
"Hey, no-"
"Suzy Q," he stops her with her nickname. His smile is horribly, horribly sad. "Listen to me now."
His grasp on her shoulders grew tighter.
"This world will never let you be a hero."
It stabs into her heart. Words she's heart a million times from a million people. So many of them, so many times. And she's known! She knew that he didn't think she could do it. She knew he always doubted her desire, even if he never said as much.
But he paid for her classes, somehow. He picked her up, bruised and aching, and pressed cake into her hands. He-
Tears slipped silently down her cheeks, turning pink on one side.
He let's go of her and steps back. He doesn't fight when All Might snaps handcuffs on his wrists. Neither he nor Tsukauchi can make eye contact with her.
The world will never let you become a hero.