The Ketsubutsu uniform looks good on Kaname.
Chiasa isn't happy to see her youngest son in it, Suzume knows.
She's not in the house as much as she should be, but she'd heard a few arguments between the two of them about him going to any hero school at all. It's his dream, yes, but heroes had broken their family apart from her point of view.
She hates heroes.
But she loves her children, and she caves and let's him apply.
So he applies to every school he can think of, and in the end he's offered acceptance letters from Ketsubutsu, Seijin, and a handful of others, but Ketsubutsu was where he ended up.
He and Suzume sit up late into the night, designing his hero and Satomi, freshly graduated and more than ready to leave the house, sat with them and made their own suggestions, curled up in Kaname's bedroom.
They ended up with a dark grey bodysuit with a hood. Yellow and black stripes on the sleeves and on lines that spread down the sides, over his ribs to his decided on black combat boots and a black belt, and on the belt and on the chest were two small black triangles shaped like his fangs. They kept fingers off the gloves so his claws were free, and they picked a yellow visor for his eyes, one that would read heat signatures like a snake might. It kind of reminds her of a half forgotten CreepyPasta.
It wasn't extravagant, but it was functional.
That summed their family up perfectly.
The twins bracketed them on either side of Kaname's bed. They were still identical, and they had made a game out of fucking with people, but they were such different people.
Seiji loved video games. He was going to college for game design, now that they could afford it. He was a brilliant artist, and a clever young man. He'd come up with more games than Suzume could keep track of over the years for them to play.
Satomi wasn't meant for the city. They had garden boxes and in their last house they'd had enough of a backyard that he could bury his fingers in the dirt and grow something green and beautiful. Here their backyard was bigger, and it was already overrun with beautiful flowers and herbs. So it made perfect sense for him to be going to study agriculture.
It was going to be the first time that the twins had lived apart since they were born.
She had no idea how they were going to do, but she hoped that they would be okay.
They deserved to be happy.
She privately hoped they left the stealing behind. Or at least didn't get caught. She was absolutely certain that their dad's deal with All Might and Tsukauchi had something to do with erasing their short criminal records. There was more too it, but without more information even she couldn't predict what exactly he had asked for, or what he had given them in return.
"One day," Satomi says suddenly, when they've set their design aside and are setting up a four way game of mario kart, "I'm going to move out to the country, and I want everyone to come visit for a week in the summer."
"Just a week? That's so mean. I thought you'd miss us," Seiji teases.
"I think if all of us were in the same house at the same time for longer than that there would be a murder," Suzume admits, "With the six of us Kono's, Rio, Eri, Mom," and dad, eventually, "and whoever Shisui brings. Someone would wind up with a knife in their chest. "
"I mean. You did stab me the other day."
"You snuck into the kitchen while I was chopping onions!"
"I almost needed stitches!"
"Listen man, it's your own fault you got stabbed."
"Satomi, help, our baby sister is gas lighting me."
"It's not gas lighting if it's true you dick!"
"Well now you're just being sexist."
"That's not- You know what I meant!"
Suzume tackles him off of the bed and they go crashing down with a shriek into the darkness. Mom is going to kill them, but Suzume is too busy trying to choke Seiji to death.
Satomi reaches over their head to pop open the mini cooler and pull out a soda, showing no sympathy for his twin, who's starting to turn blue.
Suzume miiiiight still be mad about the time he locked her in the pantry. Maybe. Just a little.
Finally, Mom knocks on the ceiling and it echoes under their feet. She's in the livingroom, talking to Rio on the phone about Kaname getting into school. She's stressed, worried, Suzume wishes she could change it but-
Kaname is getting closer and closer to his dreams.
She's glad for him, even if a sliver of envy does slide under her skin at the fact that he's made it in, and the fact that he's one step closer to being a hero, while her own school councilor spent twenty minutes yesterday trying to convince her to be a firewoman instead.
Suzume looks down at the floor.
Sometimes it feels like their family is getting smaller and smaller.
Taka has been gone since she was only four, when he moved out. Not he lives across the country with his wife and daughter. They have their own small family now, and they hadn't even made it back for the sentencing and they're probably not going to make the twin's graduation.
Shisui had always been distant, the secret in his heart a heavy burden for him to bear and Suzume wishes, sometimes, that she had told him that she knew he liked men. Would it have helped or hindered? Would it have encouraged him to open up to them more, or scared him back into his bedroom? The mortifying ordeal of being known for something she feared too.
Now Satomi and Seiji are only months from going off to universities. Separate ones, at that. Satomi will go to Kyushu, far away from them. Satomi will be slightly closer, a few cities away at his art school.
It's just going to be her, Kaname, and Mom soon enough.
What is she supposed to do with that?
What is their mom supposed to do with that?
She still works as a vet tech, and as her children rely on her less and less she spends more and more time there, fixing up animals.
She could do people too, in a pinch. It was a story that they didn't tell often, the one about how her mother and father met. He'd been scraped up and hurt, and she'd stumbled upon him on her way home from work.
Chiasa was, in the end, a bleeding heart, and she'd taken him home like something out of a silly fanfiction to patch him up. He'd done his best to repay her, fixing squeaky hinges, repairing her leaking faucet, and putting down her new tiles.
They fell in love, completely and irrevocably, and Taka was born not a year after they met.
If it were anyone else, Suzume would suspect a shot gun wedding.
But she knows her parents. Their love is real and true.
How horrible must it be, to know they her husband had signed his life away for the future of their children.
Suzume leans against Kaname while the dark of the night encroaches. They've stayed up entirely too late, and she's going to be a massive bitch in the morning, but it's worth it for the little time she has left with her brothers.
Suzume is not a vigilante.
She's really, really not.
But she does enjoy her free running, and she's memorized hero patrol routes so she can do it without getting in any trouble. There's nothing more freeing than springing off the edge of a building and landing, cat footed and silent on the next building over. She loves seeing the city, glittering and bright from high above everyone else.
There's no one on the rooftops telling her what she can and can't be. There's no one in the sky to mock her goal.
For years she did it under the watchful eye of Kai, but now she does it on her own, her heart beating harder with the knowledge that if she fucks up he's not around to save her. She's a little too old for baby sitting, and besides that…
He's busy these days, watching over Eri.
When her mother had told them at dinner nearly a year ago that Eri was being watched over by Kai now, Suzume had nearly been sick with relief and dread. On the one hand, she's seen how fond he is of her. If he was more expressive he would have spoiled her rotten, and with Kai keeping an eye on her she knows Eri won't be a danger to Taka or Rio, who still don't come around very often. Neither of them had liked giving up their young daughter, however temporary it might be, to the only person who had a similar enough quirk to hers to help.
But.
But, the only way there is to cancel out Eri's quirk going haywire is… not pretty. Suzume has been unmade and remade by Kai's hands and she prays that he's somehow gentler with Eri. It's a small consolation that the few times they've all packed into a train and gone to visit Eri has been shy, and careful about touching her aunt, uncle, and grandmother, but there are no bandages on her skin and she smiles, small and honest at them.
Suzume… can't tell. She can't tell if Kai is still trying to weaponize Eri's quirk. Possibly, but there's no physical evidence and Eri isn't suffering under his care. She twitches when he reaches for her, but leans into his rare head pats.
Suzume wishes she could see them more and understand what's going on. It feels like the better she knows people the less she sees of their true intentions.
That had been the truth before, hadn't it? And she'd been killed for it.
So she. Doesn't act. As long as Eri is happy and safe, that's the only part she actually cares about at this point. Her families happiness and becoming a hero. That's all that matters to her.
So no. She's not a vigilante. Honest. She just likes hanging out on rooftops!
It wasn't her plan to hear someone shouting a few blocks away from where she was scaling up a drain pipe. It wasn't her plan to launch herself towards the noise, or to leap from the rooftop of the restaurant down onto the head of an attacker.
It's.
Swift.
She's off the roof in an instant and in thescant seconds it takes her to reach the ground she drinks in the situation. A woman clutching her purse to her chest. Two men, one with a knife. Another man at the edge of the alley way.
The first man goes down under the weight of her boots and she catches the other man's wrist, nearly breaking it and forcing him to drop his knife. She brings her other hand sideways, and does break his elbow inwards before she drives her knee into his stomach and steps back.
He collapses beside the first one. His shoulder is definitely out of place.
The man near the edge of the ally turns and tries to make a run for it.
"Shit," her eyes dart across the alleyway. Trashcans, a dumpster, an abandoned box of dented metal plates-
She snatches one of the plates off the ground and whips it at him. It smashes into his head and he falls into a heap on the ground.
It takes a minute at the most, and it's done.
Her heart beats wildly in her chest, throbbing through her temples. Her hands are shaking. Her breath comes quick and hard.
She takes a breath.
Holds it.
Let's it out again.
"Are you good?" she asks the woman, carefully not turning around. She's had a hood up and goggles on for the entire time, but she's sure she can still be recognized, even in the dark. She would be able to recognize someone like that.
"Y-yes," the woman breathes. Suzume's hands haven't stilled, but the woman is shaking all over.
"Then you should call the cops," she double checks that none of the men are going to be getting up any time soon, and starts for the nearest fire escape.
"H-hey, wait, please?"
She pauses.
"Yeah?"
"Do you have a name?"
"Everyone has a name," Suzume says with no small amount of amusement.
It's enough to earn her a huff. Good. If the woman can laugh, she's not too traumatized.
"If you're going to be like that, fine. But before you go, at least come inside and eat something while I wait for the police? I promise not to tell them it was you. I'll just say that someone dropped from the sky and then left."
Suzume tilts her head to look at the woman. She looks earnest, her purse still held tight.
"It's my cafe," she adds, "please."
Suzume should say 'no'. If she was smart she would.
But the woman isn't lying. She can see it in her eyes.
Suzume let's out a breath.
"Sure. But just 'cause it's cold out here."
The woman beams at her. Suzume pulls out her phone and shoots a text off to let everyone know that she'll be late.
Once the police have been called she follows the woman inside the cafe. she quietly accepts a cup of tea while they wait.
She stays close to the emergency exit. Just in case. The booths are plush and comfortable, the tables are clean with chairs stacked on top of them. Artwork lines the dark brown walls. The chalkboard above the counter reads with drinks, specials, and pastries.
The restaurant is closed this late at night, but between the two of them it's still somehow warm, and the lights that hang overhead aren't so bright they hurt.
The woman, Yusa, goes out to talk to the police when they appear.
At the exact same moment that they're loading the three men into the car there's a flash of red and yellow and Hawks is standing there, passing off a trussed up villain.
She doesn't mean to, but Suzume catches his eye in the window.
She tucks her legs closer to her chest and hides her lower face behind the tea cup. She wouldn't be able to outrun him if it comes to it.
It doesn't.
He looks from her to the men in the car then back again, but doesn't do anything about it. Instead he chats with the officers, chats with Yusa, and takes off again.
Everything tonight seems to be happening fast.
Her act of vigilantism. Hawks.
And the conversation with the officers too, who have Yusa sign something before they let her go back inside.
When she steps back in, she freezes at the sight of Suzume.
"My god," she breathes. "You're just a child!"
Suzume puffs her cheeks out. "I'm a teenager, thanks."
She's thirteen, almost fourteen, and in a month she's going to be taking her high school entrance exams. Provided that any of the schools she's applied to let her enter. She has the grades for it, but no quirk.
The crux of her life's problems.
"I let a child save me! A child fought villains!" Yusa clutched her hair, which looked more like cotton than anything else.
"Teenager," she says again.
"I can't believe it," Yusa wails, horrified.
Suzume sips her tea and watches her freak out.
"Adults are so weird."
"Do your parents know that you're doing these things?"
Suzume shrugs. "Dunno."
"You don't know?"
"I haven't told them, but I'm not keeping it a secret either. So. I don't know."
"Gods," she mumbles. "I can't believe a kid like you saved me."
"Teenager."
Yusa slams her hands on the table in front of Suzume, making her jump.
"Here's the deal-"
"Oh boy, no, please-"
"Anytime you're in this area, I want you to come visit me. I'll give you something to drink, and a snack. Then you can rest somewhere safe."
Suzume let's out a sigh. "You really don't have to."
"Yes, I do. You saved my life, so come back again, okay? The cafe closes at 6, but I live above it. So anytime you're in the area, come knock on my door. Promise!"
Suzume has no real choice here, does she?
"... 'Kay. I will."
Yusa beams at her, and pours her another cup of tea.
It's almost an hour after her curfew that Suzume finally gets back home. It's starting to snow, and she took one of the metal plates out of the discarded box, the same kind that she'd thrown before. It's only a few inches across. It was solid, and it had flown perfectly from her fingers.
It gave her ideas.
Suzume isn't sure who is more surprised when she gets a letter telling her she's been recommended for the UA Hero course. Her, her mom, or Kaname.
None of them have any clue at all who did the recommending in the first place. All of her family's ties are to the Yakuza, not to any heroes or their affiliates, and it's not like heroes had babysat her.
So who the fuck recomended her?
Even Suzume couldn't say. All Might maybe, in some kind of strange guilt?
Well.
There was one other option. The only other hero she had ever seen up close. Someone she had seen twice, total.
Hawks.
He'd heard her vow to change the world. He'd seen her little act of vigilantism.
But still, did he really have the clout to do that? He'd never attended any hero school at all, and he was barely twenty one. He'd only just started his own agency, even if he was already in the top ten heroes in the country.
God, what the fucking mess.
If she'd managed to get Hawks' attention it could spell trouble.
Sure, he was another pretty boy, and she knew he was more of an asshole than he let on, but he was also trouble. The world was heading towards trouble, and he was right in the thick of it. And if she passed this exam, she would be too.
(She privately was still bitter about the unfairness of the world. Everyone seemed to be so pretty and unique, with gold eyes and sharp teeth and bright hair and she was just little Kono Suzume, with dark hair and dark eyes and shoulders that were a little too broad from working so long.)
Her invitation comes with special permission to bring a form of support gear of her choice. She knows that there's rulings like that for people with particular quirks, like Aoyama's and his laser. Looks like they decided to give her the option too.
It stings her pride, but she's not stupid.
There's a practical exam and a written exam. That one she's not worried about at all. But the practical…
Regular students fought robots, but what had recommendation students done?
If she knew she was gonna live here, she would have paid so much more attention!
So she shows up on the day of the exam in sweat pants and a windbreaker, her hair tied into a spiky bun with a pen sticking out of it. Her bangs frame her soft looking face.
She sits in a large room with faces familiar and unfamiliar, and even the familiar ones are faded in her memories. She had once considered writing down everything she knew, but in a house with five nosy brother's there was nowhere she could put it that they wouldn't find it, and she had not been willing to figure that out.
So she only has vague memories to go on, and they aren't a lot of help here.
There's a boy on either side of her, one with his jaw visible, his teeth hard and straight, and the other is split down the middle, fire and ice. Someone else might try to befriend him. Suzume is too busy making sure she gets into the school. She isn't here to make friends, she's hear to show the entire planet her middle fucking finger.
The written test is, like she thought, easy. Math, science, language, history. She puts her pen down before everyone else and sits quietly, mentally trying to keep calm.
She can do this. Whatever happens, she has it covered. She will get into this school. She has to.
It's Snipe who collects all of their tests once they're finished, and leads them out of the main building and into a training ground, one of several that the school boasts. There's twenty for of them, and Snipe hands them off to Present Mic, who is just as loud and attention grabbing as he'd seemed on tv and the radio.
Suzume stands beside Yaoyarozu and the lizard girl, whatever her name was. Shadow boy is in their group too, and two more faces she doesn't recognize. A girl with thin blades dangling from the edges of her hair, and a boy who looks like a very small Tom Holland, if Tom Holland had bright pink hair and an extra two sets of arms.
Good.
If she was in the same group as Todoroki and Yaorashi, she would be totally screwed.
Instead, she stands between the two other girls with the number '08' pinned to her chest.
"Alright!" Present Mic grins out at them, "The written exam is over, and now it's time for the practical. After that is the interview and you kids are done for the day. You'll go six at a time for the practical. The practical is a 3 kilometer obstacle course. But, it's a course that you won't be able to finish if you just run. Use your quirks freely to reach the finish line!"
Suzume stares hard at the obstical course in front of her. Huge buildings and walkways, veritably mountains to climb with bridges suspended between them, and a waterfall cascading across a cliff at just the biggest portions. Her stomach drops out from under her. Is it too late to sign up to fight robots?
It's… bad. It's gonna be really, really bad.
If the shadow boy uses his powers right, he'll make it first, and lizard girl will probably be second. She doesn't know the quirks of Knife Hair or Pink Tom. Yaoyarozu is a toss up. If she uses her quirk right, she's a very dangerous person, but this early on will she be creative enough and fast enough to use it well?
All of this, and Suzume has only her one support item.
A grappling gun.
She lines up with the others.
She's always known she'll have to work twice as hard to get half as far. Always, always, always. If she ends up in Gen Ed with Shinsou and a bunch of other nameless faces it'll just be harder. Relegated to regular school, it'll be an even harder fight to get into the hero course than this will be.
She lowers herself into a sprinters crouch, the one she's taken a thousand times on the track team. She's the fastest in both schools she's attended, and if she was more personable she'd probably be the captain.
But she isn't, so she's not. She's just. Fast. And stubborn.
She digs her shoes into the ground.
One step at a time.
The world will never let you be a hero.
"GO!"
She bolts for it.
There are arrows that show which way to go, a blessing in and of itself, and she shoots past Yaoyarozu and lizard girl, knife hair and Pink Tom, and sprints uphill into a patch of city they've marked off. She still expects there to be killer robots, but apparently that would be overboard for the arena.
There's still traps, and ruined roads. A wire snaps against her ankle and the wall of the building beside her tips sideways, and crashes behind her. She glances back long enough to make sure that the other's haven't gotten themselves killed, and when they come scrambling through the rubble she runs on.
She knows better than to use up all of her energy at once, especially not at the very start. The city falls apart behind her, and she's forced to scrambled up the side of tall spires of stone, a bright blue arrow pointing her up and up and up. She can't see a good, reliable place to sink her grapple at the top, it's too steep, so she has to climb.
Stone bites into Suzume's gloves and she drags herself up, foot by foot. She's overtaken by Knife Hair, who's clever enough to use the blades to sink into the stone and give her quick, reliable holds.
Suzume crests the top and takes a moment to look out over whats left. Her lungs are cold fire and she's breathing hard, this high up. She stretches her arms behind her head, forcing her ribs to expand and suck in more oxygen. Yaoyarozu finally catches up to her. She has no idea where shadow boy is. She can't focus on him now anyhow.
There's five more spires of stone, with rope bridges suspended between them. The path picks up past them, with a waterfall. Knife Hair is cutting the bridges behind her. Even if she wasn't Suzume watches a plank shoot out from under her foot, and Pink Tom swears violently where he's gone after her.
Suzume pulls her grappling gun out of the inside pocket of her windbreaker and shoots it at the furthest mountain. She yanks the line, double checking that it's well and truly secure before she launches herself off the side of the mountain and let's it whip her forwards. She swings, barely missing two of the mountain spires, and uses her feet scramble up the last few feet to the top of the furthest one.
The rope bridge is unsteady and broken but she makes it to the waterfall, and the river that feeds it, in one pieces. Down below, past the initial pool of water, is an industrial maze of pipes and concrete, but past that she can see the long ramp that cuts through the rest of the water, made of steel, and ends abruptly at a pathway made of sunken logs standing upright.
Suzume shoots down into the mess of pipe and jumps right off the water fall.
Gravity tears her towards the ground, faster and faster, and right when it seems like she's about to splatter into the water she activates the gun and it whips her forwards, nearly tearing her arm off when it goes taut.
She skims across the water, twisting her weight and throwing her legs in front of her body to catch herself on the hard pavement. She rolls with the impact and loses her grip on the gun. It catches on a sheer wall of metal, between the wall and yet more pipes. She can hear something groan in protest, deep in the maze of steel.
She checks. The gun is well and truly lodged, and the other's are still running.
So she cuts the line and stows the gun back in her jacket before she starts making her way through the maze. It's… quiet. Much too quiet. All she can hear is the echoes of water rushing in pipes and her own blood pounding under her flushed skin.
It feels like something is going to happen, but all that happens is she breaks out of the mess in time to see the shadow boy run onto the ramp. There's no shadows for him to move in on it, it's just hot metal in broad day light.
Suzume briefly considers the merits of trying to drink the water. It looks cool and clear, but she has no idea what, or who, had been in it.
She's almost at the end, almost finished the race. She knows she's not last.
Will that be enough to get her in?
Will second, or third, or fourth, be good enough for her to be the first ever quirkless hero student?
Suzume brushes past shadow boy, who yelps in surprise. She doesn't know why he's stopped until the bridge tips precariously under her feet as soon as she's on it.
Suzume stills. It's on some kind of axis. Like a plank of wood over a tube, and by some stroke of luck she'd managed to step right in the middle.
Only.
When it moves she can see a gap ahead, where it separates from the next portion.
Fine.
She'll swim if she has to.
Suzume walks steadily across the unsteady ground, and once she reaches the next sheet of metal she pushes down with her foot. It tips violently sideways, one part lifting while the other dips deep into the water. The middle is a few feet to her left.
She jumps from the first section to the axis of the second, and barely waits for it to stabilize beneath her before she starts on. There's two more she can see. Water laps against her shoes.
She makes it to the next section. The fourth splits into three more pieces, side by side, each one much less stable than any of those that came before.
These ones stop when they've turned all the way out of the water, leaving only an inch of solid steel standing on edge, three feet out of the water.
Suzume hops up like it's an unreliable balance beam and walks across it. She's going to send her gymnastics coach a goddamn gift basket.
The logs feel like a cake walk, even though she nearly slips off of one when it's wetter than she was expecting. There's fewer and fewer the closer they get to shore.
She lands on solid ground, her legs trembling faintly with the strain. A look over her shoulder reveals shadow boy starting at the logs, and Yaoyarozu halfway through the steel sheets.
Suzume can't stop now. She's too close.
She sprints dead the last half 500 meters, and finds the white tape already broken. Lizard girl had beaten her. She can't say by how much. But she had.
Second place.
Suzume steps off to the side to cool down, and to nurse her injured pride.
She doesn't pay the other's any mind, even when they start chatting with one another. They're all in one piece, and Pink Tom and Knife Hair come in last, bemoaning everything. She finally finds out that Pink Tom can turn intangible.
Present Mic scribbles down everyone's time and sends them to clean up for their interviews.
Suzume washes off quickly, scrubbing the sweat and dirt off of her body before changing into her interview clothes. Black slacks, a black blazer, and a red blouse.
When she looks in the mirror she almost sees Suzanna Hemmings again.
Almost.
She ties her hair back into it's spiky bun, stabs a pen through it, and grabs her folder from her locker.
They hadn't given them a lot of information about the interviews, but Suzume remembered enough about being an adult to remember how job interviews went. It shouldn't be too different. She'd written down a few of her own questions too.
UA is supposed to be the best hero school, but how is it continuing to improve over time?
What is something you know now as a teacher that you wish you'd known as a student?
Thinking back to previous students, what differentiated those that were successful from those that truly thrived?
Will you really let me into the hero course?
She probably won't ask the last question, but the other three had always served her well in past job interviews.
Present Mic lines them up in chairs outside the principals office, in order of their assigned numbers. Suzume is towards the front, with only a couple other's behind her. It's hard for her to sit still, and she misses the familiar comfort of her lock picks tucked against her wrist.
Still, she waits for the first few interviews before she's called in.
Nezu sits behind his desk, Hound Dog beside him.
Suzume says nothing about Nezu being a mouse, or a tiny bear, or adorable even though he totally is. She just sits in the chair ahead of them, back straight and dark eyes steady and level.
"Good morning," Nezu greets with a good deal more cheer than Suzume had been expecting. "I trust you didn't find your earlier tests too taxing?"
Is that a trick question?
"Good morning. I did my best on both," she settles on a non-answer.
"I'm sure that you did. Your recommendations speak highly of your focus and drive."
Suzume feels a warm, startled flush crawl across her skin.
It did?
"All that's left is a few questions that we have for you, and then any that you have for us. Please take your time, and don't feel rushed. Are you ready?"
Suzume nods.
Nezu steeples his hand- er, paws, in front of him and begins.
Most of them are standard.
What are your hobbies? What did you find most difficult in middle school? What did you find easiest? Describe a time you overcame adversity. Why do you think UA is a good fit for you?
I like reading about history and spending time with my brothers, one of whom is currently attending Ketsubutsu. I didn't have much trouble with course work, but when I changed schools halfway through it made making friends difficult. I'm not a very sociable person, but I'd like to work on that while I'm here. A time I overcame adversity would be two months ago when I won several races at a track and field meet. I think UA is a very well equipped hero school and attending would give me a leg up in my future career and important experience that I wouldn't find in other hero schools.
"Alright, I have one more question for you. Miss Yusada. Why do you want to be a hero?"
Why?
Suzume considers her normal answers. The ones she's given a half a hundred times. The blunt ones she's given to yakuza and the bitter ones she's thrown at classmates and teachers.
She folds her hands in her lap and meets Nezu's gaze evenly.
"I want to be a hero because in the entire world, there is only one person who believes that I can be. I want to be a hero because for my entire life everyone I've ever known has told me that it's not possible. That because I don't have a quirk, I'll never be up to snuff. I want to be a hero because-"
She falters. Steels herself. Keeps going.
One step at a time. One word at a time.
"Because I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one who's been told that this goal is impossible or foolhardy. If - When, I make it, I will be the first. There's not a single hero without a quirk anywhere. Not in Japan, or America, or Europe. There are people like me who will never be afforded the opportunity to chase their dreams, all because of the circumstances of our birth. I've heard it touted as random chance, or even something as silly as destiny. Destined for mediocrity. It's not right. All because of how I was born…"
Her fingers curl tightly in her lap and she looks up at the heroes, her jaw set. It's a jumble of words, she's not charismatic, but it all comes down to one thing, really.
"If fate came at you swinging, wouldn't you fight back?"
Nezu stares at her, his eyes just as dark as her own. She doesn't know if she said the right thing. She doesn't think she could have said the right thing and been honest. But he smiles as her, and tells her that her letter will arrive in a few days time before sending her on her way home, dazed and exhausted.