Suzume does feel bad for their mother. Really, she does.
Chiasa loves her children, and she has to watch as one by one they leave her, and her two youngest decide to follow a dangerous path in life that even people with exceedingly powerful quirks will struggle with.
But she's never forbidden them from it, not even Suzume, although she's tried to talk them both out of it.
It stings, and the conversation is one that Suzume does her best to forget about.
But she doesn't forbid them. She never stopped Suzume from fighting, or running, or going out late. It's… confusing.
Even when a reporter started harassing Kaname at Ketsubutsu, she never pulled him out, although the school did get involved with a minor lawsuit against him.
Chiasa pulls her hair up like she hasn't since Suzume was still too young and uncoordinated to do it herself, straightens her tie, and pretends she wasn't crying last night before she loads Suzume into the car.
Ketsubutsu is in the same city that they live in, Sheeli, but UA is a few cities over in Mustafu. So Chiasa pulls to a stop in front of the train station, her eyes rimmed red.
"You know which stop it is, and you have something to eat on the way back, right?"
They're silly questions. They were both there when Suzume packed slices of lemon bread and beef jerky into her bag. Suzume always carried snacks in her backpack, and a water bottle swung leisurely from where it was clipped on one side. There were bandages and medical tape packed into it too, and her skirt tucked into the top. She hated wearing skirts, especially on trains, so she would swap her pants for her skirt once she got to Mustafu station.
"Yes, and yes. I'll be back around 5, and I don't have any other classes today."
Chiasa tugged Suzume into a tight, crushing hug. For a second Suzume wondered which of them it was who could see the future, that she was so afraid for her daughter. She didn't even know about all of the dangerous things that were on the horizon.
Attacks, kidnappings, war.
Suzume squeezes her mother tightly, and breaths in the familiar scent of dog fur and lilacs.
"Be careful," she begs.
Suzume nods against her shoulder before she finally pulls away. She had always been closer to dad. Even two years after his sentencing that still feels true. That doesn't mean she loves her mother any less.
"I will. I'll be back at five," she says again.
Suzume leaves her mother at the gate. She taps her phone to the turnstall and it lights up with her name when it reads her railpass and lets her through. She's just in time to catch the train to Mustafu.
It's an hour ride to Mustafu, and another hour back in the afternoon. Suzume plans on using that hour for homework, but school hasn't started yet, so she takes her seat, her backpack in her lap, and pulls out her latest history book. Her favorites are ones that focus on the rise of quirks, not-quite 200 years ago.
She hasn't gotten around to reading whatever that book by Destro is, but she'll get there.
By the time the train comes to a stop in Mustafu, the sun is already rising, golden and bright. Suzume isn't the only person in a UA uniform at the station. She doesn't recognize anyone off the tops of her head when she comes back out from changing, so she turns her attention away and steps outside of the station.
She looks east, towards the rising sun.
Almost 8 city blocks away, is UA. She can just see the top of it rising up at the top of the hill that it lives on. She had climbed that same hill weeks ago, to take her test, but the school looks different, glittering in the morning glory.
Maybe I should invest in a scooter. Or roller skates, so I can ride it down the hill on my way back.
Suzume takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and starts the long walk up to UA high school.
It doesn't feel real.
Part of her expects to walk in to pick up her student ID and find that it says Gen Ed, or Business on it.
Instead the woman in the front office, someone that Suzume doesn't recognize at all, hands her a thin card with her name scrawled across it and 'Hero Course' underneath.
It's heavy in her hands and she has to step aside and just. Stare at it. For a few minutes.
The space where it would list her quirk is blank.
It seems like Suzume should feel something about that. Pride or bitterness or. Something.
But she runs her thumb across the light bulge that marks where the identification chip on the card is and goes to find her classroom.
It was no use wondering about where she would be in 1-A or 1-B anymore, or speculating on which one would be better.
She steps into the classroom with a truly massive door and tucks herself into one of the open seats. Second from the back, next to the window. One the black board is their homeroom teacher's phone number, and a few others printed beneath it. She opens up a notebook and lays a pen on it before starting on her book again. She's almost halfway through now.
Suzume will deny it until the day that she dies, but when Eraserhead walks into the room, looking more like a corpse than a person, she almost bounces in her seat. Eraserhead is one of her favorite heroes, Before and Now, and she's so geeking out to see him in real life.
He's so cool!
Cool, and strong, and clever and-
And calling all of them out for a 'Quirk Apprehension test'.
Right.
He's cool, strong, clever, and Suzume has absolutely no idea what he's going to think of a student without a quirk.
He'd nearly expelled Midoriya, although he had a quirk by that point and it was one that would destroy his body. But he'd also trained Shinsou, who's quirk was useful but not in a combat sense.
What about Suzume?
What about someone who didn't have a quirk at all?
She didn't know.
She had absolutely no idea. She wanted to say that he would judge her fairly, but was that the truth or was that what she wanted to believe?
Suzume was used to people doubting her. They had her whole life.
So it was silly. Really, really silly, for Suzume to-
To what?
Hope?
Well that's depressing.
It's just like the entrance exam. She doesn't look at or speak to any of the others, even when the other girls start chatting in the locker room. She watches on passively while Bakugou launches the ball with a wall of fire, something ugly and green and familiar curling in her ribs before she discards it.
It didn't matter. It wasn't unexpected. Neither was Urakara's infinite score, or the insane grip strength of Shoji, or the speed that Todoroki managed to display using just ice.
She knew, she always knew that she wouldn't be able to do this flashy shit.
So she just did what she could.
She ran, she jumped, she threw, and stretched. Suzume pushed herself as hard as she could, while watching her classmates out of the corner of her eye.
She didn't remember his name, but it looked like the little grape freak hadn't made it into class.
Fine by her.
He was gross.
In the end she stood next to Midoriya, who was nursing his newly broken finger, while Eraserhead, Aizawa-sensei, posted their results on a white board.
1) Yaoyarozu
2)Todoroki
3) Bakugou
4) Iida
5) Yusada
6) Tokoyami
Five.
She made fifth place, without a quirk to her name. Her shoulders drop in disbelief. She had outrun Uraraka and Koda sure, and she'd lapped Sato and Kirishima, and Bakugo had looked pissed when her grip strength was almost double his. She could have gone completely flat on the floor stretching, and sit ups were easy, and she out threw everyone without a physical quirk to help them but-
Fifth place?
Really?
Was she the only one who had trained beforehand for this?
She spends her free time hanging off ceiling ledges and crawling up the sides of buildings, but does that really mean that her basic physical abilities were so much… higher? Than the others?
And how did Yaoyarozu get in first?
It wasn't like she made a canon and launched herself over the distance run. Yaoyorozu was… tricky. Maybe she had a secondary quirk that meant she won whatever she tried. Although Suzume had beat her in the entrance exam.
Admittedly, there were so many times she'd watched her classmates just. Not use their quirks in an efficient way. Tokoyami could have used Dark Shadow to cross the finish line faster or get extra air in the long jump, but he'd only used his own body for that. Ojiro could have used his tail to squeeze the grip measurer. There's a dozen small and large ways her classmates could have used their quirks that they just. Didn't.
And the ones without physical enhancement quirks? Like Hagakure, Koda, Jiro, and Kaminari? They had been so, so slow. It's hard for her not to snap at them. Had any of them put any real training into getting in here? She's worked her entire life just to claw her way in, and they-
It doesn't matter. Because it's a quirk apprehension test, and she doesn't even have a quirk. She's surprised her name is even on the list.
Even after he posts the results, even after Aizawa tells them the entire thing was 'logical deception' she waits for him to pull her aside and send her home. She waits to be told she's expelled.
He doesn't.
He dismisses them for the day and-
And that's it.
She feels dizzy and wrong footed and it's only when she stumbles back into the classroom that she realizes she's managed to go an entire day without speaking to a single classmate.
Suzume wonders what her mother thinks when she tells her that she could have been expelled today but wasn't. When she tells her that she was in the top ten of her class in a quirk apprehension test.
She has no idea because she's too busy trying to keep Kaname from choking on his soup to see her expression.
Suzume at least thinks it's pretty funny.
Funny enough that she's still fighting a smile the next day in class anytime she thinks of it. Right up until the moment that All Might bursts through the door and strikes a pose.
For an instant, just one instant, their eyes meet and she freezes. She can't actually see the blue beneath the shadows of his face, but she can feel the weight of his gaze on her.
For an instant she's twelve again, bleeding from a cut on her forehead, watching her father surrender himself and leave her.
The world will never let you become a hero.
For an instant she's twelve again, walking through the long halls of a court house with her brother shaking by her side while they watch their father be led away in chains, the imagine of a dead woman fresh in her mind. Toshinori is frozen at the edge of the hallway, his blue eyes on the children he's broken, before he flees like a coward and-
Suzume breaths. The cut is long healed, barely a scar these days. She is in a school, and she is fifteen, a hero-in-training.
"I AM HERE!" he could burst windows with how loud he shouts it. "Coming through the door like a hero!"
Suzume keeps herself quiet while he cheerfully tells everyone that they're going to be doing a battle simulation, and hands out their costumes to get changed into. He doesn't look directly at her again for the rest of the speech, or when they all make their way to the training grounds before splitting into the changing rooms.
There's guilt there.
Good.
Whether it was her fathers choice or not, he still took him from her. It's as much his fault as Osachi's. Or at least her heart says as much.
She changes into the hero suit, the one that Kaname had helped her design.
It's a bit like his. A dark grey bodysuit that's almost black, with a loose hood, where the arms are a dark yellow, nearly orange, and lead down to black leather gloves. From just above her hips to just above her knees, on the outside of her legs, were harder pads of more dark yellow that provided armor. Her shoes, thin soled, are the same color and the top is reinforced where it leads up to short shin guards. Small bands wrap around her ankles, to protect them and to offer extra, smaller pockets.
She has a belt that wraps around to stop at her hips, a bit like Uraraka's but more rectangular and practical. One each side was a thigh holster.
Thanks to her not having a quirk they had let her have extra, smaller support items. In one thigh holster was a stun gun, in the other was a grappling gun like the one she'd used in her exam. Her belt was filled with small smoke bombs, bola's, pepper spray, and thin throwing disks. She'd gotten the idea for those the night she'd helped out Yusa for the first time. They're only two and half inches across, but they were weighted and they could do some damage if she needed them too. In the pockets on her ankles she stores her lock picks, some caltrops, a small flashlight and a butterfly knife.
Strapped to her back, on top of the belt, is a collapsible bo staff that Ryuhei had sent her when she got accepted.
Looking at herself in the mirror is… strange.
It's still her face. It's still her dark eyes staring back and her black bangs framing her temples where the hood doesn't quite cover her, but she looks less like plain, quirkless little Kono/Yusada Suzume and more like the person her brother thinks she is. Can become.
She tugs her gloves on tighter.
"Oh wow!"
She jumps when Uraraka pops up next to her reflection.
"That's a pretty cool costume! I really like the amber color."
Suzume blinks at her, startled for a moment. "Oh. Thanks? I like yours too. The boots especially."
Uraraka beamed at her. "Thanks! They're designed to help me land softly, and keep me from getting sick if I use my quirk too much."
"Ah, cool."
Which it is. Uraraka is a nice girl. And it isn 't like Suzume hates her or anything. She doesn't really hate anyone in her class yet. It's just that socializing isn't her goal here. Not even close.
But, still…
"Does your quirk make you sick often?"
Suzume let's Uraraka tell her about how much anti-gravity fucks around with the inner ear canals, and about pressure points on the ankles, wrists, neck, and head while they walk out into the training ground.
The sun shines warm on her dark suit, and she breathes in the scent of new leather and hot concrete.
All Might still doesn't really look at her while he explains the training exercise. It's pretty simple, just capture the flag with quirks.
They all line up and draw their lots.
Suzume plucks a paper that says E on it. When she turns around, Kirishima has one that matches.
"Hey," he shoots her a crooked, sharp toothed smile that she's immediately jealous of. "Looks like we're on the same team!"
"Yeah. Looks like it," she agrees.
Kaminari gasps loudly. "Holy crap! You can speak!"
Suzume's brow twitches. "What gave me away?"
"Hey, hey, don't get all irritated," Kaminari holds his hands up, pacifying. A little B paper flutters between his fingers. "This is just the first time I've heard you say anything since school started."
Is it really? Sounds right.
"You're not exactly friendly," Kaminari ads.
Suzume tucks her paper into her belt. "That's because I'm not here to make friends," she says evenly, and turns to walk away, to where All Might has set up two boxes labelled 'Heroes' and 'Villains'.
She's still in ear shot when Kaminari whistles, lowly.
"Wow. Talk about intense."
The match ups are… interesting.
Ashido and Todoroki make up A. B is Kaminari and Bakugo, C is Yaoyarozu and Shoji. D is Iida and Midoriya, Kirishima and Suzume are E, of course. F consists of Uraraka and Tsuyu, G of Jirou and Tokoyami. In H is Hanta and Aoyama, in I is Koda and Hagakure. And Sato and Ojiro are J.
All Might digs around in the hero and villain boxes before he pulls out H from Villain and J from hero.
Sato and Ojiro vs Hanta and Aoyama.
They all filed into the observation room, save the four that started their battle.
She wasn't all that surprised when Hanta's tape was used for booby traps all over the building. Ones that Sato mostly got caught in. Ojiro had better luck, and almost won, but Aoyama managed to blast him out the window.
While the battle went on, Midoriya watched it with rapt attention, frantically scribbling in his notebook and mumbling all the while. It's a little bit creepy, and a little bit cute.
After them All Might draw C and G teams, and Yaoyarozu and Shoji run off to be villains while Jirou and Tokoyami plan their attack.
Their turn takes longer. Jirou and Shoji are both talented at reconnaissance, and it takes several long minutes of dancing around eachother before Tokoyami goes in for an attack. Yaoyarozu had fortified the room well, but Dark Shadow broke through the door all the same and hit her hard while she struggled to adapt and counter.
Shoji managed to capture Jirou, and held her hostage until Tokoyami surrendered.
Then, All Might pulled out E and B.
Suzume and Kirishima vs Kaminari and Bakugou. With Kaminari and Bakugou playing the villains.
Suzume let's out a breath. Great. Out of everyone in her class there are four people she's absolutely sure she can't take in a straight fight. Todoroki, Bakugou, Kaminari, and Iida. And now she's going up against two of them.
She's going to have to rely on Kirishima, but how effective that's going to be is debatable. He can hold up against explosions, but she can't remember if he's got any resistance to electricity.
To make matters worse, Bakugou and Kaminari are the villains. Which means there's no chance for them to try to force them to stay together and lessen their power output. She knows at this point in time that Kaminari can't control which direction his electricity goes, so he has to hold back next to allies and-
"This'll be fun."
She pauses her internal, spinning thoughts to look at Kirishima. He's grinning, his red eyes bright.
"Fun." She repeats.
"Yeah. I mean we get to flex our quirks out there, do a sick practice run at being heroes, and there's not some crazy penalty like with Aizawa. It's kinda like playing capture the flag."
"Except for the part where we might get blown up."
"Well yeah, but still. You can't tell me you aren't at least a little bit pumped!"
He grinned wider at her and, against her will, Suzume's mouth twitched upwards.
"Maybe," she concedes at last. "But still… I really wanna win this."
"Hell yeah! We've totally got this. I was thinking that they'll probably split up. Bakugou seems like a hot head, so I bet he'll try to take us head on and leave Kaminari to guard the bomb. I bet between the two of us we can take him out, and then ambush Kaminari."
Suzume startles.
She.
Hadn't been thinking like that. There had been a divide in her head, not just between her and the other team, but between her and Kirishima too. One where it was either her or him, not both of them together. Together…
"Yeah," she says at last, some of the tension bleeding out of her shoulders. "Yeah, that sounds good."
"Awesome."
Suzume follows him out towards the building. She keeps her eyes on the windows, but there's not many on the side they approach from, and she doesn't see movement in any of them. Bakugou and Kaminari are both kind of hard to miss.
She pulls her grappling gun out of her holster.
"Why don't we start on the roof? They won't expect us to come in from above."
"Oh sick, I didn't know you had that. Good idea, Yusada."
She wants to tell him to call her Kono or even Suzume. Instead she offers him one arm and her grabs onto her, holding tight. She grips him around the middle and shoots up towards the roof, pulling the pair of them up onto it. She ignores the flustered look on Kirishima's face when she lets go of him. He's almost as red as his hair.
It's… kind of cute, actually.
She stows her gun away and heads for the door to the stairwell, Kirishima at her side.
"Okay. I can break down the door and-"
"No need."
"Huh?"
He looks at her when she kneels in front of the door and pulls a pair of thin tools from her ankle pouches. They're thin enough the look more like ankle warmers she'd wear to the gym than actual hero equipment.
"I'll pick the lock. It'll be quieter that way."
"I didn't know you could do that," Kirishima watches her with interest. It only takes a second before she's turning the knob and letting them in, with her picks back where they belong.
"It's not hard."
She flicks on her flashlight. It's barely big enough to fit in her palm, but it's brilliant in the dark hallway and it gives them a little extra stealth. Suzume's footsteps are quick and silent. Kirshima's are much louder, but it's not hard to hear past them into the rest of the building.
She inhales slowly, testing the air.
Kirishima watches her. "So. Whatcha doin?"
"Trying to smell them."
"... what?"
Suzume glances over at him. "Didn't you notice? Kaminari always smells like ozone when he's getting ready to use his quirk, or when he's used it recently, and Bakugou always smells a little like burnt marshmallows and gunpowder."
"No, I didn't notice that at all. Is that your quirk then, you uh. Smell people?"
"Nope." Kaname could. His snake-like traits had been getting more and more prominent lately, and with that came a stronger sense of smell that was starting to morph into something like heat vision. He'd really come a long way at Ketsubutsu.
They creep around the corner.
"It was a long shot, but I figured I might as well try."
"Fair enough…" Two floors down, the lights are on.
Kirishima perked up. "Hey!" he whispered, a little too loud, "I smell ozone!"
"Mhmm. Same. You're not immune to electricity are you?"
Kirishima shook his head. "Nah. I've got more resistance to it when I'm hard, but it's not a full insulation you know?"
"Yeah, I get you. Do you think you can distract him, and I'll come up from behind and get him with the capture tape?"
"Sounds like a plan!" Kirishima holds out his fist. Suzume taps hers on top of it after a second. It feels weird. Being on a team like this. She doesn't fight with other people at her side, she never has. All of her classes with Ryuhei and his friends, it had always been her vs someone else. Or many someone else's, with many different quirks.
She still has scars on the back of her arm from when Tanro had ejected his ribs during a grappling session.
Suzume is still small, like her whole family is, but she's small enough that she can slip in through the air vents while Kirishima goes in through the doors and plays distraction. It's not hard, Kaminari is just as pumped up at Kirishima is, and he's an easy person to get talking. Even when he's trying to electrocute you.
Suzume quietly drops out of the vents while his back is turned. She unsnaps one of her pockets open and double checks that bola is in there before she flings it at Kaminari and seals his arms to his sides.
"Hey!" He yelps and twists, but he's caught and even when he starts discharging electricity the pair of them just move away. He can't get his legs up under him, and the lights flicker wildly above their heads, but he's well and truly stuck.
"Wow. That worked really well."
"Did you doubt us?"
"A bit," Suzume has the decency to look sheepish. Kirishima makes his way over to the missile.
"Don't. All we have to do is secure this thing and-"
He's cut off by an eruption from beneath their feet. Suzume shouts when the ground gives way beneath her, sending her tumblings into broken concrete. She drops two floors and lands hard enough to knock the wind out of her on a pile of stone.
Bakugou stands above her, his palms sparking ominously. He looks every inch the villain here, his red eyes glowing in the throwing light, destruction falling around him and a grin with far too many teeth on his face.
"I can't believe you stupid extras thought you could win just by sneaking around. What, were you too scared to face me head on so you had to go after sparky up there?"
"You are. So loud," Suzume sits up slowly, rubbing the back of her neck. She glares at him. "If I end up with tinnitus because of your bark, I'm gonna be pissed."
"Hah?" he stomps close to her, his fingers flexing in an obvious threat. "You sure you wanna be mouthing off to me when I just knocked out three floors?"
"Yep," Suzume eyes him critically. Shouldn't be too hard…
He steps up again, close enough for her purposes and levels his palm at her face.
"Give up before I blow your head off."
"Hey!" Kirishima shouts from above. "Isn't that a little far for a training exercise?"
"If she can't handle it she shouldn't be here!" Bakugou shouts back up, but he doesn't look away from her. "I don't know what kind of lame ass quirk you've got, but if you think it'll measure up to mine you're worse than Deku."
"Projecting much?" Suzume holds her hands up in mock surrender. She makes sure he's watching them before she kicks out as hard as ten years of training will let her and drives her foot squarely between his legs.
He drops. His palms go off weakly while he vomits onto the floor way too close to her. Suzume produces the capture tape and wraps it around his wrists once the sparks are gone, focing his palms flat against his butt. She ties a second length, for good measure, around his throat like a noose. He glares up at her, fury burning in his gaze. His face is pale and pained and he wheezes when she pulls the tape tighter.
All Might's voice breaks across the overhead.
"TEAM E WINS?!"
He doesn't have to sound so surprised…
Suzume gives Bakugou's new leash a tug. "Like I said. All bark, puppy dog."
She stands and brushes herself off while he struggles to get his hands free or his legs back up under him.
"Oh, by the way." she smiles, a phantom, smug thing, and tilts her head.
"I don't have a quirk."