Suzume is pretty sure she's broken Bakugou.
She doesn't feel that bad about it. He's an asshole, first off, and second off a little existential crisis never hurt anyone.
She could do without her classmates wanting to talk to her now though.
"You really don't have a quirk at all?" Mina asks, the third person since training ended for the day. She's a ball of brightness, and her hair looks way too fluffy for someone who just came out of the shower. They're all still faintly damp, and Suzume's dark hair hangs just past her shoulders while she waits for it to dry enough to tie back again. Her usual pen is tucked behind her ear for the time being.
"No. I've got the extra toe joint to prove it."
Mina actually looks down at her feet, even though they're all dressed by now, on their way back to the classroom to pick up their bags and go home. Suzume's costume is packed away, and her special boots in it, leaving her in just their school uniform. She's started wearing leggings under her skirt. It's cold in the winter and she may not be snake-like or venomous but she's still not a fan.
"Wow, it's pretty cool that you got in then," Mina said cheerfully.
Suzume knew she meant it as a compliment but it. Kind of wasn't.
"Plenty of our classmates got in with quirks that wouldn't help them much in the entrance exams," she points out. "And anyways, they repealed all the rules saying quirkless people can't try for a spot in the hero course. I'm just the first one to make it in."
"Oh hey, I think I heard that," Mina says brightly. "Yeah, yeah it was on the news in elementary school! My parents were talking about it."
"UA was one of the last schools to repeal," Suzume recalls. And still, no one had ever been a hero without a quirk.
"Wait," Tsu taps her finger to her chin. "If you don't have a quirk, how did you rank so high in the quirk apprehension test?
Suzume pauses at the door to the classroom.
"Honestly? I have no idea. I'm just glad I wasn't expelled."
A shadow falls across her shoulder and she looks up to see Aizawa, looking exhausted as ever, peering down at them.
"It's because of how her numbers averaged out," he says. "For most of you I wasn't looking at your actual scores, how fast or strong you were, but how creative you were in using your quirks and what level of mastery and control you already had. For Yusada here, I went by her physical ability, which surpassed most of you entirely."
"O-oh," Mina squeaks under his intense gaze.
Suzume, contrarily, relaxes. It was good to hear. She'd had a few theories but… crime scenes were easier to understand than people were, especially people like Aizawa.
"You're all dismissed for the day. I'll see you tomorrow," Aizawa nods towards them and shuffles off, his sleeping bag slung over one shoulder.
Suzume wonders if if she can keep her grades up high enough he'll let her bring in one of her own.
"Wow, he's so intense…" Mina watches him go down the hallway beside Suzume.
"He kind of reminds me of you, Yusada. It's no wonder you get along."
"Yeah we- wait, what?" Suzume's head snaps over to Tsu, but she's already gone inside and Suzume is left at the door, trying to figure out what she meant by that.
Eventually, Suzume shakes her head and goes to fetch her school bag.
She's aware of the fact that Bakugou is trying to burn a hole in the back of her head with his glare alone, but apparently being kicked in the balls hard enough to throw up is enough to deter even him from trying to start shit with her right away.
He's not the only one watching her.
Midoriya is staring at her with something that's a disturbing mix between awe and trepidation and she has no idea how to feel about it.
So.
She decides not to address it. It's none of her business what he thinks of her. It doesn't matter what any of them think of her.
(It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't. She's had over a decade of practice involving people who think she's worthless or delicate or delusional, she doesn't care- )
Suzume slings her bag over her shoulders and leaves quickly.
The time it takes her to get to the train isn't actually all that long, but her window is short and if she misses it she'll be stuck in Mustafu for another three hours. Which was not ideal, in her own professional opinion.
There's something else that's going to be happening soon. She only sort of remembers it. An attack on the school maybe? Or no, on a training ground.
Right. Right, that was where Tomura was introduced.
Suzume tried to very firmly remind herself not to start fangirling over the villains. It would be a bad look, and he wasn't super cool yet!
Once he had a few friends he would be better. And even then, he was probably going to be trying to kill her and her classmates.
Man, humans really were just over glorified zoo animals. They needed pumpkin's and friends or else they got real tetchy.
She's so lost in her own little world of humanity that nearly plows down a boy in the gray UA uniform who's at least a head taller than she is.
As it is she bounces off of him. He's built like a brick wall.
"Oh, sorry about that," his voice is cheerful and blue eyes look down at her from beneath swept blond hair. "You okay?"
Suzume manages to catch herself before she falls, her book clutched tightly in one hand.
"Oh uh. Yeah. Yeah I'm fine. Thanks."
"It's no problem," he smiled at her. "I haven't seen you before. Are you a first year?" he asked conversationally.
Suzume glanced up. Five minutes till her train arrived.
"I am. And you're in your third year." And familiar, too.
"You got it! I'm Togata Mirio, nice to meet you."
That was why he was familiar. He'd once beaten the hell out of Kai, in years that had never happened and with any luck never would.
Suzume was supposed to see Eri and Kai this weekend. She'd double check that things were going well then.
"Yusada Suzume. Same."
She tilted her head. "I didn't see you here the other day. Do you always take this train?"
Togata shook his head. "Nope. Only every other day. I have an internship those days."
Right. With Nighteye.
"Neat," she says with a half hearted lift of her shoulder. Togata, who if she remembers right, hangs out with the world's most socially awkward turtle, is utterly unphased by her standoffishness.
"Yeah, it's pretty cool! I'm sure you'll get a good one in your second year too. Oh, I mean if you're in the hero course. Business and support have their own internships too, but those are different."
"Uh huh."
"I don't know what Gen Ed has, but probably something similar," he went on. Suzume let him talk, even let him sit next to her on the train.
He was nice enough though that when she pulled out her homework he cooled his heels.
The assignment was simple. Dissect what happened in their combat practice. Who won and why, who lost and why, and why were winner's sometimes in the wrong.
When Togata asks her how her very first battle simulation went, she even tells him, in her own painfully blunt way, that Todoroki was completely cheating when he covered the entire building in ice.
"And how did you do?" he asks, his blue eyes bright.
Suzume shrugs. "We won. I kicked a kid in the balls so hard he puked and we tied up the other one."
"Ouch, brutal."
"But effective."
"Very that."
Very that?
What a dork.
"If it works, it works. I don't have the time to flip around unnecessarily. I just need to win and be done with it, right?"
"Mmmm, for the most part that'll work. Sometimes you might have to be a little more flashy though. Like if you're trying to get sponsorships, you want to be seen in front of cameras. Some pros intentionally draw out relatively low risk fights to get more screen time, for instance. "
"You know I'm not surprised, but I also don't think I like that. It seems like…"
Suzume stops because she can get sanctimonious, but Togata prods her shoulder and she goes on.
"It seems to me that the priority should be keeping people safe, and turning heroics into a popularity contest detracts from that and attracts people who are in it for fame and money instead of important things."
Togata looks surprised, and he leans back in his seat.
Suzume thinks a lot more about the system, but they don't have time for a ten hour lecture on the socio-economics behind crime.
"Yeah. I see what you mean. There's definitely some people who are like that, But, the celebrity status serves its own purpose. It makes heroes seem more like people than soldiers or cops, and like with All Might it can offer inspiration and hope."
Suzume doesn't argue with him. He's got his own points. Instead she shrugs.
"I guess there's good and bad in everything."
"Truth."
Suzume finishes her work before the next stop, her mind turning through the difference between inspiration and propaganda.
"So…" Seiji says slowly, looking down at her. "I'm sure you're wondering why I'm duct taped to the ceiling."
Suzume stares up at her brother, then looks at the clock on the wall. 4 AM. The refrigerator light is the only thing illuminating her and Seiji, who has been skillfully crucified to the kitchen ceiling sometime between when she went to bed and now.
Faintly, she can hear the laundry washer running in the other room with a familiar rattle against the wall.
"... Nope."
She grabs a bottle of water out of the fridge and chugs it quickly.
"H-hey what do you mean no? Suzume, come on Suze, ask me how I got up here!"
"Nope."
"At least let me down?"
"Nu uh."
She crunches the water bottle and tosses it into the recycling before she pulls away from the door and let's it swing shut.
"Hey! Hey wait, it's dark in here! Suzume! Suzume!"
His shouts follow her all the way back to her bedroom.
She hears a crash from Kaname's room and steps out of the way when he goes trooping past her, hissing under his breath. Good, he's a better person than she is.
…Although, he's also probably the one who taped Seiji to the ceiling in the first place.
Oh well.
Not her problem.
As it is she only gets a little more sleep before she has to get up and get ready for another day of school, and by the time she reaches the kitchen the only sign that Seiji had snuck in last night at all is a faint imprint on the ceiling.
The man himself is gone, and the laundry room is empty.
Suzume shakes her head and packs her bags before loading into the car with her mother, who insists on doing her hair again.
It's become a sort of thing between them, although it's new. Suzume has always been the independent sort. Memories of another life will do that to a person, she supposes.
It's Chiasa trying to hold on to her children as they grow and prepare to step into a brave, dangerous new world.
And Suzume, well, she's not going to deny her it. Having her hair done by someone else is nice. It's relaxing.
The relaxation vanishes when she gets close enough to the school to see a media circus that's formed outside the walls.
Fuck.
The reporters are ravenous dogs chomping at the students that try to make their way inside, shoving speaking and hurling questions at children. Suzume's never much cared for media attention. And there's no Hawks here to cover her back with his bright red wings. He'd really saved her and Kaname back then. News channels had been forced to use their school pictures instead of whatever footage they could have gotten of two grieving, furious children on the courthouse steps that day.
There's no one to guard her at all here.
So be it.
Suzume prowls around the outside of the crowd, looking for a weak spot to break through.
Unfortunately, someone else sees her first.
"Heeeeeeey." a reporter turns to her. His eyes are camera lenses and his smile is way too wide. "I know you."
"No. You don't," she says, narrowing her eyes. She wonders how much trouble she'll get in if she throat punches him. Probably enough that it isn't worth it. Probably.
"I do. You're that Kono girl. I heard you got accepted here. Hard to believe a villains' daughter is going to UA of all places. Although your brother did get into Ketsubutsu."
"Hard to believe that you've still got a job when you were sued for harassment and stalking a minor. Wanna make that a repeat offense?"
He twitches away from her, but she can see other reporters have overheard and a few are turning their attention on her.
Great.
Just.
Great.
"If you try to publish anything with my name attached, I'll take you and anyone else to court over publication of private facts and interviewing a minor without a guardian present," she snaps viciously.
Almost immediately anyone looking her way spins the opposite, and camera's are pointed literally anywhere else. What she just spouted out probably isn't even possible, but its enough to scare everyone, and that's the part she cares about.
She ducks away from the creepy reporter, who she desperately wants to break the lenses/eyes of, and makes her way to the back of the crowd. She ends up standing next to a young man, a few years older than she is probably, with a puff of pale blue hair falling mostly into his eyes.
It takes every ounce of self control she has not to start fangirling.
Instead, she turns to the shear wall that circles the school, and flings her backpack as hard as she can until it goes sailing up and over.
She takes a few steps back and realizes that the guy is watching her, his red eyes nearly glowing under his pale hair. She can just barely see red lines snaking down his throat.
She meets his gaze and shoots him a crooked, awkward smile.
"Wish me luck?"
He tilts his head ever so slightly. She wants to say he looks amused, but that might just be wishful thinking.
"Luck," he says, his voice a harsh contrast against the cacophony of reporters.
Suzume sprints as fast and hard as she can and scrambled up the side of the wall. She barely gets enough finger holds in the rough stone to get her up to the ledge, and from there she mounts it like a horse to breath. It's only the student ID in her pocket that keeps the barrier from coming up and sending her flying, and she needs to get inside before a stupid reporter triggered it.
She waves at Tomura Shigaraki and drops over to the otherside.
Suzume lands lightly on the ground, silent as a church mouse, and picks up her now dusty bag.
She finds a familiar purple haired boy gaping at her, and waves awkwardly before going on her way. She's not going to stand around explaining how she's been doing parkour for the better part of six years.
She spends the rest of the day thinking hard on everything she can remember happening at the training grounds. There's an attack, and Tomura Shigaraki and Kurogiri are both there. It's before the rest of the League of Villains really forms up. Aizawa get's pretty fucked up during it.
If this was America I bet I could get them to let me carry around a real gun. Would that hurt that Nomu? It absorbed shock I think? So. A knife would work better.
Probably.
She's so busy thinking that when the intruder alarm goes off she doesn't even get up and join the throng of panicking students. She just sits at her table in the cafeteria, chewing on a few apple slices and watching children run screaming while she figures out what to do about the monsters that are going to show up.
She… wants to stop it. She does. But how is she supposed to get them to believe her without admitting to having bizarre, hazy memories of a future that might not even come to pass now? She doesn't remember most things in enough detail to be convincing, and the future was malleable, no matter what Nighteye thought. There's a chance that plenty of things won't happen, although Tomura had shown up today, so the USJ incident was likely going to happen.
And there.
Is very little she can do about it.
She can't stop it on either side. There's no proof if she tries to warn Nezu, and she's got no chance of marching up to the villains and kindly asking them to please not attack a bunch of high schoolers.
So.
Maybe she can just cut the whole thing short instead of canceling it?
Yeah, that'll work just fine, she thinks.
"Aren't you going to run, too?"
She blinks out of her thoughts, looking up to find Todoroki standing beside her table. He looks about as panicked as she feels, which is to say not at all.
She points through the door, where over the packed crowd of yelling teenagers the light of camera's flash and the long necks of microphones bob.
" 's just reporters. And you're not running either."
"Panicking wouldn't help anything even if it was an attack."
She's kind of surprised he's willingly talking to her. She thought getting him to interact with other humans was like pulling teeth.
Well. She's been wrong before. She's a detective, not omniscient.
"You're not wrong," Suzume admits. The two of them watch as the chaos slowly falls into calm under the muffled shouting of Iida in the hallway. It's kind of amazing, how some people react to stress and panic while others remain calm.
To be fair. Suzume is cheating. It's Todoroki who's genuinely keeping his cool in this case.
Eventually, the two both wander out to join their classmates once things have calmed down a bit, and Suzume texts her mother to let her know what happened, just to make sure she doesn't worry if she sees something on the news about the UA alarms going off.
It's a chaotic middle to an otherwise average day.
Present Mic assigns them an assignment on English poetry, and Suzume quietly mourns the fact that even Before she had always preferred Nakahara to Frost. All Might instructs them to go over videos of their performance in their earlier training and Suzume grimaces at the sight of herself on screen. She's never been a fan of her plain, boring reflection. Seeing a video wasn't any better, even if the hero suit made it easier to pay attention to her strict for instead of her actual appearance. The hood makes it harder to see how broad her shoulders are, and the body suit's armor draws attention away from her compact legs.
She can focus on the perfect angles of her landings and the missteps in her climbing.
By the time she's joined on the train by Togata she's very sick of looking at herself.
So she looks at him, instead. He's broad shouldered and powerful looking. It's not a bad look on him. It's not awkward on him like it is on her.
She wonders, between conversations about the best places to eat lunch around campus and their feelings on airports, when she got so insecure.
"I'll see you tomorrow?" Togata says when she stands up, shouldering her bag.
She shoots him a smile.
"Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow, hero," she shoots him a two fingered salute and makes her way off the train.
Chiasa is waiting in the car, her dark eyes fixed on her daughter.
"So. A friend of yours?" she asks, nodding to the station. From where she's parked they can watch the train pull away, and Suzume's usual seat is in plain view. Along with Togata.
"No. He just takes the same train. He's an upperclassman, and he's got a work study further down the line."
"I see…"
Suzume frowns at her mother. "What?"
"I didn't say anything."
"But you were thinking something," Suzume points out.
Her mother smile's, a crooked reflection of Suzume's.
"I was thinking of a lot of things," she dismisses.
Suzume huffs and leans back against the seat. Leather creaks under her weight.
"Mo-om!"
Chiasa laughs at her. She's been tense and gloomy ever since school started, so it's nice to hear.
"It's nothing for you to worry about, Suzy."
"Uh huh," she squints at her dubiously. "When is Taka coming?"
Her smile softens. "Taka and Rio will get in on thursday. Saturday, after you and Kaname get home, Kai should arrive with Eri, if they're not there already."
Suzume smiles. "Good. I missed them. I haven't seen any of them in… hell, half a year?"
"Don't swear. But yes, that sounds about right. I know you miss Kai."
"I've never said that!"
"You don't have to," she reaches over and gives Suzume's bangs a tug. "A mother can tell."
"Oh my god, don't start that stupid 'Suzume's crushing on Kai' stuff again! It's been like seven years!"
Chiasa laughs. "I can't help it. You were so cute when you were little. You knew he didn't like to be touched so you chased people away like a little guard dog."
"Mother!"
"Don't be so dramatic. He might as well be your brother at this point, right? You certainly spent more time with him growing up than you did with Taka or Shisui."
Suzume puffs her cheeks out, but she can't argue.
Chiasa tugs her bangs again before turning her attention back to the road.
"Either way, you can't lie to your mother. I know you missed spending time with him."
"...yeah. Okay. So maybe I do. Him and Kurono are. I dunno. I like them? But I know we can't hang out much anymore, especially now that me and Kaname are both in hero courses. It's a conflict of interest on both our parts, even though I'm not like. Using them for information, and they don't expect me to be a spy or anything."
"Mhmm. It's not business, it's family."
Suzume closes her eyes and leans her head back against the headrest.
"I have a class tomorrow night, so you don't have to pick me up from the station. I'll probably walk straight to the dojo."
"Will you be learning or teaching?"
"Teaching. This years kids are so cute. Shigure, this little kid that barely comes up to my knee, she's a vicious little monster. And Kagura has wings, so we're having to adjust some of the stances to accommodate it and work them in. I keep waiting for Ize to trip over their own tail, but so far it hasn't happened. And…"
Chiasa listens while Suzume tells her about her cute little students, a faint smile on her face.
Suzume doesn't notice, but her gaze is terribly, terribly sad.