There's alcohol, injury mention and weird dreams in this chapter, but nothing is overtly graphic. Oh, and frog pee.
Suzume is getting used to Togata sitting on the train with her. He said he has his work study every other day, but he's on the train every single day instead, because Sir Nighteye had decided to bump up his work this year.
Togata takes it all in good cheer, and happily chats with her whenever she's not completely busy. He even helps her a couple of times, so it's no real surprise when he notices that she's glaring at the screen in front of her viciously, trying to remember one particular word that will not come to her mind.
Rakish? Racus? Rackets? It starts with R and means loud and maybe annoying. Rapidash?
"You doing alright over there Yusada?"
She grunts, finally looking up at him.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. This assignment is just giving me more trouble than I was thinking it was going to be."
"What is it?" Togata asks, peering over at her laptop screen. The title reads 'In The Shadow Of The Birch'.
Finn does not like the look of the trees. The black eyes on the white bark make him nervous, and the deep red leaves in winter remind him too much of blood. They are lucky, Tammy says, that there is no snow to block their way. Finn thinks it would be luckier if there was. If there was snow at least that would glow in the night, and they wouldn't be left in night as dark as ink, the river of stars blotted out by thick red leaves and sparse pine needles.
Tammy says, the fire will keep away the dark and the creatures that dwell within it.
Finn does not say that the only time he's ever seen the wrong shaped beasts, with too many legs and too-sharp antlers blossoming red, is during the light of the day. He doesn't know what it means, but he knows it makes him nervous. He grips the dagger that Mother Adelaide had pressed into his hands before they left Bastion with hands that shake and sweat.
He is meant to drive it into the breast of the Wolf, the Finalis, the End of All Things, the Beginning of All Sin-
"It's supposed to be an English assignment. We write a script and then we read it aloud, record it, and he grades them. All he really said was get creative, and if we write about our dog he'll fail us on principle."
"I remember that assignment! I'm pretty sure I wrote about crashing on an island. I was going through a Hatchet phase," he laughs lightly at himself. "So, what did you pick?"
Suzume shrugs, playing with her scrunchie.
"I dunno. I was playing around with horror fantasy, but like high fantasy you know? With magic and dragons and stuff?"
Mirio looks curious. "Can I read it?"
They do have an hour so…
"If you really want to?" She pushes her lap top towards him, and pulls out her math homework. While she works on it she keeps glancing over at Mirio, watching him grow paler and paler the further along he goes. Finally, just as she's pulling out her heroics law worksheet, he pushes the computer away.
"Well?" She asks, genuinely curious.
Mirio looks at her, his blue eyes huge. "That was terrifying but you have got to tell me how it ends."
Suzume can honestly say she's surprised. She hadn't meant for it to be that scary.
"Well… In the end I was going to reveal that the narrator is the villain that they're after in the first place. The Finalis. They're a failed attempt of cleansing humanity of 'inherent evils' like greed, hatred, violence, etcetera, and instead of curing humanity of its sins the people who made them basically pulled a jekyll and hyde and made a semi-omnipresent creature that was born solely out of suffering, anger, selfishness and fear. It can never be killed with weapons, so in the end all of the rangers die at their hand and they turn the travelers bones and ashes into gems for their crown, and waits for the next batch to come."
Mirio is staring at her, his mouth open.
"That's… that's insane. But wait, the narrator talks about the Rangers like they like them! Even though the whole story is basically the Wolf traumatizing everyone on their way to their lair. Tammy losing her eye was brutal. "
"They do. They love the rangers. But they're not going to lay down and die, and the parts of the rangers that it loves are also the parts that it lusts after but can never have. The camaraderie, the warmth, the love. That's not something that they were made for, and it's something that has to be given freely and gladly. That's not something that can be taken by force. So as much as they might be fond of the Rangers, that isolation and envy poisons their feelings. Although I think if someone was genuinely kind to them, they might melt into literal goo."
Togata whistles. "You thought of all that in one day? Although, that's pretty complicated for one short story. Especially one that you'll have to read out loud."
Suzume makes a face and leans back heavily against the train seat. "Yeah, I know. My other idea was a pre-quirk detective noir."
She had about a hundred stories she could just pick out one of the shorter, more interesting ones and doctor it up with someone more interesting than she was.
"That would be pretty cool too. But! I don't think you should stop writing that creepy one. I'm definitely not going to be sleeping tonight," he laughs brightly.
"I'm not much of an author," Suzume dismisses. Actually, she doesn't have a lot of hobbies outside of reading and training.
Thats. Kind of sad.
She shakes her head. "But if you really think it's that creepy, maybe I'll at least finish and record it?"
"Definitely do that. Do you have a spooky voice? Both of them are gonna be kinda creepy right?"
Suzume works her jaw and clears her throat. She reads aloud to Eri sometimes, and the little girl is too fond of old Goosebumps for someone so little. So she picks the voice she uses for narrating.
"Westchase is a city on the coast that, like most, is home to thick fog and damp air that clogs the lungs in winter and freezes in thick sheets in the winter. This far inland, the smell of the sea would be hard to make out even if it wasn't drowned out by the sticky, cloying scent of blood.
The first time I had smelled the metallic stench I was five, and my pudgy hands held tight to my daddy's briefcase. I didn't know back then that it was heavy with bleach and sulfuric acid. It was the first dead body I saw. I've never gotten used to the glassy, far away eyes, but I don't think they're following me anymore.
Now,, twenty years later, it isn't enough to make me more than wrinkle my nose. This woman's eyes definitely won't by following me, seeing as they're gone. All that's left are dark cavities where they once were. Unpleasant, but I'm not the one vomiting in the other room. The widow, Andy, is pale and shaking in the corner. A letter that I desperately need to read is clutched in her trembling fingers."
She stops when she realizes that Togata is staring at her.
Heat crawls across her cheeks. "What?"
"Nothing, nothing. I just don't think you need to worry about your grade in that class is all."
Suzume eyes him dubiously. Maybe she has too many brothers, because she's trying to doubt his sincerity or find a way he's going to use this to tease her later on.
"You're kind of weird, you know that?"
He smiles at her. "I'm strangely okay with that."
Suzume pulls her laptop back to her and opens up a new document. What's the lamest name for the noir detective she can think of?
'Jenny Hemlock'.
"You're gonna let me read that stuff right?"
"I didn't know you were so into creepy stuff," Suzume elbows Togata lightly when he leans too close to her. He backs off obediently.
"I definitely prefer comedy, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to read scary stuff every now and again. Especially when it's an adventure, not just one gory scene after another, you know?"
Suzume nods along, eying her computer. It's time to pack up, and she still can't remember the word she was looking for.
"That makes sense. I should probably add some humor in here somewhere anyways. If all it is is a blood bath, no one's gonna care who lives or needs humanity."
"Definitely. Who knows, maybe you'll write a whole book, or start a podcast. Your voice was suuuper creepy."
"...I'm gonna take that as a compliment."
"Good, it was one."
Suzume doesn't know what's going on this week, but she does know that she's going to kill her brothers.
It's gotta be a full moon or something. Maybe everyone in her family but her is a werewolf and the moon makes them weirder than usual. Were wolf? Were snake?
She doesn't know, but she knows that she can hear Kaname sneaking out his window. Their moms room is on the other side of the house, on the ground floor, but Suzume and Kaname's rooms are on the same side, right next to each other on the second story. The only light on is the rotating waves projected on her walls, illuminating old family pictures and a few scant posters that she owns. It spins lazily on her desk, shining at the mirror on the back of her closet door and throwing off strange shapes around her.
Suzume is curled tightly beneath her blankets, warm and sleepy.
The hiss of his window sliding open is enough to make her stir, but the scratching of his sneakers on the outside of their wall is what actually wakes her up.
Suzume stares at the wall, hoping that if she glares hard enough her brother will spontaneously combust and fall in a pile of poison fire on the ground underneath as punishment for waking her up.
No such thing happens.
Instead she hears the bushes rustle beneath their windows, then nothing. A few minutes later a car starts down the street, and she can just barely hear Kaname go scampering off into the woods behind their house. He was never quite as quiet as she was, and he's only trying to get away from their mom at this point. Not villains.
Suzume waits a few more minutes before she closes her eyes and huddles further under her blankets, shutting her eyes and falling back into the bliss of unconsciousness.
Although what once was dark oblivion, has now taken on a very strange tone.
She spirals into the vertigo of a long string of cages that live beneath a theater stage. Inside of them stands costumes from musicals and theater performances. They move without actors, or anything inside them at all. Crowns hover above stoat cloaks, American revolutionary coats hold chairs above their heads. Props sit in separate cages. Couches with beetlejuice stripes, a barricade stacked high, and a Ford Model A sits beside a tire covered in cat hair.
Suzume herself sits inside another cage at a table with a crystal ball sitting at the middle of it.
Across from her sits a man. She thinks? He's smiling at her with too many teeth, and his eyes (two? Twenty?) shine red at her from the right side of his face. The single one on the left side glows faintly green. There's a flicker of orange above his head, two points that appear and vanish when he tilts his head. Horns.
He pushes a mug at her across the table, one that steams between his too-long, too-sharp fingers. His bright hair looks like heat, rippling above his head.
He looks like a headache.
Suzume picks up the cup. It's nearly burning in her hands when she takes a sip.
"I don't usually take my coffee black," she muses, peering down at the dark liquid.
"It isn't coffee." His voice sounds like the color violet.
Suzume considers the cup before she looks back up at him. She stares straight in his eyes and starts chugging. The liquid pierces her tongue and burns her lungs.
He gapes at her, a twist with too many teeth and too many mouths and-
Her phone is buzzing.
Suzume's black eyes snap open in the darkness. She gropes for her phone, her fingers clumsy and her mouth still tasting like nightmares.
She picks up her phone and squints at the horrific light that assaults her when it turns on.
There's a half dozen texts from her brother.
Kaname : heok
Kaname : Hghlp
Kaname : S0s !
Kaname : Help
Kaname : I kllieed som eone
Kaname : I amt he woo ds
Suzume slowly sits up. Her hair is a wild spiky mess around her head and her eyes are wet with sleepy tears.
For a long minute Suzume considers shutting her phone off and going back to sleep. Kaname doesn't start school for another week and a half, but she had school in the morning. And if Kaname killed someone in the woods is that really her problem?
… Of course it is.
Kaname is her brother and this is the crossroads that all siblings come to. Ride or die.
So she stands slowly, grimacing as her muscles protest the new movement. She stuffs her legs into sweat pants and her feet into boots and carefully slips out of her own window without a sound.
There's a path through the woods, which are really just a sharp grove of trees that cut them off from the neighborhood to the north. That's probably where Kaname's friends were waiting to pick him up with their car, so he didn't get caught sneaking out. Normally they're easy to navigate, and it's a pretty straight shot from their house to the other neighborhood. There's a small wooden bridge that goes above what could be called a creek if you were being generous, and a well beaten dirt path between the trees.
She flips on the light of her phone and strolls into the woods, looking for a dead body sticking out from under the bushes or pinned to a tree or poisoned and crumpled somewhere.
Instead she finds her brother, sitting in the dirt, bawling his eyes out next to a squashed frog. A frog the size of her head.
"D-dead!" Kaname points to the frog frantically. His pupils are blown so wide his red eyes look closer to her own black.
Just how drunk is he?
At some point he must have put eyeliner on because it's streaked down his cheeks and he looks scarier than whatever eldritch horror she had dreamed gave her nightmare coffee.
"It is. Maybe dead," Suzume agrees carefully, eying the frog.
"It's a heart!"
"It's definitely not a heart. It's green."
"Heart can be green!"
"No… No they cannot. Here, look," she crouches down and picks the dead frog up, intending on spreading its legs to show him that it's an animal, not an organ.
But, it's not only not a heart, but it's also not dead.
It croaks, belches against her wrist, and starts peeing.
Suzume holds it out, and makes sure as much frog pee as possible ends up on Kaname's torn pants instead of her hands.
"Not a heart. Not dead."
"It's leaking! Mom's gonna kill me Suze."
"No one is going to die tonight," she rolls her eyes and lets the poor traumatized frog go before she grabs Kaname's hand with the one that had the most frog pee on it.
"I can't believe I dragged my butt out into the woods because you can't tell the difference between a frog and a heart," she grumbles, dragging him back towards the house. Whatever monsters live in the woods would probably love to eat her. Or drink her, like horror coffee.
Kaname blubbers apologies at her until she shushes him viciously.
It's the hardest thing she's ever done, dumping her drunk brother through a second story window without waking their mom up, but somehow she manages. They get inside just as rain starts pattering against the window.
She takes a shower before she crawls back into bed, but she can still feel the slimy body of the frog in her hands.
Gross.
Wednesday morning rolls around with far too much moisture in the air. The ground is wet from a shower in the night, and Suzume nearly cracks her jaw from yawning so wide. All she wants to do is crawl back under her covers and go back to sleep. Or maybe kill Kaname. Or both.
Every muscle in her body aches, familiar as the pain might be, and the darkness is her only comfort when she drags herself into the bathroom for a shower. Another one. She still feels slimy.
Her body is covered in bruises, and there's a burn the shape of a handprint on her shoulder. It'll fade in a few days, it was a lucky shot, but it still hurt like a bitch. She'd been so tired when she went out to get Kaname that she'd forgotten all about it.
If Rio's quirk wasn't limited to just 'recent' injuries she would ask her sister-in-law to heal it when she sees her tomorrow, but as it is she's just going to have to tough it out. Over years of trial and error Rio had figured out that her 'healing' quirk only worked for injuries that were less than four hours old. Anything older than that and she couldn't do a whole lot to help.
So by the time Suzume sees her the burn will be long out of her range.
It shouldn't leave a scar. Suzume doesn't have a lot of scars in general, mostly callouses and a myriad of bruises, but she's mostly lucked out of scars.
And lucked out really is the right word. She's been cut by claws, burned by too-hot-hands, stung by acids, and had her skin broken by sheer brute force before.
It's… not fun. She doesn't like getting hurt, but it's either collect her dues while training or possibly die in the field. So she takes on whatever new, interesting quirk that Ryuhei had found and thrown at her with grace and thanks. She knows he's just trying to keep her alive.
She's his favorite student, even if he did spend plenty of time trying to convince her to give up heroics and come work for him back before they moved. Or rather, that was why he'd done his best to get her to change her life plans.
She.
Kind of misses him.
Suzume comes out of the bathroom in time for Chiasa to brush her hair back and tie it up in her spiky bun.
"You know which stop it is, and you have something to eat on the way back, right?"
"Yes, and yes. I'll be back late tonight, remember."
"I remember," she promises. She tucks a pen into her only daughters hair and motions her towards the car.
They're starting to get into a routine. It's nice.
Although she's still not sure what she thinks of her classmates talking with her.
When she walks in and Kirishima is chatting with Mina at her desk, she has no idea what to think of it. But they don't let her shove her nose back in her book like she wants.
Instead, they talk to her about the day before. The reporters, the break in, and their new class rep. They ask about her family, and she reluctantly asks about theirs in return. It's not like she hates them. Far from it.
She's just. Not here for friendship. She has work to focus on, and the entire conversation she's waiting for them to press her about not having a quirk, or saying some weird backhanded compliment about it or-
Or anything else she's heard for literally her entire life.
But they don't.
That doesn't mean she sits by them at lunch though. She takes a seat in the far corner of the cafeteria, her book open in front of her once more.
A shadow falls over her head.
She does her best to ignore it. She's already exhausted from last night, and short tempered as a result. Kirishima and Mina are good people, so she held it together for them, but the shadow is spiky and smells like burnt sugar, and she's not sure how she's going to stop herself from escalating the situation.
"Hey, you!"
Suzume ignores the too-loud voice from in front of her, and turns a page in her book.
"I'm talking to you. Hey, you extra wannabe, pay attention!"
Suzume slowly lifts her gaze to him. She's only seeing Kaname's blown eyes, keeping her from peace and bizarre dreams.
Having siblings (or five) really gives a person the strangest interpersonal skills. And the weirdest morals. Nothing makes your brain do more back flips than having an intense ride or die relationships with someone who's face you would gladly shove through the dining room table if they so much as touched your shoes, but at the same time would march into creepy woods in the middle of the night to bury a dead body for.
But.
Even though they both have red eyes, and she's sleep deprived, the snarl on his face is nothing like the soft lines of her brothers.
"What?" she snaps her book shut loudly and glares up at him.
"Don't think that stupid training exercise meant anything," he slams his hands down on the table and the smell of burnt sugar intensifies. "I was going easy on you and that other extra. It's not gonna happen again. There's no way I'll lose to a quirkless loser like you!"
"Again, you mean."
His face turns as red as his eyes.
She can see Midoriya starting towards them, flanked by Iida and Uraraka.
"What?!" he snarls at her.
"Again. You don't want to lose to me again, since it already happened once."
"Listen here your quirkless little-"
"Is that all you're going to say?" she demands suddenly, standing up so fast she almost smashes her forehead into his nose.
"Wha-"
"That I'm quirkless, that you're strong? That I'm just a little girl and you're oh-so-powerful?" She mocks, her lip curling.
Something in her seems to snap. Sleep deprivation or just anger. She doesn't know.
"Listen here, and listen well Bakugou. There is nothing you can say that I haven't heard before, from people I respect a whole lot more than you. There is nothing you can do that I haven't seen before. There's no hit you can throw that I haven't taken before. You seem to be under the impression that a few fireworks make you king shit of fuck mountain, but here's the truth. You're just a sorry bully, with your skull full of hot air and a mouth too big for your head."
"There's nothing special about you."
She sees it a second before it happens. A shifting of his weight. A tightening in his shoulders.
She catches the right swing he takes at her head, ducking the blast that comes from his palm, and drives a phoenix fist into his arm pit. His arm falls limp beside him and he snarls at her and tries to hit her with his other hand, but something gray wraps around his wrist and he's yanked away harshly.
Suzume grimaces when she sees Aizawa strolling over to them. His eyes are red and his hair is levitating.
He looks kind of pissed.
Suzume carefully picks up her bag and tries to hide her hands in her pockets. She knows how this goes. This is the part where she gets scolded for starting trouble, and a long winded lecture about how people who think they can be heroes can't get into fights like this, and how she really needs to just learn to ignore people.
And a million other things.
"My office," Aizawa orders sharply. "Now."
Even Bakugou, who's right arm still hangs limply at his side, doesn't argue with that, but he's still spitting mad and glaring furiously at Suzume when they make their way out of the now staring lunch room and through the halls to Aizawa's office. Their teacher walks between them purposefully.
He stops them outside his office and points to one of three plastic chairs that line the hallway, for this very reason.
"Sit," he orders Suzume, who drops into the hard plastic without a word. "Bakugou, come with me."
Bakugou is still glaring viciously at her when the door shuts soundly, cutting them off.
She waits, twisting her scrunchy around her wrist while they talk.
And by talk she means Aizawa (presumably) talks and Bakugou shouts loudly. His words are muffled through the wall, so she can't quite make them out, but she can take a few guesses. To her own surprise, it only takes a few minutes for all of the screaming to die down and the conversation to turn quiet.
Suzume sits up straighter when Bakugou comes storming out, his face as red as his eyes. He doesn't so much as look at her when he tears down the hallway, fury rolling off of him in waves.
Suzume hesitates and moment before Aizawa calls her inside.
His office is surprisingly neat. It's not just his, he and some of the other teachers share the room, but they have their own cubicle sort of areas. Aizawa's is populated by papers that need grading, what are very clearly police case files, and a trash can full of empty jelly packets. His laptop is shut, but a small tape recorder is running next to it.
"Yusada. Take a seat," he gestures to one of the chairs, Mic's by the look of it, and she sinks into the massive piece of leather.
She braces herself.
"How are you?"
Wait, what?
"I'm… fine?" she blinks at him, confused.
"You aren't burnt anywhere?"
She thinks of the burn on her shoulder, but shakes her head all the same. "Bakugou didn't land a hit."
But she did.
"Good," he nods once at her. "I've already talked to him about his behavior before this. If he keeps bothering you, bring it straight to me. I'm hoping he'll shape up before I have to expel him."
"Right," Suzume carefully doesn't frown. She's heard that before. Teacher's who complain that she never came to them about being picked on, and instead took things into her own hands. Even when she had gone to them with the issues the only thing they'd done was sit her across the room from the bullies, or tell her to ignore it and they'd lose interest. Her favorite was the time she was told to 'talk it out' with a boy who snapped her bra strap, and ended up nearly getting expelled when she broke his tooth.
Except at UA teacher's have a bit more freedom. And Aizawa has already stepped in once.
It's… stupid, the fluttering of hope in her chest. The beginnings of faith.
He asks her a few more questions, before she finally breaks down.
"Sorry but, what about me?"
"What do you mean?" he arches a brow at her.
"I mean, you scolded Bakugou pretty harshly. You threatened to expel him. I'm not looking for punishment but I'm. You know. Kinda confused?"
The other eyebrow joins the first.
"You were defending yourself," he points out, "Punishing you for that is irrational."
She blinks at him.
"Oh."
"Don't get me wrong. We don't encourage students to actively try to hurt each other, but Bakugou was at fault in this case. No one here is going to get you into trouble for this."
Suzume stares at him, stunned into silence.
She has no idea what Aizawa thinks of her quiet, but he ends up standing and motioning her to do the same.
"Now come on. We've still got a few more classes today."
A slow, honest smile spreads across her face. "Right!"