Someone asked if I had any pictures or anything of what our girl looks like. I do! I've actually drawn her whole family! I'll try to clean them up a bit and post them either on AO3 or deviantart (my user name is the same on both of those) or on my tumblr, under Lo-55. If I do post it, please keep in mind that I am a writer more than artist and be kind.
In the meantime I guess the easiest description would be she has the face of Dazai from Bungo to Alchemist (NOT bungou stray dogs) and the hair of Sakura Haruno when she pulled in back in Naruto Shippuden, only her eyes and hair are both black.
I saw someone comparing one of my fics to another fic that I don't particularly like and I don't know how to feel about it lol
Anyhow! Welcome to the start of the Sports Festival! And the Kono family's tragic history starts to come to the surface.
Suzume has been coming back home later and later these days.
With only two weeks until the Sports Festival she's been spending every spare minute with Ichigo and anyone at the dojo willing to go against her in a fight. Admittedly, the number of people willing to fight her keeps decreasing steadily, so she finds herself up against Tekito and Mitsuo most of the times these days.
They're getting better too. Mitsuo in particular has been using his strings less like cheese cutters and more like spider webs.
Which is good for him, but it does mean that she ends up with cuts along her arms and hands on occasion. Something that Yusa fusses over whenever she finds her way to the cafe for something warm to drink while she runs across roof tops.
Despite her insistence that she isn't a vigilante, she now has a small pocket in her wind breaker full of business cards and phone numbers that she never plans to use, all curtesy of people who just happened to be around when Suzume started trouble. Drunks, idiot teenagers, or just desperate men who thought that anyone carried cash anymore, she's gotten good at making quick work of them and going on her way.
It's getting more and more common for her to come in, crawl into bed, and pass out for as many hours as she can get before she has to get back up and go to school.
Kaname is back in school, so she doesn't have to worry about dragging him home again, but their mom has been falling asleep on the couch waiting for her to return.
It's.
Worrying.
She doesn't want her mother to worry about her so much.
But there's also really nothing she can do about it. She's not dropping out and Chiasa can't just stop caring about her children. She loves them too much, just like Sanjiro.
So it's not actually that much of a surprise when Suzume pushes open the door to their house and her mother is sleeping on the couch in front of a TV showing reruns of old anime. All the lights are off.
Suzume hesitates before she flips the lights on.
Immediately, her mothers dark eyes snap open.
"C'est pas Versailles ici!"
Suzume freezes, her fingers still on the light switch.
Since when does mom speak french?
She flips the switch back off, plunging them back into darkness, and walks down the hall and up the stairs to her bedroom. Behind her, she can hear Chiasa stirring, but she doesn't shout for her, so Suzume trots to Kaname's bedroom.
She knocks on his door and waits for a muffled ' S'open' to push her way inside.
His bed is pushed up against the far wall, and the middle of the room is occupied by a short table covered in a 3d map and tokens. Some kind of board game he and his friends play. His own character stands as a little hologram near an outcropping of mountains.
Suzume hasn't played in a few years, but it's basically a fancy D board.
Kaname himself is laying sprawled on his bed, scrolling through MyFace.
He peers over at her. "You're home late."
"I'm always home late," she points out, and plants herself on his bed.
"What's up?" He doesn't bother locking his phone. Suzume flops back against him, sprawling her torso over his back.
"I just heard mom speak french. It was weird. Did you know she speaks french?"
"Huh? No, I've never heard her speak anything other than English and Japanese. You sure it was french?"
"Positive. And the way she said it, it wasn't like she was doing it for fun or like she just picked it up or something. I surprised her and she spoke in French instead of Japanese. Like it was natural to her or something."
"That's weird…"
"E-yup."
They lay in silence for a couple of minutes. Kaname tapped away on his phone and Suzume followed the swirling lines on his ceiling.
"You think Taka or Shisui knows?"
"Shisui is still convinced telling her he has a boyfriend is a bad idea, so I'm gonna say no. Taka maybe."
"Too bad this didn't happen before they visited last week."
"We do own cell phones, you know."
"Yeah, but talking over text and talking in real life are totally different things."
"True true. Text him anyways."
"Text him yourself."
"I'm not the one holding my phone."
"So pull out your phone and text him."
"I don't want to."
"Why are you such an obstinate little shit?"
She shrugs, and stretches her arms above her head until her shoulders pop.
"You know what?"
"Hmm?"
"I don't think I actually know that much about our parents. Like. I know their hobbies. I know what they do. Or did, I guess if we're talking about Dad, but I don't know much about their lives before we were born. Mom doesn't have a lot of friends, and we've never met our grandparents. Are they dead? Are our parents orphans? Or did something happen and they don't talk to them anymore?"
He tilts his head to peer at her over his shoulder. "That's depressing. You make it sound like our parents are anime protagonists."
"Anime protagonists aren't single mothers or prisoners."
"That's because anime isn't diverse enough, now stop being a smartass."
"Better than a dumb ass."
Kaname reaches back and smacks her knee roughly.
"I don't know about them either. We were both pretty young when dad went away, and out of the two of them he was more open than mom. Mom was too busy trying to keep all six of us in line to be… I don't want to say our friend. Because he was our dad, not our friend."
"I know what you mean though. I… kind of feel like a bad daughter. For not knowing more about them."
"I mean, they're our parents. If they want us to know about them, they'll tell us. And if dad wasn't born into the Shie Hessaikai, I doubt he started working for them for the fun of it."
Suzume let's out a sigh. "And if they don't tell us about it, it's probably because they don't want to talk about it, or because they think we're too young to know whatever it is. Fuck. I'm texting Taka."
"Oh, so you're actually gonna get your phone out?"
Suzume kicks his head, and he shoves her off of him and onto the floor. "Get off me you fucking gremlin."
Suzume rolls to her feet and sticks her tongue out at him, and get's a pillow to the face for her troubles.
"Get out!"
"Fine! I don't wanna be in your weird nerd room anyways!"
She flings the pillow back and stalks out of the room dramatically.
When she reaches her own room she freezes. There's a package sitting on her desk, with her name scrawled across it.
She opens it slowly, revealing inside three pieces of wood, all connected by short, sturdy chain. The two furthest edges are capped in hard metal, and on the inside of some pieces there's small twists like a screw.
It takes her a second to realize what it is.
It's a three section sansetsukon staff that connects to create a full staff. It's a bit shorter than her last bo, only a little over five feet long as opposed to six. She'll have to train with it to make sure she doesn't expect more reach than she gets, but that's okay.
Sitting underneath is a small note.
Be more careful with this one.
The day of the sports festival dawned bright and sunny.
It's stupidly bright, actually, and Suzume low key hates it.
She has to squint against the sunlight that spills down across her shoulders as they step out onto the field. A huge crowd is packed into the seat all around them, everyone turning up to watch this years newest class. The second and third years have their own competition in a separate arena somewhere.
Mic's voice blares across them.
"Welcome everyone to the UA sports festival! Where the hero world's little eggs aim for each other's throats! Our Grand yearly melee! And let me guess, you all showed up to see the freshly formed miracle stars that shrugged off a mass villain assault with wills of steel! The hero course CLASS 1-A!"
Suzume quietly cringes at the introduction. Little eggs?
Mic is arguably their weirdest teacher, at least in terms of the crap that comes out of his mouth. He's still a hell of a hype man.
Suzume shakes her head when he introduces Midnight, and they call Bakugou up to the stand. He's been weirdly quiet ever since the USJ. Suzume doesn't have a lot of room to talk, but she's been chatting with Kirishima and Kaminari more often, plus Tsu and sometimes Mina and Uraraka.
It's the closest thing to a social life she's ever had.
Bakugou climbs the stairs, his hands stuffed into his pockets. There's no fanfare to him, no crowing or shouting.
He just leans into the mic, his red eyes burning.
"I just wanna say. I'm gonna win."
The other classes erupt around them, screaming at him for his declaration.
Suzume twitches at the roar of insults and challenges from the other classes. Somehow, Bakugou managed to drag their entire class into his dramatics. Everyone around them looked ready to start a fight with their class at the drop of a hat.
Midnight puts a stop to it with a snap of her whip.
"That's enough everyone! Eyes up here!"
There's grumbling, but everyone looks up at Midnight all the same. She stands high above them with a giant tv monitor behind her, spinning through options for their games.
Games that are going to put them on national TV and might result in some serious injuries.
"It's time to move on to our first event. The preliminaries this year starts with..." She slaps the monitor behind her, "an obstacle race! A race between all 11 classes, this course makes a nearly four kilometer ring around the stadium."
A gate at the other end of the field folds itself out of the way, revealing a bottle neck path to the outside world.
"We always sing about our freedom on campus, well this is what it's all about! You're free to do anything, anything as long as you remain within the course. There's no restriction on quirk use. Support course students, and students without quirks have been given the opportunity to choose a few pieces of equipment."
Someone mumbles behind her, "They let quirkless people in here? Isn't that kind of reckless?"
"Yeah… is the principal really as smart as he's supposed to be?"
Suzume touches the holster on her thigh. They'd let her choose two pieces of equipment, and she'd picked her grappling gun and Ryuhei's bo staff.
"With all that said, let's get started! On your mark... get set... GO!"
Suzume bolts for the door. The now familiar feeling of the grappling gun in her hand is a comfort, and she shoots it at the ceiling above the entrance and goes sailing about her classmates and competition.
She swings forwards, landing ahead of Todoroki and his ice path.
He stares at her, startled. "You-"
Suzume tilts her head at him but doesn't slow as they come to a turn in the path.
It's just like track and field, just like her own entrance exam.
One step at a time.
The ground rumbles, and robots the size of small buildings come crashing out of nowhere.
Suzume twists between them, nearly squishing herself between the treadmill of one, and comes careening out the other side just as Todoroki freezes them solid.
What an insane power. In barely a minute he took down a robot that would have killed most people.
Two smaller ones shoot out in front of her and she twirls her staff out to full size before driving it viciously into one of their 'eye'. It sparks and the thing shuts down, another following suit.
Todoroki comes up at her heel right as a third come barreling out of the bushes ahead of them.
Suzume whips out her gun and shoots, spearing the thing through the head and forcing Todoroki to stumble to avoid getting clothes lined before the gun whips her forwards and she takes back her lead, bouncing off the dead robot and landing in a run on the other side.
When she had submitted her request form for her support gear, Aizawa had looked it over and told her, very firmly, 'Try not to shoot anyone's eye out'. It's only the first event and she's already broken that rule.
Whoops. I mean, he did say try, right?
She can hear Mic shouting something overhead, she hears her name and Todoroki's and something about a 'budding rivalry', but she's not interested in what he's saying and it's muffled by the wind whipping around her.
The ground drops away into a canyon and she flings herself into the abyss, shooting for the furthest tower of rock and swinging for the other side. Overhead Todoroki passes her by, freezing one of the wires that had been suspended between plateaus and propelling himself with the ice. She nearly slips on a patch of it when she scrambles out of the canyon on his heels. When she looks over her shoulder she sees a girl with pink hair throw herself forwards with wire's strapped to her sides.
Suzume sucks in sharply. She needs to talk to that girl. Immediately.
Something sparks inside her chest and Suzume has to beat it down. She can't be focused on what her classmates are doing. All she needs to focus on is getting to the finish line as fast as she can.
It's like the practical exam all over again, only instead of rotating metal platforms and logs sticking out of the water, they come upon a minefield.
Suzume.
Laughs.
Startled and so soft she almost doesn't hear it herself.
A minefield.
Ichigo has spent months making her fight on ground that might betray her with significantly less warning than this. She can see the slight mounds in the earth where they were buried, and by extension she can see the path between them.
"Bastard! Your declaration of war was to the wrong person!"
Even better, Bakugou has finally caught up, and is trying to start a fist fight with Todoroki in the middle of the race, although the both stop for a second when she laughs.
And runs right past them with light, sure steps.
"Hell no! Get back here wasp girl!"
Again with the wasps?
Suzume spins away from him, her feet barely touching the ground as she dodges outside his blow. She dances between him, Todoroki, and the mines below. Bakugou twists mid air, his palms igniting over and over before he launches himself at them with one extended. It glows bright orange and the smell of burnt sugar is almost overwhelming.
Suzume shoves herself off the ground and back flips over Todoroki's shoulder.
"Sorry," she lies, landing lightly and sprinting off while Todoroki takes the brunt of the explosion.
Bakugou screams after her, and she tries not to laugh again, that same spark in her chest.
She frantically tamps it down and breaks for the last stretch.
Something explodes in the back of the minefield. Suzume's head snaps around to see Midoriya go soaring from behind, clutching a piece of sheet metal that came from the robots that Suzume had dodged.
"Hell no!" Bakugou roars and charges after Midoriya, exploding faster and faster. Todoroki swears and freezes the ground to go after them, clearing the path for the rest of the teams. Suzume shakes her head and turns back to the front. Almost there.
Suzume barely clears the area before there's a second huge explosion and Midoriya passes her by like a bullet, launching straight through the gates to the finish line. Bakugou and Todoroki are hot on his tail, and Suzume grits her teeth and struggles to hold onto her lead. Something sharp catches her leg and she shouts, stumbling over the vine that had come out of nowhere while someone new goes rushing past.
They burst out of the hallway and into the field again.
Midoriya, Todoroki, Bakugou, Ibara, and Suzume.
She kind of wants to scream.
Instead she slumps against the wall while the rest of her class makes their way to the finish line.
She tilts her head back against the wall and swallows thickly. It had been like the entrance exam, and she'd placed further down.
Damn.
Damn it.
Suzume doesn't need to be the number one hero. She doesn't need to top the popularity charts or anything like that. All she needs is to become a hero, period.
She can still do that even if she doesn't get scouted here by heroic agencies, but it'll make it all the harder if she doesn't intern with a good company. And the lower she ranks, the less of a chance there is of that. Most wouldn't take a chance on someone like her anyways, or if they did it would be a 'diversity hire' at best.
She has to prove herself.
She has to get a leg up and show the world, right here, right now, that she can keep up with people with insane quirks like Todoroki and Bakugou.
The world will never let you be a hero.
There's a soft thud beside her, and she glances over to see Todoroki himself, steam rising off of his skin, trying to catch his breath in the shade beside her. He looks about as happy as she feels.
There's still frost along his right shoulder. She never noticed, but the gathering patterns are actually kind of pretty.
"You might want to melt that before we get started with the next round."
Todoroki glances her way and then looks at his shoulder. His mouth thins into a line.
"It'll be fine. I'm not giving my old man the joy of seeing me use his quirk."
Suzume tried to stifle her snort, but apparently not well enough because his mis-matched eyes snap up to narrow at her.
"Sorry," she leans heavier against the wall. "That's just a weird way to say it. Since it's your quirk, not his."
"I got it from him. You know he's-"
"Endeavor, yeah. I know. But you heard Thirteen's lecture. Quirks can be good or bad depending on how you use them. And your fire is yours, no matter who you inherited it from. So it's your choice how to use it, or not, I suppose."
He stares at her, his mouth parted before he shuts it and changes whatever he was going to say.
"What would you know about it?"
Suzume resists a small wince of her own. It's not like it's the meanest thing she's ever heard.
"Well, considering I haven't inherited any type of quirk? Not much I guess. But my dad is a criminal, and my brother has the same color eyes and the same quirk as his. That doesn't mean he's going to gouge his own eyes out or rip out all his teeth."
She shrugs, and closes her eyes again.
"Do what you want. Your life is your own, Todoroki."
He's silent beside her, while the last of the stragglers finally stumble in.
"Good job everyone! From here on out, only the top 42 students have earned the right to continue on. The second stage of the festival is about to begin. From here on out even the press will be teeming in a white heat of excitement. So go all out kids!"
Suzume cracks her eyes open to look over at Midnight. She's not the only person looking displeased. Everyone who came in after her, and even the three that powered ahead, look irate. Only Midoriya seems happy, and he's crying.
Again.
"Today's second event... The suspense is killing me, and I already know what it is! A cavalry battle! Everyone get in teams of two to four people, and form a horseback configuration. Basically, it's the same as a normal cavalry battle. Swipe the enemy riders headbands and guard your own. Except for one thing. Everyone will receive points based on their performance in the last trial."
"Those points will go up in increments of five, starting from the bottom. The only exception to that rule, is the first place winner of the race. Their point value will be… ten million!"
The entire atmosphere shifts on a dime.
Midoriya stands frozen, horror on his face. Ten million points.
Everyone is going to be after him.
Better him than her. Still, she needs to figure out a team. She doesn't exactly have friends in this class.
What's worse, everyone else seems to be conglomerating already.
She looks for Kirishima, or Kaminari, but both of them are already standing with three other people. Bakugou and Todoroki's teams respectively.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.
"Hey Yusada."
Suzume falters mid mental-swear and looks over. Tsu walks towards her with Shoji and Hagakure.
"Hey," she looks at the three of them, a bit confused. "What's up?"
"We were hoping to get a fourth person for our team," Hagakure bounces over. "Do you want to help us out?"
Suzume's legs go weak.
My heroes.
"Yes," she says, a little too quickly. She clears her throat. "I'd like to be on your team."
"Awesome!" The invisible girl pumps her fist up. "This is gonna be so cool!"
Suzume looks over the three of them. A few sorta crazy ideas are already popping into her head.
"You might be right about that. Say, Hakagure, how good are you at jumping?"
They press together, away from their classmates, and whisper their strategy for the remaining five minutes. It's not much, it's rushed together but between the four of them, it just might work.
Midnight hands them a headband with their total number on it, 510. Hagakure had only gotten fifty points, Shoji had 145, Tsu had 150, and Suzume had 190. Despite that, Hagakure is their trump card.
Suzume grips Shoji's shoulder tightly.
"Are you sure you can carry all three of us?"
"None of you are very heavy, don't worry about it," he shoots her a curved eye smile over his shoulder. Or she assumes it's a smile. His mouth is still covered, but years of reading Kai's expression over his own constant mask, and the ones he makes his companions wear, has made it easier for her to tell.
"Okay…"
She's just going to have to trust him on this. He leans forwards and bends his arms back, forming an umbrella over them. Their headband rests on Tsu's forehead.
"So, since everyone will be gunning for Midoriya, we just need to pick off the others. I'm pretty sure we stand a good chance against everyone who isn't Todoroki and Bakugou's teams, and they'll probably be focused on him too."
"I don't know about that," Tsu taps her finger to her chin. "They might come after us, too."
"Why would they do that? I mean, we've got over 500 points, but they have no reason to target us in particular."
"Not us. You."
Suzume stares at her.
"Huh?"
Tsu stares back at her.
"You know what. Nevermind."
She wants to ask Tsu to explain herself, but Midnight's voice cuts through her question.
"Everyone! BEGIN!"
Almost everyone converges on Midoriya at once, but Todoroki freezes most of them in place before they can reach him. Shoji runs as quietly as he can behind them, and opens his arms long enough for Hagakure, now totally naked, to jump out and grab the headband off of 1-B's weird praying mantis looking student. Tsu whips her tongue out and drags the invisible girl back in where it's safe, and Hagakure passed the headband along to her. They flip over the point numbers, so no one can tell what their value is on the off chance someone actually makes it through their defenses.
They're vulnerable when Shoji opens his arms to let Hagakure out, but Tsu isn't exactly helpless and Suzume is perfectly capable of defending them.
She grips her new staff, hanging in its three pieces, and watches the teams around them.
"Alright. Hagakure, ready to go again?"
"Yeah!" Susume grips the three sections in both hands and holds them out. She feels Hagakure put her weight on the and invisible hands grasp her shoulders.
"One, two, three!" Shoji parts his arms and Suzume launches Hagakure out. The only way they even knew where she was, was because Tsu could apparently see infrared light. Including where Hagakure was.
Who knew?
Tsu's eyes track Hakagure while she sails over to land lightly on the shoulder of Honenuki, who stumbles to the side and throws the rest of his team off, and bounces back off again, with their headband snatched off Tetsutetsu's head. Tsu's tongue lashes out to catch her, just as a scaled arm comes in from the other side aiming at her head.
Suzume twists on Shoji's back and swings, catching the clawed hand on one section. She swings the other one at his face, forcing the 1-B dragon to dodge the hard metal cap. His 'horse' swings a furry arm up and Shoji dodges them to the side. The sudden weight of Hagakure against her back comes a second before his arms close around them, encasing the three girls in darkness again while he runs off.
They add the head band to Tsu's collections, and turn their attention onto their next target.
The redhead. Kendo.
Her team is totally frozen to the ground.
This time Shoji makes sure that there's no one else approaching them before opening his arms. Suzume launches Hagakure their way. The lizard girl from the entrance exam stumbles when new weight is added to her shoulder and shouts a warning. It's a split second, but it's all Kendo needs to lash out and grab Hagakure in her enlarged fist.
"Hey! Let go!" Hagakure shrieks.
"Crap," Suzume grabs Shoji's hand and crouches on his shoulders. "Throw me!"
Tsu would be better for this, but they can't risk her headbands.
Shoji launches her so fast her eyes sting with the wind, and she lands a hard kick on Kendo's face, forcing her to release Hagakure. Suzume jumps off of her, smashing her heel into the top of ghost girls head and taking off towards Shoji. Suzume whips out her gun and shoots, embedding the hook in the ground past Shoji.
"Hagakure!" She reaches for the last place the invisible girl was and feels her hands grab onto her wrist. She pulls her into the tightest, most awkwards hold she can get, and they're yanked forwards.
The fly, inches off the ground, away from Kendo's team.
Shoji reaches down and scoops them up, barely saving them from disqualification. He deposits them onto his back and covers them again.
"Holy crap!" Hagakure clings to Suzume's shoulders. "That was insane!"
Suzume lets out a breath and hugs her tighter. "Yeah. Shit, I didn't grab their headband!"
"It's okay," Tsu assures.
Shoji pipes up, "There's one more team close enough for us to try. Ready?"
"Yeah!"
"Who are we going for?"
"Jiro."
They peak out to see their classmate sitting on the shoulders of Koda and Sato. The boys are big, and potentially dangerous, but Jirou is their actual challenge. Her hearing is insane, although it's not much good without something to plug her jacks into, but more than that her quirks gives her a startling amount of range with how far it can extend.
Suzume's going to have to watch out for a counter attack.
"Alright, let's go!"
"Right!"
They make a run for Jiro, who turns when she hears them coming. Shoji tenses, prepared to open his arms and-
Someone slips in behind her and snatches the headband right off.
Wild purple hair. Shinsou.
The timer goes off and they fall still.
"He beat us…" Hagakure hugs Suzume, her head falling against her shoulder in defeat. Suzume thinks it's weird, but she doesn't shrug her off.
"Mhmm. That's one to watch out for."
Luckily, Hagakure doesn't stay down for long. "Let's go wait with everyone else. Shoji, can you cover me while I put my clothes back on?"
"Uh, sure. Yeah. I can do that."
It doesn't take long for them to tally up the points, and by the time Midnight is ready to announce them Hagakure is fully dressed again and standing between Shoji and Suzume.
"What a beautiful, passionate demonstration!" Midnight clutches herself, "Absolutely breath taking students! Good job, all of you. You did your best out there, but only four teams can advance! Those four teams are…"
"Team Todoroki, with 10,000,325 points. Team Suzume, with 1,285 points. Team Bakugou, with 1,260 points, and team Shinsou, with 885 points. They didn't pass but they still gave it their all, Fifth place goes to team Midoriya, with 600 points, and sixth place goes to team Monoma, with 60 points."
"Alright!" Hagakure punches the air with a wild cheer. "We got second place!"
Suzume smiles at her, but when she looks over the rest of their classmates she's struck by the vicious glare Bakugou is leveling their way.
Oh boy.