Quick reminder! There are gonna be some manga spoilers in this fic.
Suzume taps her pencil on her desk, staring hard at the grains of wood. She didn't tell Kaname about the guy at the restaurant. She didn't tell anyone at all. What's she supposed to say? How is she supposed to start?
The door opens and Aizawa walks in, his face free of the last of his bandages. There's a small scar under one eye, and for once in his life he looks well rested.
It's odd.
But not bad.
Suzume pauses, her pencil still raised.
Aizawa is an underground hero. He does sneaky stuff all the time. Maybe…
Maybe she should tell him?
He was the first teacher to ever help her when it came to bullies. What were cults if not bullies?
She barely hears Kaminari mutter to Kirishima, "Does Yusada look extra intense today, or is it just me?"
"No man, you're right. It's kinda scary…"
"Alright, listen up kids," Aizawa calls them all to attention.
Silence falls immediately. After the first few times of seeing his quirk, glowing red eyes and floating hair, everyone had started doing exactly as they were told.
"We have a big class today, on Hero informatics."
Tension tightens in the room. Everyone looks at each other.
Aizawa relishes their worry before his mouth twitches. "You need codenames. Time to pick your hero identities."
Everyone explodes in excitement, cheering over the idea. Suzume smiles a bit too. She already knows hers.
She'd thought, for a while, about keeping to just her name. Plain old Suzume.
But there was her brother's name for her, the one from when they played heroes as children.
Just like he'd taken on the name she came up with him.
Class silences again when Aizawa's quirk activates.
"Hush. This is related to the Pro Hero draft picks the last time we talked about last time we were in class together. Normally students don't have to worry about this until their second or third year, but your class is different. In fact, by extending offers to first years like you, Pros are essentially investing in your potential. Any offer can be rescinded if their interest in you dies down before graduation though. So put on a good show."
"So what you're saying is we still have to prove ourselves after we've gotten recruited?" Hagakure asks, lifting her hand.
"That's what I said. Now, here are the totals for those of you who got offers." He clicks a remote and the totals start showing up on a screen behind him.
Todoroki got the most, of course. Then Bakugou, then Tokoyami, Iida, Midoriya, Yaoyarozu, and Suzume herself.
She's not surprised. She kind of expected to get even less than that. Most pros won't take a chance on a quirkless kid like her, and the ones who will are probably looking for a diversity hire. Or worse, looking to dissuade her.
Her jaw tightens.
"Gahh" Kaminari leans his head back in his seat, "That's no fair."
"What about the real star, Moi?" Aoyama adds. Which reminds Suzume. She needs to talk to him.
"Todoroki got the most ahead of Bakugo and Yusada?" Jirou sits back and twirls her earphone around a finger.
"That's crazy considering how they placed in the festival." Kirishima adds, surprised. "I know they can't offer a place to that kid from Gen Ed, but still. Shouldn't she have the most? Or at least Bakugou?"
"They probably weren't excited about working with the guy who had to be muzzled up at the end."
"If I scared a pro, they're just weak!" Bakugo snaps.
"And most heroes wouldn't want to- to, um," Mina stumbles across her words, looking at Suzume awkwardly.
Suzume glances at her out of the corner of her eye.
"Go on. Say it."
Mina makes a face.
Bakugou twists in his seat to glare at everyone.
"Most heroes don't wanna risk their necks on a quirkless student."
"What he said," she nods to him. Trust Bakugou to be blunt. Although he himself hasn't said anything about her status in a bit. "And the ones who would take me, probably have other motives behind it. Like upping their image among the quirkless community, or taking on charity for the poor girl in over her head."
"... but you won the festival?" Kaminari points out.
"But a good chunk of the people watching were convinced I was cheating somehow."
He grimaces. "Oh. Right."
Midnight saunters through the door. "Get ready! What you pick today could be your codename for life, you better be careful, or you'll be stuck with something utterly indecent."
There are some things I know now, that I wish someone had been around to tell me when I was younger. But all my teachers were men.
Suzume grimaces. That was a hell of a new perspective.
Aizawa waves at her.
"Yeah, Midnight is going to have final approval over your names, It's not my forte. The name you give yourself is important. It helps reinforce your image and shows what kind of hero you want to be in the future. A good name tells everyone exactly what you want to represent. Take All Might for example."
She would rather not. But its a good point.
She watches as one by one her classmates get up and list off their names. Some good. Some bad.
Suzume writes her name down and walks to the front after Bakugou gets his shot down.
She flips it to face the class.
"Suzumebachi."
"A killer wasp?" Midnight asks, peering at it curiously.
"Sure? Although if I use the right kanji and split it up it could also be 'sparrow' and 'punishment'. But," she tugs at her scrunchy, holding the board up with her other hand. "It's something my older brother came up with when we were kids."
She half expects Midnight to shoot it down. Instead, the woman claps her hands together.
"Something meaningful like that will help to push you towards your goal. Suzumebachi it is."
Suzume smiles faintly, and goes to sit back down while the last few names go up.
Suzumebachi.
It barely feels real.
Deku chooses his name, and Bakugou's is shot down again, before they're allowed to go to lunch.
It's a weird day, some of the class times have been moved around for a faculty meeting, so the lunch room is even more packed than usual with their upperclassmen shuffled in.
Now that she's not so laser focused on the sports festival, there's someone she needs to see.
When she looks around, her tray in hand, she finds that most of her class has overtaken two tables in the corner, away from the worst of the congestion. The third years and some of the second years are allowed to go off campus for lunch if they want, and she figures that that's where Mirio is. She doesn't see his distinct hair anywhere.
The table nearest to her is populated by Bakugou, Kirishima, Kaminari, Shoji, Sero, Ashido, and Aoyama. The table behind it is made up of Midoriya, Ururaka, Iida, Todoroki, Hagakure, Tsu, and Shinsou of all people.
Even though there's less room on it, Suzume forcefully squeezes herself between Ashido and Aoyama, and turns to the boy.
He looks at her, his smile oddly nervous.
"So you speak French, right?" she asks without preamble. When she turns to face him and props her elbow on the back of her seat, she almost hits Midoriya in the head.
"Oui?" his nervous smile turns confused. "It is a beautiful language, befitting-"
"Yeah, yeah. What does, 'Se pa versaj isi' mean?"
Aoyama looks physically ill at her pronunciation of his beautiful native tongue.
"Do you mean, 'c'est pas Versailles ici'?" he asks, pained.
"That's the bitch."
Aoyama wrinkles his nose. "Very roughly, it means, 'We don't live in Versailles'. Did you leave the lights on or something?"
She blinks in surprise. "I turned the light on and my mom yelled at me."
"Your mother is french?" he asks, his eyes lighting up.
She shrugs. "I dunno. She's never said anything about it, but my oldest brother says that she used to sing songs about the best way to kill a bird."
Aoyama claps his hands together. "She is french!"
"That's a weird way to figure it out."
"It's a very popular children's song," he defends, "Allouette, gentille alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai. And it is about plucking a bird and cooking it, sung to the bird."
"... okay so the French are mildly terrifying. Got it."
Ashido snickers on Suzume's other side. "You're not scared of big bad villains with death quirks but you're afraid of kids songs?" She teases.
"Okay first off, I was very afraid of that, second off, that sounds like a song you'd sing while you're lowering lotion into a pit to someone who you're planning on making into a human leisure suit."
Aoyama's smile changes. It fades from his eyes.
"Ah, speaking of dangerous quirks," it's a very weird transition in conversation. "If you could have a quirk, any quirk, which one would it be?"
Suzume blinks at Aoyama for a second.
Flickers of memory stir and Suzanna Hemmings cocks her head, inside Suzume's mind. There are dots to connect here.
"... like, any of your guys' quirks? Or just in general?" She asks, surprised. There's an undercurrent of irritation in her chest though. When did she ever say she wanted one at all?
"Oh, both!" Ashido bumps her shoulder. "I'm curious. I wanna know. Who's quirk do you think is the best, since you're unbiased?"
In the span of a heartbeat, she suddenly has everyone's attention on her.
Oh. She does not like this at all.
"I guess… Well, probably Kaminari's?"
Kaminari punches his fist in the air. "Hell yeah! I'm the best!"
The tables erupt in disbelief, with everyone trying to defend their quirk as the best.
Midoriya scoots his chair back. His green eyes are curious. "How come you picked his? Why not Kirishima, or Kacchan's? Or Todoroki?"
"Hey man, he asked which one I wanted. Not which one I think is the most useful."
Kaminari falls back out of his seat. "What?!"
"You fry your brain every time you over use it," she points out. "I just like electric quirks for the aesthetic. Although if we're talking more effective ways of using it, you could carry around super thin wires and knives, set traps, and turn yourself into like. An electric spider."
"That sounds so creepy," Hagakure objects, shivering hard enough they can see it.
"I kinda like it," Tsu argues. "And he did say he's the stun gun hero now."
"Hey, I've got a question," Suzume waves at him. "Can you feel the electricity in walls and stuff? Or in other people?"
"Oh!" Midoriya smacks his fist into his palm, "human movement is just electrical impulses in the body, right? If you got fine enough control over your quirk do you think you could take control of someone else?"
Kaminari looks between the two of them, a little bit scared.
"I don't know. I've never tried that stuff before! And why would I need to control people? We've got Shinsou now, don't we?"
"You two," he points at her and Midoriya, "Come up with the weirdest ideas."
"I think you're just uncreative," Suzume sniffs at him.
"You said you picked based on aesthetic. Which one would you pick for practicality?"
It's Bakugou of all people who asks it.
She stares at him.
"Mmm. I can fight up close fine. So something long ranged. Probably Todoroki's, or yours, but I think his has more non-destructive powers with the who ice thing."
"It takes a lot of practice to get fine tuned control," Todoroki says from behind her.
"Everything takes practice," she retorts.
Aoyama, looking pale, asks her, "And if it was not limited to us? What kind of quirk would you want?"
Suzume drums her fingers on the table, considering.
"...Okay this is gonna sound really weird," she warns, "But probably 'decay'."
"Decay? Shigaraki's quirk?" he asks, stunned. He's not the only one. Ashido gapes at her.
"Why?" Kirishima asks, "He almost killed you!"
"So?" Suzume eyes him. "Literally any of you could use your quirks to kill someone. Remember what Thirteen said?"
He nods, reluctantly.
Suzume goes on. "Besides, it's not something I'd use for fighting. I've got the fighting part covered, but if something happens and I have to be a rescue hero, then all of that isn't going to mean much. I can do basic first aid, but what if someone's trapped under something heavy, or blocked off from me? There are limits to how much I can lift, and what I can move. If I had decay, I could clear away debris and free people. Like a close ranged version of Black Hole, basically."
"Huh. I never would have thought of it that way," Ashido admits, "I can do stuff like that with my acid, but there's a risk of it dripping on whoever I'm trying to save too. And if it's acidic enough to burn through rocks and stuff that would be really bad."
"You're right. He was trying to kill us, so I didn't think of other ways it could be used, but that guy could have been a pretty good rescue hero," Sero looks uncomfortable with the realization.
"Too bad he decided to be a villain," Ururaka adds. "I wonder why he did?"
"I mean, he seemed pretty crazy to me," Tsu points out.
Suzume pokes at her lunch. "There's a victim in every villain," she muses. "So probably something horrible."
"I've never heard that before," Shoji peers down at her.
"It's an old saying. I don't even know where I first heard it. But it's not wrong."
"Villains are evil," Iida snaps, startling them, "Plain and simple."
"It depends on their crimes," Suzume argues, "Crimes of cruelty are one thing, but crimes of necessity are another."
"Necessity?" Todoroki's brows raise.
"That's what I said. Like… Like, say you're gay and your parents kick you out. Most charities won't help you, and foster care is a disaster. You're homeless, no job, no money, and starving. You steal a loaf of bread and push down the baker when they try to stop you, so you don't die. That's not the same crime as, say, if you were jealous of your neighbor's new necklace so you broke into her house, killed her and her dog, and stole it. You see? In one, you've been failed by the people around you and put into a desperate situation. In the other, you're just a greedy twat."
Kaminari hums. "I never thought of that."
Suzume shrugs. When she looks down, Aoyama has made a strangely quiet exit for such a flamboyant person, leaving her sitting next to Shoji.
Huh.
She's not sure she wants to know what that was all about. And all around her, her classmates start arguing over what should be done if you steal bread so you don't die.
Joy.
I'm starting to think I'm cursed to never have a quiet lunch, ever.
She's proven right when Shoji turns to her.
"You've mentioned two brothers. How many do you have?"
She considers leaving. This is getting uncomfortably close to having friends. But, she looks up at his face, his eyes nothing but curious, and remembers that he had helped her in the cavalry battle when they barely knew each other. She can at least be nice to him.
She likes Shoji anyways. He's not annoying.
"Five," she admits. "I'm the youngest."
"Six children?" The mouth on the edge of his arm squawks, "That's so many."
"I know," she smiles faintly. "My oldest brother is actually fourteen years older than me. He's got a wife and kid. And they said they're trying for another one not that long ago. My second oldest brother is a paralegal these days, but we don't see much of him. The twins are in college. One of them is going to work oversees this summer for some kind of agricultural study? And the other one just finished designing his very first game."
He's even managed to convince her to try to play it, to see if the mechanics are user friendly enough for beginners like her.
"Then there's Kaname. He's in his last year of Ketsubutsu right now."
"Was he the one who came up with your hero name?"
"Bingo," she shoots him a lazy finger gun.
One of Shoji's hands, the one that hadn't been talking to her, starts eating his lunch.
She eyes it, her dark brows furrowing.
"Does that feel weird?" she asks. Then pauses. "You don't have to answer that, by the way. It's none of my business."
Shoji pauses, before he shakes head. "It's fine. It does feel weird sometimes, but I've gotten used to it."
Suzume hums. "Can I ask you another question you don't have to answer?"
He tilts his body towards her. "If you really want to."
"Do you have a mouth on your face? Like, at all?" She was careful to sound only curious, not judgemental. There was definitely a reason he wore a mask habitually, and she doubted it had to do with germs.
"I do," he admitted, "But it's not exactly… normal."
As opposed to having mouths on your hands?
"Ah. Well, if you like it this way," she shrugs.
"I just wouldn't want to cause anyone distress," he shakes his head. She has to strain to hear his voice. His words make her stomach turn. "I scare children."
Suzume pushes her tray, now empty, forwards and crosses her arms on the table to lay her head on them.
"As long as you're not hurting anyone, you should do whatever makes you happiest. The rest of the world can go fuck itself."
Shoji stares at her, his eyes huge over his mask.
She shoots him a very small smile, and listens in to Kaminari talking about Les Mis of all things.
Suzume squeaks in surprise when strong hands grab her by her shoulders and shake her in excitement.
"Holy crap you were awesome!"
"Togata!" She grabs his wrists, and he stops, still beaming like a sun down at her. He's nearly a foot taller than she is, and built like a brick wall.
"I saw the rerun of your fights. That semi-final one was insane."
She puffs her cheeks at him.
"I barely won it."
"But you still won," he insists. "You did way better than I did my first year."
"Didn't you end up buck naked on live TV?"
He laughs, and lets go of her to scratch his cheek. "Yeeeeah I totally did. I still didn't have the best handle on my quirk then."
Suzume's brow twitches. "How did you even make it into the hero course?"
"Back then? Mostly luck."
Suzume… kind of hates him.
"Ah."
"But! That's not what I'm here to talk to you about."
"Aren't you here to take the train…?"
"That too, c'mon. I like the earrings by the way."
"Oh, thanks," she touches her ears subconsciously, and follows him onto the train.
They take their usual spots, side by side in the car. Suzume holds her bag on her lap, and looks at him expectantly.
"Have you decided who you're going to do your internship with?" he asks, blue eyes bright.
Suzume considers him.
"I had a few offers. I was thinking of Kesagiri Man, or maybe Crust. Hawks, of all people, sent me an offer too, but I'm not sure what all I could learn from him besides like. PR stuff. He relies almost exclusively on his quirk, and as useful as his quirk is, it doesn't help me any and I'm not sure what exactly I could learn from that. So Crust or Kesagiri Man."
Although she does want a chance to have a conversation with Hawks. She has some questions for him.
"Yeah?" Mirio asks, cocking his head. "Why them?"
She had wanted to ask Midoriya what he thought about them. He knew more about heroes than anyone else possibly in the world. But Midoriya still got weird around her, and there wasn't time for a two hour dissertation on each hero.
"Kesagiri Man, he doesn't rely overtly on his quirk, not the way a lot of heroes do, and the way he fights is emphasized on speed. When the USJ happened I got sloppy. I let some jumped up sand man get close enough to hit me-"
Mirio snorts at her description of an S-ranked villain who tried to kill All Might.
"- So I should work on that. Then there's Crust. He's primarily a defensive hero, and while he does rely a lot on his quirk for fighting, he also does a lot of group work. I… don't. Whenever I've had to team up with my classmates, it's always been clunky and awkward. Like we're different people doing different things, instead of one team with one goal. Since my class is probably cursed, I should get better at cohesion. And, possibly, at keeping my temper."
"Oh yeah. You almost picked a fight with a bunch of folks in the stands."
Suzume grimaces.
"Yeah. I did do that. And even though no one will tell you, because no one wants to admit that they lost to a quirkless little girl, I got in a lot of fights in middle school with people who thought I'd let them push me around."
Mirio makes a face. For someone who smiles so often, it's strange to see him grimace like that.
"I'm glad you stood up for yourself, but I wish you didn't need to."
"Yeah. But that whole 'ignore bullies, they'll lose interest' is such a crock of shit. You just make yourself an easier target that way."
"I think it's pretty cool that you were willing to stand up to that. It's real heroic, you know? Especially for a middle schooler, sometimes that's all you can do."
"Well I am in the hero course, I guess."
It didn't feel heroic when she did it. It felt like anger and blood on her knuckles and an ache from clenching her jaw too hard.
"Yes you are! Which brings me back to why I was asking you in the first place."
There was a reason?
"Kay?"
Mirio taps his hands together in a gesture she's pretty sure he picked up from Negire. "If you haven't set your heart on one of those, do you want to do your internship with Sir Nighteye? You mentioned once that he's one of your favorite heroes, and he was pretty impressed with how you did during the festival. He asked me to ask you if you'd be interested."
Suzume feels her jaw drop open.
"He- You- What?!"
Sir Nighteye wanted her to do her internship at his agency?
She impressed him?!
"He said you were rough around the edges, but you have a lot of potential and passion."
"What."
"Yeah. So, what do you say?"
"I mean. Yes?"
She's stunned. In the quiet, practical parts of her mind someone whispers about Nighteye and Kai, and clever men who are too interested in the Yakuza goings on. But Kai hasn't done anything to Eri, he doesn't have quirk erasing bullets (as far as she knows) there's no reason for Nighteye to be after him.
There's no reason for him to be interested in her. None but the ones Togata had listed. Right?
He beams once more, all light and bright enough it hurts her eyes.
"I'll tell Sir when I get in tonight. It'll be fun. You'll learn a lot from him."
She listens to Mirio go on about his first internship with Sir Nighteye, and how awkward he'd been with Bubble Girl and his own difficult to control quirk.
"I can't see it," Suzume admits. "I can't picture you being any kind of self conscious or awkward."
Mirio shrugs. "I've grown a lot since then. Remind me to introduce you to Tamaki some time."
"... The socially anxious vampire?"
"Ah! So you know him?"
"I know of him."
"Perfect. I think you'll be good for him."
"I think I'll scare him."
"Oh, one hundred percent. It'll be great!"
Suzume wrinkles her nose at this strange blond boy.
"Well it's not like we don't go to school together."
"That's the spirit! And who knows, maybe we'll see him and Fat Gum while we're doing your internship."
Suzume lets out a breath. Right. Her internship.
She's going to do it with Sir Nighteye.
Her heart quivers in her chest.
"Thanks."
"You don't have to thank me," he smiles at her, "You earned this."
Suzume sits in the den above the garage, cross legged in front of the TV. Heat from the fireplace presses against her back. Her pajamas are soft and warm.
She flicks through the options for her avatar on screen, giving the medium sized woman lovely lavender hair, pale pink skin, and freckles. The game, Seiji's design, is steampunk themed so she picks out a black dress with a corset and those big skirts the pull up on two sides like curtains. Her character doesn't need to be practical. So she gives her a necklace and a wide, smiling mouth.
Once she adjusts the length of boots and gloves and gives the woman a dainty little hat sitting crooked on her head she saves the avatar and gets shot into a waiting room.
She spins her girl around so she can look around the lobby. There's paintings on all the walls. There's five, although there's space for more. She's pretty sure Seiji is planning on adding more, but this is just a beta test.
She settles her headset more firmly and waits for someone else to join her lobby.
The game is relatively simple. Players form teams of three to five people, each person with their own ability. She could choose between talking to ghosts, opening portals through the portraits, seeing brief scenes from the past, turning invisible, and having a gun.
Suzume chooses gun.
From there, they have to go from one portrait to another, and solve the murders depicted inside of them, and hunt down the killer. It may be steampunk styled, but it's fantasy.
Above her avatar's head floats her username.
It's kind of silly, but she's just doing this for fun after all.
SuzyQ
Someone else pops up next to her.
He's a riot of color, with a brilliant red coat and garish yellow vest beneath it. His hair is bright blue, and he's got a straight mouth that looks like a grimace.
Dusty has entered the Lobby. Waiting for more players.
Suzume wonders if she's supposed to say something, but 'Dusty' beats her to it.
"Huh. The graphics are better than I was expecting," his voice was raspy and quiet. He sounded a little older than she is.
"Oh yeah. It's super pretty," she drawls, turning her avatar towards one of the more gruesome paintings.
Dusty snorts.
Truthfully, the artwork is amazing. As horrific as it is, whoever did it is an amazing artist.
A third person appears, this one in a white shirt, green vest, and blue top hat. He has goggles around his neck, and black hair tied back in a tail.
Spinner has entered the lobby.
Suzume stares at the name. There is absolutely no way that that's Spinner, Spinner.
No way.
Not a single one.
"Hi?" she says. There's a crackle of his mic coming on.
"Hey! I like the avatar."
Suzume grins.
"Thanks! There were a lot of options, I wasn't totally sure what to pick. I did pick a gun, though. What about you?"
"I can open the pictures," Spinner says.
"I talk to dead people," Dusty volunteers. "And I'm getting bored. Let's get started already, we only need three people."
"Are you sure?"
"A quality party is better than a quantity party. Trust me."
Suzume winces. "Ooof. That might be a problem then. I'm here because they needed someone who doesn't play a lot of games to make sure that it's, you know, playable for a novice."
"A noob."
"That's somehow worse than what I said? But yes."
Dusty makes a sound of disgust. "Whatever. If you're bad enough I'll drop you and find a better team."
Suzume shrugs. "You do you dude. Spinner, which portrait are we starting with?"
Spinner turns to one depicting a man strung up by his arms and legs, bent in unnatural directions.
"That one looks like where we start. I think there's more portraits inside these ones, for side quests and mini games and stuff."
"Let's go!" Dusty circles the two of them restlessly. "If we run into trouble, SuzyQ can shoot it for us."
"Impatient," she mumbles.
Spinner snorts. He steps closer to the portrait, and his character lifts its hands up. The game sings some kind of bell filled opera, the portrait ripples and shifts restlessly. Shadowy whips lash out and grab all three of them, dragging them headlong into the nightmare.
This might actually be fun.
Y'all I had SUCH a hard time deciding who I wanted her to intern with.
I was really close to Hawks or Mirko, because Hawks (my beloved) is already a foil to Suzume and I really want to write more interactions between the two of them. I could slip in some HPSC shenanigans into that internship.
And Mirko because she's a very intense, bad ass fighter and even though she's pretty against having side kicks or partners I could see her being interested in this stubborn, angry little girl who just kicked the shit out of people twice her size. Theirs would be a very feral, violent partnership I think.
And of course Gang Orca! Suzume is an unusual character for me, in terms of how close she is to her family, so writing how she and Kaname would work together in the field and how their protective 'touch my sib and I'll cut you mother fucker' natures would either help or hinder them in a dangerous situation is absolutely something I'm going to add somewhere.
Check out my tumblr! @Lo-55