Oh my god so much is happening in this chapter too!
I was initially planning on letting Suzume skip some of this trauma, but then I figured this would be more fun :D
A lot of you noticed, but her murder solving last chapter was from Bungou Stray Dogs. Her next one will be completely original, but it's involved in a Hawks scene that I had to cut for this arc.
Im posting this off of the app so if it's a bit weird that's why.
The next day is much the same, although Centipeder has her sit in and take notes on a call he makes to set up a meeting with a police officer for follow up interviews with suspects that they captured at heroes the day before she arrived, and Suzume fills out another intensely detailed police report about the incident at the waterfront yesterday.
She and Centipeder go out to get lunch down the street for themselves and Nighteye, since Bubble Girl is off today.
That afternoon, Togata comes back in his school clothes and the two of them change into their hero costumes again before going to patrol.
Or at least they try to.
Nighteye stops them before they can get to the door, Togata leading the way.
"Hold on. There's been a change in plans," he holds up his hand. "We're taking a trip to Inowa, they need emergency help in a building collapse. They want Lemillion specifically. Suzumebachi, you can stay with Centipeder here in the office, or come with us."
"I'll come," she says immediately. "I don't know how much good I'll be, but I'd like to at least see how the situation is handled. Besides, you don't need to walk through walls to hand out shock blankets."
Off they go, to the train station.
Suzume watches Hosu pass them by, and thinks again of Iida. He's totally doing something stupid right now.
Inowa, it turns out, is a very small city not thirty minutes away by train.
They have three pro heroes, and of the three only one specializes in rescue. He's a tall man, who dissolves into smoke and reassembles, letting him slip through cracks and get into fallen buildings. It also makes him relatively fire proof. He and Togata, and a team of firefighters, go into the destroyed office building and pull out person after person.
Suzume only knows basic first aid, so she settles for doing what the paramedics tell her and keeping the crowd away. She also does her best to entertain a handful of children who had been in a daycare in the office building, by telling them stories and making up rhymes. She's sure she looks ridiculous, but the kids are laughing by the time they're collected.
It isn't as big of a deal as they initially thought it would be. One of the upper level floors collapsed and took a good chunk of wall and more floors down with it.There's only a few major injuries though, and two women rushed to the hospital, one with slow bleeding on the brain and one with a punctured lung.
Suzume may not know advanced medicine, but she knows how people die. Both women should be fine if they get to the hospital quick enough.
After that it's shock blankets and water bottles, and fielding reporters.
Suzume says 'no comment' more times in one hour than she ever thought was even possible, and she still only gets left alone when she points out that she's a minor without a guardian available to consent to an interview.
All in all, they finish just as the sun is starting to dip to the horizon. Suzume estimates that they have maybe an hour left of light.
Nighteye turns to her and Togata, who looks a little tired but is still in good spirits.
He eyes the pair of young people critically.
"...Good job out there. Lemillion, you did good work rescuing those people. And Suzumebachi, you did the right thing distracting those kids. It's important for heroes to be able to cheer people up in a disaster. I had my doubts that you could."
Suzume blinks at him.
"Thank you?"
She's going to take that as a compliment.
"You're too serious," says the man who she has seen crack a smile twice. "You'll never win people's confidence in you like that."
"They won't have confidence in me whether I smile or not, as soon as they find out I don't have a quirk," she says, before she can stop herself.
Togata frowns at her. "You did just fine there. With the kids, and the adults. You were calm the whole time, and they picked up on that."
"Because they saw the costume. Once I make an official debut, they'll ask for any other hero to help them. Any hero with a quirk."
"You can't know that," Togata says, sounding kind.
Suzume clasps her hands behind her back and looks up at him.
"I can know that. I do know that. You saw the police yesterday. You heard what Inspector Nakana said. People judge on a million things, and quirks are one of them. If I was a paramedic, or a police officer, it wouldn't matter. But as a hero, it would be on the front of everyone's mind. Can I really protect someone without a quirk?"
She shrugs, trying to act like she doesn't care.
"I know what I'm capable of. But I'll be spending the rest of my life proving it to other people."
He has the decency to look chagrined. "I'm sorry. You're right, people do judge on quirks."
Nighteye breaks them up.
"The two of you should get back to the agency. Lemillion, you said you're going home tonight. Take Suzumebachi back. I need to do a follow up here before I can follow you."
"We can stay," Lemillion offers immediately.
He shakes his head. "You're tired, I can see it. And Suzumebachi isn't used to this kind of work."
The implication is clear. If she wasn't here, Lemillion would stay.
"All I did was pass out blankets and play with kids…"
"Emotional labor is still labor. And you're only fifteen."
Suzume frowns, but she can see that Nighteye is stubborn.
"Fine."
So they climb back on the train.
In the car, Suzume pauses. There's a familiar puff of green hair in the back, sitting next to a tiny old man in yellow and white.
She sits next to Lemillion, staring hard at Deku. Alarm bells are going off.
Then someone across from her looks up and out the window behind her back. They gasp in horror right before the window behind her and Lemillion explodes.
Well, Suzume thinks, staring at the Nomu that had nearly taken her head off, this is not ideal.
Two of its four eyes dart towards her and it turns from the white wolf-like hero it had smashed through the walls of the train. Her fingers dip subtly into her pouch, brushing against the marking on the outside of one of her disks, and in the split second it takes the Nomu to turn its head and open its toothy mouth she flicks the disk out, shooting from the hip.
The nomu swipes at it, and as soon as it makes contact the disk erupts with foam. It swallows the nomu, and partially the hero beneath it.
She clicks her tongue.
"That was rude."
"No kidding," Lemillion peaks down at it, and the unconscious hero beneath nomu. "How do you get that stuff off?"
"Hmm? It should be water soluble."
Suzume looks over her shoulder, through the gap in the metal. She pulls her goggles up and zooms in.
"There's two more," she announces, loud enough for Grand Torus, or whatever his name is, and Deku to hear.
"Suzumebachi!" Deku rushes to her side. "That was incredible."
"Tell that to Hatsume, maybe she'll hook you up."
Suzume nods to her companion. "Lemillion, this is Deku. Deku, Lemillion. He works at the same agency I'm studying at."
"Oh! It's nice to meet you. This is Gran Torino, he's the hero I'm interning with," Deku motions to the older man, who's standing at the edge of the train.
"Girl, you said there were two more out there?"
"My name isn't 'girl', it's Suzumebachi. Deku literally just yelled it," she retorts irritably. "And yes, I said that."
Why does everyone make me repeat myself?
"In that case, I don't have a choice."
With a burst of air, the pro is gone, and the three teenagers are left in the train.
Lemillion plucks his helmet off and lays it on the seat.
"I'm going too. I have my provisional license, and this is an emergency. You two-"
"Are not going to 'stay here' or 'stay where its safe' or whatever you were about to say," Suzume interrupts. She crosses her arms over her chest. "We can at least field civilians, and I won't get in trouble if I have to fight. No quirk means it's impossible for me to catch a vigilante charge."
She wants to snatch the words right back out of the air. She has no desire to fight nomu's, and the city is burning. It makes her chest tight and her skin crawl with memories of the USJ and the sight of Aizawa, pinned and bloody.
But she doesn't take her words back.
Lemillion frowns for all of a minute before he gives a decisive nod.
"I can tell no matter what I say you aren't going to stay here, so at least stay together. Let's go!"
"Right," she and Deku chorus.
Suzume loops an arm around Deku's middle while Lemillion vanishes, phasing through the floor of the train.
Deku squeaks. "What are you doing?!"
"Jumping out of a train. Duh."
She launches them into the air, letting Deku scream in her ear while she lifts her other hand and deploys her grapple. It catches on the underside of the train track and they swing in a broad circle around on the support beams.
She lets them go in time to land neatly on the ground for her part, and messily for Deku's.
Whatever plans she may have had have flown out the window. They're in Hosu, the city is partially on fire, and Stain is most definitely out there someone trying to commit murder.
I think the next time I see him I'm going to smack Shigaraki in the face. This is seriously annoying.
It occurs to her that her response to what is probably a few lost lives and what is definitely a lot of property damage should be more than 'annoying', but her morality has always been on a sliding scale.
"Let's follow the smoke," she nods to the pillar rising in the air and Deku agrees immediately. He rushes off at a dead sprint while Suzume starts grappling away. She feels a little less like Batman and a little more like Spider Man, but it's totally worth it to switch from one vambrace to the other. It's a time saver too. Deku has to activate One for All just to keep up with her.
She lands on a rooftop right before they burst onto the scene of the nomu attack. There are three more here, one with wings, one muscles, and one with four arms and a tail. Lemillion has beaten them there, and he's taken the third nomu for his own while a group of pro's struggle to contain the other two and stop the building fires from spreading.
She doesn't know where Gran Torino went. She knows that Endeavor is somewhere in the city.
She knows that Iida is somewhere in the city, trying to find Stain, and Deku-
Has vanished.
She looks down at the street where he'd been just a minute ago, but the boy is gone.
He's going after Iida. He figured out the same thing I did.
She has a choice. Let them get in a fight she knows that they'll win, or stay here and play crowd control.
Her hands itch.
The murder yesterday had awakened something she had half forgotten, sitting deep inside her chest.
The need to hunt.
Suzume takes a breath and turns away from the calamity in front of her.
Lemillion will finish with his nomu too, and if these adult pros can't stand level with a seventeen year old boy then they shouldn't be heroes at all.
She sprints to the edge of the roof top and jumps onto the next one, this one slightly taller, and the one after that, steadily climbing buildings until she's got a decent vantage point.
If she were Stain, she would use the chaos to seclude his target and kill him while everyone else was distracted. Stain uses killing techniques adapted from old practices combined with a heavy reliance on his quirk to paralyze his victims while he kills them. That means he'll be away from densely populated areas, away from the ruckus of the attack, but close enough that Iida would have found him while on Manual's patrol route.
If Iida found him it was pure luck. The poor boy was smart, but not like that.
Not like her.
There. Five blocks south, two blocks east.
But…
A vantage point to see the action. To see the destruction.
Three blocks north, one block east. That high building. That's where Shigaraki will be watching this all play out. I bet it would piss him off if I crippled one of his precious nomu. I wonder who would win if I fought him again without anyone to interrupt us… Although, Kurogiri would be with him too. I don't know how to counter his warp gate, and if he wanted to he could just drop me in the middle of the ocean.
… Worth it.
She changes direction and goes springing north.
Just like she thought, as she draws closer there are two men standing on a water tower, one of them flickering in her sight of black mist and the other lanky and lax beside him, holding a pair of binoculars.
Her grappling hook embeds itself into the tower with a thump that draws their attention, but not fast enough for Kurogiri to interrupt her flying attack.
Her boot lands solidly on Shigaraki's stomach and she sends him, and herself, flying off the edge and onto the rooftop below. It's not a smack in the face, but it'll do.
"Mother fucker!" he swears and swipes at her, but she bounces away from him to land neatly on her toes a few feet away.
"Nope, just me," she says with a phantom crooked smile.
Shigaraki picks himself up, clutching one of his shoulders while Kurogiri rolls into existence beside him in a swirl of black mist.
"It is you. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the pretty little hero school?" he mocks, his voice rough behind the hand resting on it.
"It's nighttime. Even if I wasn't doing an internship this week, I wouldn't be at school. Christ man. And I'm here because that four eyed twat of a nomu broke the train I was on."
She pauses and inhales, the familiar scent of copper following the breeze towards her.
"Are you… are you bleeding?"
"Yes!" He snaps, rubbing one of his shoulders with his fingers curled so he doesn't disintegrate his own shirt. "First that stupid hero killer stabs me, and now some UA student kicks me in the gut. Are you trying to break my ribs again?"
"...I'm not going to apologize for kicking you, since you have in fact tried to kill me and also started shit in the city, but also should you even be here? If you got stabbed?"
"Awe, is the little hero-wannabe worried about the villain?" he mocks, his bloody fingers leaving his shoulder to scratch at his throat.
Suzume's brow twitches. "Don't call me a wannabe. I'm going to be a hero."
Shigaraki waves her off dismissively with his free hand. "They'll never let you get that far. You should give it up and-"
She cuts him off with a disk aimed at his head. He catches it, barely, but when his fingers close around it smoke erupts around them and sends him into a coughing fit. It's overwhelmed in an instant by a rush of black fog, and Suzume finds herself falling into cold darkness again. She can barely hear Shigaraki scolding Kurogiri for something before the fog opens up.
It's all she can do to land on her feet as she tumbles out of the cloud and onto solid ground once more.
Kurogiri must have it out for her, because when she straightens up she finds herself standing in front of an alleyway where Deku, Iida, and a man in tan clothes and feathers lay prone on the ground. Stalking between them is a man in a mask, with one katana in hand.
… I'm starting to think I picked a very annoying life path.
Why couldn't she have been a few years older?
Of course, Lemillion was off fighting nomu's now. Would she rather fight Stain or a nomu?
It doesn't matter. Suzume lifts her arm, fires her grapple, and slams feet first into the hero killer's face when he dodges the line.
It's a move she's getting very good at.
She flips off of him and twists, avoiding the slash he takes at her instinctively.
Landing cat-like on her feet she brings her sansetsukon out, holding it easily in her hands. She tilts her head towards Iida.
"I distinctly told you not to do anything stupid."
"Yusada! What are you doing here?!" Iida cries.
"You found us?" Deku looks terribly hopeful to see her.
She clicks her tongue. "More like Kurogiri found you."
"Kuro- where did you see him?" Deku sounds horrified.
"On the rooftop where I kicked Shigaraki's guts in."
"So he's still here is he?" Stain scoffs, his voice rough and oily at the same time. "I'll deal with him when I'm done with you four."
He moves.
Suzume catches the blade of his katana in the chained joint of her staff and twists, pushing the sword away so she can drive her elbow at his face. Stain forces her to break away when he brings a knife up, trying to stab her in all the nerves and arteries in her armpit.
He's on her again in an instant, but this time she's ready for his speed. She catches his katana angled on one of the joins while she twirls the other and smashes it into his arm.
The fact that it doesn't break the bone is frankly amazing.
He brings his sword back and stabs it at her, swearing viciously.
She barely catches the point of it in one of the chain lengths. She grips the wood on either side, her arms trembling under the strain of his strength. He's fast, he's strong, and the way he moves is terribly familiar. The foundations that he uses are the same ones that she had learned, ten years ago.
Shihan Tsushima would kill you if he found out you let your weapon get in such a state, she thinks at him, curling her lip. The edges are chipped badly, and she swears she can see rust. She certainly smells the old blood on it, like a cooked steak where it sparks against the chain.
Stain is the one who breaks their stalemate, kicking at her with the spiked tip of his pointed boots.
Suzume dodges it and knocks his ankle up with one of the lengths of wood, forcing him off balance before she drops and kicks his supporting leg out from under him. Stain twists in the air and flings a small knife at her, but she tilts her head and lets it go flying without scratching her.
"Just how many children are going to come crawling out of the woodwork tonight and interrupt me?" Stain demands. He lands low in a crouch. "Can't you see I have important work to do? I don't enjoy killing kids, but I've already resigned myself to ending the life of that revenge obsessed boy over there. I'm not above killing you too."
"Is there some kind of crime school I was never invited to where they teach people how to monologue?" she asks, still irritated from Shigaraki and the detective. And maybe her whole life. Her temper seems to be getting shorter and shorter lately.
With two lengths of wood in her hands she spins the third in a blur of wood and steel.
"Step aside," he orders. "They aren't worthy of being called 'heroes'. Didn't you see the Ingenium kids eyes?"
"Of course I did. But I'm not letting you kill him, no matter what he came to do here. You'll go through me first." This isn't like her normal fights. She has to remember where the people she's protecting are, and keep him from getting to them while also keeping him from stabbing her.
"Heh," there's an unpleasant tilt to the hero killer's mouth. "The boy in the armor called you 'Yusada'. You're the quirkless girl from UA. Let's see if you really have what it takes to call yourself a hero. If you run, if you cry, if you fail, then I'll know that you're just a hypocrite like the rest."
Stain comes at her.
"Suzumebachi! Watch out, his quirk-"
"He ingests blood and paralyzes people. Yeah, I know."
"You know?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
She spins just as surely as her weapon, dodging his attacks and making her own with tight, elegant curves and twists. The centrifugal force gives her strikes power, no matter how much room she gets to swing, and it twists past his katana, nearly cracking his skull more than once.
He throws four knives at her in rapid succession, forcing her backwards. When she twists to dodge, her shoulder hits a wall behind her, her weapon smacks against it and breaks its cycle, and his blade comes at her hard.
The angle is awkwards, he comes from the side and hits her from behind.
It smashes into the back of her neck and she drops. The world goes white around the edges and pain sears through her neck, strangling her.
Everything feels cold.
Someone is screaming.
Something wet spreads down her shoulder and back.
Suzume rolls onto her side, sucking air like a drowned man, and watches with hazy eyes as Stain cuts a massive wall of ice in half with his dull, chipped sword.
It takes her a few precious seconds to realize that she could move. That she had moved.
Her fingers are tingling when she brings them up to touch her neck. The fabric of her suit, cut resistant, isn't torn but her skin on the back and side of her neck has split beneath it and the blood is soaking through her clothes.
Anger courses through her, hot against the cold air.
She is not going to die again.
Not now.
Not today.
She has too many people to spit in the faces of. Nakana. Shigaraki. And Stain himself, the self righteous fuck.
With trembling arms she picks herself up. For a second she sways, dizzy, before the world solidifies around her.
Suzume swings her sansetsukon at Stain, catching his elbow with the furthest length. It gets his attention away from Shouto, who had probably just saved her damn life, but has taken a knife to the leg for his troubles. Fire courses across the ground, burning stray garbage where Shouto had nearly incinerated Stain. His torso is nicely singed, and his stupid scarf is ash around his neck.
She darts in close, and kicks at his leg. He brings the katana down, but at this range both of their weapons are disadvantageous.
So she takes one of his.
Before he can notice she slips one of his daggers out of its sheath, catches his katana in the teeth of the sword-breaker, and smashes her open palm on the flat edge of the longer blade.
It snaps cleanly, the longer end flying to embed itself in the ground behind her while the shorter edge skates across her forearm. It leaves a thin line on her vambrace, but the metal doesn't fail her.
"If you took better care of your weapons, that wouldn't have worked," she informs him, and slashes at his belly with his own knife. He blocks it, barely.
A press of cold at her back is all the warning she gets, or needs, to leap to the right.
Ice slams into Stain, catching his right leg and crawling up his body. He lifts his arm to hack himself free, but Suzume swings with her sansetsukon again and smashes the steel butt of the end against the back of his head.
He falls, and the ice consumes him.
"Suzume!" Shouto's mis-matched eyes are huge. She turns in time to see Deku struggling to his feet, also bleeding from a leg. She sways a little, but manages to stay upright long enough to reach them.
"Hey. Talk about nick of time," she smiles at him, but he doesn't return it. All of the boys look shaken, wide eyed and horrified. Iida is even crying.
"We thought he killed you," Deku says, his voice hoarse. Had he been the one screaming?
She touches her neck.
"My suit is made to be cut resistant. So it kept the blade from actually piercing through it. It did break my skin underneath, though. The blood must not have soaked through fast enough for him to get any. That seriously sucked though. If Shouto hadn't shown up, we'd all be toast."
"Midoriya sent out a text with his location," Shouto tells her. "I figured it meant he was in trouble. The other pro heroes should be here soon."
"Good."
She slumps against the wall nearest to her and puts her sansetsukon away. She's still got Stains knife, and she tucks it into her belt. Maybe they'll let her keep it. It's in much better shape than his katana had been. Her dark eyes slid over to the pro hero already there.
"Yo, Native."
His eyes slide to her. He can't move just yet apparently.
"You gave these kids permission to use their quirks right? None of us have provisional licenses, but as a pro hero, that is something that you're allowed to do. In life or death situations like this one."
His eyes grow wide with understanding. If he says he gave them permission, then he'll also be taking responsibility for their actions, and they won't get charged with any kind of vigilantism. It's an unusual, and not often used privilege, but tonight she doubts anyone will question it.
"Yes," he says. "Of course I did."
"That's not-"
"Iida," Suzume cuts him off, "Stop being an idiot."
He flinches and bows his head.
"H-hey," Deku argues. "He's was just-"
"Here to commit a little light murder," she cuts him off casually. He winces. "I told him before, I have brothers. Kaname is a hero student just like me. So I understand what he did, and why. But he was stupid, and it almost got him and all of us killed. Even if it did save Native over here."
Native finally manages to get to his feet. "She's right. Whatever the reasoning was, you came here and if you hadn't I would have died. So at least let me keep your record clean."
Suzume looks towards the wall of ice holding Stain.
"We should probably melt him out and disarm him," she muses. "I won't shed any tears if his ball freeze off, but it's probably bad form for hero-hopefuls."
At least she gets Shouto to snort a laugh.
She offers him a shoulder to help him walk, but he eyes the dark patch of blood warily.
"You're injured."
"It looks worse than it is," she promises. "It hurts, but I was mostly stunned. He missed my vertebrae, and all of the big veins are further forwards. Most of the damage is on my splenius capitis, but the muscle isn't torn. See? I can still move my head."
She shook it, slowly. It really did hurt, and if she moved too fast everything got white around the edges and spinny, but it wasn't fatal. She knows what fatal injuries look like.
Shouto hesitates, but leans on her anyway.
Iida finally gets up and the three of them melt Stains' battered, charred, and frostbitten body out of the ice one limb at a time. Suzume shows them where most people keep smaller blades hidden in wrist bands, and even the knot of his bandana. She shows them knives in the back of his knee pats and hidden pockets in his armored vest, as well one in his belt buckle.
"There's so many. How did you know where to look?" Deku asks. Native has managed to get him on his back.
Suzume ties her bola more firmly around Stain's wrists and ankles.
"That's where I would put them."
She hears Native say, "You know your friend is kind of scary?"
They drag Stain out of the alleyway, all of them looking worse for wear, and Suzume puts her new first aid kit to work stopping the bleeding on the boys' legs, arms, and her own neck. With her hood pulled down she's just considering stapling Shouto's leg cut shut, since his fire would destroy regular sutures, when a whole gaggle of pros come out of nowhere.
After a few confused minutes of figuring out that yes, this is the hero killer, and yes Endeavor and Lemillion are finishing up with the nomus right now, the pros draw the boys away to get more information from them, since they were already there when Suzume arrived. Todoroki goes to keep a look out.
Suzume is left sitting guard by the tied up hero killer.
"Fuck," she says, rubbing across the bleeding gash on the back of her neck. "That's gonna leave a scar for sure."
She glances down at their new captive and lets out a puff of a breath.
"I should have told Lemillion where to find you. He would have handed you your own ass in a basket, and passed whatever bizarre hero standards you have, with his whole 'I take this name as a vow to save one million people' thing," she tells the unconscious man. She's probably concussed. It makes her more talkative.
"Or," she adds, "Maybe I should have called my brother. You would like him," she says conversationally. "He wants to be a hero of justice."
"But, you didn't get either of them. You just got me, and I'm not aiming for such admirable things. I'm only here to prove that people like me deserve a chance to carve our own place in this superhero saturated society. Nothing as noble as those two."
When a pro starts walking over to take her place she levers herself up and brushes dirt off her butt and legs. She rejoins the boys.
Finally the pros leave the students to start calling for a police car to pick up their captive.
Away from the adults, Iida bows so low his head almost touches the ground. He's crying.
"You all sustained injuries because of me. I'm so sorry. I became blinded. I couldn't see, even when Suzumebachi tried to warn me." His voice is thick with tears.
Deku looks down. "I'm sorry too. You were so down, brooding all of the time, but I overlooked it. Even though we're friends."
Shouto shrugs off his apology. "Pull yourself together. You're the class president, aren't you?"
"Yes…" He rubs his eyes, and looks at her.
Suzume crosses her arms over her chest. She's aware that she's the one with the worst injury. The one that got closest to being decapitated. If the angle was better, even her suit wouldn't have saved her.
"If you want forgiveness, join a religion. You won't find any from me," she had warned him, after all. "Just do better next time."
"I- Yes. Yes, I will do better next time, and make my brother proud of me. I won't leave him to be an only child."
"Good," she nods a little too firmly and winces.
Someone screams. She hears Endeavor's name, and Lemillions voice, then there are claws digging into her shoulder right underneath where she's already bleeding.
Someone else screams.
It takes her a minute to realize that the person screaming is her, shrieking in pain as talons pierce into her shoulder.
The ground comes up hard and fast and she feels the knife she had tucked into her belt lifted away from her hip. Something strong, and arm, loops around her middle. It keeps her from breaking her head open on concrete but she's still spinning, held by one arm while the other drives a blade into exposed brain. Blood splatters across her.
She falls to the ground with a cry of pain.
When she looks up, Stain is standing above her, his eyes intense behind his mask. He's taken his knife back from her. He's also dislocated his own shoulder to get his arms around and in front of him again. It's the arm hanging out of its socket that he had caught her with. This man's pain tolerance is insane. He's stronger than her, faster than her, and he's. Still. Standing.
Suzume grips her own bleeding shoulder. The talons had pierced through her suit completely.
If Stain turns his blade on her, she's screwed.
Instead he turns red eyes on her, pinning her in place, and says, "stay down, children."
It's only then that she realizes that Midoriya is sprawled beside her, his own arm twisted painfully. The Nomu had snatched them both.
"Let her go!" Someone shouts, even though he's not touching her anymore.
He looks away from her, to the gaggle of pros. Endeavor has arrived.
Too bad he wasn't here sooner. I would have let Stain do whatever he wanted with him. The thought is dazed and clear in equal measure, the kind of unfiltered truth that tells her that shock is setting in.
Stain's lips curled in a sneer. She's not the only one to notice Endeavor. He stomps towards him, and the world seems to bleed red around the edges. Maybe she's imagining it. Her vision is swimming with pain.
"Look around at all the phonies that have overrun society, those that let children fight their battles for them, and the criminals who so aimlessly sprinkle around their 'power'. Do you understand? Those are the targets of my purge. All of this is for the sake of a just world. The fakes must be rectified. Someone," this close she can see ; his hands are trembling with rage. "Someone must Stain himself in blood. The word 'hero' must be restored!"
He lifts his voice, shouting at Endeavor and all the rest. Raw killing intent rolls off of him in dark waves, pressing like an ocean. Against the pressure, Suzume pushes herself to her feet. She had spent two lifetimes around killers. What's one more?
Dizziness swells and steadies. The shock is settling in. She knows she's hurt, she knows its bad, but she doesn't even feel the cold of blood loss. She doesn't feel anything at all.
"Come! Just try it, you pretenders! The only one who's allowed to kill me is All Might!"
Suzume gets enough energy to punch him in the back of the head.
He drops, his knife goes skidding off into the street, and Suzume shakes her hand out.
"Do you ever stop. Fucking. Talking?"
She looks up to find the pros and her classmates gaping at her.
"What?" she demands, propping her hand on her hip. The other one hangs limp at her side. "He was monologuing!"