This chapter SHOULD be called 'the bottom row of my keyboard is broken so I did my best' lmao,.
Shuichi was nervous.
Consciously he knew he probably didn't need to be.
Suzy and Dusty had befriended him without seeing him though, and whatever they'd said, whatever promises they might have made that his appearance didn't matter to them there was a whisper (more like a shout) in the back of his head that insisted that once they saw him in person they would change their minds and hurl the same cruel words he'd heard his whole life at him.
The city was… better. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but it was better than his hometown had ever been. Sometimes he could walk down the street and no one would even stare at him. And he hadn't been dragged into a fight since he moved!
But a month wasn't enough to erase nineteen years of abuse.
So could anyone really blame him for shifting nervously next to the fountain that they agreed to meet at?
Suzy sent a picture of the dress she'd been shopping for to the group chat, to let them know she was on her way.
It was pretty, although he definitely didn't know a lot about womens fashions. He'd never even seen what girls wore to parties.
Given that he'd never been invited to one.
Dusty, who had reluctantly agreed to give them a less obviously-fake name, appeared at Shuichi's side, making him jump.
He looked like he said he would.
Black hoodie, light hair, and red eyes.
And inflicted with a painful looking amount of eczema.
"Shiga?" he asked, using the new name. The three of them had waffled over Shiga and Hokori, but in the end 'Dust' felt too lame.
Although Shiga wasn't much better. They'd met playing a game based on an Akutagawa work, so for Dusty to call himself Shiga was definitely funny.
He insisted it was at least part of his actual name.
Suzy, who was apparently the same, had snorted at that.
"Who else would I be?" he asked, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched.
His red eyes were intense, and Shuichi wondered if he looked this distrustful.
He doesn't know all the details, he's got the distinct feeling he doesn't want all the details, but he knows that his friends have both had difficult lives in their own ways.
"Hey man, I just wanted to make sure okay?" he hunched his shoulders in a shrug and looked down at Shiga. He's about as pale as Shuichi thought he was going to be, based on his own admittance of not getting enough sunlight. There are a few small scars on hus face too, along with the dried, painful looking skin.
"Whatever," Shiga rolls his eyes at Shuichi and takes a seat at the edge of the fountain. When he pulls out a little handheld game he's wearing archery gloves of some kind, the ones that cover the first three fingers and leave the thumb and pinkie bare.
"You know I'm me, and you're definitely you. Our party is still missing one."
Shiga's voice is just as raspy as it was over their many, many calls. But he doesn't smell like cigarette smoke or anything. That really is just his voice.
"You better recount."
Shuichi nearly jumps out of his skin.
He spins around to find a teenager standing behind him in a pale yellow shirt with wide sleeves, and short over alls.
She's.
Kind of adorable?
Like a puppy.
Standing next to him she barely reaches Shuichi's shoulder. She has a soft, heart shaped face that doesn't match the picture of her he's built in his head.
In his head he was picturing a Xena sort of person, or someone more like that american hero, Stars and Stripes. Something broad and powerful and tall. Someone who fit the description of 'regularly gets into fist fights' and 'teaches toddlers to punch men in the balls'.
Nothing at all like the bright eyed, 100-ibs-soaking-wet girl that stands in front of him.
He has the weirdest idea that if he wanted to he could just lift her up and set her on a car roof and she would be stuck there.
Only she would probably kick him in the head and do a backflip off of it.
Then Suzy crosses her arms over her chest and he can see the muscles in her arms that tense with the movement. Her hands are scarred and calloused, and when she smiles at him it's a phantom, sharp thing.
He sees the fighter in the soft faced girl before him.
Shiga, behind him, is dead silent.
Shuichi glances over his shoulder at their other companion, who's staring at Suzy like she just proved that the earth really is flat.
Suzy and Shuichi both stare at him until he shakes his head suddenly.
"You're that UA girl! You never told us that!
Suzy blinks at him.
"You never asked."
"That's a bullshit response. Why would I?"
"Well why would I tell some rando online my real name, where i go to school, what class I'm in, and where they can find convenient footage that will show them what I can and can't do in a fight?"
" 'Can't do'?" Shiga repeats. "You won!"
"Yeah and?"
"You barely got scratched when the League of Villains attacked UA!"
"Yeah, and?"
"You sucked punched that annoying dick with the scarf!"
"Yeah and?" Suzy rolls her hand at Shiga, like she's trying to get him to get to the point. Shuichi feels very, very lost. She goes to UA, that much he feels like he knew. But apparently she's also famous? She doesn't seem surprised that Shiga knows all of this about her, so he can't be the first person to point it all out.
Shiga opens and closes his mouth a few times before he stuffs his hands in his hoodie pocket.
"And… nothing I guess."
Suzy reaches up and pokes Shiga in the cheek.
"I knew you were a drama queen. So I was on TV a few times? Who cares."
"Wait you were on TV?" Shuichi asks, truly feeling lost.
Suzy lets out a long suffering sigh. "I won the UA sports festival for the First years this year. Did you hear about the quirkless hero course student?"
Shuichi nods, his eyes going wide. He had, although it was mostly from people who were online, pissed that someone without a quirk had gotten a spot that rightfully belonged to someone with one.
Before he'd started talking to Suzy, he might have agreed with them too. But she had explained a bit more about quirklessness, and how in some ways it wasn't all that different from him. Society hated them for their quirk status, whatever it was.
After that he hadn't thought much about it.
Now he stares at the girl.
"Well. That was me."
"She's also in the full video of Stain going down," Shiga adds helpful. "The one people keep cropping so it just shows his big speech before she knocks him out."
"He was monologuing!"
"That was you?!"
"Why is everyone so obsessed?!"
"Because it was hilarious?" Shiga offers with a shrug. Shuichi still isn't sure why he hates the man so much. He kind of liked him. There was one hero in his own home town who had followed the rest of the population's lead in hating Shuichi and his family. They were constantly being accused of petty crimes. And while he wasn't sure he'd say the man should die, he was definitely not what Shuichi would call her material. So he understood wanting to change that. To hold the bad heroes accountable for their actions.
Shiga just seemed to hate Stain for being a dick.
Which was interesting because Shiga was also one of the only people Shuichi had ever even heard of who hated All Might.
Suzy was the other.
There's something strange passing between the two, something that Shuichi doesn't know how to unravel. Something complicated, like they knew eachother in another life.
They were both odd, opinionated people, but they had fun and they'd both offered to get a bus to Shuichi's hometown and start a fight on his behalf.
Looking between them now, seeing the intensity that they both manage to radiate, he realizes with a sudden rush of fondness that those weren't idle offers.
These two really would have started a fight.
They both had scars that showed where they had been in them before. These were two young people who wouldn't shy away from getting their hands dirty.
And they were here to see him. And they were just… there. Talking to each other the same way they did over phone calls and chats.
Like he wasn't standing there, covered in scales with purple hair.
Like how he looked changed nothing about the relationship between the three of them.
Suzy kicks at Shiga then, and Shuichi realizes that he's missed part of their conversion; he was so wrapped up in his own thoughts.
On instinct he reaches out and grabs Suzy by the racer back of her overalls and Shiga by the hood of his hoodie. Suzy slams into his grasp with way more force than he was expecting. She doesn't look like she weighs that much!
"Hey! Come on guys, do we really need to be fighting already?"
"We always fight," Suzy puffs her cheeks at him, looking less like a puppy and more like a bulldog when she does, although the tilt of her eyes is distinctly serpentine.
"We don't fight, we banter," Shiga argues, swiping at her.
She blocks his hand at the wrist, then catches it to inspect his gloves.
"Oh, shit. Do you shoot?"
So she thought they looked like archery gloves too!
"I can," Shiga tugs his hand away and Shuichi lets go of both of them. Grey clouds roll over, blocking out the nicely warm sun. "I usually don't."
"I've never shot a bow," Shuichi admits.
"I did, forever and a half ago. Mostly I stick to hitting people with sticks, but I'm okay with a gun too."
"As long as its not in a video game."
"Listen, you pretentious-"
"Are those food trucks?"
This time he doesn't even mean to interrupt them. But a small fleet of food trucks is rolling into the parking lot of the park, each one advertising something different. Pizza, takoyaki, australian pies, crepes, ice cream, yakitori, thai barbeque, singaporean chicken.
It's more variety than he's ever seen in one place.
He doesn't realize his jaw is hanging out like a country fried newt until Shiga taps it with the back of his hand.
"What are you trying to catch flies? If you want something, then lets go get it," he rasps.
Suzy, for her part, links arms with him when he gets ready to disagree.
"I'd kill a man for those guiness steak pies," she informs them, and practically drags a stumbling Shuichi after her. He has to stoop to keep with her height without being pulled off his feet, but he'd got the weirdest feeling that she could carry him over the shoulder if she got the mind too.
For such a small girl, she's kind of terrifying.
Shiga trails after them, his hands in his pocket and his hood up against the cool wind that blows in from the east. There's a touch of the ocean on it, bust most of the sounds that it carries come from cars, people, and businesses.
Cities, Shuichi has realized, are fucking loud.
People talk about the lights all the time. The stars being further away and the streets being bright in the middle of the night. They talk about all the different landmarks and places to visit and things to see; statues and museums and parks and people. They talk about cherry trees and temples, summer, spring and fall and winter.
But he's never heard anyone describe the incredible cacophony that flows in on the breeze. Car horns, conversations, cell phones and advertisements, people in costumes harking for attention.
And footsteps, everywhere footsteps by the thousands. It's like the streets are full of man sized millepedes if he closes his eyes and focuses on the pounding of all those feet.
Suzy stops them in front of the australian pie truck, and pulls her wallet out of her back pocket. It's yellow and black striped, and it says 'Bee kind' on it above a bee shaped clasp.
Its kind of cute.
Shiga comes up beside them and looks over all of the gathered trucks with a curl of his scarred lip.
"This is all over priced crap."
"Well I can't make a guinness steak pie," Suzy retorts, "So it's perfectly reasonably priced crap. Unless you know how?"
Shiga grumbles at her, and she looks all too smug.
"That's what I thought. Spinner, bud, do you want anything?"
"They sell steak pies," says someone ahead of them. He turns to look at the three teenagers with a curled lip that makes Shuichi's heart drop and his stomach twist with anger before he even finishes his sentence. "Not cricket pies."
"Cricket pies?" Shiga repeats, eying the man. There's a sudden tension in his shoulder, a darkness in his eyes.
"Yeah. You know. Cause he's a lizard. Bet he could stick his tongue out and eat from here, the fu-"
He doesn't get to finished
He can't because he's too busy choking on his own blood, his hands over his mouth as red pours out between his fingers.
Suzy stands above him, her own fist curled.
"I'd watch how far out my own tongue is if I were you," she drawls, "Especially when I'm spewing bigotted bullshit."
The man gargles up at her, spitting blood that foamed around his lips. Shuichi can't figure out what the hell he's saying.
Suzy cocks her head.
"You can call them if you want. If you think they'll believe that a five foot tall, quirkless little girl did that much damage. If you want to admit that to a cop, while we tell them that you were being quirkist. And with the chief of police being heteromorphic himself…"
The man paled.
"That's about what I thought."
No one close enough to hear would look at the three of them. If anything, everyone was studiously looking anywhere else. Trying not to get involved.
Suzy hooks her thumbs in the belt loops of her overalls.
"If you keep talking shit, I promise you this won't be the only time you get hit."
She, and then Shiga, step over him before he scrambled out of line, clutching his mouth. The blood seems to be slowing at least.
Shuichi doesn't want his new friends in trouble, but at the same time he really hopes that man gets hit by a bus.
He slowly follows the other two, listening to the pair talk about tongue injuries and whether or not people can actually die from biting themselves.
He can't help looking at Suzy. Her cheeks puff out when she pouts and she tugs at the scrunchie on her wrist habitually. Her heart shaped face isn't actually all that expressive, but Shuichi's whole family is heteromorphic, and they don't always make the 'right' expressions either, so its easy for him to recognize her phantom smiles as meant-to-be-grins and the curve of her eyes as laughter and the small frown as a thunderous scowl.
She defended him.
Punched a man for saying not even the rudest thing Shuichi's ever heard, then challenged him to call the cops on her over it. She waved her own quirk status, on the opposite end of Shuichi's own, in front of the man and made the weirdest shield that Shuichi has ever seen with it. She was angry. She was fearless.
He could totally see how she was the girl who punched out Stain.
Shiga hands Shuichi one of the apple turnovers from the australian truck, even though he held firm to his idea that it was overpriced garbage.
Suzy calls her mother, lets her know that everything is going well, and the three of them take off walking through the park, eating as they go. He can just barely see the rooftop of a museum at the opposite end of the park as the one they're in, and they start the long walk towards it so they can circled the area and come back.
Suzy tells them about hero school, and about the weird one sided rivalry the two hero classes have going on. She tells them about the moralistic essay's that Present Mic likes to assign them in English, and the fact that she has apparently got good enough grades that she can sleep through class and the teachers don't bother her.
Shuichi listens, fascinated. He'd only seen school on TV. He'd never gone himself, not at all.
She makes it sound almost fun.
The whole time, he can't help the small turning of guilt in his guts. Because he knows that he's not in the city just to get a better place to live.
Stain's message was compelling, even with Suzy's involvement. The world was full of fake heroes, people who were only in it for a pay check and didn't really care about other people. A lot of the online forums that Shuichi frequented were up in arms over his cause. To rewrite society and hold heroes accountable for their failings.
There was even a recent campaign going around about a bunch of stuff that Endeavor had done and tried to sweep under the rug. Mostly property damage and collateral lose of life. And he was still a hero!
Something had to change.
(he remembers last year, someone had died in town. A murder. And no one knew anything about it, but everyone thought it was him or his dad. All because of their scales. And the hero, where was he?
Watching a mob form outside Shuichi's home, watching the wood catch fire, and forcing his dad into a cop car when he tried to shout and fight and put out the flames)
Stain had been part of the League of Villains.
So it followed that, if Shuichi wanted to change things and follow Stains example, he should join up too.
But Suzy.
His friend.
A girl who'd bloodied her knuckles for him.
She hated Stain. She was going to be a hero.
If that all happened, did that mean he was going to have to fight her?
But, her goal was the same even if they were coming at it from opposite angles.
She wanted to change the world.
She wanted to make a space for herself and people like her.
It made his head hurt to think about it all. And his heart.
As if summoned by his conflicting feelings, the sky started to open up with rain.
"Oh shit!" Suzy swore.
"Ugh, next time let's go to someone's house," Shiga pulled his hood up firmly over his hair. Shuichi was about to do the same when he realized that that would leave Suzy alone in the wet, in just shorts and a thin shirt.
He tugs off his outer later, the black leather jacket, and shoves it at her before he pulls the white hood over his light hair.
Suzy looks startled, but quickly tugs the black jacket on. Thunder rolls hard enough to shake the ground.
Lightning flashes.
Then a strong hand grabs onto Shuichi's and he hears Shiga yelp an objection before they're both being dragged out of the park and across street car tracks to reach the bottom steps of the museum. Suzy's grip on both of their hands is firm.
"I am not staying out here to be soaked!" she informs them, and pulls them up the stairs towards the big building. This close Shuichi can see the sign that proclaims it an art museum.
There's a bit statue of a spider sitting outside, and posters flap in the wind advertising modern art and 'abstract expressionism'.
The museum is free, and they duck inside and head for the cafe to get out of the cold.
Their day at the park is over, and honestly it was coming to a close anyhow. Suzy has school in the morning and she needs to be getting back. Shiga has work to do too.
But it was fun.
Even if Shuichi is having a little bit of an existential crisis by the time a car pulls up out front to pick Suzy up and she hugs him, tightly, goodbye.
Shiga looks like a deer in the headlights when she does the same thing to him, wrapping her strong arms around his shoulders.
Shiga watches her got with the same wide eyes as Shuichi.
"I felt like I was getting hugged by a tiny bear."
"We should get her one of those fuzzy brown hoodies so she looks like an ewok."
Shuichi has to agree.
And, he has to go interview with the League of Villains. Come what may, he at least wants to try to change things, and posting online hasn't helped him so far.
So maybe this.
Maybe this city, maybe this League, maybe this year, maybe something will be different.