Hey y'all, it's looking like I'm going to be officially moving my update day to thursday due to some work scheduling. Thanks for your support!
Suzume doesn't care if Lolo is older than her, she doesn't care if he's married, or gay. She's going to fucking propose to him when she gets back.
She's also only wearing bullet proof clothes from now on.
She listens to the gun click uselessly a couple more times before the villain swears. Metal groans and something clatters to the ground before there's shouting and three sets of footsteps head for the door.
Midoriya's voice comes through, horrified, and then there's more groaning metal and something solid slams into the wall behind her.
The door closes, the sound covered by Melissa's shouting, and Midoriya swearing of all things.
"Get back here damn it! Come back!"
"Papa!" Melissa shrieks. Then, "Yusada!"
Melissa's bare feet slap closer to her, and hands touch her shoulders, pushing her over.
Suzume sits up abruptly and looks over at Melissa, who gapes at her.
"Do you always yell this much?" she asks dryly. There's a flash of green lightning and Midoriya pries himself out of the metal ropes that had him pinned to the wall of the lab.
Suzume glances around. Sam, a portly man who wanted to be famous, lay against a wall panting. He was holding his side, but he didn't look much worse than stunned.
"You're okay!" Melissa cries, staring at her.
Suzume arches a brow.
"Well, yeah. It's just ketchup."
To prove her point, she licks the red off of her palm and watches Melissa turn a fascinating shade of white.
"But he shot you!" Midoriya argues, scrambling to look her over.
"My dress is bullet proof," she waves her hand flippantly at him. "And he only had one shot left, those guns only hold six in the clip and he shot five in the smoke show. And I took his other clip when he wasn't looking."
She slips her clean hand under her top and tugged a clip of bullets out from between her boobs.
Midoriya, red faced, gapes at her.
"But- but- what?!"
Suzume pats his cheek. "Confused is a good look on you, Boy Wonder. Okay!"
Suzume hopped to her feet and went to Sam. She checks his ribs briefly, and wipes her ketchup stained hand on his suit jacket so it won't dirty her dress.
"Melissa, turn off the security already and let's go get your dad, okay? The poison should be kicking in soon."
"... what poison?!"
Suzume lifts her knife off the floor and waves it faintly at them.
"My hair ornament. It's coated in poison, and I cut the guy, Wolfgang? With it. The neurotoxin will be kicking in soon, and we should wrap him up."
They're still gaping at her.
They so don't have time for this.
"Guys?"
"We- we have to hurry," Melissa shakes her head quickly. "If he had that quirk enhancing gear-"
"He doesn't."
Melissa stares at her again, halfway to the computer consol.
"But he left with the suitcase!"
"He left with A suitcase. A suitcase that had a compressed fire hydrant in it. All the suitcases look the same, so while I was scuffling with him I took the real case and kicked it under that computer desk. That's why I was picking the lock earlier."
Admittedly, she'd had to jerry rig a way to short out the electronic aspects of the locks, but a battery off one of the pesky robots had done the trick nicely.
"The ol' Bait n' Switch," she says with no small degree of fondness.
She motions to the computer, where a diagram of the tower is blinking happily at them in bright red, security alerts.
"Get your butt in gear," she orders at last.
Melissa, still looking a little dazed, rushes for the computer console and frantically shuts down all of the security measures.
Suzume looks at the slack jawed, red faced Midoriya.
"Are you coming or what?" she asks, jerking her head towards the door.
"H-how-?"
"Write your questions down for later," Suzume grabs his hand, then Melissa's, and drags them out of the room and to the stairs. Without every single door fighting them along the way it was much easier to sprint up to the roof. Or, rather, to the helicopter landing pad outside, where Wolfgang was swaying and shouting and David Shield looks like he has no idea what's happening.
He probably doesn't.
Wolfgan- no, no, Wolfram's, little lackey looks bewildered and concerned for his boss, who could honestly pass as being kind of drunk.
His hands are probably getting numb now. His fine motor control will be shot in another minute.
"Hey Midoriya," she says quietly, "Have you ever heard of Saint Elmo's fire?"
"Saint Elmo's fire?"
"It's light that appears on a ships masts. Lightning, specifically, and it usually garners a lot of attention… And distracts people."
She gives him a pointed look.
It takes him a minute to cotton on.
His eyes widen before determination settles on his face and nods sharply.
"Got it."
Suzume slips quietly to the side. There's not a lot of cover out on the landing pad, but Midoriya is a brilliant distraction. His quirk lights up, green lightning on his skin, and he shouts at Wolfram to give David Shield back.
Wolfram, predictably, takes the bait.
He laughs and flings metal at Midoriya, doing a brilliant job of destabalizing the platform they're all standing on with no help from anyone else.
Twat.
Suzume slips around the side, nearly invisible in her nice dark dress against the night sky.
She steps into the helicopter, takes one look at the helicopter pilot, and smacks him on the back of the neck.
He goes limp, and she settles on the co-pilots seat and starts shutting everything down as best as she can. While she's turning off lights and engines she watches Midoriya scrap with Wolfram. Midoriya is fast, and Wolfram's in his element on the skyscraper, sending metal after metal at the green haired boy. Melissa manages to brave the battlefield and grab her father. She's not as strong as Suzume, or even as strong as Hatsume, but desperation gives people a boost, doesn't it?
Wolfram is getting more and more unsteady. His eyes are going hazy.
Suzume comes up behind him, too, and punches him in the back of the head as hard as she can.
He drops.
Collapses in a pile of limbs and ginger hair on the ground beneath her.
All the metal that had been flying, huge lengths and tendrils that would have shattered bones freeze. The platform groans and shifts. There's exposed wiring all over the place that sparks faintly.
Suzume looks down at Wolfram.
"So. That happened," She says, and rolls him onto his face. "How are you?" she asks a bruised and scraped looking Midoriya.
Midoriya looks breathless and flushed with exhaustion, but he nods all the same.
The door busts off its hinges, and a massive form fills it.
"I AM HE-ere?"
Suzume brushes her skirts out and looks over at All Might. Her brows raise.
"You're a little late."
"All Might!"
"Uncle Might!"
"All Might!"
Melissa, Midoriya, and David are all much more excited to see him than she is, but they actually like him so…
Yeah.
All Might looks over all of them, his eyes actually blue in the shadows of his brows they're so huge and wide. Then he breaks and drags David into a hard, desperate hug.
Suzume considers him.
It occurs to her, suddenly, that All Might has spent the last two hours masking his disability, and worrying about his friend. He'd been… helpless.
Totally helpless.
And all he'd been able to do was wait for a bunch of half trained students to either nail it or fail it, with his life and the life of his best friend on the line.
Suzume hooks her hands behind her head, and her stomach twists uncomfortably.
He couldn't do anything.
And, at the airport…
He couldn't do anything there either.
Not without breaking his own cover and exposing his biggest secret.
She doesn't want to feel bad with him. She really doesn't.
She doesn't want to be fair to him.
He wasn't fair to her, after all.
How was one of the most powerful men in the world completely trapped sometimes?
Suzume makes the quiet decision that she's never going to both with this bullshit secret identity bullshit.
It's so not worth it.
Suzume tilts her head up towards the stars.
It's been a long goddamn day, and she's going to have to fill out more police reports now.
She's getting tired of police reports.
Thin tendrils of pink dawn light are starting to reach out to erase the stars by now.
All Might leads them down the stairs, looking like he's about to collapse any second. Suzume grabs Melissa by the hand and tugs her a little faster along. All Might can change back in front of Midoriya and David, if he wants. She doesn't care.
Melissa looks at their joined hand, then Suzume herself.
She's staring again.
It seems like it's her default state.
"Do you have something to say?" Suzume finally demands. She's been staring at her for like two days now.
Melissa looks down at the ground. Er, the metal floor. Her feet are bare at this point, and starting to bleed.
Melissa is taller than her, but Suzume could probably scoop her up and carry her the rest of the way back to the ground floor again.
….
She does.
Melissa squeaks like a mouse, but she's ignored.
"You're bleeding all over the floor, dude," Suzume tells her dryly. Melissa gapes at her, and then looks down at the torn skirt of her once lovely dress. She's not very heavy, if Suzume is being honest.
"Sorry. If I knew we were going to be fighting villains, I would have worn flats instead of heels."
Suzume laughs a little at her.
"Point taken. I knew something was going to happen. My class is cursed, you see."
"Is that why you had the bullet proof vest, and the boots?" Melissa asks.
"Yeah, that's why. I don't trust us not to get in any trouble."
Melissa lets out a sigh.
"You're so… so incredible."
"Me?" Suzume repeats, startled. Not as much as she would have been a few months ago. But still. It's weird to hear.
"Yeah, you! You fought, you scaled the whole sky scraper bare handed and bare footed, and you planned all of this on the fly. You made a bomb out of baking soda and pickles!"
Suzume puffs her cheeks out and looks away, warmth creeping up over her cheeks.
"You could have done that last one. You're smart. I didn't do anything some else couldn't have. Anyone else, really."
"Right." Melissa's mouth thinned in a bitter looking smile. "You don't have a quirk."
"Neither do you," Suzume nods towards Melissa's bare feet, and her extra joint down there.
"No. No, I don't. I… always wanted to be a hero. But I finally accepted that I couldn't do it. That I had my limits. So I gave up and started designing support gear instead, like my father does. I want to help people! But I gave up on being a hero. You must think I'm such a quitter…"
Suzume considers her quietly.
Before this year, she wouldn't have batted an eye at telling Melissa she should have done it anyways.
Fuck the rest of the world, and do what you want.
She still thinks that last part, but she's started to accept that not everyone will do what she will. Not everyone will be ready to fist fight every crowd they come across, not everyone will start training their bodies to the point of exhaustion every single day and keep going. Not everyone can.
Suzume lets out a breath. At least this time they get to take the elevators down. She secures her hold on Melissa.
"You made your choice, and I made mine. Neither of us are right and neither of us is wrong. We just have to live with the decision."
Melissa stares at her, her mouth opened with surprise. Then, she starts to smile.
"Yeah. yeah, I guess you're right. Can you put me down now? I don't want the others to tease me for being carried."
Suzume lets her down obediently, and helps her straighten out her dress and hair as best as they can. One of her contact lenses is missing, but there's nothing they can do about that now.
They finally settle up, and step out of the elevator into the floor they left everyone else on.
The rest of their companions are waiting for them.
Suzume lets them swarm them, and obediently explains to them what happened up above while they held off the robots.
When she mentions improvising an electro-magnetic lock pick with a stolen battery Kaminari starts laughing like a loon, and swings his arm around her shoulders.
"You're a Migiver!"
Suzume squinted at him. "Do you mean a MacGyver?"
"Yeah that! Come on, the security guys wants to see us on the bottom floor."
Suzume lets Kaminari drag her towards the elevators, with Kirishima and Ba- Katsuki, falling into step as well. At the last minute he ends up deciding to go with Melissa instead, and passes Suzume off to Shinsou, who looks exhausted, and a little overwhelmed, but otherwise okay.
His arm doesn't seem to be bleeding anymore at least.
They wind up once more packed together, watching the lights tell them what floor they're on and where they're going as they plummet back to earth.
Once again, she has the same dilemma. And this time she's too sleep deprived to keep her mouth shut.
"If I'm stuck between the three of you, does that make me sandwiched?" She asks abruptly.
"What?" Bakugou scowls at her out of the corner of his bright red eyes.
Kirishima's brows furrow.
"What else would you be?"
"I don't know. I'm blocked in by you boys on three sides. So, taco'd? Or gyro'd? Or… hotdogged?"
"Nope," Shinsou says instantly. "Hot dogged sounds like a sex thing."