Sorry this took so long! I was out of town for most of the week and then I was fighting my computer. It took me three days to install windows 10.
Tomura paces around his bedroom.
His computers are shut off firmly and the camera's are covered in sticky notes. The only electronic still on is his phone. Well, it's actually Giran's phone but that's beside the point. Tomura had Spinner pay for it for him, in cash, and he had hidden text apps on it disguised as calculators.
It all feels…
Weird.
Wrong, even. He's never hidden this much from Sensei. He's never really hidden anything from him, besides a few 18+ websites on his computer.
But here he is, pacing his room and looking down at a selfie of Suzy.
Her dark hair is mussed and a braid across her head looks messy and frazzled. There's a scrape on her cheek and smoke stains here and there. But her fancy dress is still intact, and in the background of her selfie is some of those other UA kids. Endeavors' brat, the brainwasher, explosion boy, and gravity girl. They all look like they just got out of a fight, and news companies have been broadcasting about the sudden lock down on I Island for hours now.
Where they are.
Suzy Q : I lived bitch
Me : What the actual fuck?
Suzy Q : My class is totes cursed
Suzy Q : we keep getting attacked by villains everywhere we go
Suzy Q : we were at a party this time
Suzy Q : I made a bomb
Me : isn't blondie a bomb?
Suzy Q : He was somewhere else and I had baking soda
Me : I have so many questios
Suzy Q : take a chemistry class babes
Me : When are you supposed to come back again?
Suzy Q : couple of days then I'm off to summer camp
Suzy Q : why do you wanna be next on the schedule
Suzy Q : ?
Tomura drops his phone again and paces. His nails bite into his throat but they stay there instead of raking down, even as the inch under his skin intensifies.
Suzy Q. Yusada Suzume. The vicious bitch that once broken his arm and ribs and seemed to delight in starting fights with quirkist assholes.
The girl who wanted his fucking quirk.
Who wanted that?!
Well no, villains wanted it. It was destruction incarnate. He was distructions incarnate and she fucking knew it!
There was no way a girl that smart didn't know that 'Dusty' and 'Shiga' were both Tomura Shigaraki. Sure Father had covered most of his face when they first met, but she knew who he was. She hadn't said as much on their outting, but he'd kept his own mouth shut too. For Spinner's sake.
The lizard man didn't have a lot of friends, and it was his first day in the city.
Even Tomura wasn't heartless enough to ruin that by starting a fight in the middle of the park when he didn't have to.
So she knew who he was.
And she knew a lot of personal information about him that he didn't even remember giving her in the first place.
Of course even without saying anything she'd pick things up about him.
'Isn't it obvious?'
Honestly.
He paces further, his chipped nails biting into skin but not tearing frantically, not yet, not even as ants march beneath his skin and his mind buzzes, trying to figure out what to do.
Because they had a plan.
Have, a plan.
The first years always go on some special summer training camp, and with their little mole in the group the League will know where that is. They'll mobilize, blitz the camp, and snatch away Yusada Suzume, Shinsou Hitoshi, and Bakugou Katsuki. Bring them back to the bar and convince them to join, all while dealing a blow to the hero's public image and the world's faith in them. If they can't even protect their own students, who can they protect?
(No one, that's who.
No hero ever protected him, no hero ever protected Suzy, no hero ever protected Spinner. They protect themselves and now they can protect each other and he will-)
But.
But he knows her now.
Knows her as well as the archery gloves he slips on when he needs to hold things without destroying them, knows her as well as he does Spinner if not a little better.
Spinner isn't as vicious as they are, after all.
He's a good person, which should make Tomura sick, but it's sweet in its way.
Nothing would ever compare to the stunned silence that followed when he walked into the bar the day after their trip to park and announced he wanted to join the LOV.
Nothing.
Because Spinner, at the core of his being, is a decent person. He wants to change society, Suzy wants to change society.
Tomura initially wanted to just destroy it, to tear the world down around him until it was nothing more than piles of ashe at his feet and he stood above it all, and the damned itching in his throat fucking stopped.
Things. Changed.
He changed.
All because of one game made by a Ryunosuke Akutagawa simp.
No. Ashes of dust and ash are still fine by him, but now he doesn't want to stand above them alone. Or even just with sensei.
Now he has two people, maybe three? Four? That he wants to stand with him.
Suzy. Spinner. And now Toga Himiko, who is as Suzy would say, twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. And Magne, a broad shouldered but sisterly young woman that looked like she could bench press him but was more interested in teasing him about his 'computer friends'.
They didn't want to destroy everything. In fact he was pretty sure they would all be very, very upset if the world was totally demolished. They wanted it to change. They wanted to make places for themselves and people like them in it.
Tomura could make space! It was easy, just find some asshole taking up the space he wanted and put five fingers on them.
Bam, problem solved.
Except when it wasn't.
He wasn't used to changing his plans because of other people. Especially people who weren't Sensei, who if he was being honest helped him come up with most of the plans he'd ever had.
Including the one that had him ready to rip his own hair out.
The plan's biggest purpose, to recruit the three hero students, was going to fail.
Maybe he could recruit Bakugou Katsuki. Maybe he could recruit Shinsou Hitoshi.
But Yusada Suzume was not going to be swayed away from her goal here.
And if he went through with this plan? If he attacked the camp and hurt her friends, and the teacher she spoke so highly of?
Would that spell the end of their friendship?
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn!
What was he supposed to do? If he tried to call it off Sensei would want to know why, and Tomura had no fucking clue what he would think of his reasoning. Sensei always said that everything he did was for Tomura's future. But Tomura's future was to be a villain and this was…
Not all that villainous. Which would probably disappoint the man. And Tomura, for all his tetchy nature, didn't actually want to do that.
(Tomura did not want to think about that muttering in the back of his mind that pointed out that if he told Sensei he was attached to the girl, he could use that against him. It was paranoid idea, a stupid idea, and it had been planted there by Suzume herself some weeks ago.
Sensei had raised him, taken care of him, but he was a villain at the end of the day. Sensei was the finally boss of finally bosses, even with the injuries All Might had dealt him)
But he didn't want to lose his friend either!
So what.
The fuck.
Was he supposed to do here?
A crash sounds from downstairs and he can hear Toga shouting at Kurigiri and giggling like a psychopath.
Which.
She is.
That girl is nuttier than squirrel shit, and Tomura is starting to think he'd absorbed too much of Suzy's lexicon.
He pauses.
Crazy she may be, but Toga is a teenage girl. And Magne was once a teenage girl.
So if anyone knows what do about teenager girls, it's them.
Right?
Right.
Tomura quietly picks up his phone, and texts her something vague about scheduling villain attacks being a weird hobby, before he shoves it in his pocket, grabs his regular phone, and trots downstairs to ask Magne and Toga what they think of his dilemma.
Suzume forgets, sometimes, that there are people who were not raised in a house hold of boys.
She's not shy. She's used to guys, and if she's honest she's more comfortable with them than she is with girls half the time, if only because she's more used to them.
So when morning finally comes around and dawn threatens to blind her, she has no problem stumbling out of her room in just a shirt and boy shorts, her hair flying and spiking wildly around her like a demented halo.
She has no problems with it.
The boys, on the other hand, freak out like she just walked in on them in the bath playing periscope with their dicks.
Suzume finds that out when Kirishima shouts and flings a pillow into her face.
It drops harmlessly to the ground and Suzume squints at him over last nights make up.
He has his sheets pulled up to his collar bone and he's staring at her with huge, red eyes.
Suzume squints further.
"You know your costume doesn't hide your chest, right? I've seen your tits before, sir."
His face turns as red as his hair and eyes.
"Go back!" Katsuki barks at her, and flings his own pillow at the girl.
Shinsou, face down and for some reason underneath the couch, mutters something unintelligible and hides himself further.
Suzume picks up the pillows. Look at the boys.
Her mouth twitches upwards in her version of a wide, evil grin.
Kirishima doesn't even have time to harden his skin before she tackles him onto the ground, beating a pillow into his head. Feathers go flying and he shouts, gropes of one of the decorative, candy shaped ones, and smacks back. But he's already given Suzume all the ammunition she needs.
"Baku- ow, fuck- help!"
Bakugou scoffs at them.
Until Suzume beans him in the head with one of the decorative pillows and he spins and flings himself at her.
The morning dissolves into a flurry of shouts, cheapshots, and destroyed pillows while Shinsou wisely stays out of the way.
He gets a whole thirty more minutes of sleep while the three lunatics in the hero course fight and scuffle outside of his shelter.
Yesterday was long.
And he got shot! He deserves a little extra rest.
Then someone grabs him by the foot, and he too gets dragged into the fray.
Another hour finds the four of them finally troopings out of their hotel room, cleaned up and dressed in their hero uniforms in the case of the others three. He himself has one of the Aizawa's capture weapons hanging around his neck. It feels safer with it on, especially after last night.
It was…
Traumatizing.
Yeah.
It was a little bit traumatizing and that was mild compared to what happened at the USJ. He'd been the one who was the most badly hurt, and while his shoulder was still healing he would be just fine.
Hitoshi has never been under the impression that his path to heroism was going to be easy. In fact he was positive it was going to be hard, gruelling, and that he might just break himself on the walls of UA.
Yet, here he was.
In a hotel room on I Island, the runner up of the UA sports festival, sitting with the girl who had won and two hero students with insane quirks that he had ended the festival higher than.
He has a mentor, and someone building support gear to help him with his quirk limitation and.
He had friends.
It's weird.
He isn't here to make friends. He was here to fulfill his goal.
Yet, friends are what he has now and it makes his head spin to think about everything that's happened in the last few months and everything that's changed.
He's knocked out of his thoughts when Suzume's arm slings around his shoulders and he finds himself dragged into a new wrestling pile that only ends when Kirishima, sensible as he is, almost knocks over a lamp.
After that they all separate with grumbles.
Suzume is far too cheerful.
He shouldn't be that surprised. Outside of school she's always less stone faced and intense. He's seen her surrounded by her brothers, trying to outdo one another with their embarrassing childhood stories.
But last night had been terrifying, so shouldn't she at least be a little… subdued?
No.
No she isn't.
Hitoshi watches her pinch Bakugou's red cheek, her teeth flashing in one of her small grins, and reminds himself that Yusada Suzume is crazy.
His hand itches.
It's not really itching. It's a phantom feeling in the dead skin that covers part of his body, not the sting where the staples connect or the hiss of heat beneath his flesh, ready to bubble out and cook him and everyone around him.
No.
It's a phantom pain, and even when he rubs his thumb across the site it doesn't change the twitching under the skin.
It's one of those things that he just has to live with and there's nothing he can do about it, because there's simply no way to repair his damaged body.
If there was, he already would have done it, thanks.
His skin will always be like this until the day he dies.
Whenever that is.
Within the year, he's sure now. He's managed to survive a decade through sheer force of will, all in the pursuit of vengeance and justice.
And now, it's within sight.
If he puts his faith in that little girl, that is.
Touya is not a man prone to faith.
But there was something in her eyes when she held Shouto's face in her hands and declared an end for Endeavor that, for an instant, made him believe in her.
She already did the 'impossible' twice, between the sports festival and taking down Stain when real pro's couldn't. And everything she said, that was straight Yakuza knowledge.
It's not like she's just some teenage girl talking. This is a girl who's trained, who's connected with the Underground, and who, according to Koichi, is the daughter of one of the most dangerous men in the country.
All the ways she'd listed, he knows they would have worked. Endeavor is strong, and his fire resistance isn't infallible and he's just as vulnerable to shrapnel as anyone else.
And a hand shake.
He didn't shake many hands, but Touya had seen him do it in the past. Poison gas, explosions, all the ways Endeavor could die.
But he wouldn't ever face justice if he just died.
The world would always know him as a hero if he just died.
It wasn't good enough. But Touya didn't have a way to fix it. He didn't have anything but himself to prove what Endeavor had done, and he didn't have the resources to get a platform where people would see him. And believe him.
He had speeches. He'd rehearsed what he wanted to say for years. The words, in inflection, even his body language.
But even with his hatred, he'd been stagnating.
He had his place as a minor clean up man in the Shie Hessaikai, but that didn't do him much good besides he gets enough money to survive and a chance to practice his quirk. The Yakuza aren't influential enough to warrant him climbing their ranks. It won't get him close enough to his goal for the effort to be worth it.
Is what he thought.
Then Kono fucking Suzume had made her declaration and within the month the news and the internet were reporting on forgotten and covered up incidents of Endeavor being an asshole. Property damage, collateral destruction, and light maiming of innocent by standard. All things that had been going on for years, but only now were getting the attention that they deserved.
Touya probably shouldn't be surprised by the sheer amount of incidents of violence caused by his father and yet…
He's not the only person with burns thanks to Endeavor.
And Shouto.
Little Shouto, perfect, angel, golden child Shouto.
Was scarred.
Touya stares at the staples in his hands and thinks of the glinting silver and amber earrings that had been snapped into Shouto's earlobes.
It's all he can do not to go for the door as soon as he sees the boy standing beside Suzume, the amusing girl that had shown up and bantered with Koichi a few weeks before. But he'd stayed, for reasons he couldn't articulate. If pressed, he would have said it was to try to hear what Endeavor was up to, or to hear what the golden boy was doing in a Yakuza establishment.
Then, Shouto looks at his new piercings and sighs. It's a world weary thing tinged with anger and resentment that startles Touya.
"I'm sure he's going to find some way to punish me for it. Especially now that he's seen me use my fire side again. Sometimes I wish I'm still sworn off using it."
Touya blinks.
Because, what?
Shouto's going to get punished. For piercing his ears. That tracked, because Endeavor was an asshole to all of his children. But when had he sworn off using his fireside?
Man, the old man must have been pissed.
Then Touya looks over and realizes that Suzume is staring at Shouto. There's something in her dark eyes that Touya recognizes.
It's a fire.
Suzume stands up, ignores Touya, and cups Shouto's cheeks in her hands. The younger Todoroki blinks up at her, but her jaw is set tight and her calloused hands hold him still. Touya expects her to call Endeavor an asshole at best. Instead,
"I'm going to kill your father."
Touya chokes.
Shouto stares at her and blinks once, slowly. Like a cat. Touya feels like he's got smoke in his lungs again, and gapes at her. Koichi looks between the three of them, frowning.
"My father is a pro hero," Shouto says slowly. Koichi mages a strangled noise and crosses himself and steps away from them.
"And?" Suzume responds.
"He's very strong," Shouto says slowly, like he's not sure if she's slow or not anymore. Touya understands because what she's just said is insane. Endeavor is the number two pro hero. Kono Suzume is a kid, Yakuza or not.
Suzume laughs softly with a dangerous, glittering smile. It looks like a knife. It looks like ice.
"I know. I'm not going to fight him. I'm going to kill him."
Shouto blinks again. But Touya clicks on.
"What's the difference?" Shouto asks.
"Oh my sweet summer child," Suzume says softly. Touya mentally tries to remember if Shouto really is born in the summer. No, no he's a January baby.
"People die every day in a million different ways. It wouldn't be that hard to kill someone without fighting them. Or without them even knowing you were doing it."
"How-"
She shrugs. Just shrugs. Like they aren't discussing murdering the pro hero.
"Well, say that someone left the gas burning stove on and the house filled with gas. All it would take for one fire hero to go up in a massive explosion is a single misplaced spark. And I'm sure your father has plenty of those. It would be a stroke of luck if it happened on a weekend where you were staying over at one of your siblings' places, or my house. Poor Endeavor is dead, but lives on through his children."
"Or," she goes on, "small holes drilled in lightbulbs will fill a room with small amounts of chemicals. If a hole was in each lamp and lightbulb all someone would have to do is try to turn a light on and it would trigger a chain reaction that would bring the entire house crashing down. A needle filled with air will kill someone. Or-"
She lets go of Shouto's cheeks and takes his arm. She taps her thumb across the vein above his wrist. Touya watches in fascination.
"If you pinch here in a certain way it can cause a blood clot that will travel to heart in three minutes and give a grown man a heart attack. It could even kill him. None of these involve fighting a man. At most you shake his hand."
Shouto is staring at her. Touya is staring at her.
This isn't an idle threat.
This isn't her spouting her mouth off because Shouto is a friend of hers.
This is something that she's thought about, something that she knows.
Suzume pauses.
"If. If you want me to kill your dad."
Her brows furrow.
"I could also, you know, out him as an abusive fuck, expose him as adirt bag and a technical human trafficor and ruin his life, destroy his reputation and possibly get him arrest. If you, you know. You prefer."
She makes a face, her nose wrinkled and her cheeks puffed out. "But that way takes longer."
Shouto stares at her for a long, long time. Touya's mind is reeling with the new information. With the offer. He wants to say something, anything, but what can he do other than watch?
It's Shouto who asks the important question.
"How much longer?"
Suzume pauses and cocks her head. She hums softly.
"Seven months," she says at last. "Maybe eight."
"...You can't be serious," Shouto accuses. Touya is inclined to agree. Eight months, for something that he's been trying to figure out for years? She's-
"I am."
-serious.
"No one will help you. The police won't believe that a pro would do that." Shouto says with a horrible amount of certainty. One that Touya recognizes. Natsuo had tried once. Just once.
"Then it's a good thing I'm not going to them to help me," she reasons easily.
"Pro heroes won't back you up," Shouto isists with a frown.
"I'm not asking them either."
Both of the Todoroki's stare at her. Hard.
"Why would you do that?" Shouto asks at last.
"Because you're my friend? Obviously." Suzume tugs at her scrunchie nervously. "Well?"
Because he was her friend. That was insane. She was insane!
"... eight months, you said?" Shouto asks, his voice small with a shadow of hope.
Suzume grins, sharp and dangerous. It doesn't belong to a hero. It belongs to the daughter of Kono Sanjirou. The Carnelian Viper.
"Eight months."
He can wait eight months. He's waited years.
It's already been two months. Six more, and he'll see what she can accomplish.
And even if she can't do what she said she would, he can already see her laying foundations that he could use later. He doesn't know how she learned about all of the damage that Endeavor caused. Even Touya didn't know, but maybe that was because he'd spent years focusing on the damage done to him.
He wasn't the only person Endeavor had hurt.
Shouto has a scar on his face.
Dozens of other people have scars too.
Some are simply dead.
And the reports are still pouring in every day, and lawsuits are opening up all over the country.
Even if she doesn't get so far as to prove Endeavor a human trafficker and and abusive fuck, she's already killing darlings.
Touya can take it from there if he has to.
But for now, he can wait, a coal fire under the earth, waiting for someone to crack open the surface so he can roar to life and destroy.