Suzume lands on her feet because of course she does.
Well, no, she actually catches herself on a tree, does a tarzan swing, and then lands on her feet.
And while her classmates are frantically trying to land on not-their-faces Suzume doesn't hesitate.
She runs.
At her heels the ear shifts and lifted and she hears her classmates scream as monsters start to mold themselves and step out of the trees.
If she's being honest its not so much that Suzume remembered Pixie Bobs quirk than it is that she doesn't want to be the last person there. And also she doesn't want to miss lunch.
Who would willingly skip a meal?
(Unless that meal was cheerios and orange juice, in which case.
Just no. )
So she takes off into the trees, securing her vambraces as she goes and privately thanking every got she can think of that she had the foresight to put them in her pocket instead of letting them get put in storage with everyone else's costumes and equipment.
Maybe she should have told them all.
Suzume glances over her shoulder long enough to see four of her classmates tag team to destroy one earth golem and speeds up.
Nah. They'll be fine.
She lifts her arm and shoots, embeds the hook in a tree and launches herself up into the bark. She's never had to many holds before, even in the crowded city training grounds, but here the trees are thick and tall.
An idea occurs to her and she shoots up, to the tallest branch that looks stable, and lifts.
Greenery blurs around her until it vanishes.
For a second she floats, weightless above the canopy of trees; green spreads across all sides like an ocean of foliage.
Then gravity comes back and she goes down, faster, into the trees. She has to twist and dodge the branches as she drops back down and lands on the earth.
No sooner had her toes touched the rich grass than the ground shakes and a relatively small creature made of dirt and clay rushes her from the side, swinging dull claws at her like an oversized badger. Suzume dodges, spins behind it, and punches through the spine.
She doesn't know exactly how strong the constructs are supposed to be. If she just found a weak spot or if they normally take just one good hit to go down.
But it works.
A minute later though, and she's dancing between three larger ones, trying to get a good hit in.
Dodging is easy, and even bare handed Suzume is capable.
This thing is.
Suzume is more than capable of breaking bricks with her bare hands. She's done it hundreds of times, and she can snap these great things' joints just as she can bones.
Except that they're big, and it takes her too long to get a good grip, and there's too many following her.
So she lifts her wrist, shoots, and goes flying into the trees. She dodges hands the size of motorcycles, and teeth that seem too sharp for something facing up against kids, and launches herself through the tree. She sweeps through the branches until she's out of range before she lands, breathing fast and hard.
She's already covered in dirt.
Suzume keeps a wary eye out for the monsters, but none appear.
Not, that is, until she lands on the ground again.
Then the creatures are back, smashing at her and snarling with voices that sound like wind through canyons.
Suzume kills one of them, punches through a skull made of earth that explodes with sand and soil, and launches herself once more into the trees and above. High, high in the sky.
Something metallic glints in the corner of her eye as she whips away. Something that had stung her fist.
She lands in the sheltering branches of a tree and waits.
It's obvious that Pixie Bobs visor has something to do with her quirk. A way to control it remotely somehow. She takes a careful look around. There aren't drones or cameras around that she can see floating in the air or attached to trees. There's nothing that should give away her position.
And indeed it seems like the only time her position is given away is when she touches the ground. And Pixie Bob controls the earth itself, turns it into massive creatures and makes mud slides.
Earth. Metal inside the monsters. She's not tracked by sight. She's panting heavily so its probably not sound either.
Suzume eyes the ground.
Pixie Bob is tracking them using metal pieces in the monsters that detect vibrations in the ground.
So, if she stays off the ground, she'll be fine.
Suzume prepares to leap and pauses.
She.
Should probably tell her classmates, right?
Suzume looks towards the base of the mountain, then back at where she can still hear her class causing explosions in the distance.
"... they'll be fine."
She's still fighting all of them, after all. Friends or otherwise.
Suzume lifts her arm, shoots a hook into a tree, and vaults herself into the woods.
Three hours later she finds herself walking out of the trees, sweaty and scraped, but otherwise fine. At some point she'd decided to conserve the air pressure units that shoot her grapples and not overwork them, and to just jump from tree to tree instead.
It was slower going, but she managed with only a few falls and subsequent fights, and it seemed like the further she got from her initial group the slower the reaction time was of the pussy cats creation.
Which was fine with her.
This beast forest fucking sucked.
Suzume dusts her skirt off as she walks out of the woods and looks up at the huge building that reads 'Catnip Inn'. It's a massive lodge that can definitely hold her entire year inside, plus the teachers and staff. The thick stone walls are sturdy, and she can tell that they're mostly fireproof too. There are huge vents on the roof that speak of air filters, and a massive generator around the side.
This may be labeled an inn, but it was an emergency shelter meant to withstand the worst mother nature could throw at it.
Suzume privately clocks all the exist and escape routes on her way to where the bus is parked, and a truly massive man in a skirt has managed to wrangle every single suitcase and backpack out of the bus and is marching it towards the inn.
She blinks, then turns to where Aizawa is standing with Mandalay. Pixie Bob is crouched not far, moving her hands oddly now and again as she controls her quirk from a distance.
Suzume eyes her.
Pixie Bob is, in Suzume expert opinion, a very, very dangerous woman.
She moved an entire hillside without breaking a sweat, and she's managed to create and summon incredibly detailed monsters made of dirt and soil, and she doesn't even look tired. If she wanted to end a fight all she needs to do is open a hole in the ground and stick someone in it like a wine topper.
Yeah.
Very, very, dangerous.
"Oh?"
Suzume looks away from the blonde to see Mandalay looking at her, tapping a clawed glove point to her chin.
"You made it, but where's the rest of your class?" she asks, peering behind Suzume.
The girl shrugs.
"Somewhere behind me. I wasn't paying that much attention."
"You abandoned your friends? That's cruel."
Mandalay's mouth twitches.
Suzume doesn't blink.
"They'll be fine. There's work to be done, isn't there?"
Aizawa looks at her, something strange in his eyes, but he nods all the same.
"There's unloading to do, for one thing. And equipment to set up in the training yard. We were going to do it, but if you're already here and ready for some training…"
Suzume's cheeks twitches.
She narrows her eyes at him, but nods shorts all the same.
"Fine, whatever. Show me what to do."
He does.
She carries barrels of water out into an open space set aside for training, along with practice dummies and stacks of bricks and woods. Some of it is familiar, it's not unlike setting up for teaching martial arts classes. Some of it is bizarre.
She really doesn't want to know what the four boxes of airplane sick bags are for, but she has a feeling it's got to do with Ururaka and her quirk making her nauseous. Or possibly Aoyama.
Suzume wrinkles her nose. Sometimes she doesn't envy people with quirks at all. A lot of the drawbacks seem worse than living without a quirk itself, minus the quirkism.
Well, whatever.
At some point Aizawa has her take a break to get water and some food in her, and Suzume is suddenly reminded that food always makes a person feel more human. Especially when they've been working their asses off all morning dodging giant monsters and setting up training fields for their classmates.
The huge man, Tiger, had told the girls that he was more than capable of doing all the chores himself, but Mandalay had pointed out that the manuel labor would build her muscles up and he got a gleam in his eyes that made Suzume want to go hide behind a curtain.
He was one of those muscle obsesses loons, wasn't he?
Great.
And chances were she was going to have to train with him, since she doesn't exactly had quirk to specially train at the summer camp.
She's been wondering what to do, but up until now it hasn't seemed all that important. Or at least, she's assumed that Aizawa of all people would know what to do with her. He fights mostly quirkless, and he's teaching Shinsou to do so too. Mandalay as well is a largely quirkless fighter, since her quirk is one way telepathy. It's good for assuring people that help is on the way and giving out mass instructions, but that's about it.
Even if all my training is is carrying weights up and down a mountain, I'll still be stronger when I leave, right?
Probably.
If she didn't die in the attack on the camp.
If one even happened, which she was starting to doubt. Tomura just didn't seem all that interested in Bakugou anymore. Even though he knew who she was, he hadn't asked her any questions about him or the school or what they did to study,
It was actually weird if she thought about it too much.
She shakes her head.
Maybe it'll happen.
Maybe it won't.
She honestly isn't sure anymore. Things change. They change all the time and all around her.
After all, Kai isn't a villain here. His dad isn't comatose and Eri still has her parents.
So what.
Exactly.
Is going to happen next?
Suzume stops outside the inn and looks at the sky, her brow furrowed.
All she can do, she supposes, is face the future and live with what comes. Same as everyone else.
The sky is turning pink and she can smell dinner cooking out back of the inn, where a campground with tables and barbecues is set up in the darkening lights.
The women have been cooking for an hour now while Tiger finishes setting up the mass rooms that everyone is going to be sharing. Suzume had helped him lug sheets around earlier and futons and blankets.
The future is unknown.
She's always been better at figuring out the past than the future, and now…
It looks like that's starting to become true here too.
Maybe she should be afraid. Maybe she should be relieved.
But before she can think too hard about it, the trees part, and the rest of her class finally stumbles out of the woods.
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