This was getting so long, I actually had to cut this chapter in half!

Before I confuse people! Since so much of this chapter is a flashback, I'm not going to put all of that in italics because I personally think that much italicized content is difficult to read.

Instead I'm going to use page breaks to denote the scene changes. I'll also use parentheses to show what Suzume doesn't tell Shinsou, but what we, who have a look into her brain, do get to know.

Typical reminder that there are no reliable narrators in this story, everyone only knows their part of the story.

At this rate Suzume was going to have to buy her own bar set just to make more mocktails. Or maybe Kurogiri was putting something sketchy in them to get them to taste extra good, because she's pretty sure that normal juice isn't as sweet as this. And Suzume isn't a huge fan of sweets to begin with! There's a reason her favorite dessert is sesame balls. But they're good.

She's sipping on another one, lounging at the bar, when the door behind it opens. Her conversation with Mustard, who's abandoned his gas mask for the time being, cuts short when she sees a familiar face come in from the back rooms.

He looks tired. Which isn't unusual, but this is different. The bags under his eyes are heavy, and the corners of his mouth look red and raw. His gravity defying hair is limp and greasy, like he hasn't showered in a couple of days.

Shinsou Hitoshi steps out from behind the bar and Suzume's jaw drops open in utter shock.

"Hitoshi? What are you doing here?" She asked, feeling like an idiot as soon as the words leave her mouth. He must agree, because he said, slowly,

"Being held captive...What are you doing here?"

"The same thing," she hopped off the counter and her boots clicked against the hardwood floor. She quietly checked that her scrunchy was in place, and did an automatic, near robotic, security check. Mustard at the bar, Magne beside Hitoshi, Kurogiri behind the bar. No one was directly between them and the door, but a teleporter and a long range fighter were present.

No making a break for it. .

Suzume took Hitoshi's hands in hers and inspected him critically. There was a bandage on one arm, a fresh one, and his wrists were rubbed raw from some kind of rope. Nylon, if she had to guess. The set of his shoulders implied he'd had his arms tied behind him long term, and his pupils were a tad too dilated for this lighting. A concussion? Or some kind of drug?

Suzume narrowed her eyes at Magne.

"What did you guys do to him?" she demanded of the older woman.

The red head looked offended, and crossed her arms over her chest.

"We didn't do anything to him! I went down to get him and he'd broke a bottle and tried to stab me with it. Ended up cutting himself instead, and the ropes he was in."

"You still tied him up," Suzume argued. She took Hitoshi by the elbow and guided him to the bar, where she flagged down Kurogiri and ordered another of what she'd been drinking. Mustard eyed the pair.

"Since when do you drink?" Hitoshi asked her.

"Hmm? Oh, I don't. It's an Abstinence on the Beach. A mocktail. It's literally just fruit juice."

Mustard squawked at her. "It's what?!"

Suzume shot him a dour look.

"Did you really think I was getting drunk in the middle of villain central? I'm not an idiot."

"I don't know, maybe you were coping with the stress!"

"I'm not stressed, and alcohol is a shitty way of coping with the stress. I'm not interested in being an alcoholic thank you."

"Drinking to calm down doesn't make you an alcoholic."

"No, but it's a pretty good sign of one. Needed a drink to steady your nerves is making yourself reliant on it and-"

"What is happening here." Hitoshi cut into what was quickly becoming a common occurrence.

Mustard glared at Hitoshi. "You're not allowed to ask questions."

"He can ask whatever questions he wants. If you get caught answering them that's your own fault," Suzume cut in, narrowing her dark eyes at the young man.

Hitoshi shook his head and sat at the bar to accept the mix of fruit juice that the smokey bartender handed to him. Magne sat a few stools away, and accepted a glass of wine from the man.

"Whatever," Mustard said, "I'm getting the boss, and you two can deal with him."

"Good, I love dealing with him," Suzume snarked. Her easy attitude was gone. She could feel the tightening in her muscles, and everything around her grew into sharper focus. All at once it wasn't just her own life on the line, and she felt so damn stupid for ever thinking that she was the only one affected by the changes that had come. Especially since she knew that there was someone else here.

But seeing made it all the more real, made it absolute that they hadn't just said that to get her to behave.

There were so many changes now. Changes that she didn't even understand. None of this should have been happening. There was no reason for her and hitoshi to be here instead of Katsuki.

Except that they'd all placed in the top three of the Sports Festival.

"Suzume," Hitoshi said slowly. "What is going on here? What's been happening?"

She looked at him. Rumpled, injured, exhausted and probably concussed. Then back at her glass. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Kurogiri wander down the bar to talk with Magne, giving them a smidge of privacy.

"Well…"

For just a minute she's completely alone outside. Then a finger taps her shoulder. An unfamiliar voice greets here.

(It's only unfamiliar by the grace of fifteen years.)

"Excuse me?"

She turns, bewildered, and a white and black mask smiles back at him. The touch on her shoulder tighters and she feels a tiny 'pop!' and the world is gone.

No color. No gray.

Black.

Empty.

Nothing.

Suzume gasps loudly. Color is everywhere and she can smell cigarettes and alcohol. She stumbles, her eyes suck in dining booths and a long bar, sepia tones everywhere and people staring at her. A TV shows nothing but static but she stumbles herself into it and sends it smashing to the floor in her wake.

(Another step to the side, away from the people in the room, and she crunches the microphone under her heel. Her mind is whirling a mile a minute, everything she knows, everything she doesn't, and she knows that the last thing she needs is All For Fucking One listening in on anything here. He has too much life experience, too much creepy quirks at his disposal and she will not be spied on so easily)

The League of Villains all watch her warily. Two women, (Magne and Toga), sit in a booth a ways near the back. A familiar reptilian figure is perched at the bar, studiously ignoring her. Next to him is a boy that Suzume…

Doesn't recognize at all.

He looks like he's about Kaname's age, in a black school uniform. A gas mask hangs from his belt, and other than that he's about as bland looking as Suzume is. Dusty hair, tan skin, and brown eyes. He also has a gun, which is weird.

Next to one in Japan has guns, and even fewer villains have them, in this quirk obsessed world.

Even weirder than that is the fact that it's a revolver.

(Suzanne could handle a gun. She was actually very good with them, even if she'd never actually shot another human being with them. She had a fondness for revolvers, and the old west feel of them. Black powder were her favorites, with the rhythm of counting grains, loading each barrel with soft, pure lead, and lubing the chamber so it didn't chain fire.

She missed the heavy scent of black powder sometimes, and its sweet, smokiness hovering around her at the range.)

Tomura leans forwards on a bar stool, breaking her from her lightning fast observations. Father is fixed on his face.

"Well that was just rude."

"You don't get to complain about my manners when you just kidnapped me you shit head!" She snaps instantly. She can't see the red eyes she knows are somewhere behind his hair. But she can feel them fixed on her like a physical thing. Something inside her snaps.

"What the actual fuck is going on here?!"

"I think you summed it up pretty well," Shigaraki drawls. "Take a seat. There's no point fighting. You're out numbered and out gunned." Mustard waves his revolver around as if to demonstrate the truth in Shigaraki's words. And the revolver is impressive, but there are ways around guns, and revolvers take an extra second to cock the hammer.

(Does he use the sight at the end, or is he an instinctive shooter? Which eye is dominant, and is he prone to target panic?)

"I could always break your ribs again," she snaps, fury coating her tongue. His hands fall in front of his lap and Shigaraki cocks his head at her.

"Take a seat," Shigaraki tells her again. "You're not the only UA brat that we have here."

That, at least, makes Suzume pause. Her eyes narrow, snake like and hard, and she stomps over to the nearest barstool. Pieces of metal crunch under her boots and she sits down with her feet braced on the bar at the bottom of the stool. Her arms cross, but her body is coiled tight like a spring. She's ready to move. Ready to bolt at a moment's notice. Even if she can't.

Bakugou. She's sure that they have Bakugou around here somewhere.

(who else would it be? He was the one who was supposed to be here in the first place, angry and villainous, and why the fuck is she here now?!)

"Well?" she asks at length. Her gaze flicks from Shigaraki to Shuichi and he looks away quickly. Every inch of him screams 'shame'.

"Wait," Hitoshi cuts in, "when did they tell you their names?"

"Huh? Well, Shigaraki I knew from the USJ, obviously, and then Spinner, or Shuichi, I met playing online with him-"

"You did what with who."

"I met them on accident playing a video game online."

Hitoshi pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Did you know who they were?"

"We all used fake names. Shuichi wasn't a villain yet, and I couldn't prove Shigaraki was Shigaraki. He had his face and almost all of his body covered at the USJ, and 'tall guy with messy blue-or-white hair' is like. Really vague."

Which was true. They lived in a world where unusual hair colors were the norm.

"Okay. Okay. And then?"

"Well," Shigaraki drawls, and his fingers twitch inwards. "Welcome to the League of Villains."

Suzume cocks her head.

(Words that she had wanted to say for more than a decade popped out of her mouth as soon as they got the chance.)

"Oh, this isn't Lovemuffin ?"

Shigaraki stops, mid dramatic reveal. He's not the only one. Everyone stares at Suzume, and her bizarre nonsense. She meets their gaze evenly, unashamed.

It isn't. What?"

" Lovemuffin ." Suzume repeats. "You know, League Of Villainous Evildoers Maniacally United For Frightening Investments in Naughtiness. I bet you don't even have a musical number rehearsed. Or choreographed!"

"Oh my god you are such a loser."

"I'm hilarious, now shut up and let me talk."

Shigaraki stares at her blankly, then looks at Compress. He points an accusing finger at the magician themed thief. "Do your marbles do brain damage or something?"

Even with the black and white mask on, Suzume can see Compress bristle like an offended cat. Thieves are all divas.

"My quirk is perfectly safe on living people! Maybe the heroes trained her too hard." He gestures as he speaks, elegant and tricky hands flowing with his words. Suzume wants, suddenly, terribly, to play cards with him.

"There's no such thing as training too hard," Suzume says, affronted. "If you can still move, you can still do push ups."

Compress stares at her. "... okay, so she's insane. That's not my fault!"

"Insane?! I'm not the one who thought kidnapping me was a good idea!"

"If you think the heroes will be here to save you any time soon-"

Suzume cuts Shigaraki off. "I'm not talking about the heroes. I'm talking about my family."

Because thats the crux of it really. The heroes will come, of course they will. This is an attack on their precious school, their pride, and their students. There's no doubt in her mind that Aizawa, and the principal, and even All Might, as much as she might dislike and distrust him, will be doing everything in their power to get them back.

But the heroes are just that. Heroes. Over-glorified cops.

They are not blood and honor bound to retrieve her. They are not liable to leave corpses in their wake.

Shigaraki scoffs at her. "Your brother might be a little wannabe working with Gang Orca but-"

"But my father is Kono Sanjiro."

The name slips from her mouth, summoned by months of that familiar itchy in the back of her head. The one that said she was missing something. Because she knew her father to be a handy-man, who fixed roofs and ended disagreements between spouses, and retrieved the occasional stolen cash from convenience store thieves when they weren't worth Kai's time or important enough for more than a slap on the risk or a recruitment speech.

Because her mother spoke french. Because she felt like she was missing some huge part of her parents lives, and she'd never tried to drag the answers out because she didn't want the distance that came with looking at people, not as people, but as puzzles.

Because at the tattoo parlor they had reacted to his name with awe, more than would befit a handyman. Because there was no way that Rio and Taka had just met randomly.

Her father was Yakuza. And at some point, he had been very, very important.

Hitoshi choked on his drink.

"Your father was what?!"

"Yakuza," she said again. "That's why we use my mothers name. It's really not that much of a secret…"

"You never told me!"

"You never asked!"

"Oh my god this explains so much."

Her gamble works. Shigaraki stops talking, Kurogiri stiffens behind the bar and Compress takes two large steps away from her. Out of everyone here, they are the ones most steeply entrenched in the shadows of the world. In the Life. If anyone knew anything about The Family it would be those three. Magne and Shuichi are new to the scene, and Suzume doesn't even like calling them villains. Toga is just a homicidal middle schooler. Mustard is… a homicidal high schooler who's worse at it?

(And where are the others? Did Dabi stay at the tattoo parlor, after her little declaration? Where's Twice?)

"He's in prison," Shigaraki says slowly.

Suzume leans on the bar and taps the heel of her boot on the stool supports. She narrows her eyes, and tries to think of anything that would keep her father from coming for his children.

There isn't anything.

And what's more, Kai and the old man promised to look after them until Suzume and Kaname became heroes.

Well, neither was a hero now, and underpowered and shrunk from their glory, the Yakuza were still dangerous. There was a reason Nighteye was after them, and it wasn't just for kicks.

"So?"

"He was retired."

She arches a brow, her mouth curved in a slim, nearly sharp grin. It's all a bluff, but its working.

"So ?"

"Then we'll handle him whenever he arrives. If he arrives. They have him locked up pretty tight, you know."

"I know," she assures. It makes her feel more settled. More in control. Like she has some measure of power of the situation. She knows that someone will come for her. Aizawa, Kai, or her father.

But she needs to change the conversation, needs to grab the reigns and rip them from Shigaraki before he can get cocky and think he has all the control here. Keep him wrong footed.

So she turns towards Kurogiri. "Yo, can I get an Abstinence on the Beach ?"

"A what?" Shigaraki asks, bewildered. Suzume refuses to let a smile show. "You can't just order a drink here!" Kurogiri doesn't even blink (if he even can) and starts mixing something for her. Apparently he knows exactly what she's talking about.

"It's a bar. You kidnapped me. If you were going to kill me you would have done it already, so you want me alive. In one piece too, or I might be missing some skin as is. And if you didn't want me to order a drink, you shouldn't have brought me to a bar. You could have gone thematic, with some big evil lair, or whimsical with mini golf-"

"Mini golf?!"

"But instead we're at a bar. So I'm having something to drink."

"You're like, twelve!"

"What are you, a cop?"

Shigaraki, exasperated, took off Father and set the creepy mummified hand on the counter next to him. Kurogiri set a drink down next to him as well, something that looked like whiskey but was probably apple juice.

(Shigaraki had told her once that he didn't drink. Not just because of his quirk, but because it made him too damn melancholy. There were happy drunks, mean drunks, and sad drunks. He was the latter, and he fucking hated it.)

"Are you going to be like this the whole time?" he demanded, glaring at her. She could finally see the bright red of his eyes with the hand set on the bar counter. Suzume was unrepentant.

"Yes."

"I could kill you."

"You won't. We've been over this. If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it already. You had plenty of opportunities."

"You are so goddamn insufferable!"

"It's a trait I spent many years cultivating. It's called 'being the youngest sibling'."

"I might genuinely hate you."

"Then I'll just hit the bricks," she turned her stool to rise and go for the door, but three fingers looped in her shirt stopped her.

"Nope. No way. We went to a lot of trouble to get you here, you're not going anywhere."

Suzume eyed him. She seriously considered taking a swing, just to see what he'd do, but decided against it.

(she knows they don't have a healer in this party, and if she remembers right Shigaraki's control low key sucks right now. It'll get better in the future. Maybe.

In the future that might not happen anymore.

It's terrifying and exhilarating all at once. She's living in the present, with no set course for what happens next. She can guess, but just like Suzanna Hemmings there's no guarantee she'll be right.

She hasn't been so giddy with excitement in years.

She hasn't been so terrified in decades.

This is not small time murder, racketeering, or real estate scandals.

This is life or death, possible fate of the world stuff.

Shit.

What was she supposed to do about AFO? Was there anything she could do? She knew she could become a hero, she knew she could do detective work, she was pretty sure if it came down to it she could even track AFO down. But then? She was just one girl, and while she was far from helpless that man was a veritable god. She'd seen what he did to Nomu's, both in manga and before her very eyes, she'd seen what he could do to regular people.

It was so long ago, and such a small chapter she had forgotten about until she was really thinking.

A hospital full of children. Full of spare bodies, in case Shigaraki didn't work out.

Could she let Shigaraki work out? He was his own man with his own choices, his own sins, but-

But now, sitting at a bar with him in golden lights, she couldn't imagine leaving him to that fate. She couldn't imagine leaving anyone to that fate. Because Kono Suzume was not a kind person, but she wasn't a monster, either.)

"Fine," she says at last, taking her straw between her teeth. She could just hang out for a little while then.

And so she did. She sat at the bar, ordering drinks from Kurogiri. At some point she started seeing exactly how many mocktails he could make. From the simple classic like the Roy Rogers, Coconut Water Daiquiri, Agua Frescas, 'Strawberita, 86 tequila', to Honey Hibiscus Lemon-lime, the only thing he hadn't had ready was Agua de Tamarindo.

Which sucked because she personally liked Tamarindo.

Shuichi was ignoring her, his every motion wracked with guilt, and it got to the point that he left the room entirely, followed by Shigaraki.

Just when Suzume thought her entertainment would be over, the barstool next to her was taken up by one golden eyed girl that she recognized instantly.

"Himiko."

The girl, who's mouth had opened to speek, froze. Then she blinked and a smile spread, showing off fangs that Suzume had personally thought were very cute when she saw her last.

"You know my name!"

"Of course I know your name. We went to middle school together, before you stabbed that kid."

"We did?" Toga Himiko tapped her finger on her chin, her brows furrowed deep in thought.

(She's still cute. And Magne looks like she could crush Suzume with one hand.

Lord, have mercy.)

"You once defended me from a guy who was giving me flack for being quirkless."

Himiko's eyes light up.

"That was you!"

"Yeah, it- oof!"

Suzume grunted as her face was suddenly squished between two hands. Himiko's palms were significantly softer than Suzume's carefully calloused ones.

"I didn't know you were going to get cuter!"

Suzume stared at her blankly.

"Hmmh?" she grunted. Her mouth was squished shut with her cheeks. She felt like a fish, and Himiko was smiling with… far too many teeth.

A chill slithered down Suzume's spine.

"I mean, you were adorable in middle school, too, but no you grew into your eyes-"

"Eh Iff Hhat?" Suzume pulled her face back from the older girl.

Himiko huffed at her.

"Hey, come back. You know I never noticed that little scar on your forehead. It must have bled a lot, huh? Head wounds always do. Blood is just so cute, don't you think?"

"It's certainly… interesting."

Which isn't a lie.

"I think boys covered in blood are just the cutest. But cute girls only look cuter when they're bleeding, you know?"

Suzume automatically caught the hollow needle heading for her thigh. Twisted and forced Himiko back, bent over the bar counter. Suzume hovered above her, her grip on the other girl unerring in its tightness. She boxed her in, catching Himiko's other hand when it came in front the side.

(The girl isn't nearly as slippery as Suzume remembers her being)

"Why is everyone here so rude? You could have at least tried to ask. I mean honestly-"

Suzume's rant is cut short when sharp teeth sink into her shoulder.

"She bit you!?"

"Why do you think I'm in this dress? Yeah, she bit me. And I liked that shirt!"

"Why are you more upset over your shirt than getting bitten?"

"I can replace blood easier than I can replace my shirt!"