This is it! After this we'll be wrapping up the season, while I write the next season during a break. My plan was to have 20 episodes total per season, once a week for 5 months, but that unfortunately didn't work out this time. Maybe next time? Next season premiers August 1st, 2024.

The winner by a landslide for the vote was a Suzume ship chapter. I'll be posting the poll for everyone interested to vote on their favorite pairing partner for her on tumblr, or just like last time you can leave your vote in the comments section or message me directly. Potential pairing will be based on who I've seen people mention shipping her with in the comments sections. Please be civil, no bashing other people with different ships, etc. Poll will be open for 7 days and will end Feb. 10th.

Once that one shot is written, I'll go ahead and post it here instead of in Glory Gone By or as a stand alone, so it's easier for y'all to see your reward.

The runner up was actually the 'other' option from the AO3 comment section and my Tumblr DMs, where the vote was for Yakuza Suzume. Which has certainly intrigued me… maybe we'll see our girl as a crime lord someday.

The dining room table felt too small for this conversation.

There was so much to be said, so much to be done, and the dining room table felt too weak and flimsy to hold the weight of it all.

Suzume stared down at the table cloth. Blue and white checkered, with a stain here and there from the decades of rearing children. The table had come with them from their old home, and there it had held food enough for ten, twelve, even thirteen people. It was dented beneath the cloth, where children got too rough with silverware or toys were bashed on the finished wooden surface. The table had supported their family three times a day for longer than Suzume had been alive.

But it still felt insufficient. Like its sturdy legs would buckle beneath the words about to be said, that its grains would start to crumble beneath the secrets unspooled upon it.

Where else would they have this conversation though?

The living room was so comfortable, too soft for hard talks. The kitchen had too many knives, and Kaname was already looking twitchy.

Suzume picked at the edges of the table cloth while her mother sat at the head of the table. Kaname was across from her, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. He'd been tense and paranoid for the last few days. And how could Suzume blame him? He'd saved her, lost an eye, had it restored and witnessed the death of a dark emperor.

The fact that Suzume was allowed to go to the bathroom alone was amazing.

He was not going to like what else she was going to be doing.

Their mother looked over the pair of dark haired children. Her two little heroes in training. They'd come home, bloody and exhausted but whole thanks to Rio and her quirk.

She hadn't seen Kaname with blood where an eye should have been. She hadn't seen Suzume, stabbed through with shrapnel where Katsuki had broken himself free.

Good.

Chiasa takes a breath. The blonde of her hair is almost entirely gone. It's brown all the way down to her chin. Her dark eyes, Suzume's eyes, slide to her daughter. Waiting. Expecting. When Suzume got home she'd told her they needed to talk. About her and their father and all the things they never knew.

(and Suzume could know. She could know, as Suzanna did. All she had to do was draw herself back, far enough that the splotching colors before her became a pond of lilies or San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. She could see the whole picture herself, if she only drew away from her family, forsook their love, and became a cold, distant watcher.

She doesn't.

She won't.

She won't look up at a sibling in an empty warehouse again.)

Suzume puffs her cheek out and blows out a breath slowly.

Dark eyes meet dark eyes, daughter looks to mother, and Suzume speaks the question.

"Who are you? Who is dad?"

And Chiasa looks pained.

But she answers all the same, her voice quiet and her words heavy.

"I am Yusada Chiasa." She holds up a hand when Kaname opens his fanged mouth, cutting him off. "My mother is Séverine Clemeceau, and my father is Yusada Yuzo. He was an agricultural attaché during the rice blight of '79. He went to Nantes, on the banks of the Loire, to study the cities biodiversity, and met my mother there. She was a diplomat's daughter. They married, and returned to Fukuoka for a time. They were-"

She stops. Looks at the ceiling instead of her children.

" My father's research helped find a way to cultivate rice resistant to the fungus that had been attacking it. My mother was a philanthropist who managed charities all across the western world. But still. Even if they were 'good' people, they were not good parents."

Suzume shifts uncomfortably in her seat. She's not entirely surprised, but still. This is her mother. This is Chiasa, a woman who loves her more than anything. The idea of her being mistreated makes her blood boil.

"When I was young… My parents were very strict. I was never allowed to join clubs or to visit my friends. I could pick one person to come over for my birthday. If I had group projects I was allowed to leave the house until eight at night, and for every minute I was late I was grounded for a day. They would even call me in from school and lock me in my room. If I went to someone else's home, I was expected to stay in front of a window with the curtains drawn so they could see me when they drove by."

"I learned to go to sleep early and wake up just after midnight. My friends would be waiting a few blocks away and I would sneak out to join them. I got very good at lying to my parents too, and getting into their emails and deleting anything that came from my teachers. When I was old enough I wasn't allowed to apply for any part time jobs. They wanted me to be a bird in their cage. I have no idea what they thought would happen when they inevitably died."

"College was my only potential escape, and when the time came, even that I wasn't allowed to go to. They had enough money that I couldn't apply for financial aid, but they refused to pay for anything or let me get a job then either. Eighteen, and still powerless. Eighteen and trapped. I left our home in France in the middle of the night, thirty five years ago. I left everything behind, with a backpack and a passport that I had barely managed to get in the first place. I even left my little sister. If I could have I would have taken her with me, but she was just fifteen and-"

There's decades of regret in Chiasa's gaze then. Her mouth quivers, and Suzume reaches across the table to take her hand. After a moment, Kaname's shoulders slump, and he does the same.

"After that I moved as far away as I could. My father was Japanese, and I was born in Fukuoka so I was technically a citizen, but we hadn't come back in fifteen years. I could barely remember the language, and I didn't know or trust any of my fathers family. Nevertheless, I managed to get a flight here, and a job. Turns out pretty foreign girls can make good money bartending. It took years while I worked towards my degree. Even then, I had to take out a loan. You can guess who gave it to me."

Narutally. Osachi and the yakuza.

"To work off my debt, I treated the injured. Rio wasn't born yet, and Osachi's quirk isn't a healing kind. Those are rare and far between. But even that leash was more than I'd had with my parents. I had only been working at the vet clinic for a few years when I met your father. He was… my saving grace, although when we first met I was the one who saved him."

"He was injured. I took care of him. He kept getting injured too. I don't know how many times I saw him, for everything from bullet holes to potato peeler accidents. It was months before I saw him outside the clinic. Over a year before he asked me out properly."

"Your father was an incredibly powerful man. He specialized in wetworks. He could have commanded the Shie Hessaikai if he really wanted to. Honestly…"

"I can't think of a human being more dangerous than him."

"He had money. Status. Influence, respect. But when I was pregnant with Takahiro, he went to Osachi and gave it all up. He stepped down, and went from the Yakuza's most prized poison to an errand man."

"There are still people who know his name though. People old enough or well connected enough to understand what Kono Sanjirou was once capable of."

"Your father left the business. And I decided to leave what was left of my family behind too. When Taka was born I swore I would never do what my parents had done. I would let you follow your dreams, even when I didn't like them. Even if it pained me. I wouldn't let you grow up to be like… Like me."

"Mom…"

Kaname laces his fingers with their mothers. "Mama, come on. You've kept secrets from us, but you're not bad. Not a bad person or a bad mother."

"But I am," she argues. "I've let the two of you get put in danger, over and over again. Kaname, your time with Gang Orca has pitted you against dangerous people. Hell, Suzume's school has put her in more danger than most people face in a lifetime!"

"Which you knew it would, eventually," Suzume cuts in finally, "We all knew what this would require. What our goals would mean for us. You knew better than we even did, and you've done everything to equip us for it. Think about it. Do you really think that if you'd tried to stop us, it would have done anything but alienate us from you?"

Chiasa's mouth thins.

"...no."

"No," Kaname agrees, firm and as resolute as he's always been. "We will be heroes, mama. I know it's hard. I know you don't like it. But it's what we're going to do."

Even the world couldn't stop them.

Even their mother couldn't.

"You two. Fuck, what am I going to do with you?"

"Love us?" Suzume suggests.

Chiasa shakes her head.

"I already do, you silly girl."

Kaname cracks a smile, but it fades after only a moment.

"So dad. He was a hit man?" Kaname ventures uncertainty. Wetworks. Assassinations.

It's hard to piece it together with the man who loved his family so much, but Suzume isn't even surprised. How can she be, when his simple name drop had gotten such a reaction before?

Kono Sanjirou is one of the most dangerous men in the country. And he had traded himself for his children's future.

Traded himself, and how many Yakuza secrets?

How had he gotten All Might of all people involved in whatever plan he'd cooked up?

Suzume hadn't asked the man before. She'd refused to acknowledge him outside of simply an annoying, jack ass teacher.

But the airport. And now, rescuing her?

Fuck.

She's going to have to talk to him, isn't she?

"He was, yes."

Suzume cocks her head.

"That's how Taka and Rio knew eachother, isn't it? If he was that high up, that's how he met the old man's daughters."

"Also yes."

"...Why didn't he teach us how to fight?" Kaname asks, bewildered.

Chiasa gets the most interesting look on her face. Her cheeks turn pink and she looks sideways.

"Your father had a very specific set of skills."

Suzume stares at her mother, and quietly decides that whatever the fuck is going on there, she does not want to know. She has her own teachers, and a master to meet not a month from then.

Time waits for no one, and she no longer has any fucking clue what the future holds.

So. She's just like everyone else now.

That's not so bad.