The last time Suzume was in an airport she had solved a kidnapping in less than an hour, rallied other hero hopefuls, and ignored the number one hero in the country to do so.

This time she sits in a wonky shaped chair next to the window, so she could watch the planes float in and blast off in turn. With a coffee in her hands and a single bag at her feet, she lets music wash over her ears and ignores everything around her for a few brief hours.

It was only a two hour flight from there, one filled with a half drunk ginger ale and a handful of pretzels that sit light in her stomach. She passes it writing, about nothing. About everything.

She has ended a life now, even if it wasn't the finally blow the shot had been meant to kill and now a man was dead. Very dead. Dead enough that it could not be denied by anyone this time.

And she is.

The same.

When you take a life two people die. Them, and the person you used to be.

That had been true, in the story she had once told her classmates. It really had been told to her, a lifetime and a half ago, by a man who had loved her for all his failures.

She.

Should be different, shouldn't she?

She should feel some kind of guilt, right? Feel bad, for murdering a man? But the only 'bad' she felt was for the loss Tomura would feel. Even if she thought it was misplaced, he had loved the man who had manipulated him for so much of his life. He had been the most important person in Shigaraki Tomura's life and she had put a bullet in his life support and ensured his death.

But for killing the man? No. No, she did not feel bad for that. Not even a little big. If ever she believed in evil, All For One was the closest that would ever exist to that. He was a man who cared for nothing but himself, who destroyed everything he touched, be that his brother, his child, or any one else in the world. He was cruel, unrelenting, and vicious.

She didn't regret putting him in the ground.

She regretted how that would affect her relationships with her classmates, and the way it would make her already difficult climb to heroism even harder. She had killed someone on live TV.

There was also the slope that she had taken a step down.

If she had killed one man, what was really keeping her from killing another? She already had such a disconnect to the world and life, how hard would it be for her to decide that someone didn't deserve to live and just end their time on this earth and send them to the next one.

That's what she should be afraid of.

But.

She wasn't.

Suzume didn't think that would happen. She just didn't, if for no other reason than the fact that killing someone instead of capturing them and presenting all the evidence on why they were the criminal and why they should be found guilty sounded so. Much. more. Boring.

Maybe if she had no other choice.

Maybe if someone threatened her family, or she was backed too far into a corner.

If she was being honest, Suzume was more worried about her lack of concern than she was about her actions themselves.

Whatever that said about her as a person.

Suzume stuck to herself as she boarded a bus to the countryside, and tucked herself into a corner away from everyone else who might get the wrong impression that she was interested in speaking to anyone. Of course, most people on a public bus feel the same way. It's a place for keeping your head down and ignoring everyone else in the world while you got from point A to B in a cramped seat that smelled like sanitizer and old luggage.

The name of the town and the instructions for getting there from the bus stop sit heavy in her pocket, and by the time she reaches the outskirts of Hisao she's unfolded and refolded them so many times the folded points are soft and frayed.

From Hisao city limits stop beneath the sign for Jujube.

Walk down the mainstreet, pass by four crossroads, and turn left.

Keep walking until you've passed the house where that big tree used to be (how was she supposed to know where a tree was?) and follow the winding dirt road that extends behind it over the bridge that looks ready to collapse.

From there, climb.

Reach the top by sunset.

Be kind to the lions.

Walk through the gate.

The bus was left behind.

There were no taxi's this far out in the country. There were no Uber's, either, and even if there were she wouldn't go to them. Even without the orders to walk the few blocks forwards.

No.

Something about this place felt far too personal for her to do that. Suzume didn't want to share this time with anyone but herself.

She shoulders her backpack, and starts walking.

Down mainstreet, pass by four crossroads, and turn left.

The houses were old. Not old enough to look like they belonged in a period piece, and there were some western designed homes here and there, but the weather had worn on them over the years and the roads were rough and covered in pot holes. There were cute little gardens though, and from where she was walking she could see orchards stretching to the north.

Keep walking until she passed the house where that big tree used to be (how was she supposed to know where a tree was?) and follow the winding dirt road that extended behind it over a bridge that looked ready to collapse.

Suzume stopped at the end of the block and looked around. If she had been a big tree, where would she have gone?

There was a tree stump diligently growing mushrooms to her left, but it was thin and definitely wouldn't have belonged to a big tree. Another house had a huge lawn instead of a garden, covered in a thick carpet of grass.

Maybe the tree had once been there, but she didn't see where there was any clear indication it had been.

Suzume kept walking, looking over each yard with an intensity that would send any squirrel or resident scurrying.

She stopped when she reached a yard with a copse of skinny trees weighed heavy with fruit. The house behind it had three little statues on the porch, one of monkey, one of a pig, and one of a tanuki.

There was an old woman, even shorter than Suzume herself, diligently plucking green fruits off the branches.

Something about her caught Suzume's eyes. Maybe it was the way she held her shoulders. Maybe it was the callouses on her hands, and bare feet. Maybe it was none of those things, and just the look in her old eyes.

She also didn't look japanese. She looked Chinese, or maybe Korean.

Suzume cleared her throat quietly.

The woman squinted at her from under a tattered straw hat. Suzume got the impression that her messy ponytail had been red in her youth, but now it was so gray it was barely a shade of pink.

"What is it girl?" she asked, her voice old and coarse.

Suzume inclined her head to the copse of trees.

"Did there used to be a big tree there? Before the smaller ones were planted."

"Who wants to know? Do they not teach manners in the city anymore?"

Suzume politely bowed to the old lady, and reminded herself that old people were always Like That no matter what dimension you were in.

"Kono Suzume," she introduced. Her fathers name felt foreign on her tongue.

It felt right.

"Well, Kono Suzume, reach those jujube on the top and I'll tell you about these trees."

Suzume glanced at the sun.

It was already noon, and she didn't know how much further she had to journey.

But… she set her backpack on the ground next to the fence and went to help where she could. The trees weren't towering, they were more like tall shrubs than proper trees honestly, but she still had to rise on her toes to reach the small green fruits on the top.

It was hot, sweaty work, and she was eternally glad she hadn't been reborn as a farmer.

That would have sucked.

Suzume dropped the last small fruit into the old woman's basket a few hours later. The sun was heading diligently to the west now, ebbing towards the horizon slowly.

Her feet itched to get moving again, but the old woman wasn't having it.

"Come this way," she ordered, taking Suzume out behind the house. Suzume followed after her. The backyard was home to a single nanny goat that eyed them distastefully from where she was diligently gnawing on a fence post. On the other side of the fence was a winding dirt path that vanished into thick trees.

The old woman took Suzume to a back shed, where they stored the basket along with half dried out others. The old woman selected three fruits. One green and new, one red and ripe, and one nearly black and shriveled.

She handed them to the teenager, pressing them firmly into her palm.

"You'll spend these all in one place," she predicted. "Begone with you now. That tree is long gone, and you should be too."

Suzume tucked the fruit into her pocket. Something very weird was going on. But it was hard to get a read on the old woman.

Still, Suzume was running out of time.

She bowed politely, and left the nanny goat, the woman, and the jujube behind.

She hopped the fence, and started down the winding dirt road. Trees rose high around her, and the air was filled with the scent of earth and growing things. Birds whistled cheerfully around her and small creatures scurried overhead and in the underbrush.

It was nearing five by the time she reached the edge of a near-cliff face that reached up so far she couldn't even see the top.

From there, climb.

Up, up, up, she hiked an incline so steep it was a step below bouldering to get to the very top of it. Sweat beaded around her temples and dripped down her cheeks and pool on her lower back. Her underboob's were unpleasantly sticky and she could feel every time she bent enough for her sides to fold and the skin to peel apart again.

Suzume nearly collapsed when she finally dragged herself over the finally few feet of the rise and took the time to catch her breath.

From so far up she could see the city skyline in the distance, and the ocean glittering beyond it. It didn't even look blue from here. It looked silver and shining and like some distant fantasy waiting for her to chase it into the horizon line, where long fingers of clouds streaked past.

When she turned back to the path ahead, she found what lay at the end of her handwritten instructions.

Be kind to the lions.

Walk through the gate.

The 'gate' was a chinese style paifang.

Two tower struts of wood poked out of solid marble cylinders that made up the bases. The marble was covered in intricate lettering that she couldn't read. The pillar's stretched high, to the multi-tiled roof that slanted black tiles trimmed neatly in gold. At the top was a long piece of wood painted the same red at the supports that curved like goat horns on either end.

To the left sat a lion carved out of marble, holding a perfect glass ball under one huge stone paw. On the other side was a lioness with a cub under her own hold. Both were looking ahead, towards the distant sea. There was moss growing on their faces, threatening to block their view.

Neither snarled, or came to life to confront her when Suzume stepped forwards. She had one hand in her hoodie pocket, and the other held her backpack tight. Her sneakers barely made a sound, but her jeans 'whooshed' against each other with each step she took.

It was so quiet here.

There were no birds singing, no small scurrying creatures in the underbrush.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled.

Between the two red poles of the gate the air rippled faintly. Like heat waves coming off a cement street. But it wasn't that hot out, and the pathway beneath her feet was made of compacted dirt. Not tar and gravel.

Walk through the gate.

Shihan's handwriting was neat and perfect. His instructions were clear.

That didn't stop every inch of her being from balking at the idea of taking even one more solitary step towards the paifang before her.

There was something unnatural about it.

The birds and the squirrels and the field mice knew it. She knew it.

Yet, Suzume forced herself to take another step forward. And another.

Be kind to the lions.

Suzume's dark eyes darted from one great beast to the other. Their stone claws were curved and wicked, and made of dark black rock compared to their smooth marble fur.

Suzume stepped shakily to the big male, and carefully pulled the moss off of his rocky face. She dusted his muzzle, and cleaned his eyes. And, for some reason, dropped the wrinkled date between his claws.

She moved to the lioness, and repeated the procedure, leaving her the ripe jujube. And the cub she tucked the green one under its small paw, and managed to slide her hand on it's wicked claws.

It was like being scratched by a house cat, but she didn't have time to stop or address the new injury.

The sun was going down, and she needed to reach her destination.

Suzume went back to the path and faced the paifang again.

The air felt heavy and damp as she approached, like she was going down in altitude instead of climbing ever higher. Her scalp crawled with nervous shivers that prickled through each individual hair, one at a time.

With a deep breath, she stepped between the pillars, under the tiled roof, and the world shifted around her. Even the colors felt different as something trembled across her skin and cascaded through her very bones.

Why, she wondered, Does it feel like I'm stepping into another genre?

Her right foot landed solidly on the other side of the gate. Her left foot followed it.

It wasn't sneakers that crunched fine packed earth then though. It was sandals, thin and woven out of tight bamboo.

Suzume stared down at her feet.

Her jeans were gone too, she realized, replaced with loose pants that didn't cover her ankles.

In place of her hoodie a folded over shirt was tied tight with a plain white belt.

She was in a gi, of all things.

Her once spiky black hair was cut straight, and barely brushed her cheeks. Her pony tail had fallen to tie low at her shoulders. It was almost, almost a hime cut.

Behind her, the gate rippled and the Pillars of the World glowed faintly red.

Acolyte Arrived. Begin.