Raven tapped one of her claws on a table as she stared out at her view of the city, her eyes naturally moving from the sea of lights to focus on a much smaller blinking red dot.
The stoic-ness she was currently displaying would be a great shock to many.
Madam Raven was known for her flamboyant personality after all.
Achebe Roth on the other hand was not nearly as animated as the persona she put on, she was naturally a cold and closed off person, but she had a head for business and knew enough to fake being the overly sexual woman 'Raven' was.
Even if she felt that Raven was over the top more often than not, she was such a believable character the drop of it shocked most.
Roth did not have many reasons to drop the act, so Raven was more of a second skin than just a persona.
However, her ladies had been whispering about a name she had not heard in years.
Tsutsumi Kaina.
A woman better known as the fallen heroine Lady Nagant.
She had burst into the scene nearly two decades ago with her rifle arm and rose through the charts to the hundreds in five years.
Only to sub come to mental illness eight years ago and slaughter five of her co-workers and was quickly arrested then sent to Tartarus.
Roth scoffed.
The official story was such complete bullshit.
Granted, she had insider information that no one else could ever have for why that was bullshit.
Once, many years back long before, she had been one of many children abandoned by her parents, and life as a gangly Owl/Ostrich girl was not so easy on her.
Then a new girl with purple and pink hair had been left by a couple of officers, that was when Roth first met Kaina, a girl that was far more friendly and bubbly than most kids whose parents died before they could meet them.
Kaina had decided to befriend her of all people, and Roth admittedly loved finally having someone in her corner even if she always felt like a downer on Kaina's positivity.
Tired of the treatment Roth was getting Kaina insisted the two of them run away then they actually did it, being homeless together for six years, just the two of them.
You do not spend six years with a person and not become attached to them, Kaina and Roth crossed the line of friends to sisters at some point, not that either of them had minded.
Nicknames were of course given, she became Raven for the first time, and Kaina decided she was going to be Kain of all things once she spelt her name incorrectly in English.
Some of the happiest years of her life, tough but they had each other through thick and thin, things could not stay that way forever naturally.
They were put back into the foster system when they were ten and promptly separated when Kain was adopted by the Tsutsumis within a month, they stayed connected and still saw each other regularly.
It was not until Kain's second year in middle school that things between them ultimately fell apart.
Roth had been living as a runaway again for a couple of years and was quite a bit more jaded, so when Kaina came to the alley she was searching for supplies in to tell her all about the amazing opportunity she got from the commission to become a hero.
Roth, was not quite supportive.
It sounded too suspicious to her, having the commission personally stop by to offer you training to become a hero just, felt wrong in some way and she wanted Kaina to understand why she should not leap at it like she was.
Unfortunately, middle schoolers were hardly eloquent in their words and the two of them ended up fighting, with some strong words and jabs being thrown between them.
The two of them both walked away sobbing and hurt on a personal level, they did not talk after that as Kain stubbornly signed on with the commission and Roth had not seen her until she was eighteen and Kain debuted as a pro hero, named Lady Nagant.
Part of her wanted to reach out and try and apologize at least for how they fell out, but she could not bring herself to do it, especially as she was laying the groundwork for her Nest.
And for a long time, Roth had felt guilty for being so harsh, instead diving deeper in her work at the Nest keeping her flock safe from less savory characters.
For the longest time she thought she had overreacted because Kaina seemed to be so happy.
Whatever training they gave Kain was impressive because she did not see the cracks of Lady Nagant until a decade after she started working, as most people say it was the little things that gave them away in the end.
Again, to be fair, she would not see the evidence of her spiraling if she had had not grown up seeing it to know what it really was.
The complaints of Lady Nagant suddenly being unwilling to shake hands were because she did not want all the blood on her own to rub off on them, it was a common sign from whenever Kain felt guilty about something she had done with her quirk.
It started when she was seven and used her quirk to help them get away from a creeper, she got the man in the arm but he fell and hit his head hard, they didn't stick around since he was cursing up a storm but neither of them could forget the way blood gushed from the wound.
And once she started paying more attention Roth found even more of Kain's guilty ticks popping up and worry gnawed at her.
Which was when she turned her business from just being a brothel to an information mill, searching for any bits or pieces to understand what was going on behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, there was not much she could find, and Roth felt a touch crazy for how far she was going to basically stalk Kain, but deep in her gut she knew that something was wrong and that she could not let this go.
Then one morning she woke up to the front-page story of the newspaper being about Kain snapping and killing five of her co-workers.
She was in shock for about a minute before she tore that morning's paper to shreds.
Lies, she knew it was filthy lies.
One of the heroes Kain "supposedly" killed the night before had spent the whole night with one of her girls so the commission's story of her gunning them all down around midnight was complete horseshit.
Kain must have found out something she should not, and the commission was trying to cover it up, or maybe Roth had been right, and they were forcing Kain to do things she did not want to and was not willing to do for them anymore.
No better way to shut up a hero than to make her look like an unstable killer.
The voicemail she discovered when she checked her old phone guaranteed it, it was one of two old purple flip phones they got back when they were nine and there was no one on earth other than Kain who could have called her on it.
"H-hey Roth, it's... been like, forever. We have not talked s-since... yeah. Look, I- I don't know why I called you- Or why I was hoping you'd pick up after everything I said to you, but... you were right."
"You were right about that bastard being a fucking scumbag and I should've kicked his ass to the curb back then."
"God, I feel so fucking stupid right now... Roth you have no idea of the crap I did just because he said, said... I was such an idiot, and I can't fix any of this because of-"
"I wish I could go back and slap myself for being such naive optimistic bitch, but I can't Roth."
"I know that I shouldn't ask you to forgive me, I really fucked all of this up so bad... "
"But give them fucking hell for me Raven, I don't think I'm going to be around to do it."
Kain was right, she had been swiftly locked up without so much as a word, and Roth fully intended to find any scrap of information she could so that she could get Kain out of that forsaken place.
But the new president was good at covering up the dark side of the commission and she had no leg to stand on and instead found out about far more dangerous things to be afraid of in the process.
Of course, that was before Midoriya Izuku showed up.
If there was anyone who could help her then it would be him, and now here he was coincidentally asking around about her friend.
What luck right?
Standing up Roth walked over to the windows and placed her hand on the glass just under the blinking red-light way off in the distance.
It would be impossible for most to see, and most would not look past the skyline of neon lights and big billboards.
But with her powerful owl-like eyes Roth could make out the tiny, blurred silhouette of Tartarus, a series of red blinking lights the only eye-catching part of it from so far away.
There was a light screech as her clawed fingers scrunched up and she narrowed her eyes.
*Soon... just wait for me a little longer Kain.* Roth thought, as for once she might have a way to get her sister out.
An expected knock at her door lulled her back to the present and she called out "Enter."
The short brief answer was clearly putting the other off as they did not open the door right away, hesitating for quite a bit before peeking their head in the room.
A young man with long floppy pink ears stared at her with cautious face, she raised an eye and the man quickly moved to sit on the couch clearly intimidated by her.
Roth took her time walking over to her couch and sat down, she threw one leg over the other and grabbed her cigarette stick to light up.
Roth took a deep drag before she turned back to the Vespa with hooded eyes.
"You've been asking around about information on one Tsutsumi Kaina, yes?" she questioned.
A timid nod from the rabbit.
"Deku-Sensei is the one whose been asking, correct?" Roth pressed, letting her head fall over to the side.
"Yes, Madam." Cotton answered.
Roth waited for a few minutes to let him squirm before she stood and crossed the room, she dug out a box and returned to the table, placing it on it and pushed it over to Cotton.
"This is everything I could find from her childhood," Roth told the shocked Vespa as she settled back on to her couch.
And it was, Roth had kept many mementoes of her years with Kain and even had some from her time living with the Tsutsumis.
The avian part of her brain strongly protested giving these items away, most of them were gifts from her sister and they should not be in anyone's hands but hers.
She silenced the voice took another drag of her cigarette and leaned forward causing the man to flinch back.
"What does he want to know?" she questioned.
Roth was ready to spill every fact she knew of her sister if it meant Kain would finally be freed.
Did I make Raven with this back story in mind? No, no I did not.