AN: I wrote part of this chapter from Giran's point of view because I love him and also because I didn't wanna get into the reeds of Dabi like, committing crimes I didn't actually care about!

There's some slight horror themes to this chapter, btw, and a brief mention of suicide, but nothing graphic. Please stay safe!

008: horror show.

March; 8 years.

Suzume's father takes her home – her real home, he calls it. The big house, out in the country. He carries her home himself, his big, luminous wings a shimmer of terrible violet light. The wind high up in the clouds is cold, and bitter, and awful, and she cries the whole way back.

Her father, like the wind up high, is just as cold.

It makes her ache for her brother, and the press of his warm hands, always touching her. And thinking about him, she cries more, and her tears make her father grow colder, still. He flies faster, flies farther. Far, far away.

The big house is so far away from the park.

Suzume knows she will never see her brother again.

Once, the big house had been her home. Without her mother, though, it's no home at all. When they first arrive – the two of them both so small in the big common room with all its shiny too-open windows – she tries to tell him so. Says it soft and meek, trying on the voice she remembers her mother using with her father.

It's not home without Mama. It's not.

His eyes when he turns to look at her are flashing and angry. Then, a terrible calm washes over him, and the face that looks back at her is the face of the man from the television. Smiling. Nice. Reasonable.

Her mother is sick, he tells her. Very sick. That's why he's brought her here. Brought Suzume home.

Sick with what, Suzume asks? There's something in her stomach, eating her up from the inside.

Sick in the head, he tells her. Sick in the body. Too tired, too weak. It's just been so much. His voice when he tells her is so quiet. His voice is gentle. Suzume has never known her father to be gentle, outside of the television. It frightens her more than his anger.

Where is she, Suzume wants to know – where is she? Can I see her?

The hospital, her father tells her. Her mother is in the hospital. And no, no – Suzume cannot see her. Mama is too weak. Mama is asleep. Mama will be asleep for a long while, and if Suzume wants to see her again, well, she will need to be good, and she will need to listen, and she will need to behave. Can she be good? Can she listen? Can she behave?

That night, her father says more to her than he ever has in her entire life. Tells her so much, and asks so much more of her.

The hospital, Suzume thinks. The hospital. Her mother, asleep. Sleeping, sleeping, and the house so big without her.

Suzume nods, and nods, and nods. She holds in her tears, because they make her father so cold –

Because her brother isn't here to warm her.

Because he won't ever be, again.

Late-September; 45 years.

Giran often thinks that the atmosphere of his favorite office has a way of making those who come seeking his services appear almost…

Abstract.

Maybe it's the low, borderline ambient lighting, casting the room in a dim gold. Maybe it's the constant fog of cigarette smoke. Like vaseline smeared wet over a movie lens, the weak light seems to catch in the haze, lending the whole room a surreal and almost otherworldly quality. Under that haze, the features of his guests soften and blur, more amorphous shape than exacting detail.

He likes to think it helps him judge them better. Reduced to their most basic essence, Giran feels he can get a more instinctual reading on them. It's something he can almost feel, this talent he's honed, staring down patron after patron across a messy desk in a messier room.

It's like being an art critic, he thinks – one who is always in on the deeper meaning of a particular piece of work. Before him, they are all made abstract, drawn up in bold lines and fragmented forms, painted erratic in discordant splatters of color.

And, reduced thusly, Giran can read intention and emotion in them so much better.

This boy who sits before him now, he thinks – this boy will be no different.

"Your reputation precedes you, kid," Giran says with a wry smile, taking a drag of his cigarette. "Though I daresay it's your face that makes the bigger impression."

The boy regards Giran with eyes so blue they seem to be backlit with the neon straight out of the signs in Akihabara. "Oh, yeah?" His voice is low and husky, deeper than what Giran is expecting from the lean, hungry-angled kid slouched in the chair across his desk. "And what kinda impression is that?"

The boy doesn't sound offended. Truthfully, he doesn't sound like he gives a shit what Giran thinks.

Somehow, though, his voice seems full of something like intent all the same.

Whether or not his guest is worth anything, Giran is sure of at least one thing: the kid's not boring — something that is, as far as Giran is concerned, at least a small win.

There are few things worse than being boring, after all.

Smile widening, Giran lets his gaze sweep across his client in open appraisal. "You look like shit, kid," he says, cheerfully. "Like death, warmed over. You're falling apart at the literal seams. Haunted-like – like something straight outta a horror show. 'Course, whether that means it's cause you get shit done or cause shit gets done to you – "

"Thought you said my reputation preceded me." The kid shrugs his way through the interruption, not even remotely ruffled by Giran's honesty. "You want some more context clues to help you figure it out, old man?"

Giran closes his mouth around the end of his cigarette and the rest of his unfinished sentence, both. It's true that the boy looks a right fucking mess. The collar of his oversized shirt seems to be separating from the garment in at least three places that Giran can see, and the ends of one sleeve are a frayed, half-torn mess. His hair, too, is wild, sweeping in inky black waves that spill chaotic across his piercing eyes.

Giran finds himself idly wondering if the kid ever bothers to brush it with anything more than his fingers.

This disheveled appearance, though, is certainly nothing unique. It's not even out of place. Some of Giran's most trusted associates can't be bothered to look over their shirts for holes or wear shoes with soles that aren't halfway detached. Villains and criminals, they aren't like heroes. For most, there's rarely any real incentive for them to keep up appearances.

For better or worse, Giran has always appreciated that honesty.

What's unique about the kid, though, is the rest of him. His skin is a patchwork mess. Large swathes of mottled, purple flesh – what look like severe burns – are forcibly joined together with comparatively more normal skin by thick surgical staples. Like razors, they gleam sharp and cruel in the dim light.

The effect is the worst across his face. Mutilated skin hangs dark like deep bruises beneath his eyes. Still more of it disfigures the whole lower half of his jaw.

Giran's been told about this, too, of course. As a broker of many things, he's always been keen about staying well-informed. Information sells as well as illicit goods do, after all, and Giran is nothing if not one hell of a businessman.

Still, it's one thing to be told about some fire-and-ash boy looking like a gaunt, reanimated corpse – however desperate to make Giran's acquaintance that reanimated corpse might be – and another thing entirely to actually lay eyes on the sorry bastard.

"Please," the kid says, and the word sounds exceptionally discourteous in his mouth. "I don't want or need your pity."

Observant little shit, Giran thinks, and laughs, surprised despite himself. "Good thing, that. My pity ain't worth fuck-all. Nothing's worth shit to me unless it's got money behind it – but I suspect you know that, aye, 'cause my ears tell me you been houndin' after me like a school girl sick with feelings, desperate for any news on her disinterested beau."

A small smile ghosts the boy's face, there and then gone again. Making an obvious show of it, his ice-bright eyes flicker around the room. They study the lewd wall art of a couple of barely dressed pin up girls. They linger on the overflowing ashtray on Giran's desk. They scan the discordantly slumped stack of obviously adult DVDs on the shelf just behind Giran's head.

Yet he regards each with the same unchanging air of marked detachment.

"Well I'm here now, and at your invitation – at least, last I checked," he points out, finally returning his half-lidded gaze to Giran. "We can't really call that disinterest, can we?"

"Ya know, I was told you were competent – and doggedly persistent, too. I was also told you were conversationally constipated, but you sure seem like you're more than on top of your shit, huh. Real regular, turns out." Giran ashes his cigarette gently into the ceramic dish with another chuckle. "Hope the people who introduced us weren't as wrong about the first two things as they were about the last."

"Full offense, but the people I had to pal around with to get here weren't exactly the sort I was excited to hang out with. Sharing the same air as them felt like a fucking burden." The apathy is thick in the boy's voice, but Giran can just make out the way his disdain creeps in. The kid, he thinks, is beginning to take shape. "Talking to them more than I had to was pretty much out of the fucking question."

"Oh, so I'm the exception? You flatter me." Beaming, Giran reaches into a drawer in his desk and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, offering first choice to his guest with an over-exaggerated flourish.

The kid eyes the proffered pack for a brief moment with a strange, private smile before accepting. When he reaches out to take one, Giran can't help but notice that his hands – similar to his face – are marred with the same awful, staple-secured burns.

If the kid cares about Giran's undisguised interest, though, it doesn't show on his face. Giran suspects he's more than used to it.

More brushstrokes. More color. Giran smiles.

The boy twirls the cigarette between his long fingers and eyes Giran from out of the tops of his eyes, teeth flashing in another brief grin. "Who's the school girl with feelings now, huh?"

Giran snorts, stubbing out the nub of his previous cigarette before taking a new one for himself. "You're a real cunt, you know that?"

"Flattery'll get you as far with me as I suspect it does with you," his guest says, dryly, extending his free hand out to Giran. The tip of his pointer finger erupts into a bright, electric blue flame that overwhelms the room's warm lighting with a cold, impersonal brilliance.

Despite its visual chill, though, it's an intense physical heat. Giran can feel it even from an arms-length away.

Lighting the end of his fresh cigarette in the kid's proffered fire, Giran nods his head in genuine appreciation. "Flattery might work for me if you were a girl – you know, if you had some nice, plump tits."

The boy lights his own cigarette, gaze landing on the ashtray Giran pushes more towards the middle of the desk. It's meant as a peace offering – something shared between equals – and the boy seems to accept it, flame flickering out as he asks, "Even with the horror show face?"

"I've seen some weird porn, kid. Liked it, too. Variety is the spice of life, or so men older and wiser'n me are fond of saying. Even with how bizarre our society's gotten – well, you know, not everyone gets to say they fucked a zombie girl."

"And if she's broke?"

Pausing, Giran thinks about that. "Maybe if her tits were especially choice."

The kid exhales his breath sharp and sudden through his nose before taking a drag of his cigarette, and Giran thinks it might be some approximation of a laugh. One that sounds, to Giran's surprise, possibly genuine.

Clearer, still, this catastrophic work of art.

"But you, Horror Show," Giran continues, gesturing towards the kid again with the cherry-red point of his cigarette, "Your tits are decidedly un-choice. Ain't an ounce of fat on you. So, if you want something from me – and I know you do, 'cause I wouldn't be letting you waste my time if you didn't – well, you're gonna have to manage the old fashioned way: with lots and lots of fucking money."

This revelation doesn't remotely faze the boy, but this isn't a surprise to Giran. He's been hearing things about this kid for months, now – and he suspects the boy's been hearing an awful lot about Giran, too, considering how desperately he's been pursuing him.

What is a surprise, though, is the absolute fat wad of cash the kid pulls from his pocket and sets down on the scuffed desk. "Guess it's lucky for us both I got something better than fat tits, old man."

Giran considers the solid lump of bills for several long beats of silence. Then, he sets his cigarette down in the tray so he can handle the money as it so clearly deserves to be handled:

Reverentially, and with both hands.

There's a delicious weight to it as he frees it from its rubber band binding. Like a tender flower, it unfurls beneath the gentle, prodding movements of his fingers. The way it feels as he thumbs through it is both a familiar and delightful sensation.

Giran gives a low whistle as he counts – as the amount keeps climbing, and climbing, and climbing. "You weren't kidding, Horror Show – much better than tits, this little bundle of joy."

Looking up, he finds his guest watching him with raised eyebrows, openly smirking.

"Shit, dude, if you wanna fuck it that bad, go ahead, I won't judge. Not much, anyway." Horror Show tilts his head back and blows smoke up towards the ceiling – his first real show of anything even remotely bordering on politeness. "But you mind waiting 'till later? Not really so keen on watching, myself."

"Me think the lady doth protest too much," Giran murmurs, still counting. It's a lot. Not the most Giran's handled, by any means, of course –

But coming from a kid in tattered clothing who looks like he doesn't get enough to eat?

"I heard you'd been busy," Giran says, a little louder this time. "But shit, Horror Show – what a stash."

The boy doesn't say anything. Instead, he reaches out and ashes his cigarette before sinking deeper into his worn, overstuffed chair. The fingers of his free hand dig into a hole in the arm rest, pulling absent-mindedly at the exposed stuffing there. His blue eyes, though – an almost palpably heavy sensation Giran swears he feels – never stray from Giran's face.

Setting the money down on his desk in a much neater pile than the DVDs behind him, Giran folds his hands over it. "All right," he says, "You really got my attention. Before we go any further, though, I want a name."

The kid works his cigarette between his lips. Takes another drag. Angling his head to the side, he exhales slow, the smoke leaving him in billowing waves. Then, finally, he asks, "Horror Show not good enough?"

"It'll be a tough act to follow, no doubt, but after all this – well, I got some faith in you."

"Some?" The kid smiles. It lingers, this time. "After all my hard work and generosity?"

"You running a charity? Can't really call it generosity when you're expecting goods and services in exchange, now can we?"

"Mmm. Fair." Taking one final drag of his cigarette, Horror Show leans forward again and snuffs it out in the ashtray. "You can call me Horror Show, or Dabi, or whatever else tickles your fancy, old man – so long as I can make use of your 'goods and services', anyway."

Giran pantomimes an expression of over-exaggerated sadness, mouth curving downward around his own cigarette. "No real name for poor old Giran?"

"Not like Giran's your real name, either." Dabi shrugs, his shoulders sharp beneath the pull of his shirt. "You want money, I'll get you more money. Names, though – that's off the table."

"Dabi's a fine enough name for my kinda business," Giran says, amicably, opting not to push his guest. It's hard not to be amicable with the thick stack of cash under his hands. "Though I gotta admit I am partial to Horror Show. So, Horror Show, let's get down to business: what brings you to my parlor – and with such generosity, to boot?"

Propping his elbows on Giran's desk, Dabi leans his chin against his laced fingers, his eyes burning into Giran's. There's an intensity to him now that wasn't there moments before.

Something like a ferocious sense of urgency, well-restrained now – but clearly dangerous.

Giran is, despite himself, impressed. The kid can't even be twenty yet, but there's something so distinctly cunning about him, lurking and monstrous beneath that veneer of apathetic calm. He's tempted to ask after Dabi's age. Instead, he only smiles encouragingly, settling back into his own chair with a puff of smoke.

"I need information," Dabi says, evidently encouraged enough. "After that, I'll need supplies. On top of that, and most importantly – and the reason I've come to your parlor, specifically – I need discretion."

"Ah, three things I am very much known for, yes – and the last of which I'd say I'm the most proud. Discretion in this business means I can command higher prices for my services, and that I'm always in demand." Giran grins, drumming the fingers of his free hand against his desk. "Can't say when you waltzed in here that I thought you'd be able to afford my fees, Horror Show. I've heard all about you, sure – you do good work. Come up from nothing – come up from nowhere a couple months ago, and suddenly: boom! You're out there, nose to the grindstone, day in and day out, doing good fucking work. Nothing flashy, they say, but consistent, you know; reliable. With this gig, though – in my line of work – consistent and reliable are leagues ahead of flashy."

Giran, never in the business of lip service, means it, too. Dabi's reputation has preceded him much the way the ocean's waves do before a storm: slow and gentle – and then surging and inescapable.

(Frothing and dangerous.)

At first, the rumors had been little more than whispers. Some unknown kid with a fire quirk, looking for work. But so what? Fire quirks, always a dime a dozen, vary so much in power and potential that no one of any substance had wanted to take a chance on him.

Eventually, though, someone had gotten desperate – and Dabi had been desperate, too. To suggest that the opportunity had paid off for the both of them would be a grievous understatement. His "employer" had had their perfect arsonist – evidence of a different and much more heinous crime consumed by Dabi's ravenous flames – and Dabi was finally blooded. With something proven and real to offer the criminal underground, he was finally someone who mattered.

That he'd ultimately been paid some insulting sum for the risky work didn't matter in the wake of exposure. Suddenly, Dabi was in demand. Arson job after arson job, and Giran isn't surprised; whether to hide a crime or make good on some insurance claim, the promise of a fire so hot and so quick as to make short, neat work of the worst of one's problems was a siren song to all the worst kinds of people.

The kinds of people who Giran not-so-coincidentally worked with on the regular.

It hadn't been long before the kid was wheedling – as much as he was capable of wheedling, anyway – at those same people for an introduction to their favorite neighborhood broker. Taking pay cuts and worse jobs – vicious torture, Giran had heard, in pursuit of information on behalf of one particularly vindictive client – Dabi had been willing to sacrifice a lot for the promise of introductions.

Months and months and months of hard, shit work. Looking at the terrifying visage of the boy before him now, Giran knows with a certainty that it had never been about the money for Dabi.

No; it had all been about finding and meeting Giran.

And Giran can't help but chuckle warmly, flattered by the thought. Dabi is clearly not the only one whose reputation has preceded him.

"That all said – consistent and reliable though you may be – when you came slinking in here looking like a right fucking mess, I felt like I was really taking a chance – worried I might be wasting my time on you."

Giran pats the money with obvious fondness. "Well, Horror Show – congratulations. You've gone and done it. You've fucking made it; I'm impressed. Tell me what you want."

With his lips pulled back from his teeth in a self-satisfied leer, Dabi leans forward and tells him.

Mid October; 17 years.

Two weeks, Dabi had told himself at the start. Just two weeks. After all, what were two more weeks in the wake of the months he's already spent waiting?

The answer should have been an enthusiastic nothing. He was actually making real progress – and wasn't that something? Finally free of all the nebulous scraping and clawing at maybes, taking job after shit-fucking-job in the vain hopes of getting an introduction. Things were actually fucking happening, now. Dabi was seeing real, tangible results as a reward for all that demeaning bullshit he'd put himself through. And really, there was something kind of thrilling about that. Something thrilling about putting himself out there and making it work, even if it was risky. Even if it was hard.

(Even if such brazen and frequent use of his quirk was consuming him from the inside out.)

So when that had all fucking finally started paying off, and Giran had asked for two weeks to put together a dossier of information about Suzume's father – about the bastard himself, No. 5 Pro Hero, Featherlight – Dabi had told himself the two weeks would be fine. It would be fine.

It had to be fine.

And Dabi, of course, had been wrong. It wasn't fine.

No – no, it's been fucking torture. Selfishly, Dabi thinks the man he'd burned nearly to death over the course of thirteen and a half agonizing hours hadn't suffered nearly as much as he has in the last two weeks. Each minute has felt like an hour. Each hour a day.

Each day a month.

Even now – sitting once more in Giran's office above the loud bar, the pounding bass of the place vibrating up through the soles of Dabi's heavy, scuffed boots – it's torture, still.

Gritting his teeth, Dabi is careful not to let that show on his face, watching the old man shuffle a heavy ream of papers into a folder with practiced detachment.

"Gotta say, the information I was able to dig up on your guy Featherlight has proven to be a rather…" Giran pauses, looking up from the papers to fix Dabi with a raised eyebrow stare. There's an undercurrent of wariness to the look the broker doesn't bother to conceal. "Shall we say, 'entertaining' read."

Dabi, after spending the last two weeks on pins and fucking needles, finds he doesn't have the patience for Giran's theatrics. He's done some cursory investigations of his own, and come to his own wild conclusions. "Gonna take a wild stab in the dark and guess his wife is dead." Taking the way Giran's eyebrows loft higher in naked astonishment as confirmation, Dabi pushes further. "Second guess: beloved No. 5 Pro Hero Featherlight was involved in his dear old wife's sudden demise."

"What the fuck." Giran lets the weighty folder drop to his desk with thud, jabbing at it with a thick, nicotine stained finger. "What the actual fuck."

"Really?" Dabi falls back into his chair, letting out a long, slow breath. "You that fucking shocked to find out there's corruption among Japan's top heroes? Working the job you do?"

Giran lets out a short bark of laughter, but there's no real humor to it. "Fuck, kid – it ain't that. I know some heroes are ass-deep in all kinds of nefarious shit; I wasn't born yesterday. I know brokers with less scruples who take the dirtiest among them on as clients. No – what's fucking weird is that some kid no one's ever heard of turns up outta goddamn nowhere and has me sniffing into one of our country's biggest heroes like he already knows full-damn well what's going on."

Dabi shrugs. "I said it was a guess."

"Bullshit." Giran's customary smirk is nowhere to be seen, his wariness now open suspicion. "What is this? You working for the HSPC? Get yourself feeling a little desperate looking for proof – think I can dig up something your shit-for-brains coworkers can't? Well, you're fucking right, and I can, but I ain't in the business of blowing up stories like this. It's too flashy; I don't want my name anywhere near this."

"Good," Dabi breathes the word out hot from between bared teeth. It's a struggle not to pick up on Giran's fast-mounting mania – a struggle not to let it flicker to life, hotter still, inside of himself. "Fucking good. I already told you; I came to you because I wanted discretion. So I guessed some shit – so what? It's not the story I was after, and I got no intention of doing anything with it. Hell, once I get what I actually want from that file, you can watch me burn it for you."

Giran stares at him, brows still drawn, eyes still a little too wide. "You guessed 'some shit'? It's not like any of this 'some shit' is public knowledge. His wife's death hasn't even been announced – yet you're somehow close enough to the situation to – correctly, it seems – finger him as the reason his wife is dead?"

"I told you I looked into some shit on my own," Dabi says, patiently. It's so fucking hard to be patient. "Some guys on the street, they were talking about how someone who was maybe working for Featherlight had hired a guy with a mind control quirk for him. I knew his wife was missing. I made some guesses. That's it."

"Oh – that's all, then." Giran laughs, but it's so much more bitter than it was two weeks ago. "Sure, he says – that's it. Look, Horror Show, if you're in bed with some shady hero shit – "

It's Dabi's turn to laugh then, and he does. It's loud and sharp; a rippling, awful kind of laugh. Giran's eyes, already wide, go wider at the sound – drawn immediately to the unsteady glimmer of blue-white light that licks behind Dabi's teeth.

"I can assure you that it ain't fucking that, old man." Extending his hand, Dabi gestures for the folder. "Give it here."

For thirty whole seconds, Giran works his cigarette between his teeth, letting the silence stretch between them. Then, finally, he hands the folder to Dabi.

It's a weighty, unwieldy thing in Dabi's hands. He opens it on his lap.

Guessing it to be more than a hundred pages, Dabi begins to flip through the folder. The first few documents appear to be a very basic introduction to Featherlight, as a person and as a hero. None of it is new information for Dabi; rather, all of it is something that could be had very easily from any fansite worth its salt. Height, weight, birthdate, blood type – it's the sort of shit only a fangirl would care about. Similarly, Featherlight's detailed quirk analysis doesn't introduce anything new. Hours spent pouring over footage and commentary regarding Featherlight's heroics has already taught Dabi everything he needs to know.

Featherlight – best known for his spectacular, radiant wings and his impressive control over powerful lightning – is a beast in combat. The amalgamation of intense, speedy movement and long rage attacks lends him a tenaciously punishing kind of maneuverability on the battlefield. In the realm of area-of-affect attackers, it makes him a star player.

And that would be enough for most heroes, Dabi thinks. Rather than play conservatively to his ranged strengths, though, Featherlight seems to enjoy the fantasy that he's more of a quick-footed bruiser. His signature move is an electrically charged barrage of punches, the combination of which almost always ends in an immediate knock-out. Undeniably showy, it's something that looks incredibly good on camera. There are countless images of Featherlight smiling serenely as his fist – webbed with violet, crackling lightning – shatters some villain's jaw in an explosion of meteor-fall sparks.

It's no wonder to Dabi, then, that Suzume's mother was a necessity for Featherlight. Regular healing would be an unavoidable necessity to maintain his indulgent, melee-focused farce.

Separating these introductory papers from the rest, Dabi soothes the sudden spike of his rage by setting them alight. Across the desk from him, he hears Giran hiss. Dabi doesn't bother to look up at him. Instead, his eyes linger on the chaotic storm of falling ash, a dusting of blue, smoldering stars that burn themselves out before they reach the ground.

Next, then.

The following papers are a mix of photocopied newspaper articles and internet posts. Mixed in between those are page after page of documentation, detailing both observations and interpretations of the provided data.

A single sheet of paper towards the end of the observational documents seems to be an actual leaked HSPC memo regarding an investigation into Suzume's mother's unannounced but apparent "suicide" by hanging a few months back.

Attached to the memo is a copy of a handwritten letter, supposedly penned by Suzume's mother. The letter itself is very brief. In it, Kozue expresses a deep, irreconcilable sense of guilt for separating from her husband. Unable to live with the regret of 'destroying her family', she begs her husband and her daughter for forgiveness, choosing to try to make amends in a way that will allow her to retain some semblance of honor:

By taking her own life.

Bull-fucking-shit, Dabi thinks, bitterly.

While he'd certainly not had the highest opinion of Suzume's mother, Suzume had nevertheless painted Kozue in a glowingly positive light. The hold Featherlight had seemed to have on his wife had undeniably weakened after the birth of their daughter. Passive and submissive though Kozue might have been, she was clearly made of stronger stuff than Dabi's own mother.

Regardless of how he'd tried to undermine Suzume's faith in her mother, Dabi cannot well imagine the woman taking her own life when her death would mean abandoning her daughter to her estranged and terrible husband.

These papers, too, Dabi burns.

Giran curses under his breath.

Immediately following the suicide note are copies of several offshore bank accounts, all in the name of a very generic sounding business. Attached documentation suggests the business is a dummy corporation associated with Featherlight himself. Highlighted lines in the otherwise uninteresting mess of transactions indicate a suspicious and generous withdrawal of funds from all of them in the months leading up to Suzume and her mother's disappearance.

Attached to the last page of bank statements are a collection of hand-written sticky notes. They mention a fairly well substantiated rumor that a rival broker of Giran's had introduced Featherlight to a powerful mind control quirk user.

This is, of course, the same rumor Dabi had managed to dig up on his own.

Vindicating though it is to see his suspicions all but proven correct, it's also not what Dabi needs. Mindful of Giran's anxious expression in his periphery, Dabi shifts this handful of papers to the back.

The rest of it – a slew of official government documents – grows significantly more promising. There are school records for Suzume's parents, and for her as well. Suzume's parents' records indicate they both participated for the full length of their compulsory education, but Suzume's first year is conspicuously unaccounted for. Nothing in the folder seems to indicate why this might be. Considering Featherlight's obvious desire to keep his family out of the public eye, it's not difficult for Dabi to guess why.

Then, there's a marriage certificate. After that is a very elaborate and well researched family tree that makes up at least three pages, with associated birth certificates and quirk registry documentation for each listed family member.

Both Suzume and her mother's quirk registration forms list them as quirkless. Dabi is wholly unsurprised.

And then, at the end of all the unnecessary filler – past a dozen and a half brief biographies featuring a slew of women Featherlight has had suspected affairs with – Dabi finds exactly what he wants.

A contract from decades ago details the purchase of a generous plot of land out in the fucking boonies of Saitama. The name it's registered under isn't overtly associated with Featherlight, and for good reason. A sticky note on the paper reveals it was purchased two generations prior by Featherlight's maternal grandparents.

The property remains under that family name.

Architectural blueprints for a house from some ten years back follow suit, and then a detailed floor plan. These, too, are not in Featherlight's name, but rather in his mother's – specifically, in her maiden name.

Another sticky note reveals the truth Dabi has been desperate for. Contrary to the public's knowledge regarding the posh apartment he keeps in Tokyo near his agency, this large, sprawling house in the countryside is Featherlight's main – and meticulously well-hidden – main residence.

The big house, Dabi remembers Suzume calling it.

Pulling these last few pages free, Dabi holds them up for Giran . "This," he says, "This is what I wanted."

Giran leans forward a bit. Squints some, from behind his glasses. For a mercy, the man seems less suspicious now, if considerably more confused. "His – his address?"

Dabi doesn't say anything. Folding up the papers into a small, neat square, he pushes them into his pocket before dumping the rest of the folder onto Giran's desk with an unceremonious plop.

Giran watches Dabi expectantly, head tilting as he considers him. Dabi can tell he's fighting a war with his own curiosity. It's a war he loses a few seconds later, when he finally asks, a little distantly, "So, uh – what exactly do you need his address for?"

Dabi doesn't have to answer, of course. He's more than paid for this information. Giran had told him as much two weeks ago when Dabi had made what he wanted clear, but Dabi had insisted Giran keep the rest as a sort of deposit towards future 'favors'.

Answering, Dabi thinks, is more of the same – a deposit towards future favors.

He still needs Giran's help, after all.

"What else?" Dabi rolls his shoulders. Then, he shrugs. "I'm gonna kill him."

Giran's curious expression falls away from him like so much suddenly shattered glass, and Dabi relishes the shock beneath his cool facade. The uproarious bubble of laughter that follows a few seconds after, though, is something Dabi relishes a little less.

"You want to – " Giran can barely manage to speak. It takes him a moment – and then several more – to gather himself.

Dabi only sinks back into his chair, crossing his arms, watching Giran steadily out of his motionless face.

"God – but god – " Giran isn't laughing anymore. His face, though, is still flushed with the effort of it, his breathing a little erratic. He takes a deep breath, and his words tumble from him in a rush. "God, Horror Show – you're fucking serious, aren't you?"

Dabi fixes Giran with a languid, crooked smile. "I am."

Shaking his head, several different emotions cross Giran's face at once, vying for dominance. There's that confusion again. Surprise, as before. A flashfire ghost of that mocking, acerbic humor –

And then, sheer incredulity. "Fuck me, you're crazy." Giran keeps shaking his head, scoffing now. The valley between his pinched brows seems especially deep, carved out in dark shadow "Absolutely, certifiably batshit. What, you got a moderately flashy quirk, get yourself a few good crimes under your belt and suddenly you think you're ready to take down a pro hero in the top ten? A hero in the top fucking five?"

It doesn't have to be society shattering, Dabi reminds himself. It just has to be successful.

"Yeah." Dabi says. "So what?"

"'So what,' he says – 'so-fucking-what,' he says! Fucking rich!" Again, Giran jabs at the folder on his desk, the tip of it red and angry. "Did you even read this shit? It's not like this guy's just a top five hero. The things he's getting up to and just – and anyway, as far as I'm aware – and I'm aware of a lot – it's not like you've fucking killed anyone yet!"

"That's been entirely intentional." Dabi watches Giran, unblinking, his smile darkening. "I want my first time to be special, old man."

They lapse into silence again, Giran staring Dabi down with that convoluted jumble of emotions. Eventually, though, his features shift, softening. The clever businessman is back, all professional interest.

"You know, if you were anyone else, I'd chalk it up to you being a dumb fucking kid. Lots of snot-nosed scum out there with more bravado than sense, yeah? They wanna hit the scene running, make it big. Bag a hot shot hero, get their name out there in lights and blood. The money you'd get for taking down someone in the top five, too – I mean, there's some pretty lucrative hits out there, for any one with a name to 'em. It's just no one ever tries to go for it. No one but fools, anyway."

Dabi's smile widens, knowingly.

"And then there's you," Giran continues. "I been hearing about you for months. Good work you do, they say. Fine work. Damn fine. But you know what else they say? They tell me you're wasted on the grunt-level garbage you accept. That you're pissing your potential away.

"And y'know, at first, I thought – shit, well, he is a kid. Piss scared, no doubt, afraid to get really out there in the muck of it, where the real money's to be made. Our world's a dark fucking place, and you'd be right to be scared shitless. You'd be sane. One wrong step, and boom: life in prison.

"Or worse, you cross the wrong person, and that person decides suddenly they don't like the cut of you, the way you talk. Anything. Next thing you know, some big rotten fish's got you on his shit list, keen to help you on your way to meet death – or something worse. Aye, there are definitely worse things out there than death."

Giran ashes the smoldering cigarette he's been too distracted to smoke. His gaze smolders in much the same way.

"But after getting to know you – no, it's all too intentional. You're not scared. You've been avoiding doing anything loud on purpose, taking shit jobs on purpose. Dependable, sure – you want people to think that. Ambitious? No. You absolutely don't want anyone thinking you're ambitious. Kid with a fire quirk, does enough to scrape by. Who cares about his name? You want to be a ghost."

"You sure got me pegged, old man," Dabi says, generously. He shrugs again. Smiles, still. "But really, it's not like it was that hard to figure out. Told you from the get go I wanted discretion. S'not like I was trying hard to be subtle with you."

Giran loudly sucks his teeth. "Then why? Why something this – why something this fucking bombastic?"

"His death will be something big, sure. No denying that. It'll be all over the news for weeks, if not months; it's not like top heroes die every day, and the vultures, they'll feast, stretch it out as long as they can. Make for great ratings." Dabi yawns. "But I came to you because I don't want my name attached to this at all. I'm no one because I want to be, and no one is exactly how I want it to stay. You said there's a hit on him?"

Frowning, Giran finally allows himself a long drag of his cigarette. "Most heroes have more than a few hits put out on them at any given time, almost always related to petty grudges."

Chuckling to himself, Dabi closes his eyes, and the room is suddenly pleasantly dark. The bass thrums up through his body. It gets into him. Feels soothing, somehow, like he's floating. Drifting.

He feels like he's so close, now.

"Mmm. All the better for it, then," he says. "And all the better for you. I'll kill him, and you can keep the money. Should cover your finder's fee, and your well-advertised silence – and just a few small things I need from you, yet."

"The fucking balls you must have, Horror Show. How you manage to walk, I'll never know."

Dabi opens his eyes and watches Giran bury the corpse of his still-smoking cigarette in the ashtray. There's a gleam in the old man's eyes when he looks at Dabi now, something sharp and glittering and hungry.

With unmistakable certainty, Dabi knows he has this well in hand, too.

"That still doesn't tell me why, though." There's clearly no doubt in Giran, anymore. Just that terrible curiosity. Dabi can tell it's really eating him up. "Why Featherlight, out of all of them? There has to be a reason."

"Oh, sure." With a half-nod, Dabi lets his gaze drift from Giran down towards his hands. As his thoughts drift to Featherlight – and, more pointedly, to Suzume – his grin begins to falter.

How often had she run her fingers over the scars of his wrists? Pressing gentle at the fresh blistered flesh, she'd willed it away, again and again. It had never looked so bad. It had never looked like this.

Raising his gaunt, macabre hands, Dabi runs his own fingers under his eyes, touching the sharp metal bite of each steel staple. Horror Show, Giran called him. It was the truth. Dabi hadn't cared. What was there to care about, really?

For the first time, though, Dabi can't help but wonder if Suzume will.

Suzume, Suzume, Suzume. His little sister. His perfect little sister. His, his, his. Stolen from him by hero scum. Rotten fathers. Rotten fucking garbage, the lot of them. How much more could they take?

Ten months, gone. Ten months, too long.

Dabi lets his hands fall away from his face. The look he gives Giran is wide-eyed, and his smile is back. He can feel it contort his face, the staples closest to his mouth stretched taut and aching.

Giran grimaces. Dabi's smile widens impossibly more.

"Oh, it's personal," Dabi says, grinning sick around the confession. "He took something that was mine – and I'm gonna take it back. I'm gonna make him pay."

Late November; 17 years.

The darkening afternoon of the Hero Billboard Chart JP event finds Dabi standing just outside a very large three story house nestled deep in the Saitama countryside.

Set against the backdrop of low-sloping mountains and beset on all sides by the encroachment of dense forests, the house itself looks distinctly out of place. It's a modern glass and concrete monstrosity, fitted with an absurd amount of floor to ceiling windows. The sunset that blazes stubbornly behind the mounting threat of rain clouds reflects red and gold in them, and to look upon the place is almost blinding.

It's an odd design choice, Dabi thinks, from someone who very clearly values his privacy. Even behind the blinding reflection of the sun, Dabi can make out the gratuitous flood of interior lighting, of fine furniture and large pieces of art.

Another brazen mark of Featherlight's ego.

From the pocket of his holes-in-the-knees black jeans, Dabi retrieves a small remote, grinning to himself. Its black and white screen is thankfully backlit with a dim, neon green, providing just enough visibility to read the GPS from his place behind the heavily shadowed treeline.

It further confirms what the courier from earlier had: his package, signed for and accepted by Featherlight's long-term girlfriend only a couple of hours ago, is safely in the house.

More important than that: it's fully operational.

Fully operational means that Featherlight's girlfriend hadn't gotten curious and opened the package. That had been a very minor risk, and one of few Dabi had been willing to take. Featherlight, Dabi figured, didn't seem the sort who'd appreciate his girlfriends rifling through his things without permission.

And Dabi sincerely doubted Featherlight was the sort to react with moderation to things he didn't appreciate.

(Suzume's mother was, after all, very dead.)

Relieved to see those assumptions proven correct, Dabi checks the time in the corner of the screen: 19:01. The event – scheduled to run for two and a half hours – has just started.

Two and a half hours. He has two and a half hours to prepare.

Taking a deep breath, Dabi presses a button labeled 'engage' on the touch-pad screen.

There's the sudden and telltale mechanical woosh of electrical equipment powering down, like during an outage. The lights, bright and impersonal behind their heavy glass prison, flicker and then die with a satisfying abruptness.

The package – the small EMP bomb, delivered earlier – works, and Dabi lets out the breath he was holding. Giran had promised him that, once activated, nothing electronic in nature across the entire area of Featherlight's property would function for twenty minutes.

And, as expected, the remote in Dabi's hand appears dead, its screen blank, wiped clean of its earlier information.

The bomb had been designed and built exactly as Dabi had requested, from its precise coverage to its specific duration. Involving the distant town in the outage seemed too risky an endeavor, and twenty minutes seemed a short enough time to not draw Featherlight's attention considering his participation in the event.

Even if he did notice his security system going briefly offline, it wouldn't seem too out of place. Power in the countryside was occasionally known to be unstable.

(Especially in the wake of a fast-brewing storm.)

Casting a look up at the looming clouds, Dabi can't help but laugh. The storm had not been part of the plan. This night had been chosen weeks ago, both because Featherlight's absence was a guarantee considering the event –

And, of course, for the thematic reasons.

No, there had been no way to guarantee the weather. Yet here it was – this beautiful, perfect storm – all the same.

Suddenly, a shock of lightning crawls its way across the sky. Then, there's the clap of thunder, and a smattering of cold, fat raindrops strike his cheek. Dabi wipes them away, feeling all the lighter for it.

Meant to be, he thinks, slinking his way across the darkening yard. Meant-to-fucking-be.

Late November; 9 years old.

The lights in Suzume's tiny third-floor room flicker once, and then go out. Everything, suddenly, is very, very dark.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Suzume stares for a long time at the blank screen of her handheld system before she abandons it to the floor, scampering up and onto her bed. In her chest, her heart hammers, frantic and wild.

Only a few seconds later, the room is a veritable flood of light. Then, it's dark again. Thunder comes quickly next, grumbling and snarling after the lightning, working its way through the entire house in rolling waves.

Then, it's inside her. She can feel it, in her bones, thrumming in the hollow of her chest.

Suzume whimpers into the backs of her knuckles. The sensation is terrible. Familiar, but somehow wrong.

She hates it.

The power outage, she understands. The lights die in the big house at least once a month, usually from storms, though sometimes from nothing. Most times the generators kick on, filling the house with a low, eerie light. Backup lights, her mother called them.

There is none of that now.

Her gaming system, still on the floor, Suzume knows that's battery powered. Generator or no, it should work. Somehow, though, its screen is black, wiped neatly clean.

That's also new. That's wrong.

And something about that terrifies her.

Somewhere above her, against the single very high up window, she hears the sound of rain like rapping fingers, asking to come in. She closes her eyes tightly, encasing herself in a deeper, more impenetrable darkness, and blindly gropes her way beneath the sloppy nest of blankets she's left in a pile in the middle of her bed.

Behind her closed eyes, there's another brilliant flash of light. Thunder, too, again. Muffled though it is by the blankets she presses tight to her ears, Suzume feels it deep in her clenched teeth.

Begrudgingly, she opens her eyes.

She can see a little more now. The daytime light from the window is fading quickly, swallowed up by a hungry twilight and the hungrier storm, but her eyes have adjusted, and she can better make out the shapes of her small bedroom prison.

The upright rectangle standing silent in the corner is her dresser, filled with only a handful of clothes. There's a stack of books piled haphazardly beside the bed, tipped and crooked. In the middle of the floor lies the black spot she knows is her abandoned handheld, and when she looks up from that to the locked door, she can just barely make out the curve of the handle.

Cutting through the ringing silence in her ears, then, something sounds from inside the house. Movement, maybe – yes, yes, the sound of footsteps, faraway. Walking sounds, echoing in the corridors, downstairs. Walking – and then, faster, faster, a staccato drum of feet, like clumsy running. Someone makes a noise that sounds like a cry, but it's cut off too soon — cut off too short.

Silence. Silence.

Then, the footsteps again. Steady, again.

Distantly, from a million miles away, Suzume hears the stairs creak.

Lightning. Thunder. The rain starts in furious earnest, pelting in hissing sheets against the roof and the windows. If there are sounds in the house anymore, Suzume cannot hear them.

She's not sure which is worse, hearing or not hearing.

Seeing, or not seeing.

Suzume closes her eyes, drawing her knees up to her chest. The blankets feel heavy around her, and she draws them tighter, burying her face in the fabric. She breathes through it ragged, mouth open, feeling dizzy. Slowly, so slowly, and with a barely maintained steadiness, she begins to count.

More thunder. More thunder, again. The rain sounds worse, and there's wind now, too, and Suzume counts, and counts, higher and higher.

Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Suzume lifts her head, eyes still closed, and counts, lips moving slow around the numbers. There's light behind her closed eyes. There's thunder inside of her.

Something is wrong.

And then, there is more than the sound of the storm and the things in the house. There's more than the feeling of thunder, vibrating through every terrified nerve of her trembling body.

There's a smell now, too, and it smells –

It smells like burning.

Suzume's eyes fly open. In the near-total dark of her room, the haunting blue light that seeps in from under the crack in her door is made all the more stark. There's nothing steady to the light, and the shadows of her dresser and books skitter and slink across the walls of her room in a tumultuous, tumbling motion that leaves her feeling sick, sick, sick.

Pressing a trembling hand over her mouth, Suzume curls in on herself, her blankets spilling over her bowed head. Counts.

She counts.

And completely loses track as the sound of something metal clatters loudly to the floor just outside her bedroom.

There are no more numbers in her head. No more minutes. Just a rush of what and why and please, please, please –

Even through the pounding rain, Suzume recognizes the sound of her door opening. It whines, soft and slow, on its hesitant hinges.

There's a scream in her throat, sticky and hot and stuck. She's too frightened to open her mouth. She's too frightened to look. She's too frightened to breathe. There's someone in the room –

There's someone in the room.

And even through the pounding rain, Suzume recognizes the sound of his voice.

"Hey, Suzu."

So nonchalant. Achingly familiar. As familiar to her as breathing.

And for a moment, for one long and silent moment, Suzume thinks that when she looks up, she won't be in her room. No – no, she'll be back in the park, under that tree, waking up from a long, awful dream.

She'll open her eyes, and look up —

Look up and up and up into the face of her brother, peering down at her with his bright, bright eyes.

Like always. Like always.

But when she opens her eyes and looks up, there is still the rain, and the dark. She's still in her bed.

Her door is open, and there's a figure there, drawn wild-haired and monster-gaunt in the thick, impenetrable shadow of the hall.

And then lightning spills white and sudden from the high window, and the room and that figure both are bathed in an awful, cruel phosphorescence.

Her brother – it is her brother. His voice, his face – but different. Wrong. The wrong thing in the house.

There's something set in his cheeks, glinting under his eyes, something shiny, something bright. As bright as his eyes, even, and twice as cold.

And his skin –

The room is dark again, and his skin – the skin of his jaw, and under his eyes, they're darker, still. Thunder crashes down around them like a fist hammering on the roof, again and again and again. The whole house shakes.

Suzume shakes, too.

"Suzume," he says, softly. Somehow, she can hear it over the thunder. It settles over her like fine gauze, like a sticky spider web shroud. It seeps into her. Gets inside of her, like the thunder –

But different.

The thunder falls away.

Launching herself from her bed, Suzume crosses the small room in three stumbling steps.

Crouching now, her brother opens his arms to catch her, and in another flash of light she can see his eyes gone so wide – see his mouth, see his teeth, stretched into a terrible, silver-sharp smile.

Her stomach twists as she spills into him. Her cheeks are wet. Her chest hurts.

And then his arms are around her, and he's warm, warm, so warm, and when she closes her eyes, she is back in the park again. On the slide, under the tree, sitting in his lap, caught up tight in his arms. The heat of his body seeps into hers. It fills her up. It makes her whole.

The good, she thinks; focus on the good. Think about the good.

Warm, warm – he makes her so warm.

She thought she'd never feel warm again.

And everything is fine. Everything is fine. Lightning, and thunder, no, no. She's shaking her head. Everything is fine.

"Nii-chan," she sobs, "Nii-chan, Nii-chan, Nii-chan – "

"Oh, Suzu," he says, and his hand is in her hair, and his voice is in it, too. "It's okay, Suzu. I have you. I'll keep you. You're safe."

AN: Gods above, I am finally getting to the stuff I really want to write. The story is FINALLY TAKING A TURN. The next chapter is one of those big things I was excited about when I first started coming up with this story, and I'm so STOKED for it and all the stuff that happens after, ahhhh!