8 8 Slice of Life For Real This Time

West Downtown

July 8th, 21:00

///

Humming to himself as he skips down the dark streets, only occasionally lit up by a functioning streetlight, Suzuya fights the urge to open one of the pizza boxes in his hand to have a bite. 

They managed to convince Han-chan, or Mom Militia, as Ma-chan likes to call her, to let them have pizza today to celebrate Mary's recovery. Which is cool! Pizza is great! Ma-chan should get hurt more often if they get pizza every time.

Nodding sagely to himself, Suzuya wonders what it would take to convince Ma-chan to let herself get hurt for more pizza. Maybe if he could find someone to have sex with her? He knows she likes that, though he doesn't really get why.

She says it's because he's a eunuch, but he doesn't really know what that word means and no one would tell him. Oh well, he can probably just ask. Ma-chan always knows what to do, after all.

Still, he's jealous that she got to fight a dragon man and he didn't! It's totally not fair! 

At least the dragon man escaped anyway, something about an Oni, he wasn't really paying attention, the point is! He still has a chance to be a Dragon Slayer! That would be so cool. Kind of like Challenger, she's cool.

She took Suzuya on a ride on her motorcycle the other day, and it was incredibly fun, he's never gone so fast! Now he wants a motorbike... Maybe he can convince Ma-chan or Han-chan to get him one?

Maybe he can ask to borrow Challenger's? Or just steal it. Ma-chan would probably help then, 'cuz stealing is fun. Hmmm, but it's also against one of the rules they were given by Han-chan, he now remembers.

Such a conundrum.

He knows what will help, though!

With a smile on his face, he balances the pizza boxes on one hand and uses the other to open the top box, happily taking a slice, salivating at the sight of the stringy cheese stretching out as he pulls his slice, topped with an assortment of meats, and closes the box again with the back of his hand, to keep the warmth.

Bringing the tantalising slice to his mouth, he bites down with a soft 'nom' and practically melts in the middle of the street.

"MmmMMmm so gooood~." Pizza is truly the best thing to come out of Italy, shortly followed by dentures.

Dang, he's spent so much time around Ma-chan now that he's got a bunch of useless facts in his head! 

"Hm?" abruptly pausing his stride, Suzuya turns his head to the side, looking at seemingly nothing.

But he could have sworn he heard something.

Straining his ears, he focuses on hearing anything unusual, until right as he is about to shrug and move on, he hears it again. A faint, kind of 'wooshing' sound, followed by a much less faint and far more familiar cry of pain.

Well, at least whoever it is isn't squealing. It's only funny sometimes, most of the time it's just annoying. Plus, it means that whoever's getting hurt isn't a pussy, as Ma-chan says, which is also cool. 

Shrugging his shoulders, he decides that pizza is more important that whatever is going on over there, and just resumes his humming, continuing to skip his way home, happily munching on the slice in his hand.

It's only as he starts on his second slice, and is only a minute away from home, that he hears the strange 'wooshing' sound again, this time much closer. Close enough that he can check it out without really going out of his way, he'll just have to take a turn earlier than he intended.

Unconcerned with any such notion as stranger danger, especially with his clothes wrapped around his heart as they are, Suzuya skips down another dimly lit street following after the sounds of pained whimpering and a murmuring voice.

Just few steps later, as he hears another, louder cry of pain, Suzuya reaches the entrance of the alley the sounds are coming from and peers into the darkness.

What he sees, is some thug-looking guy, gangbanger, Ma-chan said they were called, who is sitting with his back against the far wall, a trail of his blood showing that he mist have crawled there from closer to the entrance. The blood, he assumes is a result of the stick in his leg, shoulder and in the long organs, whatever they're called, the wriggly ones at the bottom.

Eh, doesn't matter.

Standing over him, is some short person covered in black clothes, with a hoodie up and holding what can only be an actual, real crossbow! Which is awesome! He's only seen a crossbow once, when Ma-chan found one, but Papa confiscated it after she shot Trick-chan.

The bleeding guy spots him behind the edgy guy, and makes a weird face at him. He's seen that kind of face a lot, but Ma-chan just says it's the face of a loser, so she doesn't really care about him anymore. Losers are boring, Ma-chan says so, and she's usually right about things n' stuff.

The other person however, is wearing a hockey mask, kind of like that guy in that movie from Aleph that Ma-chan showed her, Friday Thirteenth, he thinks. The point is, Ma-chan said that people wearing masks are usually not boring.

With that in mind, Suzuya decides to be friends with them!

"You want slice?" He asks, putting his own slice between his teeth so he can open the box in edgy guy's direction.

The bleeding guy starts shouting something, but the edgy guy kicks him in the face and Suzuya is abruptly forced to catch her slice of pizza after dropping it from the unexpected laugh that tore from her throat.

Unexpected violence is always funny. Sometimes Ma-chan would just stab someone in the face out of nowhere and it never failed to make him laugh. There's just something incredibly funny about having a casual conversation and then Bam! Knife in the throat!

"If you don't want slice, you can just say y'know? It's get cold!" Suzuya exclaims, gesturing vaguely with his steaming pizza.

"...You're one crazy-ass bitch, aren't you?" Edgy girl, apparently, says, to which Suzuya can only shrug. Ma-chan says crazy is good, because anything else is boring. And Edgy Girl must agree, because she gives the bleeding guy one last kick to the face before making her way over. "But sure, I'll have a slice."

Edgy Girl proceeds to reach for the biggest slice that Suzuya was saving for last, making him hastily call out, "not that one! The biggest slice has to be the last slice! Everyone knows that!"

Giving him a look that he can't decipher under her mask, Edgy girl obliges and picks a different slice, making Suzuya smile.

"What's your name anyway?" Suzuya asks, noting that Edgy Girl isn't eating her slice, probably a mask thing.

"...Shadow Stalker."

"Cool! Well, I'm Suzuya!" He puts what's left of his slice in his mouth all at once and offers the free hand for a fist bump. "Mishe 'o meet 'ou!"

Hesitantly, Shadow Stalker reciprocates the fist bump, making Suzuya smile widely, close his pizza box, and simply start walking away, calling out behind him, "Later, Edgy Stalker!" 

Standing there, filled with genuine bafflement, Shadow Stalker only belatedly responds. "Right... Whatever, I'll be seeing you around, Crazy Bastard!"

Putting that interaction behind himself, Suzuya continues to hum as he reaches home, using his power to unlock the door with his sleeve instead of bothering to use his key. Making his way inside, he reaches the living room, where Han-chan and Ma-chan both are.

Hannah is is sitting, curled up in a loveseat with some paperwork on her knees that the olive-skinned woman is looking through intently, her long black hair let lose over her shoulder, making her seem very homely.

Next to her, on the actual couch, is Maryam, who is lying on her back across the entire piece of furniture, her feet on one side's armrest and her head on the other, with both of her hands in the air above her, holding onto a Gameboy that she is rapidly tapping away at. 

Neither of them are paying attention to the TV, and Suzuya too ignores it as he hops into the room and holds his boxes above his head. "Pizza has arrived!!!" He yells out, failing to startle either of them, and only getting a bland look from Han-chan, while Ma-chan ignores him in favour of her game.

"Ah, wonderful. Just put it on the table please, Suzuya," Han-chan says as she places her paper on a small table besides her chair, straightening out from her seat.

And Suzuya obliges, moving to the middle of the room to drop the stack of boxes next to the paper towels and drinks already prepared. Taking off the top box, he places it to the side and then hands Han-chan the middle box, before picking up the final one and moving over to the couch.

Uncaring for the Ma-chan already lying there, Suzuya plops himself down on her belly, making her 'oomf' at the sudden weight. The glare she turns his way tells him that he lost her her game, but he just smiles at her.

She plays it all the time anyway, it's no biggie.

"Ass. Get off me."

"No."

"I'll stab you."

"No, you want," Han-chan says, interrupting them and glaring at Ma-chan until she puts the knife she just pulled out back in her pocket.

"Fine then, I won't stab you," Suzuya gives her a victorious grin, "I'll just tickle you instead." His grin freezes in it's place.

"Ma-chan, there's no need to overreact..."

"Too late."

Before he can jump away, Ma-chan lurches upward, catching him in her stronger grip, retraining him with one hand while the other starts furiously tickling at his sides, forcing him into an uncontrollable laughter that nearly made him drop his pizza on the floor.

Luckily, he managed to throw it onto the table at the last moment, but even then, it's not until his lungs are burning, desperate from air, that Ma-chan finally releases him, whereupon he collapses onto the floor, back leaning against the couch.

"...Ma-chan is so mean~."

She just responds by bumping his head with her hip as she half-rises from the couch enough to reach her own pizza box, abruptly reminding Suzuya of her encounter with Shadow Stalker.

...Kuso!

"Suzu-kun~," haltingly and mechanically, Suzuya turns his head up and back to meet Ma-chan's innocently smiling face. "Why is half of my pizza missing~?"

"Ehe... I can explain?" Suzuya tries, scratching the back of his head, only for Ma-chan to suddenly move, wrapping her legs around his neck, made easier by him sitting on the floor and her the sofa.

"You'd better explain, and give me half your pizza while you're at it." In the face of her senior's menacing words, Suzuya can only acquiesce, raking his mind for an excuse that doesn't incriminate him. "Well?"

Panicking, he just says the first thing that comes to mind. "I was mugged!" His rushed exclamation is met by a pair of dry looks.

"What kind of mugger would only take half a pizza? And even then, how the fuck would you get mugged?" Ma-chan says, her voice accusatory, seeking to poke holes in his poorly crafted lie.

But then he remembers something Ma-chan taught him, that the best lies are the honest ones, so with that in mind, he sticks to his guns. "It was cape! I was mugged by cape because they were hungry!"

"Really?" Han-chan interrupts, her face growing more serious, "who?"

Heh. Just what he was waiting for! "Some edgy girl calling herself Shadow Stalker!" He'll apologise to her the next time he sees her.

"You know her?" Ma-chan asks after noticing Han-chan going all silent and contemplative.

"I've not met them, but I know of them," the older woman says with a nod of the head, before explaining further, "they're a vigilante that started out sometime early last year. Some low Breaker ability, tends to mostly go after drug dealers and the occasional depot. There's been some talk about brining her into the Wards since they've started getting more violent recently. They didn't hurt you, did they Suzuya?"

"Nah, she was just really hungry. Ate half Ma-chan's pizza really fast, and then burped really loud and disappeared." Dang, he'll have to apologise twice now. At least they seem to believe him.

Phew. Safe!

///

Meanwhile, as Suzuya was happily humming away from Shadow Stalker, the Vigilante in question simply stared at his retreating back with a whole lot of confusion.

Moving back into the alley, Shadow Stalker shook her head at the crazy boy, at least she thinks he was a boy, if an incredibly girl-looking boy, and, satisfied that the gangster she was hunting was out like a light, she brought her mask up and quickly devoured the slice of pizza, groaning slightly in appreciation.

She'll have to find out where that boy- Suzuya, where Suzuya got it, because it's way better than her regular joint.

But, despite the strangeness of the encounter, or perhaps because of it, Shadow Stalker decided to call it a night and head home. And so, after pulling her bolts out of her prey, uncaring if he bled out before an ambulance arrived, she returned to the roofs of Brockton Bay, bounding between them with ease.

Her power makes roof-running a piece of cake, as she can simply jump from one roof, turn shadow, and then glide over to the next. She doesn't even need to worry about landing on the roof for taller buildings, as she can just phase into whatever floor is level with her, and then phase out the same way, jumping through buildings like a wraith.

Coincidentally, Wraith was one of the names she considered using, but it was already taken by some guy in Wisconsin. Whatever the case, she made good time on her return, making it back only about an hour after she left, far quicker than her usual patrols.

Her home is a simple place. A run down apartment block, though, 'run down' doesn't really narrow anything down in this city, but hers is a little more run down than the usual fare. Not like it's to be unexpected, she is a black girl living in the Nazi capital of America. Good housing isn't something in her cards right now.

Silent as a ghost, she phases through her own bedroom window, letting out a breath at the familiar feeling of safety that comes from simply being home, no matter how shitty. But she doesn't dwell on it, and quickly undresses, putting all her Vigilante stuff in a bag and using her power on it all, phasing it out of reality so that she can shove it into the wall.

With her stuff safe in a place that no one but her can reach, she decides not to bother with sleepwear, and just pulls on a pair of panties, leaving her ebony skin bare as she crawls under her covers.

Yet, as she lies there, her thoughts can't leave that weird boy she met. He's the first person who's seen her justice and not batted an eye. He's definitely crazy, but he's also only a year or two older than her, and it's not like she really has any friends...

The thought makes her frown, and she quickly berates herself for being so pathetic. She doesn't need friends. She's a predator, she can do just fine on her own. She doesn't need anybody!

It would still be nice though, to not be alone. She does her best to ignore the traitorous part of her mind whispering to her, but she can't hide from the truth.

I want a friend.

She wonders what it would be like. She hasn't had a friend since she triggered.

It's with these thoughts, that a lonely girl falls asleep.

The next day finds her walking through the North side of Downtown, closer to ABB territory than E88, her usual target. Can't blame a black girl if she targets the Nazis the most, not that the ABB are any less racist. But still, she's hit Empire goons for the past few days, so now she'll target the others while the heat dies down.

And nobody would expect a thirteen year old girl to be scouting out for criminals, so all she needs is a reason to be out, and that's easily solved by just buying some cigarettes for her mom. It's about the only good thing about having such a pathetic mother, having a reason to be out alone on a busy Saturday afternoon.

However, she is soon distracted from her goal as she notices a white van pull out in front of a side-alley, blocking it off. She's sure she saw another car just go in that way, and when she hears the recognisable crash of a window being smashed, she realised that she was right.

Curious what exactly is going on, even if she can guess, she quickly, and nonchalantly, speed walks around a corner and into another alley, this one thankfully empty. Bending her legs, she launches herself up as hard as she can, turning shadow at the last moment to glide to the rooftop.

Checking around one more time for any prying eyes, she is satisfied that the city is just as derelict as she remembers it being, and hastily swings her backpack over, taking out her black hoodie and quickly throwing it on, shortly followed by her cloak. She was already wearing black pants, just in case of a situation like this.

Finally, she takes out her metal hockey mask, painted black, and puts it on. She didn't bring her crossbow, is being to unwieldy to carry around without being obvious, but she doesn't need a weapon. She's a predator, after all.

Making her way to the edge of the roof, she peers down into the alley the noises are coming from. She sees seven people. Five wearing ABB colours, and two civilians who have clearly just been pulled out of their car windows.

The civilians seem to be a father daughter pair, both red heads. The man is being held against one of the walls by a guy and a woman with a knife who is either robbing him or molesting him, either way, he's just switching from begging the woman to calling for his daughter, an Emma.

Emma, is on the floor, lying on her face with two of the gangsters, one man and one girl not much older than herself, while the last gangster is looting the car, shoving things into a bag.

Through all of this, she can only think of how pathetic of a display the two redheads are showing. Acting like prey. Weak and pathetic. She doesn't even really want to save them. What's the point? Prey is prey. If they can't even try to protect themselves, then why do they deserve to be protected?

The guy looting the car moves to join the two standing over the girl, who is now on her back, having been divested of her fancy looking jacket, which is now being worn by the girl gangster.

Deciding to get a closer look, she turns shadow and jumps down to the civilian's car, landing in a crouch and without a sound. No one notices her. No one except the red head girl, who is being held to the ground with one of the men, a guy with a bandana covering one of his eyes, sitting on her, a knee in her stomach and a knife dancing over her face.

The girl's eyes lock onto her own, filled with pleading and desperation. Her eyes asking, begging for help. She does not move. She doesn't know if the girl understood her meaning, but to her it's pretty simple.

You want me to save you? Show me that you deserve to be saved.

For a moment, she's pretty sure the girl is just going to let herself get cut up, a shame really, she has a pretty face. But the next moment, the redhead suddenly starts thrashing about, and she knows that she chose to fight.

Guess I'll help her.

With a smile, she ignores that struggle and turns shadow, launching herself at the two holding down the father right as they are turning around at the commotion. A quick kick to the nuts has the man bending over, and before the woman can get over her shock, she grabs her knife out of her hand, spins it around and stabs her in the gut.

Leaving the woman to collapse, she gives the man a solid kick to the head to knock him down for good.

Turning around, she sees that the ginger girl has buckled herself free, though she doesn't look good, but she likes the fire in her eyes. Dashing forward, she quickly reaches the youngest gangster and grabs their arm, pinning it behind their back and forcing them to drop their knife.

It's then that the others notice her presence, and with a hidden smirk, she gives the gangster's arm a tug, causing a satisfying crack to sound out as she pushes them to the side, letting them fall to the floor, arm limp.

Enjoying the wary attention she is being given, she briefly turns shadow again, reaching down to pick up the fallen knife before undoing the transformation and advancing on one of the men while the other scuttles off.

A single swing manages to score a cut across his eye and distracts him long enough to turn shadow for extra speed as she lands a kick right on his temple, sending him clattering to the ground. God she loves steel-toed boots.

Turning, she sees the last guy running for the alley exit, a bag of robbed belongings in his hand left open, leaving a trail of stuff behind him. Launching herself forward again, she turns shadow and catches up to him, going low and cutting open his knee as she leaves shadow.

Only, as the man falls to the ground, he snaps out with a kick that she didn't expect, hitting her right in her own knee and sending her tumbling over him. Ignoring the pain, she rights herself, turning shadow again as he tries to strike her.

She's back on her feet by the time he's on his hands and knees, and with one hand on the alley wall for stability, she lines up her elbow and drops back on him with all her weight, driving him back to the ground and leaving him dazed.

With a dull throbbing still plaguing her left leg, she drags the man forward a bit, bringing his hand up against a wooden door leading into the alley, and drives her knife straight through his palm and into the wood, taking great satisfaction from his pain.

Panting to herself, she takes stock of the situation and confirms that all the prey are down, before giving the red head one last glance, she's my age. Maybe we could be friends?, And turns away, limping slightly as she leaves. 

She doesn't think she'll be able to go out tonight. She should go home, give her leg a day to heal.

The only problem, is that it leaves her with nothing to do, if she isn't going to be doing Vigilante work.

In the dark of her mind, she really wishes she had a friend to spend her free time with.

///

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Yeetus, some slice of life while also introducing some canon characters and events! Also, for those of you that know your Worm, if you felt that Shadow's personality didn't fit, remember that she's 13 rn lol.

(5)Advanced chapters on pat.reon, link in description and profile. Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses