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CHAPTER START---
---January 23rd...
"Look, its Hawks!" A woman screams on the sidewalk while pointing toward the sky.
Soaring through the city streets, weaving between the skyscrapers they see the #2 Pro Hero Hawks, moving casually and waving down at them.
Everyone on the street stops and some take out their phones.
"Hey everyone!" Hawks yells back, giving a friendly smile and gentle wave. "You all doing ok?!"
"We love you Hawks!" the same woman screams, excited to see her favorite Pro Hero in person.
"Who is that ahead of him?" a man asks while looking further up the street where Hawks is going toward.They see someone swinging between buildings by constantly stretching his arms and retracting them, and they look to be in a hurry.
"That's Reacher!" a child says, excited by all of this.
"The guy Horizon saved from Stain?" A man asks, slightly confused. "I guess Hawks is working with small time Pro Heroes now huh..."
"He's so cool," the woman keep staring at Hawks as he catches up to Reacher.
If those people could see Reacher up close, or hear how his heart was pounding against his ribs, they'd see a very different situation.
Reacher glances back, seeing Hawks closing in, and speeds up.
He grabs the side of a building and swings right, putting him on a straight route to his target.
Sweat is pouring down his face, drenching his Hero Costume.
"Reacher!" Hawks yells, "c'mon buddy slow down!"
He instinctively pats his pocket to make sure his cargo is there when he hears Hawks closing in.
"Stay away from me!" Reacher yells.
He glances down, considering going to the street level and getting the crowd involved, but the last thing he wants it to put the civilians in danger.
He couldn't even trust other Pro Heroes to help him, he was alone against the entire world.
Because that's what happens when you try to stand against Horizon.
Hawks keeps smiling, but narrows his eyes as some of his feathers disperse, taking alternative paths around the buildings.
Reacher looks ahead, seeing a large police station at the very end of this long street, and suddenly safety was that much closer.
Reacher glances back a moment later, and doesn't see Hawks.
'Oh n---' He feels the wind get knocked out of him. "GAHHH!"
His eyes close for a moment as he's suddenly moving faster than he every could on his own, and he barely opens his eyes fast enough to see the city street disappearing below him.
Eventually the entire city becomes distant below them, and he realizes what happened.
Hawks tackled him, knocking the wind out of him and wrapping his arms around Reacher, taking him into the clouds and away from the city.
Now they were miles above the buildings.
"Let go of me!" Reacher rears back and punches Hawks in the back of his head, but the smaller hero doesn't let go of him.
"Just listen!"
"They have to know!" Reacher extends both his arms upward 33ft -10m- and brings them back in much faster, transitioning into two palm strikes at Hawk's shoulders.
"Argh!" Hawks lets go and drops Reacher, who instantly nosedives through the clouds, ready to grab a building and make his vertical momentum into a horizontal swing.
But he was over a mile above the nearest building, so before he could even get close Hawks wrapped his arms around his torso again.
"Don't make me hurt you, please!" Hawks says while dragging him out of the city again.
"You can't protect him! He's a murderer!"
"I know that, and I'm not trying to!" Hawks yells while continuously being punched in the head, but even as blood flows through his hair and down his face, he doesn't let go.
"AHHHH!" Reacher feels two feathers pierce his back, into the joints at his shoulders.
His arms fall limply at his side for a while as Hawks takes them to a small forest outside the city.
"There, now can you please let me explain?!" he asks while dropping Reacher on the ground in a clearing.
"Explain what? That you're covering up a murder?!" Reacher asks as he gets to his feet, flexing his fingers and trying to move his arms.
All of Hawks feathers leave his back and begins hovering around Reacher, like hundreds of swords at his sides.
"I don't want to hurt you Haru," Hawks says.
"These feathers tell a different story," he looks around nervously at Hawks feathers. "I'm just trying to do the right thing, to be a actual Pro Hero, or did you forget what that was like? How dirty are those talons, huh?"
"This isn't like that, its just a matter of timing, I promise. Just let me explain, please."
"There is no timing, I saw a murder and I will act on my instincts and report it, everything that happens after will be justice!"
"Its not that simple!" Hawks yells, and his calm expression gives way to anger. "If it was that simple I wouldn't be in this problem, but it's Horizon!"
"That's why we must act now! He's dangerous!"
"I know that!" Hawks screams. "Believe me, I know that more than anyone. If you got past the first few files on that flash drive you stole, you would have seen what he did to me. How he tore me apart piece by piece and kept putting me back together. Why do you think I was missing for a month."
Reacher looks shocked as Hawks begins to tear up, clutching his head as if physically suppressing the memories.
"I couldn't function after the things he did to me, after he made me stay awake the entire time...I don't want him to do that to you, to everyone. So please, just give me the flash drive, and we can go talk to Pantu together."
"Pantu?" Reacher finally puts the pieces together. "So that's why my phone hasn't been working, she blocked me out...so she's in on it too. The police..."
"That report was never going to happen Haku," Hawks says calmly. "I don't like hurting innocent people, but if you got to that police station a lot of people would have had to die after hearing that report. But that's a lot less than what we'll lose if Horizon goes crazy.
So please, just give me the drive, I don't want to hurt you, or worse..."
"If you keep covering up his crimes, they'll only get worse, you'll make a real monster!"
"I trust Pantu to deal with him before it gets completely out of hand. Right now he's just being a bit excessive with villains."
"Just 'A bit excessive'?! That's what you call what he did to Wolfram?!" Reacher looks disgusted. "The man was begging for his life and Horizon just kept tearing into him, he looked like bloody burger meat when he was done!"
"A freak incident, not a pattern."
"The amount of files on this drive say otherwise, and what about you, don't you want justice for what he did to you?"
"Yes, I do. Believe me, there isn't a day I don't dream about locking him up, or worse. But he's Horizon, its impossible, plus that was part of my job, I knew what I was doing."
Reacher grits his teeth, "yeah well, being a Hero is my job, and if I'm the only one in Japan with any sense of justice then so be it. I'll just upload it and let the world decide!"
"Wait!"
Reacher begins extending his arm forward to grab Hawks, but before his attack can even begin dozen of feathers pierce his back.
He flinches for a moment, and unconsciously blinks.
And by the time he opened his eyes Hawks was in front of him swinging a feather sword at his neck...
"Damn it," Hawks says as Reacher's head falls to the floor, rolling away from his body.
All of his feathers return to his back after shaking off the blood while he searches the body.
Taking a few steps away he examines the drive while calling Pantu.
"Did you get it?" Was the first words out of her mouth.
"Yeah, but he's dead."
"Good, that's better than him being alive and us having to worry about him eventually talking."
"He had a family you know, and now they'll never see him again."
"That's the occupational hazard of being a Pro Hero, he just ran into a villain on patrol and didn't make it back home, send them a card if you care so much."
Hawks sighs, "how the hell did he even get this info anyway?"
"This morning someone hacked into our most secure servers looking for info on Horizon, they left a small back door and that information got out."
"So they hacked us for data on Horizon?"
"No, they wanted something in his file but none of the personal data, and honestly aside from this there wasn't anything else there. He really doesn't exist in our files, they only got this because we used it for his counterpart in the simulation."
"Right, so they got what they wanted and left a back door, then that group Reacher just busted up got these files using that same back door?"
"Yes, and I've already sent a team to deal with them, him arresting them made things much easier."
"Gotcha, and what did the actual hackers even want?"
"Our people are still working on that, I should know by the end of the day."
"Good, just tell me as soon as you---" Hawks stops talking as a purple Warp Gate manifests in front of him. "I'll call you back, my bestie needs me."
As he hangs up Dabi walks out of the Warp Gate, "since when are we friends?"
"Awe, and here I thought we were best friends..."
Both men glare at each other for a moment, then Dabi glances down at Reacher's corpse. "Nice work, trying to impress me?"
"He got a bit too nosey, had to cut it off," Hawks shrugs.
"You missed the nose then," Dabi walks forward and observes where they are.
"So did you need something?"
"Yeah, the boss is calling a meeting, now, lets go."
"The boss, Shigaraki will be there?"
"Everyone will be there," Dabi says. "Congratulations, you're more useful than untrustworthy, now lets go. And obviously don't try anything stupid," Dabi begins walking to the Warp Gate, but stops in front of it.
"What?"
"Mind if I take credit for this?" he gestures to the corpse.
"Sure, make the league look good and cover my tracks, that's perfect."
Dabi rolls his eyes, "when you say I'm helping you it almost makes me not want to do it...but I just love watching heroes burn." With a wave of his hand he sets a raging fire in this part of the woods, starting at the corpse.
"A bit much, don't you think?"
"I like the scent of burning trees," Dabi walks though the Warp Gate.
Before Hawks steps in the looks back and tosses the flash drive into a blue flame, making sure it melts before he fully enters the warp gate.
'Time to meet the boss...'
END CHAPTER---