Winds of Destiny: Rising
Chapter Fifteen: Detour
Misaki and Hawks sat opposite each other in the private dining room of an izakaya down the street from the Safety Commission headquarters. She had flat out told him when they'd walked out the front door that he was not allowed to fly her anywhere, so he'd suggested something close by. The food was decent enough and it was still a bit early, so they hadn't run into any of the after-work traffic when they'd walked in. It was always a crapshoot whether or not he'd get recognized and stopped when he walked into an unfamiliar place, which was why he tended to avoid them while he was on the clock.
"Thanks for that heads up the other day. It's too bad I wasn't able to make it," he said as he reached out for one of the yakitori skewers in the middle of the table. They'd ordered several side dishes, but that one had mostly been for him.
"Don't worry about it. The raid was a bust. Everything had been cleared out by the time we got there," Misaki replied dejectedly as she picked at the hiyayakko she'd ordered for herself.
He'd enlisted the aid of several of the supply chain workers he'd been helping out to spread the word around the other facilities about a rush order had been scheduled for some black-market support items to be received and processed at their warehouse in Shiga. He'd asked Skeptic to keep an eye on the surveillance feeds from all of the bases and let him know if anyone stepped out around two and a half, to three hours before the scheduled time of the bogus shipment. As luck would have it, the worker they'd caught taking a break during that time was on rotation at the villa. He'd tailed the guy overhead as he drove into the city to make the call. Misaki's heads up had come in no more than a minute later.
When the guy had returned to his vehicle, Hawks had met him there and confronted him, prompting him to spill for the cameras that he'd been unhappy with the new regime under the command of the League of Villains, and that he'd been working alone the entire time. He'd reluctantly delivered the man back to the villa to be dealt with by the higher ups. He couldn't really blame the guy for trying to thwart their plans, but Hawks was focused on the bigger picture. The black-market support items were chump change compared to the payout of taking down the League and the Liberation Army as a whole. Unfortunately, the man had picked the wrong time to have a sudden change of heart.
"Think they figured out you were onto them?" He asked, sliding the chicken off the end of the skewer with his teeth.
She sighed. "Something like that. We haven't heard from our anonymous tipster since then either. It's suspected that he was probably discovered by the people he was working for, seeing as they were able to clear out before the raid team arrived."
"That's too bad," Hawks drawled sympathetically. "Seemed like a good opportunity to get a bunch of illegal items out of the hands of the public."
"Yeah. Especially after Deika," Misaki huffed.
"You guys close the case on that yet?" He asked in a light tone before clearing off another skewer.
"For the most part. The investigative team finished running down background and known contacts for all of the militants a few days ago. Seems like the League really wasn't involved at all." She shrugged, sectioning off a bit of her tofu and bringing it up to her mouth.
"Kinda strange that they never responded to that whole finger business, huh?" He prompted, giving her an avenue to elaborate on that point. It wouldn't hurt to give the Liberation folks a false sense of security that the Commission was officially off their backs at this point.
"Don't even get me started on that wild goose chase..." Misaki mumbled around her food as she rolled her eyes. "So, how are things in your neck of the woods?"
He allowed her the redirect, settling for the cursory mention instead and switched gears to the report he'd prepared on what he'd discovered so far about the PLA hierarchy. "I haven't really been home much. I've been flying around and helping out the rest of the chart toppers here and there. Even the one at the top! Since the last time we spoke, I've only been able to work with four groups of heroes. I guess I made about nine assists, though I probably only did any real work on seven of them. Got to see some of the students in action though. Each of the heroes I teamed up with had at least three of them working under them. They seem pretty capable, maybe even stronger than your average hero by now!"
He'd been careful to make sure that he'd matched the team-ups he'd engaged in over the last week with the report he'd prepared to give. Each mention of a number had been in reference to a regiment. There were four groups, each one led by the top members of the League and the Meta-Liberation Front. There were nine of them in total, with the exception of Shigaraki. Re-Destro and Trumpet made up their own regiment at the villa, which left the other seven to manage the rest of the army. Each of the seven regiment leaders had three assistants working under them that were responsible for overseeing one of the satellite bases and all of the members on hand; and nearly all of them had abilities and experience that made them more than a match for the average hero.
Misaki's eyes narrowed almost imperceivably as she replied in a lower octave than her usual tone, "That's a promising review from the Number Two. I'll tell the President you said so."
"It's just my opinion!" He replied jovially, taking the hint that she had picked up the code he'd used by calling him "Number Two".
"I plan to team up with all of them at least once, but I'm still working on getting in contact with a few of them. They can be pretty elusive sometimes. Tracking down their locations is the next thing on my list," he continued, making reference to his plans to look into which lieutenant was in charge of which base.
"Maybe I can help. Are you looking for anyone in particular?" Misaki asked, reaching down into the bag sitting next to her and pulling out a small black notebook, along with the pen he'd given her for Christmas last year.
His eyes widened at the sight of the obvious lure. She'd shown the schedule book out in the open in reference to his misdirected statement about tracking down the locations of other heroes. The Liberation leaders would assume that meant the book contained pertinent information concerning scheduled hero operations. It was bait to distract them by drawing their attention exactly where the Commission wanted it to go while keeping their eyes away from the important missions. It seemed as though the President was aware of Misaki's involvement with him and had given her a hand in preparing for their encounters going forward. No way she'd be able to pull off that kind of massive ruse all on her own. She had to have had help.
"And here I thought a woman's little black book was for personal use, not business," he drawled, narrowing his eyes at her and tossing her a sly grin.
"It can be both," she replied carefully as she cracked it open and flipped through a few of the pages.
He inclined his head and asked, "You got anything on me in there?"
She grinned back at him with a raised eyebrow. "Maybe. I'll leave it up to your imagination as to which section you're in."
He let out a short laugh. "Thanks for the offer, but I've already got a line on my next target. Just gotta run 'em down now."
"Suit yourself." Misaki shrugged, snapping the book closed and placing it back in her bag.
She hitched the handles over her shoulder and announced demurely, "I need to visit the lady's room."
"Take your time," he said with a wave as she rose from her seat and made her way toward the sliding door.
As soon as it closed behind her, Hawks's phone began vibrating in his pocket. He fished it out, noticing the blocked number and deducing it was probably Skeptic on the other end. He answered with a short, "What's up?"
"Figure out a way to get a look at that book," Skeptic's clipped tone immediately ordered from the other end of the line.
'Well, it looks like they took the bait,' he thought to himself, feeling slightly impressed with Misaki's skillful espionage tactics.
Sure the President may have helped her with the planning, but a ruse was only as good as the actor's ability to sell it. She had caught them hook, line, and sinker with both her strategy and her execution, and she hadn't even giving them a good look at the lure yet. He was sure the sight of the book had just been a teaser, otherwise she would have left it behind when she'd gone to the restroom. Hawks found himself silently counting his lucky stars that she wasn't such a good con artist in her personal life. All things considered, Misaki's potential for manipulating people was probably on par with the likes of All For One. With her brains and good looks, that woman would've been hell on heels had she gone down a darker path in life.
"Her little black book?" He asked facetiously.
"Yes! That book!" The man yelled impatiently in his ear.
He held the phone away from him as he asked, "What for? It's probably just a contact list of some sort."
"Just do it!" Skeptic ordered curtly. Hawks could almost see the veins that had to be popping out of his forehead at the moment.
"Alright, alright. I'll figure something out. Relax," he replied in a dismissive tone, hanging up the phone just as Misaki walked back into the room.
"Work?" She inquired, taking note of the phone in his hand.
He shook his head and dropped it back into his pocket. "Nothing important. You got any plans after this?"
"I've got an early morning meeting, so I think I'm gonna call it a night," she said as she returned to her seat, reaching out for her glass and finishing off the tea she'd ordered to go with the tofu she'd barely finished.
"It's not even eight pm yet! You sure you can't keep me company for a drink or two?" He asked in an overly pleading tone, knowing that she'd turn him down for being too forward.
"Next time," she replied curtly, as he'd expected.
"I'm gonna hold you to that," he said, shaking himself out of his thoughts before reaching his arms above his head in a stretch. "I should probably be getting back too. I'll walk you out."
"Thanks," she replied with a small smile as they rose from the table to make their way out of the restaurant.
As they stepped outside, Hawks's gaze was drawn to a portable ice cream stand a few meters away at the entrance to the park leading back to the main road. They'd have to walk through there anyway so that she could catch a cab back to her apartment. Grabbing a little snack on the way couldn't hurt.
He turned to her and gestured toward the ice cream stand with his head as he asked, "You got room for dessert?"
...
"Ice cream?" Misaki asked incredulously, turning her eyes in the direction he'd gestured and noticing the ice cream stand. "It's five degrees out here."
He cocked his head and asked her with genuine curiosity, "Haven't you ever heard that ice cream is better when it's cold out?"
She rolled her eyes. "Nobody says that."
"You've never heard that?" He incredulously asked, his eyebrows skyrocketing in shock. "Alright, come on. I'm buying," he said as he reached out to grab her hand and turned, making his way over to the ice cream stand and pulling her along behind him.
"Wait—!" She called out, jogging a bit to follow after his purposeful strides.
What just happened? He had just spun a complete one eighty on her. Aside from the obvious suggestive pickup lines he'd used in the beginning, he'd been playing a somewhat cautious gentleman in all of their interactions since then. Suddenly slipping back into his usual forthright, playful self had thrown her for a big loop. Was this some kind of new ploy or did he really just want ice cream?
"Good evening," he greeted the vendor inside the ice cream stand.
The guy's eyes became as wide as saucers before he called out suddenly, "You're Hawks!"
Misaki briefly wondered to herself if he ever got tired of people always telling him who he was.
"In the flesh," Hawks replied magnanimously, offering the guy a wide grin.
"No way! My kid's a huge fan! Would it be alright if I got your autograph?" The ice cream vendor asked enthusiastically.
"Yeah, of course. What's your kid's name?" Hawks asked, pilfering a pen from the cup on the counter and swiping one of the napkins from the dispenser on the other side.
"Koichi!" The man replied excitedly.
He quickly filled out his signature and a short message on the paper napkin before handing it over to the vendor. He took it gingerly with both hands while staring at it as if it was made of gold.
The man smiled back at him broadly. "Thank you, Hawks! You just made my kid's year! What can I get ya? It's on the house!"
He looked over at her and tilted his head toward the stand. "Lady's first."
"Just a small vanilla, please," Misaki timidly told the man.
Not that she didn't like ice cream, but she wasn't convinced that it was going to taste any better in the frigid winter air than it would have on a hot summer day.
"Vanil—?" Hawks interjected suddenly. "Can you throw a scoop of each into one of those big cups?"
"Yeah, of course!" The man replied enthusiastically before turning to grab one of the large size cups.
"Oh, no, that's really—" Misaki started, but was cut off by Hawks.
"I'll eat whatever you don't."
She glanced up at him from the corner of her eye and chided him, "You're taking advantage of free ice cream."
He smirked at her as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded up ten thousand yen note before dropping it into the tip jar on the counter while the vendor was distracted filling the large cup with ice cream.
Misaki widened her eyes and gasped, asking him sharply under her breath, "What are you doing? That's way too much—!"
He shook his head and held up a finger to his lips just before the vendor reached over the glass to hand him the overflowing cup of ice cream.
He took the cup and a couple of plastic spoons from the bucket on the counter, calling out to the man, "Thanks! Have a great night!"
Misaki smiled tightly at the vendor, who waved to them as they walk off toward the park.
Turning back around, she snatched the spoon he was holding out to her from his hand and sighed, "You're ridiculous."
"Maybe if you hadn't ordered vanilla, I wouldn't have had to take such drastic measures," he replied ironically as he dug into the heaping pile of multicolored ice cream.
"I happen to like vanilla, thank you very much," she shot back, swiping a spoonful of the white scoop peeking out over the edge of the cup on her side.
"I'm not saying that vanilla's a bad flavor." Hawks shrugged. "It's okay. If you like flavors that taste really boring and plain that is."
She shook her head as she rolled her eyes and asked, "So, what's your favorite ice cream flavor then?"
"Hm... That's a tough one," he replied thoughtfully, lifting a hand to cup his chin with a look of firm concentration. "Savory or sweet?"
She blinked, pausing for a moment with her spoon in her mouth as she stared back at him. "What are you talking about? It's ice cream."
"Oh man, you have no idea what you've been missing out on." He shook his head and picked up a scoop of a tan colored ice cream with his spoon, holding it out to her as he said, "Here, try this."
She looked at it warily for a moment before opening her mouth to allow the spoon inside. Her eyes widened in surprise and she lifted her hand to her mouth. "Oh my—! Is that—?"
"Miso, uh huh. What'd ya think? It's good, right?" He grinned, placing a spoonful of the same ice cream in his own mouth.
She tilted her head from side to side in consideration. "It's not bad, I guess. Kinda weird." She tossed a suspicious glance at the bright green scoop in the middle of the stack and asked, "Do I even wanna know what that one is?"
He took her spoon and ran it through the scoop, holding it out to her with an eager grin. She hesitantly took it and placed it in her mouth, expecting the worst. Her face lit up with shock a second later and she looked up at him in surprise.
"Matcha?"
His grin widened as he quipped, "Yep."
"I was half expecting it to be wasabi..." Misaki trailed off in relief.
"That's in here too, but I won't make you try that one," he replied, glancing down at her from the corner of his eye playfully as he stuck his own spoon back in his mouth upside down.
Oh, man. This was dangerous.
The casual dinner conversation laced with innuendoes she could handle. Whatever this was now all of a sudden was veering into hazardous territory. It was way too comfortable. She really couldn't afford to be mixing business with pleasure like this. Not with him. If she wasn't careful, she'd end up being swept away by his alluring golden gaze and happy-go-lucky grin.
Turning her eyes downcast, she cleared her throat and said, "You never answered my question."
He hummed thoughtfully as he took another bite. "So, savory flavor is definitely chicken wing."
"That is not an ice cream flavor!" She exclaimed, unable to keep herself from laughing out loud at the sudden ridiculousness of his statement.
"That is one hundred percent a flavor of ice cream," he replied, matter-of-factly.
"Whatever," she shook her head, feeling a bit adventurous all of a sudden and dipping her spoon into a dark purple scoop of ice cream. "So, what's the sweet one?"
"Probably coffee," he replied after a moment.
"Coffee?" She asked around the spoon in her mouth. Casting him a sidelong glance she hummed, "Hm, and here I was expecting it to be pancake."
His eyebrows shot up and he looked over at her in wonder. "Pancake flavored ice cream? I'll have to try that some time. I bet it's delicious!"
She giggled around her spoon at his reaction, almost forgetting for a moment that they weren't actually on a real date. They'd never really done the conventional dating thing, even while they'd been getting to know each other after they'd met. He'd stop by every couple of days on her lunch break at the bank and they'd eat together, but walking through a park alone, joking about ice cream, wasn't something they'd ever gotten to do before. He was too well known in Fukuoka to have the luxury of walking out in the open without getting stopped for a photo or an autograph. When she'd moved up to Tokyo, they'd rarely had very much time to spend together, as they'd both usually been too busy with work. Any alone time they'd managed to find was spent either cooking together, watching a movie, or making love. Usually some combination of all three.
She wasn't quite sure what to make of this sudden detour. It almost seemed like he was being openly flirtatious, though not in a blatantly suggestive way like the first time he'd approached her at the Safety Commission headquarters. He was making an effort to make her feel comfortable with him, perhaps with the intention of giving the Liberation Front the impression that she was warming up to him. It was working. He'd lulled her right back into the familiar ease of conversation with their usual witty banter. She still wasn't sure that had been his actual intention, but it made the most sense, given the situation and the fact that he was currently wearing his trademark mask of affability.
They eventually made their way to the other side of the park and Hawks tossed the empty ice cream cup into the trash bin along with their spoons. He'd ended up eating most of it, with the exception of a few test bites here and there of flavors he'd wanted her to try. Most of them she'd liked, but a few of them had just been weird. She probably would not be ordering herself any squid ink ice cream any time soon.
"Sorry to cut the evening short. All we really got to talk about was work and ice cream," she said, hunching her shoulders to bring her scarf up around her ears to ward against the winter wind that whipped unhindered through the open thoroughfare.
He stepped up to stand next to her, effectively blocking the wind so that she could relax. He glanced down at her from the corner of his eye as he said, "S'alright. I'll let ya make it up to me next time."
She shot him a quizzical look. "Next time, huh?"
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You did promise to have a drink with me, ya know?"
She ran her tongue over her back teeth as she cocked her head to the side and squinted up at him as she asked, "You know what next week is, right?"
She slid her eyes over to the billboard across the street advertising jewelry for Valentine's Day.
He followed her gaze for a moment before sliding his eyes back over to her and suggestively asking, "What's the matter? Already have plans with someone else in your little black book?"
She held out her hand to flag down one of the cabs driving down the street as she replied, "No, I don't have any plans. I just didn't want to assume anything... Complicated."
He shrugged. "Nothing complicated. Just the usual. Some food, some drinks, some conversation. Totally casual. No pressure."
She grinned as he held up his hands in front of him, feigning innocence. "Right. Well, I guess I'll see you next week then."
As a cab pulled up to the curb next to them, she stepped toward him and leaned up to softly press her lips to his cheek.
"Goodnight, Hawks," she said in a low tone next to his ear as she opened the door and swiftly slid down into the back seat before he could reply.
She caught his admonishing glare through the window as he shut the door behind her, and she grinned back at him as the cab pulled away. It served him right, after throwing her for a loop with his ice cream stunt. She told the cab driver the address of her apartment building and sat back against the cushions, absentmindedly running her fingers over her bottom lip.
Dangerous was right. If he got it in his head to take them on another ice cream detour again, she was going to be in some serious emotional trouble.
~ Author's Note ~
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! We're already halfway through this story! 😭 I can't believe it! I am SO unbelievably appreciative of ALL my readers, everyone who has reviewed (you know who you are!), and all my silent readers as well! You guys keep me going and I can't thank you enough for sticking with me this far! I love you all!
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