animal (i'm supposed to fill it up with something something something)

by justheretoposttrash

After the war, after All For One, and after suddenly having more free time than he knows what to do with, Keigo Takami goes to the zoo with some friends of his and tries to learn how to relax instead of just acting the part.

Author's note: I have no idea where MHA is gonna end up in general, let alone where Hawks keeping/losing his wings permanently is concerned, but by golly do both possibilities have tons of potential! This fic is really just an exploration of what-if, and then what-next.

There's some brief allusions to Dabi that are based on the speculation that he can be saved, which uhhhhhh idk if it's looking so great rn but! What if, optimism, we'll wait and see, etc.!

CW heads-up, since this is Hawks we're talking about there will be some talk about his abusive and otherwise suboptimal upbringing as well. He also uses a firearm, though he doesn't hurt anybody.

Songs I picked for the vibe of this fic are Animal by Miike Snow (of course), Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine, Study Me by Zutomayo, and Color by Yama!

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Keigo Takami was the kid whose father kicked him in the spine, whose father went into a rage whenever that small back was turned to him.

Keigo Takami was the name that was sold away so that he could take the burdens none of the other heroes wanted, the burdens that none of them talked about, onto his own narrow back.

Keigo Takami was the hoarse name screamed to him like a curse when he was trapped in a cage of flame as blue as Sirius, before the searing fangs of that star sank into his back and tore it apart.

Keigo Takami had nothing on his back anymore. He'd lost that weight.

Keigo Takami's tank top was currently sticking to the sweat on his scarred and knotted back, and he was wearing sunglasses to hide from the sharpness of the sun.

That motherfucker was beating down hard today, which wasn't great for visibility. These oppressive summer temperatures also meant that if a villain were to attack, Endeavor couldn't sustain his flames for as long before risking heat exhaustion, heatstroke even.

No breeze either, which in the past would have been good for flight conditions, and in the present was mainly just kind of a bummer. It was hot and humid as balls.

From the shuffling of feet, he'd approximate five people passing by behind him. Around four on top of that were standing stationary in that blind spot, judging by how many figures he saw enter his peripheral right and leave on his peripheral left.

Breaths, heartbeats—they had once been like a constant constellation for him to navigate, all around him—and he didn't have those landmarks anymore. It made it hard to tell if the people around him were safe or even still alive.

Thing was, he wasn't a stranger to the feeling. His work with the Commission never left his wings full for long, and he'd had all his feathers depleted several times before. Being used to the feeling made it all the stranger, though, because it kept tricking him into thinking that this was all temporary. That they'd come back.

Three people leaving on his left. Four people entering on his left. Two people leaving on his right. So around nine people behind him, total. No distressed voices, catches in breath—they all seemed content. They all seemed okay.

(As it turned out, losing the ability to sense everything going wrong around him hadn't instantly made his sense of responsibility disappear.)

Habits, relics, that's all these were. A reflex.

Still, it's not like there was much else for his mind to do right now, and besides, multi-tasking was all he knew, and besides, the one time he'd lost track of who was behind his back, he'd been burned, and wasn't there something about Sirius rising with the sun in the sky during the summer? (How apt, the image of Sirius and the sun in harmony at last, now that the war was over.) That's why this part of the year was called the "dog days" in the West, because of the Dog Star. But "dog days" didn't just mean the hottest time of the summer, did it, and wasn't that something else to think about.

His tank top would've been a little cooler if there'd been a hole cut out in the back, but it was a new purchase, closed all the way around like a wall instead of a window, a swath of cloth that touched every part of his currently moist and disgusting shoulder blades. It took getting used to. And unlike before, unlike the breakneck blur of his career, where adaptability and getting up without missing a beat were as automatic as breathing, now there was nothing for him to do but get used to it.

(He'd had too much time on his hands once before. Back when he was trapped in that awful house.

Yep. Dog days, for sure.)

Oh, he was on a roll with all these fun connections, all right. He was here all day and all night, folks, always here for the captive audience that was his own brain.

The giraffe in the wide, deep enclosure in front of him started to pee in front of everyone in a long, unabashed stream. A chorus of "ew"s and delighted laughter erupted from some of the children in the crowd.

In an instant, Keigo flipped through the idling and open tabs of his brain and focused back on the one he'd pinned to the front of it all. He was at a zoo. He was with supposed friends. He was supposed to be relaxing.

"Here." One of the moving figures Keigo had been tracking had returned. Jeani—Tsunagu was cast in shades of dark, dusty teal through Keigo's sunglasses, and was holding up a corndog.

"Sweet, thanks man," Keigo said, taking it with his right hand. Best to keep his dominant hand free in case of emergency. Slightly obscured by the baggy burnt-orange vest he wore, a handgun was holstered above his hip. He wasn't a fan of owning one, let alone carrying it around like this, but it was essential for even inactive heroes to have some kind of protection in case revenge-seeking villains wanted to settle the score. And save for his new set of katanas—which would have been way more obvious to wear out in public—there wasn't any other kind of protection for Keigo to fall back on.

He sank his teeth into the corndog, then waved it around like a wand as he gestured. "So like," he muffled around his mouthful, "if they pee from that height, does that mean they do everything else from that height? Like give birth and stuff?"

Tsunagu smelled like sunscreen and was covered toe-to-nose in bleached denim—white to reflect some sunlight and stave off the heat, smart—and began lifting a spoonful of his shaved ice towards where his mouth presumably was, looking thoughtful.

Come to think of it, had anyone ever seen Tsunagu eat anything when his mouth was covered up like that? How did the guy do it? Keigo watched him carefully from the corner of his eye as the guy raised the spoon above his face, hooking an elbow to lower it down the opening of his high collar as his whole hand disappeared in there, then lifted his hand out to reveal that the spoon was now clean.

Whoa. Weird. Keigo blinked and snapped his pupils back to the giraffe so he wouldn't be caught gawking out the side of his sunglasses.

Now, there were about eleven people milling behind him. Maybe.

Heartbeats, he'd lost all contact with, save for his own. (He remembered the way that Tsunagu's vitals had all but come to a stop, once upon a time. It was part of his job to acquire people's trust, (( and it earned them stabbed backs and scarred faces—no, don't think about that right now )) but it was still hard to fathom how much faith Tsunagu had placed in him. What was it like, to be able to believe in someone so much despite them giving you next to nothing?) Breaths, though, he could still somewhat make out if he strained his ears and the other person was close enough.

For instance…Mirko—well, it was Rumi, presently—had pulled up on the other side of him, and was huffing and puffing up a storm from her nose. It was impressive, honestly, that even her breaths sounded aggressive.

"Aw, can't believe I missed it," she said, nibbling on the corner of her veggie pizza slice. A comically giant water bottle swung from her other hand, already depleted by a third of its volume from her efforts to stay hydrated amidst the heat. She was wearing an old volleyball jersey and loose athletic shorts, her ears gently perked forward to shade her eyes from the sun.

"You mean the pee stream? Didn't take ya for that kind of gal, but I'm not one to judge peoples' interests," Keigo drawled.

Without exerting a single breath or drop of sweat, Rumi elbowed him so hard that he nearly toppled over. "Pfft, is that all that happened? I heard everyone freaking out and thought it'd finally done something cool."

Honestly, if Rumi were any less…unabashedly herself, she'd be like a stranger. At the very least, she was strange , in that bloodthirsty-yet-friendly jock kinda way. There was a good meaty head on her shoulders, but she was deceptively sharp, and had a philosophy that'd make her right at home sword fighting among the Spartans. (What was it like to dig your heels into your own existence and proclaim to the universe that you weren't afraid? Rumi had looked death in the eyes again and again, and it asked her if she'd done her utmost, and she always knew her answer. Each time that Keigo had looked death in the eyes, it asked him if laying down his little life would be enough to save even one person, and he had to think about it.) On top of all that, the core of her was explosive but emotionally stable through and through. Must be nice. (Not that Keigo wasn't stable, just—usually when people called you "emotionally stable", they assumed that said stability was some unambiguous state of good, or at least contentment. And while he couldn't really put a finger on the soft static, the cool carbonation of activity in his hyperactive brain, "content" really was not the right word. Whatever, neither here nor there.) Point being, he and Rumi hadn't actually known each other for very long, and if not for her wearing her heart on her sleeve, they might not have developed such an easygoing rapport as they did in such a short time.

(A person who wore their heart on their sleeve, who opened up to him immediately—it was easy to name someone else like that. It was harder to think about how the guy had named him back.)

(("Hey, Red!")) (Not now.)

Funny thing was, countless fans had assumed that he and Rumi were best buds from even before they really got to know each other, probably because the two of them were lumped into some promotional photoshoots around when they were getting noticed in the hero biz. Photographers even asked them to swap parts of their outfits, like, the works. It was so effective that some fans even speculated that they were dating. Meanwhile, Keigo had been left to idly wonder whether him and Rumi just-so-happening to get lumped together into a proverbial box, then presumed to simply know each other by default, wasn't just a teensy bit morphobic. (And geez, as heteromorphs went, him and Rumi were considered "passing" in comparison. Well. He was a lot more passing now. Whoo hoo, privilege.)

Those aggressive breaths of hers got a lot louder as her excitement shot to a peak, the object of her, uh, belligerence finally rejoining the group to complete their ragtag little posse.

"Oi, Todoroki!" Rumi proclaimed, jabbing a finger at Enji so hard she produced a small gust of wind, flinging a couple of olives off of her clutched pizza slice in the process. "I'll arm wrestle ya for that sandwich. Let's break out our metal ones, make it a cyborg match, yeah?"

Enji was wearing a light blue button-up with the sleeves rolled up—looked like one of those fire-resistant brands he preferred. (It was another thing to get used to, seeing the patches of burn scars covering him from head-to-toe. After what was probably one of the worst family group hugs of all time, the guy had insisted on his family getting all the healing juice, which left him with relatively little medical attention and a lot of skin grafts. All the frowning kept him plenty recognizable, though. Same ol' grumpypants.) He scowled at Rumi like she was crazy. "Our prosthetics don't align. We can't arm wrestle with both at the same time."

This was a fun pair. The first time they'd really tangled, Keigo had been there, too—right after the High End attack. From there, the heroes Mirko and Endeavor had struck up a mutual respect during the raid, when the latter had found the former bleeding out yet valiant on the floor and cauterized her wounds. Their sense of honor towards each other had been intuitive, instantaneous, and blood-forged, their heated and gung ho natures finding mutual recognition in the other. And now that they'd both lost limbs to the war, there was yet another thing for them to bond over. Really, good for them. They made this whole friendship thing look easy… Minus some not-insignificant personality clashes, anyway.

"Psh, you're gonna let logic stop ya? Let's figure something else out, then. Like arm wrestling II." Her teeth bared in a wide grin as she stepped to the nearest outdoor table, dropped her water bottle onto the ground, and planted her robotic elbow on the grille with a loud thunk. "We'll both face each other and push. First elbow off the table loses."

Frowning, Enji held his sandwich closer to himself. "I purchased this sandwich with my own money. I'm not arm wrestling you for it."

His defensive motion came with a subtle wince, just a narrowing of his right eye, and his left hand moved to rub at the space where his prosthetic was attached. (Fuck, his arm. Keigo had messed up. He'd really messed up. However—however. That was neither here nor there.) Both him and Rumi had that in common, on top of everything else—those specific kinds of aches. Keigo's aches were different.

Something deep inside him was unsettled when he thought about the relationship in front of him too much, and he thought about everything too much. Unsettled in a subdued way, not teetering over the edge but swaying gently on a fulcrum, balanced on a knife point.

It was so easy for them, and he admired that, really, he did…

"C'mon, we'll both have stakes. If you win, you can get my slice of pizza!" Rumi was saying, thrusting it forward and making the bites she'd already taken out of it that much more visible.

This unpleasant feeling was probably jealousy, if Keigo had to bet, though he couldn't tell in which direction it ran. It was the sort of feeling he'd get when he used to see kids on TV shows stuffing their faces with warm food, having birthday parties, that kinda thing. Now, and even back then, it was clawless. Seeing people happy was never a bad thing, per se, it was just…hard to think that he was locked on the outside, looking in. (How was one supposed to wear their heart on their sleeve without it just, sort of, falling off and splatting all over the ground? Eh, it was a stupid metaphor.)

Nothing to do about the feeling other than move on from it. Compassion, fear, confidence, and anger were all stamped by the Commission with the "useful" label, functions that could push him to make good choices, protect himself, and keep trucking through a mission. Jealousy, sadness, insecurity, and plenty other things were stamped with the "unhelpful" label—irrelevant to his duties.

(In his second year with the Commission, Hawks had gone to one of the agents and asked, "Ms. Hayashi, when're Ren and Yuri gonna come back? I wanna play with them again."

Hayashi kneeled down, propping an elbow on her knee. "That was a simulation, Hawks. We brought in a couple of kids for you to practice talking to. But the simulation is over. Do you understand?"

He nodded slowly, gaze downturned as he squeezed his Endeavor plushie tighter, wings folding smaller against his back. "So we're not friends anymore?" )

(Three years ago, Hawks had been toweling off his hair as he stepped out of the shower when he got a ding on his phone.

[Naito Tadao: You free this weekend? Donut dog is hitting theaters on Friday ]

His eyelids half-lowered.

He'd only gotten to know Tadao because he needed an in with the guy's embezzling cousin, who in turn was friends with a Trigger dealer. Tadao had turned out to be an oblivious but persistently friendly person. After Hawks had picked apart Tadao's interests, he mentioned off-hand that he was into these surrealist, stop-motion films by a particular director, and the guy was so excited to talk with him about the topic that they ended up slamming beers for a few hours straight. It'd been months since the mission had been completed, and since Hawks had seen or spoken to the guy. Yet Tadao hung onto the details of Hawks's fabricated likes and dislikes with a level of care that seemed effortless to him. He kept trying to get them to hang out again.

[ Sorry, I've just been so swamped lately :c got patrols and other bs back to back for the next few weeks, and I won't be having any time off ]

[Naito Tadao: Ahhhh damn ]

[Naito Tadao: For sure! Sorry to hear that dude ]

[Naito Tadao: Hero work sounds brutal. Thanks for keeping us all safe! ]

He left it on Read. He knew that, like everyone else, Tadao would give up on talking to him eventually if he kept giving him so little.

Hawks pulled the towel off of his head and drifted out of the bathroom. His wings hung low, primaries dragging along the floor as he flicked the light switch off. He hadn't looked at himself in the mirror once.)

(After the Commission had been unceremoniously bludgeoned out of existence, Keigo had flipped through some of their files and found a stack of old progress reports on him through the years. One from a decade ago observed that he {Displayed signs of an avoidant attachment style}.)

"I don't like pizza," Enji retorted.

"Okay, what the actual fuck," Keigo said aloud, planting a hand square in the back of Enji's sweat-damp shirt and giving him a shove. "Just for that, you have to win. You will eat that pizza and you will like it, young man." Shooting a glower over his shoulder, Enji allowed himself to be budged forward by a single step.

"That's what I'm talking about!" Rumi proclaimed, shooting Keigo an approving grin, and he grinned back.

"Wre-stle," he said while pumping a fist, spacing out the syllables into a mantra, and no sooner had he said the first word than she'd joined in, matching his wavelength even as he amplified it to meet her energy. For someone who claimed that team ups were for sissies, she was really good at jumping on board.

"Wre-stle! Wre-stle!" they chanted together repeatedly, Enji looking entirely unimpressed and muttering something about being surrounded by fools. Still, he acquiesced in the face of their teamwork, stooping over to plant his metal elbow on the table, and like, was it really coercion if it was for a worthy cause? Rumi grabbed his hand in hers with a clang , their fingers interleaved, palms flush. Tsunagu drew closer, running a hand back over his hair with a smooth fwip, and with a flourish flashed three fingers—"Needle"—then two—"Thread"—then one—

"Sew," Tsunagu proclaimed, and the two immediately began straining, small whirs buzzing from their limbs.

Seven people were behind him. Among the crowd maneuvering around the giraffe enclosure, someone dropped their phone, and he tensed as he tried to send a feather over to catch it (just a reflex). Nothing happened, and it hit the ground with a clatter. Oops. Well, they were capable of picking it up themselves, but it was too bad about the crack on the screen.

…Nnnnnot like that was his problem. (Hell yeah, now that revelation was progress. Mindfulness win of the century.)

There were nearly a dozen separate problems he could be trying to solve, really, (that kid's shoe is untied, that skateboarder is about to skin their knee, is skateboarding even allowed in here? ) and even more that he could try discovering to make up for his lack of sensory information, but the only problems he could reasonably access anymore were all piled inside his lil noggin.

And oh shit, were those actual sparks shooting from their limbs?

Enji had way more body mass, but Rumi had a hell of a technique, both organic and robotic legs tensing against the ground as she subtly used her entire body to add to her strength. But just as he figured it'd be over, Enji started coming back, and their hands shifted all the way back to the midway point of the table. Hm. He glanced at Enji's focused expression, and he could tell that the old man was already catching on to Rumi's tricks. Observant as ever.

Keigo really had no stake in who won or not—if anything, Enji should win, for the sake of pizza appreciators everywhere—but in the twelve seconds of silence that had passed, his brain was pawing for action like a restless cat, and Enji was the easier of the two to mess with.

Squinting off into the distance, Keigo visored a flat hand over his already-sun-protected eyes and said, "Hey, is that Shoto?"

The way Enji's voice shot up in volume was alarming, if expected, as he glanced off to the side with ill-concealed delight. "SHO—"

There was no one in the world who could get away with letting their guard down against Rumi. She surged forward, sending Enji's elbow clear off.

"Sweet!" she cackled, swiping the sandwich from his other hand before he could even react.

"Whoops," Keigo drawled, "it was just Tsunagu. Who, y'know, looks exactly like a blonde, older, stretched-out, denim-clad Shoto…if you squint. My bad."

Enji wasn't slow-witted by any means, but the man had to have been reeling with betrayal on the inside, because he was standing there with eyes seemingly running through an entire cinema reel of everything that had just gone wrong. Damn, he was so confounded he wasn't even blowing up in angry flames yet—oop, no, his brow was starting to furrow. Keigo was probably the only person in the world who found Enji's explosive idiosyncrasies kinda fun, but it was too hot out today for a bonfire.

He reached with the full length of his arm to pat Enji on the back of the shoulder in a pastiche of sympathy. "Here, as penance for my wrongdoings, I'll win it back for you."

Rumi burst out laughing, smacking above her knee like a thunderclap.

"Seriously? Compared to me, you're a toothpick!" Sure, compared to her he was a toothpick. Compared to the average person he was built like a fucking action figure. A small action figure to be fair, but still, the point stood! "And no offense, but you've lost weight."

He had.

"I'll still win," Keigo said.

He would.

Reaching up to his left ear to undo the earring closure there, then the right ear, he said, "Arm wrestling II. You and me. Let's go. Here, someone hold my earrings. This is gonna get ugly." Both Tsunagu and Enji held out a hand, Tsunagu looking entirely fine with this level of melodrama, Enji looking both out of his element and a little constipated. He took the metallic black owl earrings—an old gift from a likely rather confused fan—and tossed one to each of them.

"First elbow off the table loses, right?" he inquired, his voice the perfect blend of nonchalance and naivete.

"Yeah. What, you forgot how it works already, chicken wing?" Rumi snorted. The nickname really didn't apply anymore, did it? She probably realized it, too, but her grin didn't falter. No need for unnecessary apologies, no need to make it more awkward. That was something Keigo appreciated, honestly.

In response to her question, he hummed, maintaining a serious facial expression as he gripped her right hand in his left. Keeping it "organic" this time around.

Like before, Tsunagu flourished and began a countdown. Keigo leaned in closer with each number announced, and Rumi leaned in as well, mirroring his show of enthusiasm, until they were nearly nose-to-nose above their hands.

"Go," Tsunagu said, and Keigo's tongue darted out to run up and down Rumi's middle finger.

"Gah!" she yelled, yanking her hand away. "What the hell?"

"Told you I'd win," he said with a lazy flip of his hand, palm facing up as he pointed at her arm, clearly off the table. She blinked down at the results, before barking a single, sharp laugh.

"Alright, sure. Fuck you, man," she said, taking the sandwich and shoving it into his expectant hand.

"Musclehead," he remarked with a smirk.

"Nerd," she shot back, sticking out her tongue.

Spinning around to hand Enji back his lunch, Keigo chivalrously announced, "I return victorious." It was thoroughly smushed from the scant time it had spent under Rumi's care, but hey, a win was a win.

"I'm never going in public with you two at the same time again," Enji grumbled, dropping Keigo's earring into his awaiting palm. "Let's go."

From the savannah region of the zoo, they meandered their way to the jungle region with similar levels of chaos, earning a lot of silent judgment from those around them. Not that people wouldn't have been staring even if they were on their best behavior. They made for quite a group of recognizably fucked-up heroes, after all. Rumi was on her third set of limbs, Enji had just started breaking into his second set of limbs and skin which made more people frightened by his presence than ever, and Tsunagu looked relatively alright but was still missing a lung. Not to mention that one time that he kinda, basically, died. Hey, at least he got better!

As for Keigo…

Without his flight suit, or, you know, the huge red wings behind him, the most recognizable thing about him was probably the burn scar that ran up one whole side of his body. So… So.

(He was never one for staring long in the mirror, anyway. Ever since he was a kid, he couldn't really figure out how he felt about what he was looking at.)

"Hey, check out that baby elephant!" Rumi said as she pointed at a black-and-white quadruped big enough to ride on. It had a little trunk.

"Is this creature cut from marsupial cloth?" Tsunagu pondered.

"It looks like it shares some physical similarities to an anteater," Enji remarked.

"I'm gonna call this guy Big Snorty," Keigo said, throwing his arms out wide.

The placard in front of the big glass pane read "Tapir". It wasn't a marsupial.

They wandered further to the next enclosure, and there were little armor-plated critters waddling around in there. It looked like they could curl up into protective balls.

"Ooh, a roly poly!" Rumi exclaimed. Okay, she had to know that was wrong, right?

"These specimens are certainly marsupials, with every fiber threaded through their being," Tsunagu said confidently.

"I wonder if they're closely related to pangolins," Enji said.

"Now this guy is Sir Scaly," Keigo declared, crossing his arms and nodding approvingly at the creature closest to the glass.

This placard read "Armadillo". It also wasn't a marsupial.

As little as they understood zoology, everyone seemed to be having fun.

Rumi adored the kangaroos back in the savanna area, no surprise there. Enji was visibly impressed by the tiger. Tsunagu had been enthused by the wolves in the temperate forest zone. Keigo thought that everything was pretty neat, but nothing had really jumped out at him yet.

As the group left the jungle loop and entered the mountainous zone, they passed by an artificial rocky outcropping, cut with a short tunnel leading through it—one of the many little touches the zoo had put in place to divert some of the excess energy of visiting children away from the animals.

Two little kids, probably siblings, raced each other on hands and knees through the tunnel, laughing as they scrambled out the other side. What exactly was so entertaining about being in such a cramped space? Time to find out.

His friends (they were his friends, right? Of course they were. What kind of silly question was that?) slowed to a puzzled halt as he crouched down and started crawling into the opening that was much too small for him.

"What are you doing?" Enji whispered with mortification, as if they were about to be caught in the middle of committing a crime.

"It's a tight fit. Mind the ceiling," Tsunagu cautioned.

Screw the haters, this was the sort of nonsense Keigo was meant to be indulging now that he'd been sent hurtling into his supposed golden years several decades too early, with a one-way ticket to retirement duct-taped to his hand. (In the past, a shockingly high percentage of his time "enjoying" himself had been just him...well, playing at playing. More often than not it was for a goal of some kind, part of a persona for a mission, a stint to advance his public image, or a means of getting in the good graces of necessary connections in the pro scene. What did he do for fun as a kid before the blood, the sweat, and the title? Hell if he knew.)

Also, this seemed like it was going to be funny.

Keigo managed to get through to the other side without incident (welp, that was riveting, but he had to commit to the bit), and banged his head hard on the ceiling as he tried to straighten out.

{Generalized intelligence summary: Hawks has a profoundly high intelligence, at the 98th percentile among the total population and the 96th percentile among pro heroes. There is no one area that he particularly excels at, scoring "high" and occasionally "above average" across all categories; however, his aptitude is balanced and well-distributed along these categories to an exceptional degree.}

"Ow! Fuck!" he exclaimed loud enough to send several nearby parents escorting their children away with disapproving glares. If he'd had his wings, he would've detected the shape of the tunnel behind and above him, and he wouldn't have bonked his head. Really, he had every excuse to be caught off-guard.

"Utterly moronic," Enji said, covering his eyes with a hand as he tried to look smaller. Not something that was exactly feasible.

Rumi, meanwhile, was whole-heartedly guffawing at his expense, clutching around the middle of her stomach. "Damn dude, 're you still feeling the edible or something?"

"Nah, that's been tapering off for a while. You?"

"Same here."

"You came here high?" Enji raised his voice angrily, crossing his arms like he was about to give an interrogation, or some kind of drug-free P.S.A. The families that remained within a 5-meter radius of their group backed up to a 10-meter radius. "Hmph. That explains why your eye movements were all over the place today."

Beneath all appearances, Keigo had historically never been the type to unsober himself unless it was for schmoozing or maintaining cover, though he'd had plenty of training in various states of being drugged up. {DNA results indicate that he is moderately predisposed to addiction. By all accounts, his father smoked and was an alcoholic. His current disinterest in drugs and mind-altering substances is likely the result of past trauma regarding his father.} Unemployment was one hell of a drug all its own, however, and he'd recently started to experiment more, no small thanks to Rumi's stellar influence. Although, maybe Keigo's training wasn't so bulletproof, at least not anymore, if someone could tell he wasn't sober. Oh well. It had been true that his thought process at the peak of the high was something like nosuspiciousactivityhereeitherwowthatgrassissogreendidthatladyjustloseherwalletIcancatchuptoherifIrun"Here you go, ma'am. Yeah, no problem!"whewitfeelslikeawholehourhaspassedbutifIchecktheshadowsit'sstillonly11:40ishsoit'sbeenlike10minutestherearefourclearescapepointsifweweretobeattackedrightnowwhoaIkindathoughtrhinoswouldbebiggerunlessthesearebabyrhinosthat'ssohilariouswaitdon'tlaughit'snotthatfunny .

"Yeahhh, I admit I was a bit more distractible than usu—hold on, you were tracking my eye movements? Through my sunglasses?" Keigo asked incredulously. "Is that why you asked me if I was concussed earlier?"

"That's exactly why," Enji said, like there was nothing strange about that. A beat, then, "Don't tell me you're actually concussed now."

"Nope, I'm feeling great," Keigo said, rapping his knuckles lightly on his forehead.

"You're bleeding through a tear in the fabric of your head," Tsunagu observed from behind him. Keigo ran a hand back through his hair and got a small dab of blood on his finger.

"How 'bout that," he said as he stared at it. He kicked up a heel behind himself, reaching back to wipe the blood off on the black part of his sneaker. "Don't worry, it's just 'cause the ceiling's got all these sharp little points on them. One of them musta broke the skin."

Rumi made a face. "Is that supposed to make it better?"

"Well yeah, it's not like the blunt force did that or anything! My brain's fine."

"That could readily be contested," Enji muttered, and Keigo laughed.

As huge as the zoo was, the group eventually decided they'd had their fill despite not getting to see everything. They briefly dispersed for a bathroom break—Rumi had to go "take a fat dump" in her own words, and Tsunagu opted to use the time to go and fix his hair. Enji was waiting patiently outside, checking his phone for the umpteenth time to see if any of his kids had texted him back yet (Keigo had texted him the letter "e" to mess with him; his message didn't even get a "Read" icon, but the hopeful, then irritated, flare-up on Enji's face at the ding told him he'd been successful).

Stretching, Keigo yawned like a sunbaked cat and glanced at his shadow. About four in the afternoon. Not that that was useful. He didn't have any plans after this.

One foot moved in front of the other, and he started wandering a short distance away to check out some more animals.

The first thing that caught his eye was a tall enclosure, set against neatly arranged rocks to appear like a cliff face, and otherwise filled with thick branches. Sitting in the center, talons wrapped around one of the branches, was a dark-colored bird of prey.

With the others gone, Keigo was silent, not opting for any of his quips or silly nicknames. He glanced at the placard. Golden Eagle.

It swiveled its head to look back at him dead-on.

This is a little on-the-nose, isn't it, Keigo thought to whatever cosmic force had led him here.

The eagle flapped its wings a bit, stretching them out briefly, wide and powerful—the sunlight caught on them, a flash of gold even through the dimness cast by Keigo's sunglass lenses—then folded them back down. Yup. Definitely on-the-nose.

The ruminations that came next were less of a stroll down memory lane, and more of a slow sink.

Dabi, All For One—when they took away his wings, it was purposeful. They could have gone for the kill instead, but they chose to target his quirk—to take his wings away like proof, to say, See how useless you are now that they're gone.

("Why were you even born? Why do you even have those wings?")

Joke's on them. He had never been raised to be merely useless, not for a single second.

"You must be adaptable Hawks," an agent had told him when he was ten years old.

For heroes to lose limbs and non-vital organs in the line of duty wasn't merely a possibility; for those with long enough careers, it was a statistic, a near certainty.

"You will lose parts of yourself along your journey." The words were meant to be encouraging, inspiring. In a sick way, they almost were. "Loss and renewal are universal. In many ways, the life of a hero is no different from that of a civilian, only on a faster scale. Everyone has to say goodbye to the old and bring in the new, eventually." He clung onto his Endeavor doll, because there were things he was afraid of losing, even back then. "Think of it this way: when you lose something that's yours, you gain the new experience of learning to go without it."

"Adapting", that was the name of the game.

Be liquid. Be malleable. Be everything, so that you blend in. Be all these things so that you don't break.

Like a liquid, his shape slid in wherever it would fit, took on the edges and corners of whatever space would have him. He was always a chameleon, phasing between colors like he could simply flip the channels on himself, just enough where it seemed natural, where he still seemed recognizable, like "himself". Whatever that meant or looked like.

Be everything, even if it means that, deep down, you're nothing.

"You will lose parts of yourself along your journey." Sure, and it was easier when he was conditioned to feel like those parts of himself were nebulous and barely there, not significant enough to mourn. The Commission hadn't buffered out every attachment of his, though—there was a thing or two that he could never, would never accept losing—and ironically, that was what made him such an asset to their cause.

Resilience was the trait the Commission had sought out, even more than skill, even more than adaptability. It wasn't just the fact that Keigo's quick thinking had saved a bunch of pedestrians the day he'd been discovered. It was that he could do so after having endured the conditions that he had.

Years later after his discovery, his feathers had caught wind that his predecessor had been sent to Tartarus. The time had come to replace her as he'd been brought up to. The Commission'd turned to him, and he raised his palms, offering the next pair of hands they could paint red.

"He won't break as quickly as she had." That's what they said when they thought he couldn't hear.

"Resilient" had been copy-pasted over and over on his psych assessments, year after year. They loved that about him. (Less loved than coveted. But hey, it wasn't like Keigo ever asked for much.) Yet they never stopped to ask what kept him going. Where that little immortal ember had come from.

That hopefulness had been used like a weapon. The fact that he could keep on going, and going, and going—it spelled doom for the enemy, and perhaps for himself.

(These two opposing things could simultaneously be true: He could be hopeful enough to keep himself afloat, to fight, and care, and keep on caring. He could be cynical enough to know, in no uncertain terms, that hopefulness of his would be the thing to send him under one day.)

So, time to take stock of the situation, once again.

Keigo Takami was quirkless, after having been only valued for his quirk his whole life, yet also while being told over and over again to be prepared to lose anything and everything, by an organization that no longer existed.

Keigo Takami had been told from a flutter of fair-weather fans that his wings were beautiful, from his enemies that his wings were ugly, from agents that his wings were necessary, from an ex-therapist that he needed to learn to love having his wings, from forums that he needed to learn to love being without them.

Keigo Takami had been rendered only uselessly useful.

Keigo Takami's most prized trait was his talent for being okay.

He was at a zoo. He was standing alone. He was supposed to be relaxing, but he only knew how to fake it.

Shuffling footsteps. Right now, there was one person behind him.

Old scars, new scars, old skin, new skin, old self…

Keigo turned and cocked his head. Enji Todoroki was watching him solemnly.

Nodding back towards the eagle, Keigo said, "Kinda funny, isn't it?"

Enji inhaled, opening his mouth to speak, when an out-of-the-usual peripheral movement had both him and Keigo launching themselves away from the enclosure. In the same breath, he held up his prosthetic like a horizontal guard bar in front of Keigo (and that wasn't great, the thought of that arm taking the blow for him again, the absence of flesh and blood and feeling positioned right before his eyes), while Keigo's hand had flown down to his gun. (His back muscles ached, and that was all they did. A reflex. Nothing to get hung up on.)

Their eyes shot to the source of the movement, the ceiling of the eagle's enclosure—the metal wires were peeling away from the center on their own, curling and tangling into a mass at the edges of the walls. Metal manipulation.

With a tsk, Keigo swung around to look at the other enclosures nearby. All the metal fencing was riddled with gaping holes.

"Endeavor—"

With a high-pitched cry, the eagle began banging against the walls, flapping its wings and shedding feathers in a disoriented panic. There was a cacophony of other noises, grunts, roars, and trills as the other animals began stumbling out of their habitats and into the walking paths, soon accompanied with screaming as civilians began scrambling away from the beasts crashing towards them.

Mirko and Best Jeanist flew out of the restrooms, Mirko with a crack of her knuckles and a bounding leap, Jeanist with a snap of his arm as his fibers propelled him forward.

During the second in which all this went down, Keigo realized a few things.

Knowing the others, Mirko would speed away to try and take down the big bad on her own, and Best Jeanist would use his fibers to restrain the animals. But there was a bigger picture here.

Control over metals had to be the quirk at play, and it had to have been enhanced by some damned strong Trigger to work on this scale. But it wasn't normal for well-taken-care-of captive animals to be this distressed, this aggressive right off the bat, so there also had to be something driving them nuts, probably a second quirk from another person.

That still wasn't everything, though. Without knowing the motive, the heroes were shooting in the dark. Was this a distraction for something bigger, or some kind of trap? Were there more bad actors lying in wait who had yet to reveal themselves? This could have been a prank in the best case scenario, but it was safer to prepare for the worst. Why animals? Why the zoo? Was this their way of endangering the lives of every person here? If so, the perpetrators probably wanted to use everyone's well-being as a bargaining chip. That was just speculation, though. It was impossible to tell which scenario this was without further information.

On top of everything else there was to worry about, there was always the danger of there being a couple of opportunists among the civilians who'd try to take advantage of the chaos. There were tons of kids here too, it'd be bad if they got separated from their parents—

Breaths, heartbeats, Keigo couldn't hear everyone around him anymore, he couldn't tell where they were—

"This wicked weaving has all the makings of a villain attack," Best Jeanist said as they regrouped, unraveling more parts of his outfit.

"This day just got even more interesting," Mirko said with a manic smirk. Her ears swiveled like oblong satellite dishes as she narrowed in on her target (at least one of them still had excellent hearing), thigh muscles expanding as she crouched down to take off as predicted.

He couldn't—

The Flame Hero ignited, but instead of dashing off, he held up a flame-flickering hand. Mirko and Jeanist halted, their attention caught by the gesture. Endeavor was looking Hawks—Keigo—straight in the eye.

"You have a plan, boy?" he said, and it was less a question than an observation.

Everyone was staring at him. Awaiting orders.

His back wasn't meant for leading, but he knew how to hatch a strategy. His own heartbeat was loud and steady in his chest. No time to waste.

"Yeah. I do."

---

Keigo didn't like the unusual methods these villains were using.

"Mirko, someone's distressing the animals. They're your number one priority—make it fast. Take out the metal manipulator second. If the latter wanted to use their metal quirk to hurt people directly, they'd have tried it already."

"Piece of carrot cake!"

(Mirko had a steel-solid sense of self, and took every challenge as an opportunity to hone her best self, to shine and do her absolute best at everything. She kept fronting like she wasn't a team player—but the ironic thing was, no matter who you were, no matter how scary things got, you could always, always count on her.)

---

Hopefully Mirko seeing out her objective would be enough to calm the animals, because their team didn't have enough manpower to subdue both the animals and the people at once. It was risky to let the creatures roam free, but making sure there was no immediate loss of life among the civilians was of higher priority.

"Jeanist, evacuate as many civilians as you can. The paths between the food court and the gift shop are the biggest trample risks."

"I'll do it seamlessly."

(Jeanist was the glue in any situation—er, rather, he was the needle and thread, patching things together, no matter how disparate the pieces of a team may have been. Not only was he incredibly competent, but he also treated his allies with a level of consideration and faithfulness that went unmatched, like...like a rare swatch of fabric. Seriously, no one really deserved him. Insert another cloth pun here.)

---

Still, the biggest danger facing them was ignorance. Their team needed information, and fast.

"Endeavor. Protect whoever you can from the animals—but what's most crucial is that you examine the animals themselves. Look out for anything else suspicious."

"Understood. And you?"

"I'll get backup to secure the perimeter."

"Good. Watch your back."

"Always do."

(Endeavor was Endeavor. 'Nuff said.)

---

Running everywhere was tedious compared to flying, but it got the job done. After calling up Tokoyami, Keigo dialed law enforcement to back up the understaffed security here, his thin phone sandwiched between his shoulder and ear. As he told them about the situation, he was jogging to and fro, pointing and pushing people towards the exits that he thought were safest, bending down to help up those who'd fallen. His head was starting to pound from the dehydration and heat, and he was really regretting not taking some extra swigs from Rumi's water bottle when he'd gotten the chance.

As he hung up the call, the small area he was in was already mostly emptied, save for a few stragglers and a couple of hostile mountain goats. Crap, they were charging this way. How exactly was one supposed to subdue a goat? Look, he'd done pretty out-there stuff—hostile horse simulations, feral cat simulations, hell he even had experience with wild geese—but goats?

Just as Keigo was about to reach for his pistol, the goats bucked up, rollicking around in confused circles. As the rest of the civilians ran past him and out the nearest exit safely, the goats halted completely, wobbling in place before folding their legs to rest on the ground, dazed and breathing in short, stressed huffs.

Attagirl. Seemed like Mirko took care of her side of things.

Keigo crept up to one of the goats with more than the usual amount of trepidation—this was an opportunity to examine its body for any signs of tampering, though he couldn't be sure if it wouldn't stomp and ram him into a pulp for trying (if this goat succeeded in killing him where the League and All For One had failed he wouldn't even be mad, just disappointed in every party involved)—when he caught sight of a figure half-obscured behind a light pole in the distance.

There was still someone here?

The thin, nondescript man was dressed like a zookeeper. He had his fingers to his ears, pushing in his wireless earbuds as he tried to listen to something. Was he in the middle of a phone conversation? It wasn't unheard of to make a call to loved ones in an emergency situation, but he didn't look like he was panicking.

Keigo's eyes narrowed. A calm zookeeper in the middle of an animal breakout? Yeah, no.

There was a third guy.

Step by step, he moved further outside of the man's line of sight, then closer, closer, one silent foot at a time. He was about seven meters away when his phone vibrated loudly in his pocket.

The zookeeper snapped around, eyes landing on where Keigo stood. In an instant, he ducked his head down and began sprinting away.

The bottoms of Keigo's sneakers shoved into the hot concrete as he launched forward, thumb darting across his phone screen to answer the group call and put it on speaker.

"Third guy, heading towards the temperate forest loop. Quirk unknown. I'm in pursuit," he said.

Everyone on the line was aware that Keigo didn't have a hero license anymore, but they knew that was a moot point to him.

"Keep your distance. I'm heading over," came Endeavor's voice.

"The animals first," Keigo pressed back flatly. Sure, he was quirkless now, but that didn't mean he was helpless.

There was a shout from Mirko's end, then a loud smack. "Animal guy's been down for a minute," she panted. "I just took out the metalhead too."

Up ahead, the zookeeper swore, tearing out his earbuds and throwing them to the ground, undoubtedly because his buddies were no longer talking to him.

"Once they're secure, help me evacuate," Jeanist said. "I haven't reached the savannah or temperate forest zones yet. Start in one of those areas when you can, lest the situations there unravel."

"Roger roger," Mirko replied, grunting as she seemed to hoist something, or more likely someone, onto her back.

"Critters still giving anyone trouble?" Keigo asked.

"Most of them in my area have calmed down, but some are still spooked," Mirko said, the thumping of her bounding feet audible through the speaker.

"Entirely calm over here," reported Jeanist.

"All panicked where I am," replied Endeavor with some noises of exertion. "It's crowded here. That's probably why."

Keigo was about to ask if someone could pluck up one of the docile animals and give them the equivalent of a pat-down, but instead tapped the mute button as he heard a tiny wail.

"Mama…"

A little girl with a floppy sunhat and a squirrel's tail was stumbling by the penguin enclosure. She was crying.

If she knew where her mom'd gone, she wouldn't be wandering around like this.

He skidded to a stop. The zookeeper started shrinking away in the distance.

"Hey kiddo," Keigo said, flashing a grin as he turned to face her. "What's your name?"

This was bad. What was he doing?

"H-Hana," she sniffled, peering up at him with bleary eyes. She kept swiping at her face as she desperately tried and failed to calm herself down. Once upon a time, lifetimes and shed skins and discarded selves ago, Keigo had known the feeling.

"That's a pretty cool name," he said, crouching down in front of her. "Wanna know mine?"

Up ahead, the villain had disappeared entirely. If he escaped, there was no telling what the consequences could be.

Hana was regarding him with a bit of consternation, clearly unsure of what to make of this silly grown-up who didn't seem to be taking the danger seriously. "...What is it?"

"Monkey Butt," he said, and while she didn't laugh, she was perplexed enough to stop crying.

"Are you some kind of…" she started to say, tilting her head. Some kind of weirdo? Some kind of jerk? "...hero?" Oh.

"Not so much," he said with a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck. "Not as much of a hero as you, anyway."

Her brow furrowed, like she knew that couldn't be correct. "Me?"

"Yep. Even though you looked scared just now, I can tell you've been trying to find your family. That's super brave," Keigo said, rocking back on his heels. Hana pursed her lips as she looked down at her feet bashfully, sniffing through her runny nose. "C'mon, I'll race you to the exit. I'd be too scared to go on my own, but if you went with me, I think some of your courage'll rub off on me."

Hana looked up at him, skeptical, hesitant. She reached out with a small hand, which he took into his as he straightened back up. It wasn't gonna be much of a race if they were holding hands the whole way, but who was he to judge?

"On the count of three," he said, before jumping right in, "three!" His first stride was short so that she'd have time to keep pace, and heck, was that a giggle?

He glanced out the corner of his sunglasses to see that Hana was smiling, albeit nervously, as her light-up sneakers flashed in a blur over the concrete. Her tears had dried away completely.

I've got my eye on you, goats, he thought as they passed the creatures, but they lay there without making further threats. They were either the kind of nonplussed where they were too shocked to react, or the kind of nonplussed where they weren't shocked at all—either way, there was no "plussing" and no goat risk.

(Okay, okay, just over a minute had passed, tops. If the zookeeper stalled or backtracked in his current state of panic, then Keigo had a chance of catching up. Plus, if he was still heading to the temperate forest zone, there'd be people there. It'd make things messy and more dangerous for the civilians, but they'd also slow the guy down.)

Hana began decelerating as they passed through the gate and reached the crowd of evacuees. Keigo scanned the distressed faces milling around. He wasn't about to let go of the kid's hand until he could make sure there was an adult he could trust with her—

"Mama!" Sweet. He released her as she rushed towards a tall squirrel heteromorph (no maternity test required) who was opening her arms to her daughter in relief. Keigo was spinning on his heel and running back into the zoo before he could even see them embrace.

"Head on home if you can! The farther you are from this area, the safer you'll all be," he called back over his shoulder.

"Mr. Butt!" Hana called back in alarm. "The back of your head's all bloody!"

"Uh—thanks!"

Goats, interactive panels of penguin facts, and row upon row of empty habitats blurred past. It was dead silent. Keigo's breaths huffed loudly in his ears, the pavement hitting the bottoms of his feet hard as he kept running through the deserted paths alone.

{Above all else, Hawks is motivated to do good. Where other subjects displayed signs of apathy and learned helplessness at this phase, Hawks continues to care and try his utmost. His core beliefs do not get shaken by adversity, and likely are what contribute to his remarkable resilience. However, while this means he is more stable than [REDACTED] after being placed under extended periods of duress, his strong desire to do the right thing can lead to confused priorities, and on rare occasions may compromise his judgment.}

He didn't understand himself sometimes.

(Like when he'd taken Jin apart before reaching out a lukewarm hand, as if Jin were supposed to just accept him after everything he'd done. (("You're not my friend. You never were."))

Like when he'd tried to save and murder Jin in the same breath.

((When neither side will give up, someone has to die. Drugs were too slow-acting, knock-outs too unpredictable in strength and duration, and Jin's replication was too fast; he only needed a moment. He wouldn't go down any other way. It was the best call. It was the right call. It was—))

Why hadn't he kept on lying until the very end? Why had he tormented him with cold and cruel words as he pointed his feathers at him like daggers?)

((It was because Jin had to know. He had to know who Hawks was, and he had to make his choice on his own.

Jin was a good person. Hawks was not.

The guy deserved to know that.))

Jin was a good person, and Hawks had to do the right thing.

("I hurt them," sobbed the Jin that sometimes clawed at the edges of Keigo's dreams. "I hurt my friends by trusting you—I thought I was doing the right thing. I really thought...!" )

The right thing to do was…

("You don't know what it's like to feel like you betrayed the person who saved you. Like all you've ever done is hurt them." The blurry apparition would clutch at his head and sob, "You don't know what it's like to feel like you're splitting in two. Like you don't know who you are anymore." )

(("I won't watch a friend die," Jin had said, as Keigo watched him melt into blood between his fingers. In that way, they truly were different.))

{Regardless of how much duress he is placed under, Hawks retains a firm hold of his values, and above all else, wants to do good.}

There. Just ahead.

Keigo didn't need his feathers to hear the murmur of the distant crowd, the barks of security trying to get a handle of the situation. Someone was trying to squeeze in among them.

"Got held up, but found the guy again," Keigo said to his phone as he unmuted the call. He plunged his hand into the sea of people, grabbing the zookeeper by the back of the collar as he hauled him out of the crowd.

"Gah! Someone, help!" the villain exclaimed, flailing and doing his best impression of hapless innocence.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" shouted a security officer. She had no idea that the zookeeper was a villain, or who Keigo was. Not like Keigo could flash a badge or anything, anymore.

"You're crazy, man! Let me go!"

Keigo had wanted to drag the guy farther away, but with the security officer fighting her way towards them, he didn't have much time. They'd only made it three meters away from the civilians when he swung the guy around and gave him a shove, sending him stumbling back.

"Don't engage! You don't know what his quirk can do," Endeavor warned over the phone. He sounded furious.

Exactly—that was the point. They needed to know what his quirk was as soon as possible.

In a blink, Keigo grabbed his pistol, depressed the safety, and fired at the man's shin.

The crowd nearby shrieked in fear.

"Keigo!"

In fractions of fractions of a second, a white sac had ballooned out of the man's outstretched palm, expanding to a three meter diameter as it acted as a full-body shield. Keigo's eyes widened as he saw the bullet ricochet off the sides of the sac as it closed around it into a giant sphere.

"Do you need backup?" Best Jeanist asked urgently.

"His quirk is containment," Keigo said in a raised voice, dodging to the left as the sphere was sent flying his way. It hit a mulch-bound manicured tree behind him and remained stuck to the trunk.

The people in the crowd were trying to duck and scramble away. The security personnel all appeared dumbfounded.

"What?" Mirko shot back. Thanks to the huge blind spot the sphere had made, Keigo didn't see the additional small sphere the villain had fired off until it hit the shoulder of his vest.

"He can create packets of various sizes, put objects inside them if desired, and," he tried shaking the sticky orb off of him, to no avail, "they're strongly adhesive. Durable, too. Literally bulletproof. My guess is that only he can control when they open up."

Over the phone, there was a squawk, the sound of hooves on pavement, an impact and a crash, then Endeavor's angry voice returned, short-of-breath.

"I see a sac here. It's incredibly small and hidden on the underside of the creature. Possibly every single animal that's escaped has been affected."

Using frightened animals to carry the packets like this—it was messy, chaotic. These guys weren't intending a targeted delivery; they were attempting to threaten a hostage situation at best, or at worst, make a reckless terrorist attack.

Rumi swore. "The animals are ticking bombs." Maybe not literal explosive bombs—anything could be in there—corrosives, disease—

Shit. Thankfully, Rumi took out the guy who was agitating the creatures, but if even one of them managed to escape to the wider city in the chaos…

"Change of plans," Keigo said. "Everyone switch to animal control—that's priority number one. Tsukuyomi's flying Animan over here, so you won't have to be gator wrangling for long."

A beep sounded as Rumi hung up, which was as good as sending the words "I'm on it" etched in gold.

Best Jeanist was saying something about interwoven efforts when the zookeeper rushed Keigo, making another huge packet right in front of his face as he began enclosing him in a bubble, suffocating darkness enveloping him completely.

{Hawks is best suited to solo work, and this does not seem subject to change. He doesn't request help from others, even when it's advisable.}

He threw himself backwards to get away from the death trap, shouting, "Endeavor!" on impulse. Oh, what the hell? Why'd he do that?

He tumbled on the ground, the giant bubble briefly managing to close over his shoe, which he kicked off.

"Keigo?" broke in Endeavor's voice. It sounded like he was running. "Come in now, or so help me—"

"Yep, yep, I'm here big guy, what's up?" he replied distractedly, taking off his other shoe to chuck it at another incoming bubble, knocking it off-course as they stuck together.

"You called out my name."

"That—" Keigo had gotten back to his feet, before hopping away from the zookeeper's running punch. He was relying on his quirk less—that was a good sign that he was nearing his limit. Keigo reholstered his gun in anticipation of getting handsy. "That—was kind of a reflex. Everything's fine, actually, so don't go getting any gray hairs over me."

He could hear the sirens of law enforcement pouring in. Better late than never.

Endeavor's voice was warped at the edges with baffled concern. Probably considering whether he was talking to a nutcase or something. "Does that…reflex happen often?"

A memory flashed of falling in the rain with Nagan—Tsutsumi in Keigo's arms (Tsutsumi, Kaina Tsutsumi—if there was anyone who deserved to return to their old name, learn to use it again, learn to like it again, it was her) as he called out for the Flame Hero half a block away and an entire tower up, away and out of earshot, instead of to Midoriya who was pretty much right there at the time.

Uhhhhhhhhh…, went the voice inside his head. Helpful.

Uh-huh. This was embarrassment. Another "irrelevance", according to the Commission.

(Wasn't Jeanist still on the line, too? Goddamn it.)

A marble-sized packet was flicked at his face, and he ducked under it.

"Nah, not really," Keigo said, shrugging even though Enji couldn't see him, nearly tapping the sticky sphere on his shoulder against his face. Ugh, that was a narrowly avoided disaster.

"Are you sure you're alright? You may have a concussion, after a—"

"Byeeeeee," Keigo drawled in his most annoyingly disinterested voice, hanging up. The zookeeper tried punching him again and he sidestepped, grabbing the guy's arm and twisting it behind his back, slamming him into the ground.

Officers were running up with different types of restraints and sedatives, which was typically the right move if they weren't sure about the details of the quirk they were dealing with, but Keigo held up a hand.

"Hang on." He turned to the villain pinned beneath him. "Do you have to actively use your quirk to open the packets? Or will they release once your quirk stops exerting control?"

If it was the latter and they tried stunning this guy too aggressively, then everyone here could die.

No reply.

"Hand me the sedative," Keigo said, motioning to one of the officers, and the villain began squirming and thrashing on the ground. There we go. If the guy was this afraid of getting knocked out, then it was the latter scenario—worst-case. He shook his head at the officer, giving a wan smile. "Just kidding. Physically restraining this guy is all that's necessary."

Backing up to give some space, he let the officers step in to slap cuffs on the zookeeper and wrap him in a containment blanket for extra measure. They went about it with wary glances shot Keigo's way. Sure, he'd been the one to call them in, and he'd even worked closely with a number of these people before, but it was strange for an ex-hero to be haphazardly stomping his authority all over the place.

"Let's try another question. If you cooperate, I'll put in a good word for you," Keigo sing-songed, drawing in front of the villain.

"Like your word's worth anything," he sneered back.

Regarding him impassively, Keigo asked, "Can your packets be released individually? Or is it a mass-release kinda deal?" He hoped it was the latter, this time.

"Fuck you."

{Hawks tackles obstacles with determination and aplomb. Once he sets his mind on an objective, he very seldom backs down. This is both an asset and a liability, depending on the situation. Furthermore, he is adept at discerning the most efficient and utilitarian way of ending a conflict. As suggested earlier, this can grow to a point of fixation, which doesn't allow him to accommodate failure. While seldom becoming a notable issue, he struggles at slowing down and reassessing in the rare moments where it's necessary.}

With a flick of his arm, he pressed the barrel of his gun to the man's temple. People in the crowd were gasping.

He'd subtly turned his safety back on beforehand. He had zero intention of pulling the trigger.

No one else could know that, could know what he was thinking. Everyone was staring. They were terrified by what they were witnessing. He didn't have the time to tell them all "sorry". (Was Hana safe at home? What would she have thought if she were here?)

The villain wasn't a complete idiot, because he seemed to have gathered that if Keigo was being so cautious about his quirk, there was no way he was going to kill him. He grinned at him with bared teeth.

"Not talkin'."

"Do you like having toes on your feet?" Keigo returned mildly, angling the gun downwards, and at that one of the officers grabbed his shoulder.

"You're out of line," they said, but Keigo didn't budge. The zookeeper's shoulders shook as he began chuckling to himself.

"I know what you're thinking," the villain said.

Keigo was wondering how he could guarantee that everyone would stay alive if he had no wings to help them.

Tilting his head, Keigo replied, "Sounds fun. Enlighten me."

"You're wondering how much you can hurt me while still getting to call yourself a good guy," the villain said. Another critic of this self-righteous society. Too bad he probably wanted to murder people. "You're wondering just how much you can get away with."

Performatively, Keigo chuckled, "Wow man, you got me." He leaned in closer. "My turn to guess what you're thinking." Beads of sweat were forming on the villain's forehead, and Keigo could bet that it wasn't all from the heat. "Whatever's inside your packets, you clearly don't wanna get caught up in it. And I'm glad you chose life, I mean that. Good for you. And good for us, because that means so long as we keep all the packets within a certain radius of you, you can't do a damn thing." As if that would be easy. Who knew how many of the small containers there were, if dozens hadn't already slipped past the cracks? The zookeeper was glaring at him. "Second-to-last question. What's inside of the packets?"

No answer again.

Keeping his gun pointed at the villain's foot, he flicked his safety off. "Last chance. How many animals did you plant them on?"

An eagle's call tore through the air.

Keigo's eyes snapped upwards and he spotted its dark shape beginning to ascend against the sky, shrinking with every millisecond.

It was going to fly away.

---

What else can you grasp when one of your hands has to carry the lives that you stole?

When you only have one hand left, which do you end up holding: everyone else's future, or your own?

---

"Your birthday is coming up in a week. What's something you'd like to have?" said a silver-haired Commission agent. It was less than a year since he'd been taken in under the organization. He had to crane his head back so he could see above her knees.

"My birthday?" Hawks asked. He had one? His father had said that he didn't.

"Yes," the agent said, coolly patient. She seemed to be reassessing how much he knew and how much she would have to explain. "It will be this next Tuesday, December 28. On someone's birthday, they get to ask for something that they want. Since you've been working hard and performing well, we can give you a present, so long as you ask for something reasonable."

A present. So, like his Endeavor doll. Something that would make him happy.

"Can I train some more, then? So I can become a hero sooner?"

He'd never seen her hesitate for anything. She always looked carved out of stone. But for a moment, she paused, and his wings ruffled as they heard her heart and breathing go funny. "You're sure that's what you'd like to ask for?"

"Mm-hm," Hawks nodded, blinking up at her. "I wanna save more people. That's what I want."

---

There's only one moment to make the decision, and he decides.

He's in this on his own. This is all up to him.

Children are watching. Everyone is watching. They aren't prepared for the spatter of blood, the rainfall of feathers. No one asked for this.

It's okay. They can all blame him. He'll take all of it. He just has to save everyone.

His left hand tightens, his arm swings up, and his aim closes in on that desperate point in the sky.

He won't miss.

---

It's nothing personal.

This wasn't what you wanted, was it?

But you're too dangerous to fly free.

For everyone else to be free, you have to—

---

A hand closes over the top of his gun, lowering it.

He's staring up at the back that moves in front of him, and it's big, broad, strong.

The words are efficient and intentional and firm and gentle, and yet for how softly they're spoken they impact Keigo hard, with the loudness of every distant sound that he can no longer hear, every echo bleeding through the wide, screaming world that's been cut off from his back.

"That's enough, Hawks."

And Keigo's eyes widen, and his finger slips away from the trigger.

In the same breath, a blast of heat hits his face, knocking his sunglasses askew and off of his eyes, wind whipping at his hair. The world ignites in color. Endeavor has taken off into the air in a burst of flame, accelerating to the sky all on his own, and as Keigo looks up to watch him his back prickles, and he remembers that speed, what it once felt like to push him up with his feathers himself.

Endeavor's shrinking silhouette intersects the smaller, thrashing one, both figures nearly overflooded with light.

Dark spots sear into Keigo's eyes as he struggles to keep looking up. It hurts a little, that dazzling brilliance.

The sun is just so bright today.

---

"Sorry about all that, earlier," Keigo said to the golden eagle, which was being held by a handler outside its enclosure. Plastisitee, a pro who could control plastic, was forming a makeshift seal in the ceiling of her enclosure.

Apparently her name was Burger, her favorite food was mice, she liked staring at people's faces, and she was 28 years old. Older than him, and old-seeming for an animal, but her handler said she could live up to nearly 70 years in captivity. She had a long, feathery life yet to live. He was glad he didn't shoot her.

Thanks to Animan's tireless work (and some sedatives here and there), the animals were all accounted for and gradually put back into place as their homes were repaired. They were all soothed and sleepy, the last ones waiting outside their enclosures as Plastisitee finished her rounds.

Every creature that had been tagged with the packets had little sections of feathers or fur shaved off; a top layer of skin or scales for some unfortunate critters had to be removed where the packets were adhered, and they had to be bandaged up. It'd be a hot minute before Keigo could get his vest back, so he just told the cleanup crew to keep it. Same with the shoes. At least there were flip flops he could purchase in the gift store.

With the concerted efforts of countless officers and heroes, all the packets were collected in proximity to the villain responsible—the guy was calling himself Hot Pocket, which, alright, was pretty amusing. With the bubbles so close to him, he was finally spilling some info on what was inside so that disposal teams could take care of them properly. Turned out to be a powerful synthetic toxin that acted on the nervous system—in gaseous form for the ground animals to affect the people around them, and liquid form for the flying animals to poison the water supply. How fucking awful. Good thing he wasn't a suicide bomber type, because otherwise everyone could be a lot deader than they currently were.

After saying goodbye to Burger, Keigo found a bench to rest on, spreading out with a sigh.

As thanks for their heroics, Mirko and Best Jeanist were invited to get autographs from their favorite animals. Tsunagu had seemed dead set on getting the pawprints of every single wolf that the zoo had, which would probably take a while.

Keigo'd been eager to say hi to Tsukuyomi, but the kid had been called back home for dinner before they could meet up. Damn. Who was being left in the dust, now?

He sent off a text.

[ Finally got done with the reports and everything ]

[ Thanks for your help today! I'd expect nothing less from my favorite hero ]

[#1 Hero Tsukuyomi!: I am just glad that I could assist. Your quick thinking saved lives. ]

Well, his friends were the ones who did everything. Keigo ultimately hadn't contributed much.

[ Your quick flying saved more! No need to be so humble ]

[ Tell dark shadow I said hi too ]

[#1 Hero Tsukuyomi!: He says "Hiya". ]

His finger tapped on the back of his phone. There wasn't much else to say, but he wanted to say more. About how great Tsukuyomi was doing, about how proud he was to even know the lil guy.

There was a click as he turned his screen off and let his hand dangle between his knees.

The aftermath of the war was hard on everyone. Keigo had thought he'd been clear when he asked that Mineta kid not to blab about the specifics of what happened after Tsukuyomi lost consciousness, but one way or another, his former intern had picked up on the pieces. Now he'd gotten it into his head that somehow Keigo losing his quirk was his fault, which was all kinds of wrong. Tokoyami obviously wasn't allowed to feel guilty about anything. Those were the rules.

After all, Keigo was the one who'd failed. He was the one who couldn't protect Tsukuyomi when the kid needed it most. It was his fault that Tsukuyomi had ended up lying lifelessly in the middle of a battlefield at the ripe old age of 16, when he never should've been caught up in the fight in the first place. The only thing Keigo'd succeeded in was stalling All For One long enough to keep Dark Shadow safe, and if that meant losing his wings for good, he'd do it a thousand times over without a thought. He never said all those things in so many words to Tokoyami, but he'd insisted over and over again that he'd been glad to do it, and that it wasn't the kid's responsibility. It seemed to mostly work…but the lil guy still looked so sad when he saw the empty space behind Keigo's back. Work in progress. They'd get there.

(Not that he didn't understand how Tokoyami felt. Whenever he saw him, it was hard not to think about the blood covering the kid's broken body, how limp and still he looked after trying so hard and being so strong.

Even then, Keigo had been optimistic, to the point where it may have seemed heartlessly unrealistic, myopic. All he could do was cling to the hope that Tokoyami would live, as tightly as he clung to the lil guy, because he had to pull through. He had to.

Best not to dwell on what reality would have been like if Keigo had been wrong. 'Cause hey, life balanced itself out, didn't it? Things seemed objectively pretty shitty for a lot of Keigo's life, but fortune really knew when to get off its lazy ass and give him a win when it counted the most—though he was pretty sure he hadn't racked up the good karma or whatever to earn it. From clutching his doll as a kid, to clutching his mentee and seeing that he was still breathing in the middle of the battlefield, he'd been given a tiny miracle here and there. People had saved him when he needed to be saved. Not everyone could say the same.

((There'd been no reason to think Keigo'd make it this far, make it to ten, really. It was always something. His father, his job. Hell, back when he was infiltrating the League, he'd entertained the thought of ending up tortured and left dead in a ditch somewhere, and could only entertain that thought without dwelling on it for a second longer, because there was just never any time.))

And after everything, here he was. Here they were. The ones who had saved him were all doing alright, despite his failings, despite the fact that he was never able to do much for them in the end. People like Tsutsumi weren't entirely sure what to make of Keigo's worldview, of how his positive outlook seemed to clash with everything that he knew about the world. But the way he saw it, he had no reason not to be optimistic. Like any bird, his sharp eyes had always been able to pick out shiny things, and that included silver linings in the most distant clouds.)

He could hear the rush of air from the nearby restroom's hand dryer, and shortly after Enji stepped out, not having been invited for animal autographs, either—not because he'd nearly shot one of them, but because in addition to remaining maligned by the public, no one knew how to approach his heavily scarred and imposing figure. He flashed a flame on his left arm to finish evaporating the water, while having to make do with rubbing his metal right hand on his pants.

His arm. Fuck, fuck, fuck, his arm.

(There were the older scars—the slash down Enji's eye, the burn up Keigo's jaw. The apologies for those, half-spoken and silent, had been one and the same: I'm sorry I caused this.

Then the battles only kept coming. They'd done what they had to in the final fight against the League, and in the grand scheme of things, they came out on the other side with more things saved than lost. Still, there had been losses—the patchwork of mottled burns across Enji's entire body, the lightness on Keigo's back. This time, the apology, entirely unspoken, had changed: I'm sorry I wasn't there.

It was a stalemate in that department ((in the same way that neither could unequivocally call the other a good person while being truthful)), so neither of them could really say anything without getting countered. But they both knew, and they both knew that the other knew. That was enough.)

"Your attempts at retirement could use some work," Enji said dryly as he joined Keigo on the bench. His shirt was torn up, and gashes from the eagle's talons raked across his left arm from when he'd grabbed it. From how mad he'd sounded earlier, Keigo had been expecting to get chewed out entirely. Seemed like he was getting shortchanged.

"'Scuse you. You were the one who wanted to hear about my amazingly flawless plan. Led to great results too, didn't it?" Keigo said with a self-deprecating smile.

His plans led to broadcasts and burned backs, to lost limbs and nearly dead students, and now frightened innocents, a nearly dead bird, and—

"Eight," Enji said cryptically.

"...What?"

"That's how many of my plans ended up working as expected, during a career lasting over two decades."

"Your agency's success rate begs to differ. Highest number of solved cases in all of Japan," Keigo remarked pointedly.

"That's because a successful plan and a flawless plan aren't the same thing," Enji said. "Splitting our attentions between different possible threats guaranteed that, while we wouldn't be able to react optimally once the real threat was discovered, we would be able to respond no matter what it was. Disaster was avoided, today."

Okay, maybe past Keigo had a point, and maybe Enji had a point that Keigo had a point.

He went on, "Your strategies tend to be sound. Frankly, at the core of at least two of your intricate plans, I was the weak link leading them to failure." What was the big guy talking about? He'd bolstered the heroes' numbers for the raid exactly like Keigo'd asked, and he'd succeeded in nearly killing All For One during the big fight. He'd come through.

Was this about the little hiccups, like freezing when faced with Touya, or raging when All For One tormented him? But that was—

"Don't say stuff like that, old man. It's unnecessary," Keigo muttered. "Can't blame you for having real human emotions. Plus, how strongly you feel things is one of the reasons why you're pretty cool. It's not something all of us are capable of, you know."

{Hawks is slow to anger, and tends to resist manipulation and goading. He is affected little by whatever may be said or done to him.}

Enji frowned, turning to look right at him. "I disagree."

A thump in his dumb chest. Like his heart was whispering to him that it mattered. (It mattered.)

{He is affected little by whatever may be said or done to him.}

Shifting uncomfortably, Keigo sank his head. He just couldn't shake the feeling that he'd been struggling to read himself like a code, while Enji had read him like a book. It was hard to look up from his knees right now.

C'mon, this is really starting to suck. How many more times are you gonna save me?

He thought of the trigger he never got to pull, the blood dripping from Enji's arm. He couldn't exactly pay any of it back, anymore. ("Why do you even have those wings?")

He puffed some air towards his forehead, trying to blow away a curl of hair. "I'm flattered, I guess. You really make it sound like you know me." It came out kind of smilingly sarcastic. Maybe it didn't make sense for it to.

"You want to know who you really are?" Enji said, because socially inept or no, he wouldn't be one of the best detectives in Japan if he couldn't read between the lines once in a while.

I'm not good. Don't tell me I'm good. Don't—

"You're an idiot."

Straightening, Keigo blinked up at him with dinner plate eyes before cracking up. "Pfft! Did it really take you this long to figure that out—"

"You are you, Keigo. That's all that matters," Enji said firmly. He said it with a steadfast gaze, like it was a good thing, and like that was obvious.

Alrighty, that was plenty of eye contact for today. Rather than fidget outright, Keigo stooped to grab the huge water bottle Rumi'd left with him and take a gulp.

(Stupidly simple. People were who they were. Those words were a big deal, though, coming from Enji—because seriously, who wanted to be this guy? Who in their right mind would ever wish to have done the things that he had, to live with those mistakes forever branded into their soul? Enji certainly hadn't wished to become that person, despite the fault being all his own.

It was easy to hide from the truth of who you were. And Enji was bullheaded, and at times foolish—but he wasn't a coward anymore. Most would have continued to shift the blame, make excuses—or else, faced with the mortification of their sins, run away, pretend like they could be someone else, anyone else. And he didn't, even when the guilt and enormity of what he'd done was insurmountable.

They said to never meet your heroes. Well, Keigo couldn't say it hadn't been a bit of a disaster on paper. He'd handed Enji over on a silver platter to a High End nomu, and it turned out that Enji was an abusive piece of shit. Good times.

Despite all that, he couldn't agree with that old adage.

He had never needed heroes to be perfect. Only real. And Enji was the real deal. The good, the bad—all of it.

Disaster or not, he would always be glad that he got to meet him.)

Um, okay, Keigo was drinking a lot of water. He breathed out a lazy "hahh" as he surfaced and capped the lid.

((Sometimes, Keigo wondered how this all would've gone down between them if he could have had a single real moment, free of double-crosses or triple-crosses or being burned within an inch of his life. He wondered if this whole friendship thing would've been more straightforward if things had been different. Because from the get-go, liking the big guy and getting along with him was stupidly easy, but being honest with him had always been hard.))

"Yeesh, remind me to not take any philosophy courses from you." He offered Rumi's bottle to Enji with a little nudge, but the big guy just crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"You're being unnecessarily rude," Enji mumbled with a frown, and—was he sulking? Oh, he totally was.

Even if it was pretty damn funny, he had a point, didn't he? Keigo had seen firsthand how the big guy had cooled down his metaphorical flames, day after day, month after month. He was putting in the effort to try doing things differently. The old man was a step ahead in this little footrace between them more often than he probably realized.

"Reflex, reflex," Keigo laughed sheepishly. Yeah. Just an old reflex. He slipped his sunglasses to the top of his head, and took in all the vibrant evening colors as his eyes adjusted. Orange sunlight, warm green grass, hints of blue from the oncoming darkness. A red horizon. "What I mean is, um...thanks."

He could feel the remnants of dried sweat cool off of his face as a soft breeze rolled in.

Enji had changed so much since Keigo had first met him. He wanted to keep up, even if the roadmap of his own life had been burned right off of his body, even if the next steps were completely unknown.

(Maybe sometimes moving on looked an awful lot like looking back, and change looked a lot like staying still for once.)

((Change. Change. Let's go. Come on. Say it.))

"You. Mmean a lot to me," Keigo made himself say without any build-up or context, the front end of "mean" getting caught on the way out of his mouth. Fuck. That kind of sucked.

The big guy was sitting rigid, like a statue, before quietly grunting out, "I feel the same." What. What was even happening.

"You mean a lot to yourself?" Keigo filled in quickly, and Enji glowered at him.

"You are a welcome and important person in my life," he clarified clunkily, one word at a time, as if reciting from memory—oh hang on, was this from memory? Was this a script his therapist had told him to say? Keigo peeked suspiciously at the palm of Enji's hand to see if there was anything written there, but saw nothing.

Resisting the urge to clear his throat, Keigo glibly replied, "You're welcome."

"Keigo," Enji chastised.

"No like, you said I was a welcome person, so you're also a welcome person."

Before he could keep running his mouth in whatever aimless, blindfolded direction it was going, Keigo felt his head get bowled forward. A big hand forcefully palmed over his skull, lifting away and leaving his sweaty spikes of hair an even bigger mess than before.

"Uh," Keigo uttered, his own hand rising to the back of his head in shock as he turned to stare at Enji from the side. With how weirdly his hair was sticking up right now, he realized he probably looked like a bug-eyed dandelion. "Ha. What was that ?"

The big guy was staring determinedly at the horizon dead ahead, looking rather embarrassed and a little preemptively ticked off, like he could anticipate how annoying Keigo was about to be over this. His jaw flexed back and forth in thought, as though he were rolling a ball bearing between his teeth.

"A friendly gesture," he settled on. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. (God, he was so awkward.) ((He was so cool.))

"Maybe a friendly way of getting decapitated. Felt like my whole head was gonna get knocked straight off my neck," Keigo said, recovering brightly with a laugh. "Seriously, it's like trying to get pet by a grizzly bear."

A little spurt of fire shot up from Enji's shoulders and ran up his scarred face, dissipating at the top of his head. "There's a bear in the temperate forest area. Why not jump in the enclosure and see how similar the experience is?"

Keigo laughed louder while Enji fumed harmlessly next to him. This really was a return to form.

"Also, you really should treat your head wound properly."

"What, is it still bleeding?"

"There's a giant scab."

"Sounds like it treated itself, then."

"Your ability to survive your own negligence is astonishing."

"You know what's really astonishing?" Keigo drawled. "Your audacity. You're really not in the position to be criticizing my post-injury care, or my manners, or my retirement skills, for that matter."

"I'm not even retired," Enji said gruffly. Not like he needed to punch people in the face to help solve crimes, after all. Ever since his day-to-day started involving a lot of painkillers, his job had shifted towards more deskwork, less overtime, and more hours spent rebuilding things with his family.

"Right. So you're worse at it than I am," Keigo said.

"Even if I were," Enji remarked—stubborn as ever—"it wouldn't be for long, I imagine." Ah, so the jig was up.

"Mm. I'm considering a teaching gig," Keigo admitted, "or maybe becoming a trainer of some kind. Gonna be interviewing at a few schools soon, your alma mater included."

"You'll be an abysmal instructor," Enji said bluntly, and Keigo laughed. "But knowing you, you'll learn. It will grow to be a fitting career for you, in its own way."

"Yeah. Y'know, I never had much experience with people younger than me, growing up. I always thought that dealing with younger folks meant slowing down for them, and that kinda seemed like a drag." He smiled downwards as he kicked out his legs, interlacing his fingers and stretching his arms palm-side away. "But I finally get the appeal, now."

Like, someone took the table scraps of advice he gave and decided to go Plus Ultra with it or whatever? Elevated it far beyond his own potential could ever reach, like they'd actually learned something from him, like it actually really mattered? And Tokoyami still wanted to look up to him after all that? That was a thing that was possible? Kids were wild.

The thing was, Keigo had given the phoned-in bare minimum in more areas than just fighting. He knew how to make people like him, and when he met Tokoyami, he hadn't exactly been trying to win him over. But like with everything else, Tokoyami took that and transformed it into something earnest. Was this what having a sibling was like? Keigo didn't understand how he could be so lucky. He was starting to feel slow.

"I imagine your pupil played a role in shifting your perspective?" Enji ventured, and Keigo leaned forward, grabbing his ankle as he crossed his legs.

"He's the coolest," Keigo blurted, gesturing animatedly, "like, literally the coolest person in the whole world. Sorry Endeavor, but you're gonna have to get used to being Number Two all over again, 'cause Tsukuyomi takes first place in my book."

The corners of Enji's mouth twitched upward. He didn't remark on the use of his old hero name during this calm moment, allowing it this once.

"I'm happy for you."

Keigo's eyes widened for a tick, before a smile spread, warm and wide, on his face.

He leaned back, arms stretching out over the top of the bench.

"Yeah." Someone was actually happy for him. What was the world coming to?

He took in a deep breath, held it in, and let it out, tilting his head back to look at the sky. He couldn't tell how long this feeling would last, but he couldn't be afraid of it. Not anymore.

The sky really was big and clear and beautiful today.

"Huh. How about that," he said then. "I guess I'm happy for me, too."

---

That night, the foggy figment of Jin that stood at the edge of Keigo's dreams was calmer than usual.

"Hey, Red."

For the first time, Keigo tried talking back. "Hey," he said. "I hurt you, and then I killed you. I'm starting to think that I didn't have to. And I'm going to live with that."

Jin nodded thoughtfully. "Sounds pretty heavy."

"My back's not that small. I can carry it."

---

If Keigo Takami had to be honest with himself—and (un)fortunately, these days that was becoming a more common occurrence—he'd never wanted to merely "kill" time. He'd wanted all the time that he spent, no matter what it was spent doing, to mean something.

What it all meant was another issue to parse out later.

It was Saturday, the day after the whole zoo fiasco. In its own way, Keigo found this morning to be as much of a struggle as the previous afternoon.

His speaker was playing some cheerfully moody indie rock station, and a half-finished breakfast smoothie sat on his nightstand, condensation beading down the sides. His hands were pillowed under his head as he lay on his bed. There were no wing bones to crush at awkward angles beneath him.

It'd been well over an hour, now, and he was still stuck.

Memorizing the commanders and lieutenants of the PLF, easy peasy. Creating hidden codes on the fly, no problem. Juggling several dozens of simple tasks at once, or one dozen complex ones, that was just business. Figuring out what to put in a single letter, though? Nah, that was just too hard.

"Ah, I just remembered," Enji had said before they all went their separate ways. "Did you locate your mother?"

Keigo stood silent. Yeah, he'd managed to track her down. Had been sitting on that information for a while, too.

"I see," Enji said after a bit. "The responsibility lies with her," his tone dipped a bit disapprovingly right there, "but you should talk to her if that's what you want. It's too late to undo the past—but don't allow that fact to trick you into thinking it's too late to do something now. It never is."

Goddammit, but Enji was kind of the expert on "too late but never too late," wasn't he? Which meant that Keigo really didn't have a choice when he acquiesced to that unreasonable amount of reason.

So, yeah. This entire morning was all Enji's fault.

Plenty of potential messages knocked around his brain, most of them not worth pursuing:

"Hey mom, I'm sure your life sucked almost as much as mine, why don't we talk over some grub as we relive the worst of it?"

"Dearest mother, I hope this letter finds you well. Please reply if you're feeling silly and you suddenly change your mind on whether you want to be a part of my life. And if you don't, uh…don't feel too bad, I guess. It's probably fine."

"'Sup ma, I lost my wings and I'm not exactly super popular anymore, so are you still as proud of me as you'd said in that note you left behind? "

Man, he was out of his depth.

What he'd actually planned on writing out thus far went something like this:

"Hey, it's Keigo. I go by just that, now. Dunno if you've followed all the news going on, but I'm pretty much done with hero work. I'm keeping busy still, though! Gonna be looking into instructing the next generation of heroes in some capacity. I'm sure it'll be hectic in its own ways, but it'll definitely be calmer than being #2. Once all the stuff associated with my hero name and old life blow over, you'll hopefully have an easier time going out in public. I don't think you're going to be in danger again anytime soon, which is good. Maybe if you're interested and feel up to it, we could catch up somewhere, and you can meet some of my buddies. One of my old interns, Fumikage Tokoyami, is super great. He's got a pretty calming presence— "

Wait, that was just him switching over to talking about someone else instead of himself. Damn.

He rested a forearm across his brow. Ceiling sure was interesting today.

…Keigo really was an idiot.

Keigo was the name his parents had decided to give him. He didn't know why they'd even bothered. Yet they gave it to him, all the same.

Keigo was an old name turned new—turned only.

Keigo couldn't call himself a good person, but he could tell himself that he existed, and that was important in its own way.

Keigo was Keigo, and that apparently mattered.

Keigo was trying to cross the uncrossable space between himself and another person.

He remembered the image he'd once had of Endeavor toiling to surpass All Might, of putting together boards and stones to make a bridge across an impossible ravine. In the present, Keigo felt almost as foolish, and not quite as admirable.

Friendships that weren't just to kill time, relationships that really meant something, weren't all that different from those kinds of out-of-reach aspirations: fragile little bridges of sticks and rocks. However…

His phone buzzed, and he grabbed it off his nightstand to see a text notification.

Bridges were always easier to build when you weren't doing it on your own.

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): this song is so u ]

Her message came with a link to an old American pop song. He queued it up, then snorted as he heard the first few notes. Really random, Rumi, but okay.

"Lost in an image, in a dream, but there's no one there to wake her up, and the world is spinning, and she keeps on winning, but tell me what happens when it stops?"

As he listened along, another text popped up.

[Enji: globalresearchinitiative/article/6TsET88n1TH105n3/ Interesting.]

Ha. Wit was the soul of brevity with this guy.

The link led to a polisci article on how adjusting the scoring of the Quirk Olympics to be more inclusive would improve international relations. The connection didn't seem immediately apparent, but Keigo suspected the twenty-something paragraphs and multiple figures were devoted to explaining how one would beget the other in dry detail.

He didn't feel like reading it now—probably give it a skim while on the toilet or something.

He left the eyes emoji as his response for now.

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): ok this song is literally u ]

Again? Keigo queued it up next. More pop. Not unheard of for Rumi's tastes, but kinda unusual. She usually went for metal and R&B, stuff like that.

"Don't want cash, don't want card, want it fast, want it hard, don't need money, don't need fame, I just want to make a change!"

Stretching, Keigo sat up, taking a sip of his smoothie as he used this opportunity to catch up on some more notifications he'd missed while sleeping. His eyebrows shot up as he saw one from Tsutsumi.

[Kaina Tsutsumi: Sorry I didn't reply earlier. I'm available Sunday if you still want to meet up ]

[Kaina Tsutsumi: If not, I get it ]

[Kaina Tsutsumi: Thanks for reaching out either way ]

Keigo had been the one to initiate the sporadic texting between them. Anyone who was a former Commission project was going to have a rough time reassimilating. It was easy to fall into isolation. He understood this as well as she did.

Just over a week ago, they started trying to coordinate a get-together over coffee. Matters weren't helped by the fact that Tsutsumi took such a long time to respond. Her stretches of silence weren't anything to worry about, at least—that was just the kinda person she was.

Her words rang with a dull, tired kind of anxiety. He hoped he hadn't left her hanging for too long.

[ Hey! You're good, believe it or not i'm not super busy these days haha ]

[ Yeah let's do tomorrow morning! ]

She probably wouldn't be able to reply right away. That was okay. It was good to hear from her, in any capacity.

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): nm THIS is u ]

Hoo boy.

[roo]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): /track/kt12H28ru3M1 ]

[stop]

This song was just loud and garbled dubstep. Should he be offended…?

What was she doing, listening to all this random music, anyway?

…Uh oh.

He was in the middle of typing a discouraging message when his phone buzzed again, and he knew it was too late.

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)):just DESTRYOED ur bs record git gud ]

Welp.

When did she have the time to get so good at Beat Saber? Well, actually, that was pretty easy to answer, now that peace was (mostly) reigning, albeit with some kind of whimper instead of a bang. Yesterday had been part of that whimper.

He held the delete button, retyping his message.

[ gg ]

[ pics? ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): FUCK ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): forgot to take one ]

[ lol it's ok i believe you ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): you betfer ]

[ you're not creative enough to lie ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): HEY ]

As Keigo was rolling his eyes, a beep from Tsunagu chimed in.

[Best Tsunagist:Would you care to share a pot of tea this weekend? I was gifted some tea leaves that have a taste finer than a single silk thread. ]

Meanwhile, Rumi was continuing to rant in the top corner of his screen.

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): whatever i'm the best ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): get better at ddr so you feel like less off a loser ]

To Tsunagu, he texted:

[ Sounds nice, you mind if I bring my textbook with me? Gotta brush up on some teacherly stuff ]

Then to Rumi:

[ k ]

[ but like how am i gonna do that ]

[ i'll never be better than you ]

[ your legs are just so big and strong ]

Rumi's next text came in while he was sending off this next one, interrupting the flow of his own little monologue.

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): stop skipping leg day, sounds like a youp roblem ]

[ and i don't stand a chance ]

[ i can't even use my giant muscular ears to slap the buttons ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): cmon i barbells use my ears! ]

Her autocorrect knew her too well. He was just gonna wait and see if she caught the error.

[Best Tsunagist:You procrastinated, didn't you ]

[ Still am ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)):*barbells ]

There we go.

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)):*bearly ]

[ is that some kind of pun? ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)):? ]

[ dwai ]

[Best Tsunagist: Yes, that's fine. Some situations must be tailored to fit one's needs. I'll read my book while you study ]

[ Your hero name is so correct, bc you're seriously the best! ]

[Best Tsunagist: How about this afternoon? ]

[Roo (big bun) ((bb)): come over tn! you can practice your skills ]

Tonight, huh? That might make for a good way to decompress after cramming. To Tsunagu, he shot off,

[ wfm ]

And to Rumi, he replied,

[ ya ok ]

[Enji: heronewsnetwork/2162-06-20/opinions/planning-for-power]

[Enji: Hm. ]

The big guy managed to contribute even fewer letters of commentary this time. Impressive.

This time the link led to a new editorial, which was basically proposing different systemic solutions to the Quirk Singularity Event, though the author was pretty skittish around naming the issue outright—they just referred to the issue of increasingly strong quirks, the urgency of which was especially clear after all the devastation that the war had caused. This, Keigo took the time to read, before shooting a quick reply.

[ The social and mental health ideas are pretty cool! but not a huge fan of the whole medical side of the "quirk limiting treatments" they mention. Sounds, maybe, just possibly, really invasive ]

[Enji: Agreed. ]

Swinging his legs off the bed, he paced into the kitchen to toss his emptied glass in the dishwasher. As he pondered over which condiments in his fridge he could try combining into some kind of dubious lunch, he got another phone vibration.

[#1 Hero Tsukuyomi!: I received my career survey results. They are somewhat confusing. I could use your advice, if you're free. ]

Oh, hell fuckin' yeah.

[ Np! It's been a while since we had a chance to hang out ]

[ Lunch on me and we'll talk about it? ]

[#1 Hero Tsukuyomi!: Sure. My classmates have been talking about a new bao bun place that just opened in the International District. I think they have chicken bao there as well.]

[ Yesssssssss ]

[ Meet you there at 12 ]

Whew, today was filling up fast. He wasn't really as extroverted as people thought, but he'd make it work. Besides, a million All For Ones could return and rear their ugly heads, and they still wouldn't be able to keep Keigo from being a part of the kid's life. He was done with keeping him at arm's length. He wanted to be better than that.

[#1 Hero Tsukuyomi!: Sounds good.]

He sent a string of the hungry, confettie, dancing, and praising emojis.

A pause, then he received a smiley face.

Ho-ly shit. Was that Tokoyami's first emoji?

Keigo took a screenshot.

As soon as he got the address, he marched back into his room. He'd need to get ready for the day straight away if he wanted to make it on time.

Phone, keys, wallet—ah.

His eyes landed on his empty desk. With the same compulsion that had him stop and talk to Hana yesterday, he took out a sheet of stationery, grabbed a pen, and began writing.

"Hi mom, this is Keigo. Dunno if you've followed all the news going on, but I'm pretty much done with hero work. I'm keeping busy, though! My hope is that I can help instruct the next generation of heroes. I'm sure it'll be hectic in its own ways, but it sounds really rewarding. Things are a lot less dangerous now, though of course peace doesn't come all at once. Regardless of how scary the world can seem, I hope you're able to leave the house and enjoy yourself, all the same. You won't be in danger from being associated with me, anymore, at least. If you feel up to it, why don't we catch up? I can't pretend it won't be strange. I'm sure it'll be strange for you, too. Still, I don't think it's too late to try doing things differently. Plus, it would be nice if you could meet some of my friends. They're all really cool. Hope you're safe, and that you have people you can lean on, as well. If any of those things aren't true, then just say the word, and we can work on fixing that together. "

Done!

Before he could have any doubts, Keigo folded and sealed the letter. Shit, but now he was running late, wasn't he?

Deciding that there was no time to shower, he rushed into the bathroom to slap on some deodorant. He combed a hand through his hair, which decidedly did nothing, as he caught himself in the mirror.

Little dark marks perched at the corners of his eyes, tattooed-in now instead of fully natural.

His pupils were a little rounder.

The scar gripped at his face and swallowed his back as much as ever, but it didn't feel so tight and achey today.

His back was empty.

If he could still see those wings, he might've tried telling himself something new—might've tried reminding himself of all the people they'd saved, of all the flights they'd taken. Maybe he could've worked up to finding some kind of beauty in them, eventually.

Since he couldn't see them anymore, he could instead remind himself of how they'd disappeared by protecting Dark Shadow. The empty space meant that Tokoyami hadn't lost his friend, that Keigo had managed to do something for the lil guy. That felt pretty good, too.

Both sides of the coin were bright and shiny, in their own ways, if looked at in the right light.

Optimistic to a fault, huh. The scruffy guy in the mirror had earned a little taste of that optimism, too, hadn't he—had earned the faith that he was a bit of a better person than he used to be.

He tried on a tentative grin, and his reflection grinned back at him.

Idiot, he thought affectionately, before ducking out, snatching the letter, shoving into his sneakers, and running out the door.

As he sped down the hall and hopped down the stairwell, he got another text.

[Enji: Hello Keigo, ]

Keigo gave a snort. Why the heck did he include a greeting in this text and not the previous ones? Whatever. He scanned the rest of the message.

[ We're having a family dinner and board game night tomorrow starting at 18:00. It appears that friends can also attend, as Shoto has informed me that he's invited a few of his classmates. Are you available? Apologies for the short notice. ]

Not sure why the apology was necessary. He had a whole 32 hours to respond.

Shouldering open the lobby door and stepping forward into the rest of the day, Keigo smiled to himself as he tacked on the screen keyboard.

[ i think i can pencil you in ]

---

Author's note: (Yes, there is going to be a board game fic after this)

((petition for someone to make that "it's okay to ask for help" "you're not a burden" "murder is okay" "your feelings matter" meme with everyone where Hawks is "murder is okay"))

(((i know there's no way BJ eats like that when his collar's covering his mouth, if anything that's the least canon thing here, but i also couldn't resist)))