Flap your wings, drop on a criminal, swoop.
Repeat.
Flap your wings, drop on a criminal, swoop.
Repeat.
Flap your wings, drop on a criminal, swoop.
Repeat.
These words looped in Hawks head over and over again as continued to work his beat, one that was as hard as it was now that M-
Hawks violently ripped his thoughts from that track of thought and stubbornly chanted it again.
Flap your wings, drop on a criminal, swoop.
Repeat.
Flap your wings, drop on a criminal, swoop.
Repeat.
Flap your wings, drop-
A car crash loudly breaking out of his thoughts, and he shoots down to the accident in the next second immediately spreads his wings out and to work, the four people involved are quickly removed from danger in mere seconds and moved on almost immediately once he was sure they victims were safe.
His sidekicks could handle the paperwork.
*Right, 'his'.* Hawks sneered in his mind all but rolling his eyes since that wasn't an approved behavior in most cases.
The three people were hired via his agency staff under the commission's orders no doubt and certainly there to remain him to stay on his best behavior.
No skin off his nose, if those numb-skulls wanted to chase his tailwind for the kickbacks let 'em try, the commission couldn't blame him if their watch dogs couldn't keep up with him.
But having them around and forcing him to joke around with him to play up the persona of Hawks was such a damn drag, his slip of the tongue on Mic's radio show made his ratings soar but as far as the commission was concerned, he was out of line.
He repressed a twitch in one wing as he thought of the week of the retraining.
The fucking irony of it a small bitter part of him thought privately, one he shoved out of mind as soon as it popped up and beat his wings even faster.
Hawks didn't stop his break-neck pace until he hit the sixth hour of his patrol and reluctantly stopped on a water-tower high up above on a building far away from 'his' sidekicks, so he didn't have to play all buddy-buddy with them.
His wings were aching and protesting his refusal to let them lay limp like they wanted to and curled them as he was supposed to then popped a pair of peanuts in his mouth.
He wished they were heavily salted and roasted but the commission would shoot that down and he was stuck with the man-made low-fat ones that tasted like cardboard.
What he wouldn't give to have a rab-
He mentally cursed when he bit his lip by accident as he aggressively chewed and shook his head to try and clear it of the thoughts that had been hounding him since the meeting with the president after he finished retraining.
Given he was seated and didn't have any distractions he failed, and he was engulfed by shame and self-loathing twisted his heart in a vice.
He hadn't felt that way in the beginning.
No he had even been deeply proud of his open defense of the quirkless even if it was only in the secrecy of his own mind, he had no doubt it would get back to, to... him in one way or another and the thought of his face when he told him all about how Hawks of all people thought he could be a hero was all that got him through those seven days.
He knew he was going to get out in time to meet up with him since he couldn't be missing for longer without drawing more attention than they wanted, so he was impatiently counting the seconds for the debriefing meeting at to end so he could finish up his paperwork and get ready to meet up with the kid and be Tweety again.
He hardly cared when she told him about the new sidekicks that had been signed on, they'd just be more people he'd to avoid after hours on Tuesdays and he might even be able to push off some of his paperwork on them if he played his cards right.
No, it wasn't until Madam Shitate said his unorthodox break in character would actually turn out useful that he finally tuned into the conversation, apparently Deku-Sensei had been discovered while he was 'training' and he'd initially been overjoyed to hear it since he'd finally stop the hell patrol and have more energy at the end of the day.
But then she placed a series of pictures on her desk and only his mask prevented him from giving it away as terror gripped him.
Multiple candid shots of Zuri were shown to him and for a horrific moment he thought with ice in his veins that she'd somehow found out about his meetings with the boy before she continued speaking and a new more consuming realization took hold of him instead.
Midoriya Izuku, the boy he'd exclusively known as Zuri, was Deku-Sensei.
Madam Shitate had kept talking about how they could swing this to befriend Deku-Sensei and probably a bunch more about how they were going to use him to get to the boy but at the point it all went in one ear and out the other for Hawks.
He didn't remember much more of what happened after that and was mostly in a daze as he stumbled home to his apartment, too busy mentally turning over every aspect of his meetings with Zuri.
And came to the sickening realization that he had been played from the very beginning.
Even with the benefit of the doubt he greatly wanted to believe Zuri that his first meeting with him wasn't maliciously planned out.
(Which he desperately really, really didn't want it to be because Zuri was the boy who gave him the freedom to be Tweety, and fed him such incredible and tasty meat all the time and let him cuddle him all he wanted-)
No matter how painful it was to acknowledge, Zuri had to know that he was Hawks the second time and had been slowly worming his way into Hawks heart by indulging his every whim, all to get closer to a high-ranking pro hero.
And Hawks like the fucking blind fool he was lapped it all up, letting him get what was no doubt months of blackmail that would utterly ruin the persona the commission crafted him to be and had been successful enough to make him willingly chose repeatedly to put himself in positions that would have his license ripped away without a second thought if one word was leaked.
Deku-Sensei had been three steps ahead of them all and Hawks couldn't tell anyone without the commission catching wind of all the rules he'd broke which was sure to go over well with the knowledge he'd fallen headfirst into Deku-Sensei's honey-trap.
And that was the part that hurt the worst.
'Zuri' wasn't any more real than 'Hawks' was.
And even with all of the red flags of the situation being waved in his face he still bought into it hook, line, and sinker.
Hawks for the first time since his second meeting with Deku all that time ago didn't leave the penthouse, and instead spent over half the night wallowing in how fucking stupid he was for falling for something so obvious in hindsight, mainly to drown out the pain of the betrayal since this whole affair was likely nothing more than business to Deku.
Since then Hawks had done his best to forgot about it and move on but that was pretty hard to do when his new priority mission was to cozy up to Deku and his half-baked deal with Mic was going to help with that since Deku was now working at U.A. as a T.A.
And if that wasn't enough Deku apparently recently got caught up in a scandal and he was bombarded with dozens of news channels discussing the whole thing with various options on the matter being forced in his face along with more pictures of him.
Something the commission wanted to capitalize on so he had to take regular breaks to give 'his' option the matter, which wasn't off from his real thoughts once he got the details but apparently it wasn't the one they wanted him to have from how his handler explained it to him, and they told him that getting on Deku's good side was more important than arguing over whether Nezu should've given Deku so much power in his role.
So yeah, that combined with his lack of fresh meat had left him very irritable under his calm facade.
But it was better to be bitter than drown in the fucking guilty-hate spiral his mind devolved to every night when he laid in his bed now a days, and unfortunately it was starting to show as his wings were more frayed and starting to dull from the stress of it, something that wasn't obvious before but was much clearer in his larger and darker wings.
Sick of his thoughts Hawks jumped back into the air against the protests of his wings and took off as fast as he physically could to escape them for a little while longer.
Flap your wings, drop on a criminal, swoop.
Repeat.
Flap your wings, drop on a criminal, swoop.
Repeat.
Flap your wings, drop on a criminal, swoop.
Repeat.
Hawks huffed as he glided between the dock yards over sunset, his patrol would be over soon and he could finally go back to the loft, and on the plus side, 'his' sidekicks were probably still busy processing the child smugglers they found so he'd probably here another good two minutes to himself before they come yapping at his heels again.
The weather had lightened up from the drizzle of that morning, so it was the perfect conditions for a flight and he tried not for the first time to push all of his troubling thoughts to the side and just enjoy something for once in his life that didn't have any ulterior motives pulling the strings behind it.
But as it seems he apparently couldn't even fucking have that.
Because one second, he closed his eyes and the next a familiar foot covered in electricity jolted him from that split second of peace he had, the then he plummeted to the ground and crashed hard.
He tried to whirl around despite the pain in his chin, but two feet collided with his shoulders kept firmly planted him where he was and knocked his head against the ground again making him hiss involuntarily, the wave of low-level paralyzing electricity was as familiar as the voice that came next.
"There you are pretty bird." Raijin Vespa hissed, the once flirtatious tone to the man's pet name for him was completely lost and if he could move his body, he'd have to hold back from tensing up.
Raijin in all of their interactions so far had been relentlessly salacious and the tone that was just used was a far cry from that with how cold it was, Hawks could even feel Raijin's eyes fixed on the back of his head.
"You know it ain't nice to disappear on people Tweety," Hawks heart traitorously jumped from misplaced excitement of the name and cursed himself for it.
"You're real lucky the kid's as understanding as he is, I mean it's one thing to be busy with work, anyone would understand bosses suck like that. But it's another thing to ghost a person on purpose Birdy." Raijin hissed, digging his right foot into his shoulder and he whimpered from the pain of it.
Normally he wouldn't, Raijin wasn't pressing that hard or using that strong of a current to keep him pinned... but Hawks hadn't been eating meat and his body was still recovering from the week of re-training.
However it was what Raijin said that caused a seed of worry to bloom, during their multiple interactions the man hadn't said anything about Deku other than how he was one of Deku's favorites, but now he that knew Raijin was probably aware about Deku's meetings with him and could out him if he wasn't careful, which was something he hadn't factored in when he skipped his meeting with Deku.
Raijin lifted up his foot instead leaning down so that he could feel the man's breath on the back of his neck "You ever wonder why those handlers of yours always ask ya about what I say to you after?" Raijin questioned distracting him from mental cursing himself.
Raijin, likely knowing couldn't respond if he wanted to didn't wait long and answered his own question "Well you see Pretty bird.~" he purred threateningly right against his neck and jolted when the man ran a hand down his left wing.
"As much as I love having a big pretty predator like you under me whimpering, those bugs they put in your wings are easy to shut off with a low-level current like this and they can't hear shit until someone personally reactivates them, so it's just the two of us Tweety." Raijin explained pulling out one of the small and near invisible mics for him to see.
Hawks eyes widened at that, they had never told anyone about that and of course he wasn't aware that Raijin or any of the Vespas knew of the mics and trackers that littered his wings, and as relieved that his connection to Deku wouldn't be outed Hawks felt paranoia gnawing way at him as he wondered just what else the Vespas could know about him.
"Getting back to why I'm here, the kid misses you." Raijin told him and his body managed to tense up and Raijin scoffed "Yeah, yeah, you're pissed he didn't tell you about his day job, but you weren't innocent of that shit either Tweety. Deku might've known you were a hero but you sure might a point of hiding that crap as best you could from him, didn't you?" Raijin snapped back at him.
Hawks felt in gut twist at the comparison, Deku's honey-trap wasn't anything like what he was doing to hide his identity, only to whimper again as Raijin increased the voltage briefly.
"You ever wonder why I chose to call you 'Tweety' of all things back when first met Pretty bird?" Raijin whispered directly in his ear planting his hands on each side of Hawk's head to keep from falling over.
Hawks kept his jaw clenched to keep from biting his tongue off, so he wasn't quite in place to give a real answer.
"It's cause you're the commission's canary in the coal mine." Raijin told him and he scoffed in his head as his bird species was once again misidentified before the man huffed.
"Right, those corporate shills wouldn't tell you old saying like that, canaries were used way back when to check if the coal tunnels were going to kill them, a tiny bird like that couldn't take as much carbon monoxide as a human so if it croaked they knew to get out of dodge." Raijin explained to him.
"And you Pretty bird are the commission's canary, that's why the send you to do all their dirty work, because you get them the results they want if you want to survive and if you ever decide you won't take their toxic shit then they can wash their hands of you and pick up another birdy to replace you." Raijin elaborated.
Hawks wanted to dispute it, but he finds it hard to form arguments, the only one he can is that he isn't as disposable as Raijin was implying because he wasn't trained alongside anyone else, a quirk like his wasn't a dime a dozen after all.
"Take a look at the birdy before you, what was her name? Lady Nagant? Yeah, that was it and you remember what happened to her don't ya?" Raijin asked and Hawks mind stilled.
He, did know of the heroine, met her a couple times near the end of his training.
Then the previous head was killed, and she had locked up for a killing spree of her former co-workers, and he didn't question it at the time because he trusted the commission.
But he remembered the look on her face the week before the head was killed, the horror of it as she found him standing over the target of his first kill mission, her dragging him away from the body and forcefully cleaned him up before feeding him his first taste of ice cream.
He... couldn't see that distressed woman as the unstable killer the president told him she was, and that left him with a deeper unsettling feeling because what else could Madam Shitate be lying to him about her, because he knew that Lady Nagant was unquestionably the one to kill the former president.
He was in the building when it happened and she had tried to escape with him, but he'd taken her down instead and the pride of it was quickly flushed from him.
A curl of Raijin's toes brought him back to the world "So you do know what I'm talking about Pretty bird, good, then you know why the kid's been working hard to find a way to get you out of that shithole." Raijin said.
Hawks mind screeched to a full halt.
*... What?* Hawks thought his brain still trying to reboot.
Perhaps like a mind reader Raijin began chuckling "Oh Pretty bird... Deku laid claim on you the second he saw you, and he won't stand for the commission keeping you caged the way you are." Raijin told him, his voice returning to the more flirtatious side and continued to purr in his ear "You have no idea how far he'll go to protect his people, and you've been his for a long time now Pretty bird."
The thinly veiled admittance of possible violence and clear claim of possession on him should've at least left him unsettled but Hawk's heart all but leaped at it, a traitorous warmth growing in place of the deep stab of pain in his chest.
"So, if you ever feel like those bastards are going to clip your wings, know you'll be safe in the districts. Everyone knows your one of his and won't give you any trouble." Raijin whispered much more quietly and the invitation to what was exclusively Deku's territory caused an odd fluttering in his chest.
"Hope you get your shit together Pretty bird, Deku is forgiving but he won't wait around for you forever. Don't get me wrong, but as a two-toes Deku takes rejection way too well and won't fight ya if you don't want to see him again." Raijin commented and Hawks felt a spike of guilt at that, remembering the things he read about two-toes.
Hawks hadn't thought about it but despite the anger the idea of never seeing the boy in person again had opened a gaping hole in his guts which was suffocating him.
"So, if that ain't what you want Pretty bird, then make some time to clear the air with the kid as soon as you can." Raijin said then up the current once again and Hawks was pushed into unconsciousness.