Super Science
Ch. 131: A Hero's Lament
Meanwhile, in the HQ of the hero Hawks, the winged man was slowly and sadly packing up his desk. Looking through scores of old photos as if they were a sour memory, some being tossed in a trash bag while other things were placed into scattered boxes. As he moved around the small area, his wings dragged along the ground, and dozens of feathers all dislodged and sat on the ground, waiting to be stepped on by him.
As he was packing, the voice of his friend Miriko called out from the other side of his door.
"Hawks?" she called while knocking. "Hawks!" she called a little louder before forcing the locked door open. Upon seeing him, she says, "Hawks, there you are. I've been trying to get in contact with you for hours; where have…you been?"
But Hawks say nothing in reply. He doesn't even turn to face her. Only continued to pack his boxes slowly. Coming up to him, with Endeavor in tow, the two of them trying to avoid his scattered feathers, the rabbit woman asks, "Hawks? What are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious, Rumi? Im closing down my agency and quitting as a hero." Hawks tells her with a sad and drawn-out sigh, still refusing to look at her.
Surprised by this, Miriko holds the man by his shoulders and spins him around while exclaiming, "What?! You can't just quit! If you're having money problems, I'm sure we can help you out."
Hawks pushes her off and tells her, "It's not about the money, Rumi. It's… everything else."
"What are you talking about?" she asks back.
Finally, he snaps and half yells at her while having a breakdown, "What am I talking about? What am I talking about!? Look around you, Rumi! Look at everything! It's a lie! Everything I've ever known and believed is a lie! All of it! My dreams, my ambitions, my family! All one big fat lie!" Miriko says nothing, too shocked to say anything, as he takes a breath before continuing, "From the time I could remember, I was groomed into thinking that being a hero was the one and only thing I wanted! And now that I know what I know…I don't even know what I really want." Hawks takes a moment to let tears fall from his face, leaning on his desk as he does so. All before rubbing them dry and turning to Endeavor, where he demands, "I don't even know what is real anymore. Like you! Are you even the hero that I idolized, that I strove to be? Are you?!"
Endeavor says nothing for a long while, unable to say anything in return until he finally admits with a sigh, "No, I'm not. I'm even worse."
Hawks turns away as if shattered by his worst fear being made true. He then turns to Miriko and demands, "And you! Are you even really my friend?! Or are you just another of the Association's little ways to control me!"
Without a second thought, Miriko punches the man dead in the nose so hard he hits his desk and falls to the ground, clutching his face. With a shaky breath, she yells at him, "Shut the hell up! How dare you think for a second that our friendship was a farce! You may have been lied to, controlled, and manipulated all your life about many things, but you can know for certain that our friendship was real! Sure, the Association might have asked me to play nice and be friends with you, but I told them to fuck off! But when they put us together on missions, you know I hated working with you. But as time went on, I came to really like you as a hero, as a partner, and as a friend! And that never changed."
Hawks looked down, conflicted with his thoughts and feelings and unable to speak like the other two heroes in the room. The air was heavy with tension, but that tension quickly broke when one of Hawks' sidekicks stormed into the room.
"Hawks! Hawks! Sir Hawks, I-!" the man yelled in a red-faced fluster. He stopped when he saw the hero leaning against his desk and began to say, "Oh, thank God! Hawks, you're still here with…Miriko and Endeavor! What luck! Maybe the town will be saved fast!" He trailed off with excitement at seeing the other heroes.
Endeavor put up his hands to calm him down and told him, "Calm down, son; now tell us what got you in such a tizzy?"
The sidekick took a deep breath and exclaimed, "A giant moth monster is attacking downtown!"
All heroes paused and stared dumbly at the man as Miriko asked Hawks, "A giant-what now? Hawks, are your sidekicks on the sauce?"
Suddenly, the whole building shook violently, and a huge shadow covered it for a long second before the sun came back. This was followed by a strange animal sound as the image of a giant moth flew past.
"Was that a-?" Endeavor began to ask.
Until the sidekick cut him off and confirmed, "Giant moth monster, yeah."
Just before the heroes could fully react to this or act, a dark purple portal opened in the office space, and out walked Izuku, who instantly asked in demand, "Where's Hawks?"
Just before any of them could start asking questions, Miriko piped up and said, "Hey, I know you. You're that scientist kid from Nipple."
Izuku grunted under his breath and corrected her, then went up to Hawks and told him, "N.I.P. And listen to me—you're the only one who can help in this crisis!"
"You mean that giant moth?" he asks.
"Yes!" Izuku exclaimed.
Hawks shook his head and told him, "I'm sorry, kid, but I'm not a hero anymore."
Izuku looked baffled by his response and stated, "What are you saying? Of course, you are!"
Hawks, a bit upset, half yelled, "No, I'm not! I've never been a hero! It was never my choice." he said the last part while looking at the ground.
Izuku gave a small sigh as he thought, then told him, "But it was your choice to try and redeem villains, help them find their place back in society, and not just lock them away forever in Tartarus, right?"
"Was it even?" Hawks ask back.
Izuku grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look at the boy as Izuku said, "Of course it was! You may have been tricked into the life of an expendable hero, but doing good for those that society threw away was always your choice, never the Association."
"I guess," Hawks replied in an unsure tone.
Izuku inwardly sighed before quickly telling him, "That's good enough for me. Take these splinters and this earpiece and fly towards the moth; the person on the other end will tell you what to do!" Izuku said as he shoved two splinters into his hands and an earpiece into his ear.
Confused by this, Hawks tried to tell him, "Wait, that doesn't mean-."
"Go, go, go!" Izuku exclaimed as he shoved the hero out of a floor-length window.
As Hawks seemingly fell to his death, Endeavor and Miriko both gasped in shock as they ran to the window, where Endeavor yelled, "Holy crap, you pushed him out a window!"
Izuku, looking unbothered and confused by their reactions, told them, "What? He can fly."
Suddenly, all of Hawk's scattered feathers flew out the window, and the hero rocketed up the building and across the sky toward the giant moth. As he flew off, Endeavor could only say dumbly, "Oh yeah."
As Hawks stabilized himself mid-flight after getting thrown out his own window, he put the strange crystal into his coat pocket and adjusted the earpiece before speaking into it.
"Uh, hello?" he asked into the device.
"Hello. Izuku, is that you?" a voice answered back.
"No, this is Hawks." Hawks corrected the person.
"Hawks? Oh, good. It's you! Izuku got to you fast," the voice said in relief.
"Who are you?" Hawks asked.
"Call me Professor Hankoyo. I'm one of Doctor Izuku's employees. Listen carefully, do you see the Mothra flying through the city?" Hankoyo quickly introduced himself while questioning him.
"The what? Is that what that thing is called? What is it even?" Hawks asks. Looking out towards the city, he sees the huge bug flying between buildings, causing mass panic.
"It's from Pacifica, and it's a gargantuan moth creature with a plethora of abilities. I don't have time to explain this; all you have to know is that it has to be stopped." Hankoyo quickly explains to him.
"Why? It's just a huge bug." Hawks inquired as he initially saw nothing wrong.
"Look closer," Hankoyo tells him.
Using his high-tech goggles, Hawks spots the Mothra grabbing and jamming a proboscis into a screaming person, drinking them up like a juice box! Hawks freaks out and exclaims, "It's eating people!? Why?!"
"Mothra has a liquid-based diet; the flowers on its home island can substantiate it, but they don't exist here. Plus, do you know how much water makes up humans and how many calories we make?" Hankoyo tells him.
Hawks thinks on it for a moment before saying with a shutter, "Good point. So, do I kill it?"
Hankoyo immediately freaks out and half yells, "No! No, no, no! Absolutely not, no! Avoid that at all costs! Mothra is filled with a strange energy called BioEnergy. It's safe when she's in her homeland, but if that detonates here, who knows what could happen?!"
Feeling pressured and unsure as the Mothra picks up and eats another poor pedestrian, Hawks says, "So what can I do? What do you expect me to do?"
"Do you have the two splinters?" Hankoyo asks back.
Shifting through his pockets, he pulls them out and says, "The two weird crystal things, yeah."
Hankoyo takes a steady breath and then tells him, "Okay, so you turn them on with your mind, and each one does something different. One allows you to produce your feathers at 100 a minute, and the other allows you to change the tensile length and strength of your feathers instead of just making them soft and sharp."
"What does that mean?" Hawks asks in confusion.
"It means you can use your feathers like the strings and bow of various string instruments." Hankoyo numbs it down for him.
"How is that gonna help?!" Hawks exclaimed, not seeing the point.
"Mothra are insects. They communicate through smell and vibration. The former is out of the question, so the ladder is our only choice. Use your feathers to play a song and soothe the savage beast." Hankoyo tells him.
"But I don't know how to play music!" Hawks stated, feeling more stressed out.
"Just try, or else more people will die!" Hankoyo half-yells at him through the earpiece.
As the line went dead, Hawks halted in the air, feeling conflicted. Should he help? He was a hero, but that was all a lie. He could wait for another hero to take care of it, but he was the only one on the scene and the only one who could keep up with the Mothra if it flew off. But if he doesn't act, more people will die! Who knows how many died before he got here? Mothra isn't stopping!
So he makes his decision and activates the splinters with his mind as he flies down to the animal. His feathers break free from his wings, hundreds by the minute, all of them changing in strength and length. They go in sets of six to eight and surround the moth. This caught her attention, so she took to the sky, angrily screeching at the man and illuminating a sea of bright, threatening colors, ready to make a meal out of him!
Just before Mothra could, Hawks took a calming breath and looked back into his mind for a soothing song. He remembered one his mother used to sing when he was young and began to replicate it on his feathers. Despite the sound from Mothra's wings, the tube of feathers carried over it as many more feathers quickly joined the chorus. Soon, the sky was filled with sweet and soothing sounds, and Mothra's changed.
Her furious expression broke, softened, and finally went calm as she landed back on the ground and folded her wings to listen to the sounds of the music.
When the song finally ended, Hawks, who was on the ground, approached the giant bug and gently placed a hand on her face, watching as the tense animal relaxed into a friendly touch.
Hawks gave a sad smile to the creature and told her, "You aren't so scary; you were just scared. Weren't you, friend?"
Suddenly, a whole host of dark purple smoke portals opened near the back of the Mothra, and several huge tanker trucks came out with Egon. Taking a megaphone in hand, he shouted to the trucks, "Alright, boys, pop the tops!"
Several robots emerged from the driver's seats and climbed into the truck, where they unscrewed large nozzles that kept the contents inside. When they came off, a sweet scent filled the air and grabbed the Mothra's attention. She moved from Hawks, learned over one of the openings, and began to slurp the contents out with her proboscis.
Just before Hawks could question what was going on, Izuku surprised him from behind, clapping his shoulder and telling him, "Excellent work, Hawks. You calmed down the Mothra and saved the city; you should feel proud."
Hawks didn't smile like he usually did; he just stared awkwardly between the boy and the giant moth as he asked, "I'm mostly just confused. For instance, what's in these trucks, and why was this huge thing here in Japan in the first place?"
"Nectar. We had stocks in reserve for just an occasion." Izuku answered the first part.
"That's what I like to know." Egon chimed in as a notification came up on his Purah Pad. Looking it over briefly, he says, "And that's what I've just been informed."
Egon looked at the information on the pad for several minutes, constantly changing his expression as he read. Eventually, Hawks got impatient and said, "Well, don't leave us in suspense."
Egon took another minute to think, rubbing his chin, and explained, "From what we could gather, a single Mothra Egg was washed away from Pacifica and washed ashore here. A nearby laboratory found and hatched it. Seeing as they had no idea what they were doing, they essentially tortured the creature, trying to reign it in, chained it down, underfed it, and stressed it out. This caused it to go into an early metamorphosis, which allowed it to break free, kill everyone, and break out. Leading to the events of right now."
Hawks looked back at the giant bug, moving and feeding from one truck to the other, observing his body. There, he saw the scars, bruises, and welts littering its body and wings. Even its body looked naturally thin, even for bugs.
Looking at a pitiful experience, he surmised, "It was caged, unfairly."
"Yeah, pretty much," Egon confirmed.
"She wasn't even the villain; she was the victim," Hawks said with a sad tone, wanting to conform the animal once again.
"I guess Mothra's empathic abilities have really gotten to you." Egon inquires with a knowing look, to which Hawks says nothing in return.
When Mothra finished her meal, she moved from the trucks and back towards the men, shaking her body and stretching out her wings. Seeing that the bug was ready to move, Izuku said to the winged hero, "Thanks for your help, Hawks. We literally couldn't have done it without you. I guess this will be your last good deed as a hero."
Hawks looked back on his life and every moment that led up to this point. He looked at the city and at Mothra, whose head he petted. Feeling his emotions and unease suddenly melt away and his mind clear. No doubt Mothra's work.
He smiled and replied, "You know, I think I got plenty more heroing in me. I think I'll stick around a bit longer."
Both Egon and Izuju smile at his answer, and the teen tells him, "Glad to hear it. Welp, we better get this girl back to Pacifica where she can eat plenty and fly free."
Just before the two scientists could act, Hawks pipes up and asks, "Say, I know this might come as forthcoming, especially since I tried to…you know, I was wondering if I could…bring Mothra there?"
Both men stop and look at the winged man in confusion. Izuku reiterates, "You wanna chaperone Mothra back to Pacifica?" Hawks nods in confirmation, and Izuku looks at Egon, who nods. He shrugs and says in agreement, "I don't see why not, but it's a long trip, like days long."
"I can handle it." Hawks assured him with his old smile and thumbs up.
Seeing the old hero come back to the broken and conflicted man, Izuku agrees and hands off a small device from his lab coat, telling him, "Alright, take this device. When you're about two minutes from the eternal storm, press it, and once you're through, press it again. She'll fly to her homeland, and from there, you can go to a small civilization on an archipelago with a Warp Pad, which will take you to our facility. And when flying, watch out for dragons, wyverns, and griffins."
"Uh, what?" Hawks questions, unsure if he heard correctly.
"Oh, and speak not a word of the talking elephants when you get back," Egon warned him in a whisper.
Hawks opened his mouth to ask questions but stopped himself and casually said, "You know what? Yeah, sure, you got it."
Mothra then spread her wings and took to the sky, with Hakws following soon after. The two of them flew above the building's height and soared off into the distance.
Once they were fully out of sight, Egon told the robots to drive the tanker trucks back through the portals. Once they were gone, Egon generated another portal for him and Izuku, and just before they went through, Izuku asked, "Sooooooo, what do we do about the people who got killed by Mothra?"
Egon stopped him in his tracks, forgetting that Mothra had just eaten over a dozen people. He thought about it for a minute, then suggested, "Let's just send them respiration for their lost loved ones. A million might do the trick."
"Make it two, just to be safe." Izuku put forward, making the man nod.
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