sirspazingtonthefourth

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Chapter 7

843 words. Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!) Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of. Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Summary: Aftermath of the extraction

A/N: So, this is the last chapter, and I just wanted to say thanks for reading this far. This is sort of a test run to see how I feel about writing a more parental Hawks, and if you liked this one I have a longer one in the works that you might like. Anyways, I really hope you enjoy this last chapter!

The creature didn’t like any of the people Keigo had brought. They were friends with the man, and they’d been trying to hurt Keigo too. All it’d wanted was for him to run, to get out safe. But then it had bitten him, the one friend it had.

He would be chasing the creature, and it couldn’t blame him. It bit him, that meant it was about to be punished for lashing out. It understood, it really did. But did he have to do it himself? If he just let the man do it, the creature could still pretend to have a friend.

The creature knew it didn’t have long. Keigo was good at finding things, and it hadn’t run far. There had been the wooden man that it had seen on Keigo’s phone. It had leapt to get away, and the wooden man had not followed, thankfully. There was something clear and easy to break, and the creature had broken it, crawled into a place as dark as where they had just left used to be, before Keigo broke its dark sky and let in light for the first time.

The creature had crawled into a sheltered corner, out of easy sight from the thing it broke. There were many more boxes here, more places to hide, and it was warm enough that it didn’t have to worry about cold nights yet. It could find enough soft things to build a nest, once Keigo was done with it.

It wasn’t long before it heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to its new place. It heard Keigo talking to someone else. Not the man, his voice sounded different and his steps were much heavier. The creature could hardly hear this new voice. A door opened, and the creature held its breath as the door closed.

It heard Keigo walking towards the thing it broke, stepping softly. Even in this new place, he tried to avoid the creaking wood as he made his way around the dark place. A gentle thud resounded through the silence.

“It’s just me kid. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Keigo heard the creaking as the kid made their way out of whatever hiding spot they’d found. It was slow going, the attic new to them and harder to navigate. Harder to avoid making noise. But eventually they peeked their head around a box to see him sitting near the broken window.

They seemed… scared. Of him.

“It’s okay. You can come out. It’s safe.”

“It is not okay. You are mad. You will hurt me.”

“Why?” A click of teeth was his answer, and he nearly laughed.

“I’m not mad you bit me. You bite hard. It’s good. It’ll keep you from getting hurt.”

“Promise you are not mad?”

“Promise. Will you come out?” The kid slunk towards him, still wary. It made him hate Kobayashi all the more, but he pushed the anger down. It wouldn’t help his kid right now.

“There you are, little bird. You okay?” he said, signing along as best he could. His kid nodded and curled up out of his immediate reach.

“Not hurt.”

“That’s good. I’m glad you’re safe.”

They sat like that in the dark. It must have been at least ten minutes of them both sitting there before the kid let out a coo.

“Keigo, I am scared.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Where is this? Will I be found? I do not want to get hurt again. I didn’t like the noises he made me hear. They were so loud.”

Keigo saw tears brimming in their eyes as they glanced towards the door he’d entered the attic from. The house was owned by a rather kind old woman, but Seijin didn’t know that. He held a hand out to them to offer comfort. It seemed they needed it, gently grabbing his sleeve and scooting themself closer.

“It’s okay. You’re safe, I promise,” he said, signing along again.

“What is safe?”

“Safe means… it means no more hurting, no more pain. Safe means that- that he can’t get you anymore. Ever.” He was worried the kid hadn’t quite understood everything. They just stared at him, eyes wide.

“S… sa-afe?” Their voice was raspy, the word shaky from their lips as they spoke to him out loud for the first time. He felt like he was about to cry because how could a word that meant an end to their suffering sound so broken, so wobbly, so uncertain?

“Yes. Yes, you’re safe now. You’re safe.”

“S-afe.” They crawled a little closer, Keigo’s sleeve forgotten as they ducked under his arm.

“Safe,” he agreed, letting his now crying kid curl in his lap, wrapping him in a hug.

“Safe. Safe, safe, safe, safe, safe.” They were crying onto his coat, shaking and sobbing as he hugged them back. He never wanted to let them go. He never wanted them to cry again. Never wanted them to feel afraid ever again. And that started right here, right now.

“You’re safe, Seijin. You’re safe.”

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Chapter 7

1.7k words. Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!) Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of. Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Summary: Seijin, finally, runs

A/N: Almost the end here. I had a lot of fun with this chapter specifically, lots of protective Dad Keigo. Definitely my favorite part in the whole fic.

Kobayashi showed up around noon. Hawks watched from a nearby roof as he arrived in his car, Eraserhead and Kamui Woods with him. Mirko, Endeavor, and Lemillion were in their own car and would cover Kobayashi’s arrest. Eraser would keep an eye out in case he started using his quirk.

Mirko arrived first, landing a kick as Kobayashi was turning to get back in his car. Lemillion and Endeavor were quick to follow, arriving as Kobayashi was cuffed and dragged to his feet, shouting all the way about how there must be a mistake. Hawks nodded to the two heroes flanking him and flew through the skylight.

“Little bird, you there?” The only response he heard from the shadows was a hiss. “It’s okay, I know he’s here, but it’s okay. He can’t hurt you.”

The hissing got louder, and Keigo could hear Kobayashi shouting downstairs. It sounded like he was getting closer, but there was no way that was right. He hadn’t given the signal yet. He started frantically leaving feathers on the creaking boards, praying that he remembered them all.

“It’s me,” he signed once he stepped into the shadows and maneuvered to see his kid.

“Run. He is here. He is bad. The sounds hurt. Run Keigo. Please.”

“He can’t hurt you, you’re safe.”

“He hurts. He is bad. Run Keigo.”

The shouting was getting louder. Keigo could hear multiple people coming towards the attic. Kobayashi was shouting about how he hadn’t done anything wrong, demanding to know what this was all about.

“I think you know,” he heard Endeavor say, very clearly from behind the door before he heard it open. His kid froze, staring as Kobayashi was led up the stairs. Their eyes locked, and Seijin immediately looked down, starting to back into the shadows again. Kobayashi was led towards the middle of the room, every step he took pushing the kid further and further into the shadows.

“The brat? That’s what this is all about?” He scoffed at the heroes. “That thing’s hardly human. It’s barely an animal.” He turned to face the shadows where the kid was hiding, speaking in a forced, deep voice.

“Oi! Heel!” With a quickness born of fear Seijin moved to Kobayashi’s side, laying next to him, refusing to look up. Their jaw was clenched, and they were shaking. Kobayashi looked back to Endeavor. “See? With a quirk like its, it can’t be human. It’s just some thing, barely has a mind of its own to begin with.”

Every word out of Kobayashi’s mouth made Keigo’s blood run hotter, his vision tint a little more red, his feathers sharpen just a little bit more. Some rational part of him knew that the others hearing this were angry too, that they were keeping a better handle on it, but it was so small in the face of an overwhelming wave of rage.

“How dare you?” he muttered, earning Kobayashi’s gaze for the first time. Mirko had to have seen how angry he was because she began walking towards him, but he only saw that in his periphery, too focused on the monster that had dared to call his kid less than human.

“Have you even seen the damn thing? Its mother overdosed or some shit. Thing could barely control its quirk. Would have grown up to be some useless street rat if I hadn’t given it a purpose.”

“And that was?” he seethed out. He silently cursed himself for letting other heroes in on this. All he wanted to do was tear this abomination that called itself a person to shreds. Mirko was closer to him now. His kid had started to growl, deep and low and quiet, he could hardly hear it. He saw their eyes dart up towards the rabbit hero approaching him.

Shit, he had to reign himself in. He couldn’t kill Kobayashi, not with witnesses and certainly not in front of Seijin. He needed to head Mirko off before his kid decided she’d gotten too close to him. He needed to get everyone out of this attic without making a sound.

“Furthering science. Used it to contribute to quirk research. What else in an animal like this good for?” Fuck reigning himself in.

“Is that what you call damn near killing-”

“Hawks! I get you know this kid, but you have to calm down.”

“Are you shitting me, Mirko? This bastard turned them into a blood bank, and I’m supposed to calm down?” Mirko took a step closer, and he felt his wings start to spread in warning. Seijin let out a quiet snarl, and Kobayashi hissed for them to shut up. Maybe he could manage to get Kobayashi alone, make him disappear. After all, the attic was dark, hard to see in. He could grab him and be out the skylight before anyone could stop him. But that’d leave his kid alone with people they didn’t trust.

“Yes! You said yourself, they hate noise. You’re yelling isn’t doing them any favors,” Mirko said. Taking another step towards him. It would have kept escalating between them if they hadn’t heard it.

The gentle creak of unmarked wood under Mirko’s foot.

Seijin launched themself into the air, shrieking and snarling, towards Mirko. He took a step back as Mirko jumped away from the angry kid. He expected them to pursue the rabbit hero but they stayed in front of him,

Their quirk was active, and he could see the cat claws tipping their hands, vestiges of the video he’d shown them yesterday. Reflections of his own wings flared out from his kid as they glared at the other heroes and Kobayashi.

Still snarling, they began backing up, right into him. He took tentative steps back, anger forgotten for now. Lemillion stepped forward, hands up and looking at the kid as they glared right back, teeth bared.

“Hey there, Seijin.” The kid snarled a little louder.

“Lemillion, it’s not going to help. They don’t understand you. Back up.” Lemillion ignored his warnings, kneeling down a little too close for Keigo’s taste, holding an open hand out to them.

“I’m sorry my friends scared you. But it’s okay. We’re here to-” The kid made a swipe at the hero in training, and if it wasn’t for his quirk they would have taken at least an eye. The kid was backing up again, and Keigo nearly stumbled over himself trying to keep their pace while avoiding the creaking boards. They were driving him backwards, towards the halo of light on the floor.

“Hey, little bird, calm down,” he tried. He knew words wouldn’t do anything. But if he could get them to look at him, he could start signing, could maybe calm them down.

“Kid, please. I need you to look at me.” They backed up into his leg, causing them both to stumble a little.

“Please, Seijin, I need to talk to you.” He reached for their shoulder, fingers barely grazing it before they turned, biting down on his hand.

His gloves did a lot to keep the fangs at bay, but they did nothing for the crushing pressure. He swore he felt some of the bones in his hand start to creak before his kid let go. He was quick to draw his hand away, cradling it as Seijin stared at him in terror.

Their wings were half folded as they looked between him and his injured hand. They hesitantly took a step towards him, letting out the short coo they used to talk to him. But a gentle thud behind him drew their attention, and their wings flared open again, snarling at Eraserhead, preparing to snare them in his capture weapon.

“Don’t!” He didn’t know who he was shouting at, the kid readying themself to attack or the reconnaissance hero about to try and bind them. Either way it worked. Eraser hesitated half a second, just long enough for his kid to dart into the shadows.

They were quick to leap onto a stack of boxes, avoiding Mirko and Eraser as they ran. They jumped to a rafter above Keigo’s head, then to the skylight. They miscalculated, feet kicking in the air as they tried to haul themself up onto the roof. One feather, large enough to use as a foothold, found its way underneath their foot and they were out of the attic for good.

Keigo heard them snarling, likely at Kamui Woods, heard footsteps along the roof, then the sound of them jumping. His heart froze for a moment, praying they could figure out how to use their wings to slow their fall, that they wouldn’t crash down onto the pavement. Sure, it was only two stories, but they could still break something if they landed wrong.

He was only able to breathe when he heard the clattering of shingles from a nearby roof. He called to the wooden hero not to follow them.

“What do you mean, don’t follow? The point of this was to get them somewhere safe, and they’re-”

“Terrified and ready to attack. They aren’t going to go far, they’ll try to find somewhere else to hide.” Keigo heard a chuckling behind him, feeling his blood start to boil again.

“What did you expect? I told you, they’re hardly an animal.”

He needed to stay calm. He needed to think clearly. But damn, if he didn’t want to cut out Kobayashi’s tongue.

He inspected his hand, seeing small holes bitten into the gloves. He could feel blood trickling underneath the thick gloves and felt a bit of pride spark underneath all the anger.

“Get him out of here. I’m going after them,” he said. Endeavor spoke into the silence as he prepared to leave.

“Not without others. If they’re still aggressive-”

“If they’re still aggressive, more of us will make it worse. This all happened because you didn’t wait.” He hated to cut his hero off, but he needed to get away from the monster that he wanted to watch bleed.

“I’m sorry.” Hawks looked to Lemillion, looking sheepishly at his feet. “I could hear them, I thought they were attacking you, that you might need help. We couldn’t leave Kobayashi alone, so we brought him with. We- I didn’t think this would happen.”

Dammit. Damn this kid and his good intentions.

“I appreciate your concern, Lemillion, but the plan was there for precisely this reason. When dealing with a potentially volatile victim, you need to keep them calm, let them have as much control over the situation as possible. Keep that in mind. I’ll be back with m- with the kid.”

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Chapter 6

1.4k words. Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!) Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of. Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Summary: The heroes prepare to extract Seijin.

A/N: So, I've been sneaking in a little detail over the past several chapters, and this is where it finally pays off.

The stakeout was approved quickly due to the evidence Hawks had collected. Well, quickly as stakeouts went. It still took two weeks.

He warned the team of sidekicks not to make any noise, that the man they were looking for had extremely sensitive hearing. The first group didn’t listen. The car they were waiting in rocked as the man pulled into the driveway, and he immediately pulled out and kept driving. The sidekicks didn’t even get the license plate.

They tried again a week later with better results. They had parked slightly closer and gotten a license plate and a photo of the man’s face before he’d fled, the shutter of the camera giving them away. Still, a breadcrumb trail was a trail.

Within hours of his sidekicks getting him the information, he had a name and a file. Kobayashi Hayate, listed as a member of whatever bogus company owned the house since its founding seventeen years prior. His record was pristine, his quirk enhanced his hearing enough to hear a butterfly’s wing beat. He had a privately owned residence, and no complaints from neighbors. The car was registered under his name. Bank records showed regular payments coming in from the company every two weeks, right around the time he would drain the kid.

He checked the company finances too, hoping for something traceable to whoever the client was, but there was nothing. A cash deposit made hours before the transfer for the same amount. Whoever the client was, Hawks wasn’t going to be able to find them. But it was shady to say the least, even without one of the company’s founding members being tied to selling blood, likely through a black market contact somewhere.

Coupled with the information he’d gotten about Seijin, their confinement, the bloodletting, it was more than enough to not only get a warrant for his arrest, but to get other heroes on board with a collaboration. Mirko was one of the first to sign on, along with Edgeshot, Kamui Woods, Eraserhead, Nighteye’s work study student, Lemillion, and, of all people, Endeavor. He was probably just trying to boost his PR, but Keigo still felt honored, and more than a little giddy, that his favorite hero was teaming up with him on this as he started his presentation on what to do.

“Thank you for coming everyone. I’ll keep this as short as I can, since I’m sure you all have better places to be,” he started, glancing around the conference room to meet everyone’s eyes.

“This is Kobayashi Hayate, our target in the raid tomorrow. His quirk allows him to manipulate sound, increasing or decreasing it for up to five targets. He’s been holding a child in a home in the residential district in Fukuoka for an extended period. We don’t know precisely how long.

“The goal for tomorrow is to arrest Kobayashi for kidnapping, child abuse, and selling illegal substances, namely products of the human body. His pattern for approaching the house seems to be mostly random, so we’ll be waiting for him to arrive before we can do anything. Once he’s arrested, we can focus on the kid. Any questions so far?”

“Why not get the kid out of there before confronting Kobayashi? Wouldn’t it be safer if he isn’t able to use them as collateral?” Lemillion asked.

“Normally we would, but the kid isn’t going to leave. There’s a hole in the attic large enough for them to fit through and they have had multiple opportunities to escape over the months this investigation has been going on. Until they understand that Kobayashi is no longer a threat, they won’t leave willingly.”

“Then what’s the extraction plan?” Mirko asked.

“I’m going to drop into the room first. The kid hates noise, and you can bet that arresting Kobayashi is going to cause at least a stir. I’ll try and calm them down and mark areas on the floor that creak. No matter what, do not step on those areas. I’ll let you know when to bring Kobayashi up. From there, I should be able to convince the kid that he isn’t a threat and that it’s safe to leave. I want standby’s on the roof in case Kobayashi somehow gets out of hand.”

“You’re going to be the only one interacting with the kid?” This time from Eraserhead.

“Yes. I’ve built up some amount of rapport with them over the past seven months.”

“Why not have another hero with you to ensure they know they’re safe?”

“Because it won’t work. They don’t know what a hero is or does. They didn’t know what a quirk was until a few days ago. They won’t trust any random person that enters that attic. The only reason that I have to even suspect that I might be able to convince them to leave is that they know me.” Eraserhead nodded, and Hawks pulled files from his coat.

“If there’s nothing else, these should have relevant information collected that I didn’t go over, your position tomorrow, what to expect.”

“Hawks, sir?” It was Lemillion again, giving him a rather determined stare. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s their name? You haven’t told us.” The whole room turned to Hawks as he took a breath.

“Seijin. Their name is Seijin.”

“You should’ve seen it, kid,” he said into the attic. “They all want to get you out of here too. You’re gonna be free come this time tomorrow, I promise.”

They were currently laying on a rafter above him. Ever since they’d found out what a quirk was, they kept asking to see cat videos. If they felt energetic, they’d morph a few parts of themselves, namely the tail and their hands. They were much quieter on cat feet, despite being nearly silent already, and they liked to jump around on the rafters even more. They’d run from box to rafter to rafter to floor to rafter again.

They let out the short, high pitched coo that he’d come to understand was their way of getting his attention. He supposed, to them, it was as close to a spoken name as they had for him. It was fair, since he’d given them a name too.

But they would need more than that. They’d need food and clothing and guidance. They’d need to go to a doctor to see if they could hear at all, get them hearing aids if they needed it. Would they even want them? They’d need a place to stay. He’d heard horror stories about people in the foster care system, and there was no way he would let the Commission take care of them after what they did to him.

He could always find someone. Probably another hero, one able to handle teaching the kid more sign language and their skittishness. One that knew how to keep quiet so they didn’t startle his kid too bad. It was hardly impossible, practically speaking.

But he wouldn’t see them again.

“Keigo, you are sad. What is wrong?”

“Not sad. Nervous.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how to say it in sign. Sorry.” It was a half-truth, really. If he’d been able to just talk to his kid and have them understand, he might have still tried to get out of explaining it. How do you tell someone who’s been held captive so long that they’re about to be free? How could he convince them that it would be okay when they still squinted at the sunlight? How could he convince them to stay with him?

This wasn’t like any other rescue case he’d been on. He hadn’t been assigned this one, or just been passing by. He’d cared for this kid for months. He’d made sure they were warm in the winter, cared for them in the aftermath of their abuse, started learning sign language for them, lost who knew how many hours of sleep wondering and worrying about them, given them a name.

He couldn’t just walk away after all of that. He wanted- no, he needed to stay with his kid. Needed to provide for them, care for them, because no one else knew how to. No one else understood what his kid had been going through up here, he couldn’t trust anyone else with them.

Hang on. His kid? When had that happened?

…

Did it really matter?

He had plenty of extra room at his apartment, more than enough space for them. He’d be able to see them regularly, start introducing them to the world outside the attic. He could teach them to fly with their borrowed wings, what little he knew of cooking, how nice an actual bed felt after a long day. He could keep learning sign with them, help them unlearn all the fear they’d had ingrained into them, see the person they became outside of this dark, awful place.

Damn. It sounded nice. It sounded right.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Chapter 5

1.2k words. Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!) Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of. Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Summary: Seijin learns about their quirk.

A/N: Only a couple more chapters after this. This is sort of a filler, I guess, but I still felt like it was important to go into why Seijin was on the streets in the first place as well as their quirk. Anywho, hope you enjoy!

While he waited for the stakeout to get approved, he searched for any street with the number 24 on it. Nothing.

District 24. Nothing.

Building 24. A few hits.

He ruled out all but two buildings, the only two that were in the same district as the attic. He did a search on both buildings, looking for cases of a homeless woman found dead in winter. A few popped up for both of them over the last twenty years. Some women didn’t have names. He compared the faces of everyone he saw, fully six women, to what he remembered Seijin looked like. No matches.

He checked the other buildings for dead homeless women. A few more popped up, still no matches. The next time he visited he managed to get a good picture of their face, though they were pretty annoyed about it. He ran it through a database and finally had a partial match.

To a deaf, nameless woman that gave birth in a poorly funded ER nearly ten years ago.

There was no contact information, no name, no partner he could contact, no address, all he had was a face and a quirk. Shapeshift, she could turn into someone she’d seen for up to 24 hours after seeing them. His kid didn’t even have an official name, their mother had left against medical advice before they could bring her a birth certificate.

The quirk was interesting, at least. Hawks knew Seijin had grown sparrow wings, and later his own wings, but he hadn’t actually looked into their quirk. He grabbed a couple pictures and videos from online before patrol and took off to soar the darkening gray sky.

Halfway through the day it started raining, the kind of downpour that soaks you down to your soul and just keeps going. He was grateful when he made it to the attic as the sun started setting, although he almost dropped right onto the kid.

It was the first time he’d ever caught them under the skylight alone, and the first time he’d seen them completely let their guard down. Their head was tilted back, eyes shut, letting the rain land on their face. When he let out a soft curse, flapping to keep himself from falling on them, they scampered back into the shadows. They left a wet trail of foot and handprints across the floor and over the boxes they’d leapt over.

“Just me, little bird. Got something to show you.” The kid popped out once they heard his voice and trotted over, though, considering their mother, maybe they weren’t really hearing him. As Keigo stepped out of the rain the kid took his place, tilting their head up again to let water wash over them.

He saw how brown the puddle they stood in was, full of dust and dried blood. They reached up to ruffle their wet hair and dark brown droplets rained down from the mats that he hadn’t even really noticed. Most of it would have to be cut off and regrown when they got out of this place.

“Seijin.” No response. They were rolling in the puddle now, stretching out as the rain hit their skin and dirty clothes. The shirt they wore, now that it was rinsed out, looked like it might have been white once.

Keigo stripped his jacket off and wrung it out. They snapped their attention to him as the water hit the floor before dismissing him to continue playing in what was probably their first shower ever.

He skimmed his hand along the top of the small puddle his jacket had made, splashing it at the kid. It hit them in the face, significantly smaller droplets than the rain, and they seemed to notice the difference, glaring at him before splashing water from their dirty puddle towards him.

“Hey, no fair! Your puddle’s all nasty.” His kid just huffed and splashed him again. He flicked the water from one of his wings towards them, and from there it was chaos. Water splashed everywhere as the two “fought.” It ended with both of them sprawled out on the dry floor, smiling and soaked.

“Wanted to show you something,” he said, signing slowly along with his words. Seijin sat up and watched him pull out his phone. He showed them pictures of a few heroes with mutation quirks, like the up-and-coming Kamui Woods and one of a random kid with a tail that had gone viral in a video a few months back. Nothing about the kid changed. Same happened when he showed them pictures of cats and dogs and squirrels.

Then he showed them videos. The kid didn’t react to the hero, but promptly sprouted a tail after watching the viral video of the other kid taking down three opponents.

Videos of a squirrel led to the kid growing small, sharp claws. The dogs and cats both made the kid sprout ears and a tail, before the kid managed to hide them. Each time a new trait appeared they would cower a little, each time a little faster to hide the evidence of their quirk.

He was about to show them another video, this one of a U.A. student who relied on eating different foods for his quirk, when his kid let out a cooing noise. It was short, and high pitched, the one they’d used to get his attention before.

“Please stop,” they signed, and he immediately put his phone away.

“What’s wrong Seijin?” His kid looked pointedly at the stairs, a signal he’d begun to understand meant the man that was holding them here.

“Hurts. New shape is bad. Stay the same.”

Right. Of course whoever the asshole was wouldn’t want the kid to use their quirk. They might overpower him or escape. Better to train them out of using it than risk them getting bright ideas.

“I’m sorry.”

“It is okay. What is it called?” The kid pointed to where Hawk’s had stashed his phone.

“Oh, it’s called a phone,” he signed out the word as he spoke. They shook their head.

“Things inside.” Oh. The people, the animals. He opened his phone again, going through the pictures and videos and naming the various animals. They didn’t particularly seem interested with heroes.

“This one.”

“Cat.”

“Cat,” the kid signed back, staring hard at the photo for a moment. The ears and tail popped back onto them, though he didn’t think they noticed yet. “Pretty. It feels soft.”

“You’re right, they do.” The kid flicked their tail into view. They frowned at it until it disappeared, along with the ears. But they continued to look at where the tail had been.

“Keigo, why do I change?”

“Change?”

“Yes. Why is my shape not always the same? I do not like it. It is scary. It is bad. Why does it happen?”

“It’s called a quirk.” The kid tilted their head at the sign for quirk.

“Quirk. Like my wings,” he gestured to the red mass of feathers that was finally beginning to dry.

“Those are wings.”

“Yes, but they are only mine. It’s why they’re a quirk.” His kid looked at their hands, growing the squirrel claws again.

“Mine.” They smiled and started purring. “This is mine.”

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Chapter 4

1.5k words. Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!) Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of. Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Summary: Keigo finds out what exactly has been happening to the kid.

A/N: Hey, another update! I'm probably going to try and get the rest of the fic up today, since I'm thinking about it. I'm also going to go back and change the summaries to reflect the chapter content, that'll be fun.

Whenever Keigo visited after that he brought a few books with him, mostly children’s books to help preschoolers learn sign language. The kid, he found quickly, couldn’t read. They stared at the hiragana the same way he remembered looking at English letters when the Commission had taught him. So he would quietly sound out the words for them, then sign the word. It was a learning exercise for the both of them, and the two of them were soon able to hold short, simple conversations.

“How are you feeling?”

“I am good. How are you, Keigo?”

“I’m fine. It’s cold outside.

“It is cold here. The nest is warm. Keigo, you will follow me.”

The kid’s nest was indeed warm, he found out. Despite being crafted mostly from thin, ratty blankets, the thick one he’d got at the start of winter did a lot to insulate it, and the clothes he’d brought before lent the thing some extra structure.

It was in a different place every time the kid offered to bring him to it. He suspected they just wanted him to know where they were, in case they didn’t respond. He was glad they did come early spring.

The recording devices had picked up on the sounds from whatever happened before the kid got fresh bandages, which had happened regularly, every two weeks or so, throughout the winter. It was a lot of screaming from the kid, a lot of cursing from the man holding them captive, and the occasional word from a third person, younger than the man. This new person, a buyer of some variety it seemed, sounded raspy, and he spoke softly. The only reason Hawks knew he was a client was that the man would respond occasionally that he’d “get his product once this little rat held the fuck still.”

Whatever it was they were doing, it left the kid exhausted after. Exhausted enough that, in the early weeks of spring, Keigo had to search the attic for them. He’d long since become accustomed to avoiding the creaking on the attic floor, following the kid’s movements as they played with his feathers and led him around the dark room.

He found them curled up on the floor. The kid was pale, like they normally were when the bandages were changed. Except there were no bandages this time. The kid was sprawled out, arms extended to show pockmarks up and down the inside of their arms. They were concentrated near their wrists and elbows, but there were some in other places. There was some bloody tubing nearby. One end was attached to a large needle, the other held what looked like a screw top, a few empty vials nearby that looked like they would fit on.

The kid was heaving for breath, eyes hardly open enough to scan the room as he got closer. He tried to sign to them, but they didn’t seem like they could see properly.

“Kid, what happened?” he whispered.

Slowly, shaking as they did, the kid raised one hand to tap their other arm, wincing as they did. Then they traced their finger along their bottom lip.

“Arm is red.” That didn’t make sense. He knew their arm was red. He could see it, some of the pockmarks were leaking blood still.

And there was tubing and empty vials right next to him.

“Are they taking your blood?” His kid just laid still. They were still breathing, labored and slow, but they didn’t move otherwise. “Dammit. Just… stay here, okay? I’ll be back soon.”

Keigo tucked a feather into the kid’s shirt, all the way beneath them so it wouldn’t be found easily, then quietly strode towards the skylight. He made it out right as he heard the attic door open.

He listened through his feather as he flew, trying to remember what foods the nurses in hospitals recommended him when he’d lost a lot of blood. The man knelt down, berating the kid as he pulled on them. They whimpered and he snarled at them to shut up before going back to whispered words.

“It would go so much easier for you if you would just hold still.”

“You brought this on yourself, you understand me?”

“You should be used to this by now.”

“Might need to tie you down tighter next time if you don’t behave.”

“You’re always too damn loud. Hurts my fucking ears, you stupid brat.”

There was a grocery store nearby, and Hawks frantically searched through the shelves for anything with iron in it that was ready to eat. He grabbed a large container of raisins and an American brand of cereal that looked bland but had a decent amount of iron in it. He grabbed two water bottles as well, paid, and left before anyone could try and slow him down, feeling as the kid got up and moved somewhere softer. The man had left the attic by that point, and with no car in front of the house Hawks figured that he’d left. He dropped through the skylight, walking as quickly as he could, considering the creaks, towards the nest where his kid now lay. Their arms had been bandaged now, but with all the marks it couldn’t have been doing too much good. He could feel that they were still breathing, which was a small relief. Near the door out of the attic was a cold steak, left whole on a paper plate.

“I’m back. I brought some food.” The kid lolled their head towards his voice, and he knelt down as close as he could. They shied away at first, but reached out and grabbed his coat. He waited for them to let go, but their weak grip remained. Slowly, he opened the raisins and handed some of them to the kid. The arm not holding him didn’t move.

“Please, you have to eat. You’ll feel better, I promise, just please take a bite.” The kid stayed still. Their eyes drifted towards the food in his hand, but they made no other move. God, how much had they taken from this kid?

He slowly reached for his kid’s head. He opened their mouth as gently as he could manage, though they tried to pull away.

“It’s alright,” he said, speaking the way one might speak to an injured animal, low and even. It was enough to calm them a little, and they weren’t pulling as hard. “I’m trying to help. I need you to eat this, okay? Please, just…” He didn’t know what he was asking them for. Not to bite him? To eat? To be alright?

He was able to open their mouth and place a few raisins in. As soon as he let go they pulled their head slightly away. There was a long minute as they chewed the raisins, then swallowed, before they turned their head back towards Keigo and opened their mouth.

“Heh. Just like a little bird, huh?” He placed a few more raisins in their mouth, and they ate them just as slowly as the first.

He stayed with them for an hour, most of the time spent feeding them slowly. By the end they were leaning up and feeding themselves, shoveling handfuls of raisins and cereal into their mouth. He thanked God that the cereal was dry enough that they had to slow down to chew it, or he was certain they would have choked.

He handed them one of the waters, and they chugged it down while he used a feather to cut the steak into smaller pieces. He didn’t trust that they wouldn’t try to shove too much in their mouth and choke. It was the only time he’d seen food up there, and he was sure that his kid was already starving, even with the snacks he snuck in. He’d have to start doing that more often.

”Will you be alright?” he asked. He didn’t want to leave them alone here, not with what he knew.”

“Yes. Things do not feel pain.” They signed it like a mantra, like if they just said it enough it would become true.

“You aren’t a thing.” And then it hit him, plain as day.

“Seijin.” The kid glanced at him, and he signed it while he spoke. “Seijin. Your name.”

“Things do not have names.” Keigo was going to rip the man holding his kid to pieces when he got the chance. He didn’t even want to know what it had taken for this kid, for Seijin, to think of themself as less than human.

“You aren’t a thing. And I’m giving you a name, so you can’t be a thing.” The kid considered that, then shakily copied the signs he’d made for their name.

“Seijin. I am Seijin.” A smile started on their face, breaking into a grin as they signed their name over and over again. They noticed as he stood, letting out a short, high coo.

He signed that he was leaving, and they waved back before turning to the steak, shoving one piece into their mouth and then continuing to sign their name. Keigo grabbed the remains of the food he brought and the last recording device and left.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Chapter 3

1k words. Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!) Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of. Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Summary: Hawks crashes through a random roof during a fight with a villain, only to find that there's something in there that definitely shouldn't be.

A/N: Sorry that the updates are so far apart. The whole thing is written, but I only remember to actually post the chapters if I bring my computer to the dining center at the station since it's the only place that has wifi out here. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Keigo stopped by the house every day all winter, dropping through the skylight and trading out the old recording device with a fresh one, then putting all the information onto his work computer and sorting through it. Most of the day was silent, so he could skip it, listening only to the noise of the man that was keeping the kid trapped.

When he’d come back the day after the kid had seemed excited. They hadn’t stopped pacing silently, avoiding creaky spots and watching him with what he could only describe as hope. When he sat down to talk to them while sending his feathers to get the recording device, they had curled on the floor just inside the halo that the skylight let in. Out of his reach but still close.

As it got colder they would get closer, getting just inside his arms reach. He would reach out to them, occasionally, patting their shoulder to reassure them or brush some hair out of their face or otherwise fuss over them. They would tolerate the touch for a bare moment, before tensing and letting out a growl. He hadn’t heard it once. He’d almost lost a finger again.

Every time his hand withdrew the kid relaxed, then tensed again. They would glance between him and his hand a few times, but if he went in to reach out again they would scamper into the shadows.

They became more active a few days after he’d given them the blanket. He would sometimes enter the attic in time to see them leaping from box to box as silent as a cat. Once he’d caught them in the middle of moving their nest, one of the shirts he’d given them held in their teeth as they trotted across the floor on all fours, barely paying him notice.

He still came across them sickly every couple weeks, fresh bandages on their arms again. He’d try and comfort them as best he could, draping his jacket over them as they sat, leaving a few feathers with them when he left.

The second time he’d seen that he tried to sign to them. He knew they wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, talk. It wasn’t anything complex, just a very stilted Are you okay? The kid had almost come back to life, chirping and cooing before they held up their own hands to sign back.

Finally, he thought, some way to talk. But the kid froze for a minute, staring at their hands with knit brows. Slowly, they traced their index finger along their cheek then held up their pinky finger.

“Mother.”

Keigo tried to sign again and ask the kid if they were okay. This time, after signing mother, they placed their hand as if atop an invisible ball, then pointed to the ceiling and shook their hand.

“Where is my mother?”

“Your mother?” The kid nodded once in reply to his message, fumbling through the signs for alley and box, then the number 24. Keigo held a hand up to his shoulder, making a deliberate circle with his hand towards himself.

“I don’t understand.”

“Box. Alley. 24. Home. Where is my mother? Where is my home?”

He sat, staring at the kid for a moment as he put the pieces together. A box, in or near an alley, probably nearby something with the number 24 on it. That was their home. Some box on the street. He struggled through a few more signs.

“I don’t know. What’s your name?”

“What is a name?” He swallowed down the lump in his throat, trying desperately to remember the signs he’d been taught.

“What you’re called. My name is Ha- My name is Keigo.”

“Keigo.”

“Yes. What’s your name?”

“I have no name.” He felt his chest ache. Of course you have a name, he wanted to say. Everyone has a name. You had a mother, she must have called you something.

“I’m sorry,” was what he signed instead.

He needed to switch topics. He didn’t want to think about what someone would have to go through to forget their name. He’d find one for them. It was the very least they deserved.

“How did you get here?” The kid just stared at him. He pointed to the kid, gestured to the attic, tilted his head, hoping the message got across. The kid looked around, as if they were about to tell some huge secret.

The skylight had let in a dusting of snow that the kid had avoided so far, but they made the sign for mother and then laid in the snow for a minute. They got up from the snow, shaking it off. They glanced around the attic, pantomiming looking for something, then their eyes landed on the stairs leading down to the rest of the house and they curled into themselves.

Their mother had died in the cold. They went looking for help. Whoever was keeping them here had found them.

There were tears starting to trace down their cheeks, and he reached to try and wipe them away. The kid jerked back, then ever so slowly touched their cheek to Keigo’s outstretched hand. He didn’t move, and they pulled back after a few seconds, curling up on the floor out of his reach.

The creature hated that fact. The man’s- Keigo’s hands were warm and kind. They didn’t grab or hit or stab. But it was too much. The creature didn’t deserve that kindness, just like it didn’t deserve a name. It was only good for what the man did when he showed up, and even then it fought so much it could barely be considered useful.

It was why it was a creature, a thing, not a person. People did as they were told. People could understand what they were told. The creature was not a person. It couldn’t be. Not when it couldn’t hear enough to understand, not when what it did hear was incomprehensible, not when what the man made it hear was unbearable and disorienting.

The creature watched as Keigo stood, a sad look in his eyes as he waved before walking towards the light. The creature waved back, letting out the high rumble it felt in its throat but couldn’t hear. It didn’t mean “friend” anymore, it meant “Keigo” now. The creature saw the man smile, watched his lips move, heard something deep and muffled, felt the way the floor shook a little as his wings pushed him through the hole in the sky. Then it went back to its warm nest.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Thank you for the tip. If I ever start writing smut I will keep that in mind

the secret to writing good smut that doesn't feel like you're just repeating the same words for junk and fucking over and over is to spend your effort writing about everything happening around the sex and everything happening inside the heads of the people having sex and before you know it you have four paragraphs of introspection and two paragraphs describing the space and it's okay to use the word cock again

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Chapter 2

1.7k words. Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!) Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of. Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Summary: Hawks crashes through a random roof during a fight with a villain, only to find that there's something in there that definitely shouldn't be.

A/N: None, hope you enjoy!

The house, it turned out, belonged to a company and not a person. He’d never heard of it; it was selling some weird home remedy bullshit that Hawks was certain was completely made up. Normally, it would have been easy enough to track down whoever was running the company but it had 40 employees, each one owning an equal share in the company. The process of tracking all of them down and trying to pinpoint who the man was would be tedious at best and useless at worst.

The kid, in the meantime, was wary of him no matter what he did. But they weren’t outright scared. They’d watch as he landed in their attic, tried to talk to them. He offered a few gifts, stuff like food or clothing. The food was dragged away into the darkness, and though they didn’t touch the clothing while he was there, he didn’t see the pieces again.

He’d visit after every patrol, and he’d let other heroes in his agency know to keep an ear out in the neighborhood in case something were to happen. But he heard nothing. He’d asked a few neighbors about the man who lived there, only to hear that the place was mostly abandoned until a few weeks ago. A car would show up every couple weeks for an hour, then leave. It had been like that for years, and no one knew why. Every time neighbors tried to visit the house was empty. But there had definitely been a man there. Hawks would bet his position as number three that he had been the one to kill the sparrow. But no one in the neighborhood had seen him. He didn’t have a face, let alone a name.

He did know that the house had seen more use, specifically since he’d crashed through the roof. There was a car in the driveway once a day now at least, though all anyone could say about the driver was that they were big. The timing was random, sometimes it’d show up in the morning, sometimes the middle of the night. Which meant, to get a clear look, Hawks would need to get the clearance to set up a stakeout, something he couldn’t do without good reasoning. Stakeouts were reserved for true investigations, and as of now this was still a private project.

With the information he had now he could only justify an extraction operation for the kid. But he had the distinct feeling they wouldn’t appreciate a bunch of random officers busting into their space and dragging them into the light. Besides, if he did it at the wrong time he could miss their captor entirely and he’d walk free to take another kid.

“Why don’t you just get out of here? Fly off into the night? What’s stopping you?”  he asked them one night. He was sitting just inside the halo of light, and they were perched on one of the rafters. “I know you have wings. Why not go?”

Like every other night they remained silent and watched. Their gaze had turned from wary to curious, but they still kept their distance from him. He was becoming accustomed to their silence, and stretched out a wing to show them.

“Like these. You can fly away from here. Why stay?” He had given up the previous week on ever getting an answer. The kid hated making any kind of noise, and when they did make sounds they were chirps and growls and snarls and whines, never words. He was beginning to wonder if using sign language would be better than talking.

They stared at his wings. It seemed to be their favorite thing to do, aside from playing with the feathers he made float through the air. He was slowly learning where the creaky spots were based on what places the kid avoided stepping as they chased them.

Slowly from their perch, they extended a wing out. They weren’t the same sparrow wings Keigo had seen on their first meeting, but a reflection of his own, bright red and fluttering. But the wind whistled through the hole in the roof and whatever trance his wings had put the kid in was broken. They snapped the wings to their back and glanced towards the stairs the man took into the attic, as if he would walk through the door at any moment to tear them off. Maybe he would.

Fear, then. He couldn’t think of any of their meeting that hadn’t ended in the kid afraid, cowering behind some box or another. But it was time to start using what little trust he’d built up. He drew a small black box from a coat pocket and placed it in front of himself.

“This is a recording device,” he said into the silent attic, watching as the kid’s eyes followed the box. “It’ll record everything that happens until I see you next, okay?”

Still silence. Then a gentle thud, almost silent, as the kid hopped down. They crept forward on all fours, keeping eye contact with Keigo as they approached. They took their eyes off him as they observed the little box. Then they carefully placed a hand on it, glancing at him as if they expected him to pull it away. When he stayed still, they grabbed it and crawled away to observe the box.

He stood, walking quietly back to the hole, almost the perfect size to be a skylight. He gave the kid a little wave and, to his surprise, they slipped to the edge of the light and waved back. He smiled at them, spread his wings, and took off.

The next night was the first cold snap of the winter, and as he flew through the cold air on patrol he couldn’t help but wonder how his kid was doing. He stopped by a home goods store after patrol, buying the fluffiest, warmest blanket he could find. He didn’t know how much good it would do, but it had to be better than nothing, right?

“Hey, kid. It’s me. Are you here?” The attic was nearly silent. “I brought a blanket with me, in case you’re cold.” Still quiet. Then slow, gentle taps as the kid padded forward. They seemed exhausted, paler than usual, almost sick. The bandages on their arm were fresh, and dotted in a few places with red.

“What happened? Are you alright?” It took every ounce of self-control he had to keep his voice a whisper, to stay still. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to reach out and cradle the kid in front of him, to check them for injuries, to take them from this stuffy attic right then and there.

The kid just stared at him, no more comprehension as he spoke than there had been any other time. He bit back his concern. There would be no answers from them. He knelt down and draped the blanket around the kid. They seemed startled but too tired to do anything but freeze as he arranged the blanket to cover them.

“There. So you don’t freeze to death,” he said into the silence. Slowly he watched the kid rearranged the blanket around themself, tucking in the ends to form a small nest that they settled into.

They just laid there for a while, eyes half open, staring into the darkness. Keigo let a few feathers drift in their view in the hopes they’d bat at them like they usually did, but they just laid there. He sent another few out, looking for the recording device. It could only record so much audio, and he wanted to get a significant amount of evidence to make his case for a stakeout.

He found it, tucked under a thin cloth, next to a familiar wooden box with a feather glued to the top. He brought his device back, hitting the button to stop the recording, before pulling out a new one and handing it to the kid.

“I’m probably gonna be trading these out for a while. Gotta make sure my case is airtight so I can catch the bastard that’s keeping you here.” He placed the black box, recording started, in front of the nest for the kid to see. They were quick to reach for it and pull it into their nest, curling tightly around it and turning to stare into the darkness.

He didn’t mean to, really. He didn’t even think as he reached it hand out and gently rested it on the kid’s shoulder, trying to reassure them, trying to make it clear that it would all work out. That he’d get them out.

They turned and snapped at his hand, terror in their eyes for half a second before they seemed to realize who he was. They curled into the nest more, staring, waiting for him to move from where he’d yanked his hand back. Instead, he smiled softly and stood.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. See you tomorrow, kid.” He stepped back towards the skylight, preparing to take off when a short coo stopped him. The kid was still laying in the nest, but their head was up now, silently pleading with him, though for what he didn’t know.

“I’ll be back. I promise.” And then he took off.

The creature stayed huddled in its nest for a moment, watching the kind man through the hole in its sky. It hoped that he would be back tomorrow, that he would offer some reprieve from their loneliness again. That he would offer that kind hand again.

It had been so long since it had felt something so gentle from a person. It wished it hadn’t tried to bite him, hadn’t scared him away. But it didn’t want to be tied to the floor again.

Slowly, it rose from the floor, dragging the large, soft thing to the nest. The soft thing was at least twice as warm as its nest, and it was much larger too. Perhaps the creature could make a bigger nest, once it recovered.

It tucked the black box next to the wooden one that held the creature’s friend. Nothing much remained of it now, save some bones and an awful smell, but the creature could not bear to part with it, even if it would be safer to destroy any sign of the kind man. It crawled into the nest, pulling the soft thing over top of it for warmth. It was careful of its arms, sore from the angry man and the things that he stabbed the creature with. As it pulled the soft thing over its head, it closed its eyes to sleep, dreaming of seeing the kind man soon.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Olivia Is Missing

June 29th

Olivia is missing.

We don’t really know what happened, she just didn’t show up to work. It was fine that first day, we got the food out for everyone, only had some minor panic attacks, just a usual day. No one really noticed she was actually missing until a couple days later. Someone went looking for her, because Jake finally noticed she hadn’t been in for a few days, and no one could find her.

We packed lunches for the search parties an hour ago, even for the police and firefighters that showed up from town. We appreciate them coming to look for her. We’d appreciate it more if they let us look for her too. Instead we have to prepare dinner for when they come back. We’re setting a plate aside specifically for her.

July 5th

I thought I saw her. God, she was right in front of me. It was awful. She was right outside the door when I got up for work. I almost wish I hadn’t. She was all bloody and ripped apart and I don’t remember screaming but I guess I did, since I woke the others up.

She wasn’t there, not really, but I swear I could have reached out and touched her. Jasmine thinks I was sleepwalking, but I’ve never done that before and I don’t have the haunted bed (some poor guy in West 4 has it; I woke him up on the bridge one night).

They gave up searching a few days ago. They think she’s dead. I do too, now. No one could look like what I saw and still be alive.

July 12th

Everyone’s doing okay. It’s been two weeks since Olivia disappeared. Things are getting back to normal. Alice is still a wreck, those two were so close. Jake is too, she was one of the interns he already knew when everyone came back this summer. Sometimes they just sit together and look out at the lake.

It’s weird. I took the drive to town a few days ago and I stopped by that vietnamese place she mentioned. It’s as good as she said. I wish I’d gone with her and the rest, one of those nights in the first couple weeks. But town is so far away, and I had to get up early. I have the morning shift. Olivia never did.

July 14th

Jasmine is missing.

She wasn’t here last night when I went to bed, which isn’t odd because I’m the first to go to sleep usually. But I’m the first up and she wasn’t there and something felt wrong and no one saw her leave the lab under the dining hall last night. She doesn’t leave that late, there’s still people in the library. Mike’s called the cops again. I don’t get to be a part of the search. It’s Saturday, I still work. I’m stuck packing lunches and making dinner again.

July 14th

They found her. Oh my god, they found her. What’s left of her. She was still breathing when the helicopter got here, everyone told her to just keep fighting.

She won’t make it.

They think it was a bear turned maneater, but no bear could’ve done that. They’re going to let hunters know. No one’s allowed to walk alone anymore.

Her stuff’s still in the cabin. I don’t even want to look at it. We weren’t close, but she was still a friend, sort of. I just keep looking at her bed and seeing her lying on it like she was lying on that stretcher getting loaded into the helicopter. She’s not coming back.

Everyone else at the station gets the time to mourn. We still have to get up and make breakfast. There’s a truck coming in today. We’re going to make breakfast tacos tomorrow. She liked those.

July 17th

Everyone’s tense now. The hunters scoured every inch of land in the station proper and the prairies surrounding and said there’s no sign of a bear, or a mountain lion, not even a coyote. Some of them mentioned they were waiting for someone to get back before taking the hour and a half long drive to town again. Some of them didn’t show up.

Jake’s making chickpea curry for dinner. I know, I’m waiting for my cabin mates, Margret and Lisa, so that we can go to the cabin. Whatever’s going on, no one wants to be next.

Jake’s as pissed as the rest of us. Mike’s trying to get the station shut down for the summer until we can find everyone that went missing. We all know Yucca Peak demands blood, but not like this. People don’t die, they just get hurt.

July 20th

Three people went missing. I didn’t know most of them, they were just here for a class. Here for a moon cycle, as Mike likes to say. Liked to say. He’s talking to the university about shutting down the summer programs out here, but he’s not getting very far. The university doesn’t want to have to pay people back for the canceled classes. They don’t  understand the situation out here.

I thought I saw them. All five of them. Margaret was sick and in the cabin, but Lisa was with me. She saw them too. Lake said they’re seeing the same stuff. At least I’m not the only one going crazy.

Some of the students are leaving. I can’t blame them. Five people in three weeks. More, if you count the hunters that didn’t come back. The professors are still teaching, but Margaret and Lisa say that not much gets done. Everyone’s too scared to go out looking for snakes. You get too far apart from other people, and no one wants to be the next missing person.

July 21st

Margaret is missing.

July 23rd

Something cut power to the station. No one wants to use their phones or computers. We don’t have wifi out here. We barely have a cell signal. Mike radioed the town to ask for help getting electricity back but he couldn’t get through to them.

Half the people are gone now. I was going to leave too, before Margaret. I couldn’t leave Lisa alone, those two were best friends. Some people are moving their things into the dining hall so they don’t have to go out at night. I’m trying to convince Lisa and Alice to do the same. Kitchen-Mike and Cole already have. We have to do it soon, or all the space will be taken and we’ll have to be in the library.

July 24th

Something cut the tires on all the cars left here. We don’t know if the water’s clean. We’re boiling it in the fireplace and letting it cool when we want a drink. We can’t run the oven or the grill. We haven’t been able to get food in.

Mike walked the two miles to get to the mailbox. We’re hoping the snail mail gets to the University, someone in town, anywhere. We’re trapped out here. Mike’s looking through every book he can with Jake to see what can be foraged, if we can find enough for the 45 people still here.

Jordan keeps saying this is all just a series of coincidences. Really unfortunate coincidences. I think he’s in denial. Especially since five more people are gone. Alice among them.

Lake said they saw the hunters coming back from the bathhouse with Kitchen-Mike. I’ve been seeing Margaret and Olivia the most. They look like they’re trying to say something, but I can never hear them.

They all look so horrifying.

July 27th

There’s not much to forage out here. At least, there isn’t enough for everyone. The water got cut off too, so we only have the lake. No one’s swam in it in years, not since it got treated for E. coli. We boil it for twenty minutes instead of ten.

Some people got fed up and decided to take their chances walking to town. I hope they make it. Heaven knows we need to help.

More people are going missing. Since the water got cut off the plumbing doesn’t work in the bathhouse. There’s no bathrooms, no showers, no real sign that help is coming. There’s 30 of us now. Some left, some went missing. People are starting to starve. It’s been a month and a half since this all started.

I want it all to be over. I want to go home. I want to hug my parents, my siblings, my girlfriend, my dog. I want to punch whichever university bigwig pushed back at Mike for wanting to shut Yucca peak down for the summer. I want to leave here and never come back.

The vultures are all circling over the mountain, day in and day out. We make up stories about why. It’s not like we have much else to do. Class has stopped and no one is out working, except for bringing in water and going out in pairs to try and find food.

A few people brought instruments. They play songs, but only during the day. Once the sun sets it’s lights out and we don’t dare make a sound.

August 2nd

Lisa had water duty with Jordan today. They haven’t come back.

I want to go home.

August 3rd

They found Jordan in the lake. Pieces of him. We buried what we could. Everyone’s seen them now, whatever you want to call these things we keep seeing. Ghosts, spirits, collective hallucinations. No one wants to open doors. They like to pop up when you do that. We’re stuck in the dining hall without food or water. There’s 24 of us now. There were nearly a hundred before this all started.

I want to wake up from this nightmare. I want to wake up and have this all be a dream, for Olivia and Jasmine and Margaret and Lisa to all still be here. Those of us left of the kitchen staff stick close. It started with us, and if nothing else it’ll end with us.

Jake tries to keep our spirits up, but it’s kinda hard, especially now that no one’s going out to get water and stuff. It always feels like there’s something watching us, waiting for a slip up, an opportunity to grab someone else. It’s already taken so many of us. I don’t think it’ll stop until we’re all gone.

August 7th

I saw it. I don’t know what that thing was, but I saw it. It got impatient, it snuck into the lodge. It grabbed Lake. I heard them screaming. They were out the door before I could do much, but the thing looked almost human. It was too long and too tall, though, and it’s skin looked like a corpse and the look in its eyes wasn’t human.

I froze. I froze as that… thing dragged Lake out the door. I saw their eyes. They screamed for my help. I can hear them still screaming a little ways away. Whatever it is, it wants us to know it’s there.

We’re barricading the doors tonight.

I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.

August 9th

We can’t stay here. The barricades didn’t work. There’s 19 of us now. We’re getting what we can and we’re going to walk to town together. I hope we make it.

I’m going to use the last of my battery to call my mom. Tell her I love her and Dad and the kids and all that. In case we don’t make it. In case that thing gets to us first.

August 10th

It found us on the road. It got Mike and Cole, but it was too preoccupied to follow us. We weren’t carrying much but water bottles which is why we managed to get away. I can’t… I can. I can believe that all happened. I do believe it all happened. I have the malnourishment to prove it. Dad’s going to pick me up from the hospital once I get discharged. He’s across the state, but it doesn’t matter to him. He’ll book a hotel for the night and leave the morning after I get released.

None of us wanted to be alone. We’re all in adjacent rooms, two or three to a room. The nurses don’t like it, but being alone still feels like a death sentence. At least there’s sound here. Beeping monitors and footsteps all the time. The air is stale and cool, not free and warm like at the station.

We’re all having nightmares. I think we all will for a long time. The cops tried to ask us about what happened, but they don't believe us. You can see it in their eyes. We told them about the mountains, the vultures. They said they’d check it out, even though we told them not to. I don’t think they’ll come back.

We’re all trading numbers. Our phones are all dead, we left the cords behind, but when we get back from wherever we all came from we’re going to make a group chat. I can’t imagine talking about this to anyone who doesn’t know right now. Not after the cops.

No one but the nurses believes us. If we don’t stick together, I don’t think we’ll last very long. I’ve heard about tragedies happening, survivors killing themselves in the aftermath. We’ve been through so much, we have to survive. We have to. I’m scared that if we die that thing will come for us, take our bodies since it couldn’t take our lives.

I can still hear them, everyone who died. I swear I can hear a scream down the hall, like that thing managed to travel all the way here. I know it isn’t likely, but after everything that’s happened it feels more likely than not. No one’s died, though. We’re all hearing the screams. Even the nurses. I think it’s why they believe us.

I’ll be here for another week at least. Then I’ll have to figure out how to keep living. I don’t think I can go back to school right now. I don’t think I can do much of anything. Not when I can still see Olivia standing outside the door. I can hear her now.

She wants to know why we didn’t run when she told us to.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Chapter 1

2.4k words. Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!)Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of. Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Summary: Hawks crashes through a random roof during a fight with a villain, only to find that there's something in there that definitely shouldn't be.

A/N: I am nothing if not a sucker for mistreated people finding that there are good people in the world. I've also been on the Hawks brainrot for a hot minute and finally managed to write this out. I don't know how many chapters it's going to be, but that's purely because I haven't split it up into chapters yet. Anyways, hope you enjoy!

It had been days since the giant villain attacked Fukuoka. Hawks had managed to get all the paperwork done, arranging to stop by the house to collect the remainder of his feathers and speak to the homeowner about their roof. He had the forms they would need to sign to allow him to hire construction and technically “alter” their home, as well as an extra pen in case they wanted an autograph. He’d gone without one exactly once, and it was the one time the person he needed to talk to had been a massive, raging fan that also didn’t own a single pen in their house.

He tried to remember where the villain was, how far he’d been flung. It gave him the neighborhood to look in, at least, and he took off for patrol about twenty minutes early just to be sure he could get the insurance taken care of. The flight there was peaceful, quiet. He waved to the few people who looked up and spotted him, texted a few fellow heroes, and enjoyed the feeling of late autumn wind in his feathers. He was already close enough that he could start pulling them to him.

Four or five shot through the sky towards him, and he homed in on the area they’d come from. One was missing though, encountering resistance as it tried to return to him. He tried a little harder, and the resistance only grew. He focused on the feather, feeling through it. He didn’t get much. Something warm and skin-like, and what sounded like breathing. Probably some critter in the attic that liked the color.

He landed in front of the door, double checked his paperwork and pen, and knocked on the door.

No answer.

He waited a minute more and knocked again. Again, there was no response. He tried the doorbell, and the breathing he felt through his feather stopped. Whatever was pinning the feather became damp, and it felt like the delicate thing was being squeezed. It was too strong a grip to be a small pest like a squirrel. Something felt wrong about the whole situation, and he took off again, landing on the roof and glancing into the hole he’d accidentally made days prior.

The shadows were too dark to see into, and the hero carefully slipped through the hole, avoiding the rafters that he was astonished he’d missed when he got thrown. He touched down, boards creaking under his feet. Whatever had his feather squeezed tighter still, and he could start to feel a racing heartbeat. This thing, whatever it was, could see him.

He pulled a small flashlight from one of his jacket pockets, thankful he’d been about to go on patrol. The small circle of blueish light contrasted sharply, almost unnaturally, with the warm light of the sun streaming from the roof. His footsteps thumped quietly against the wood boards as he swept the light around the attic. There were a few boxes stacked around, covered in uneven layers of dust, but they were mostly pushed to the walls. Most of the attic was open to wander. He stepped out of the circle of light, sweeping his flashlight around as it glinted off something and passed over boxes.

He slowly brought the light back until it caused the same thing to glint again. Two somethings, actually. Low to the ground and connected to some darker shape in the shadows. The shape was at once too big and too small, a gangly outline that lent the thing the air of a starving predator. It was crouched awkwardly, as if covering something, and it had begun growling at him. It was a quiet thing, one that he felt through his feather too.

He brought the light to shine directly on the creature, hoping to startle it back enough for him to let him retreat out of the attic. He had no idea if this thing had been here when he’d first fallen, why it was in an attic of all places, but he wanted nothing to do with whatever this thing turned out to be.

But it wasn’t a thing that his flashlight found. It was a person. Worse, it was a child. Thin and pale as if they had never seen the sun, crouched on all fours like a wild animal. They were quick to squint their eyes, refusing to close them entirely. Their teeth were bared, but dull and human as they were they wouldn’t likely be able to do too much damage.

The kid did rear back, letting Hawks get a good look at the tattered clothes they were dressed in and the dust built up on their skin. He saw the dirty bandages wrapped up and down the kid’s arms, beginning to fray and tatter but still somehow tied. He could see his feather, clutched tight in their left hand and fluttering to get back to him. And he could see a small sparrow underneath their chest.

He pulled the light away, both so he wouldn’t blind the kid and so he didn’t have to look at the mutilated bird anymore. Its wings had been snapped the wrong way at the joints, its beak had been broken, and it had been nailed to the floor with three nails. One through each wing, and one through the chest. Had the kid done that? He didn’t doubt it with how they were glaring at him now, murder in their eyes as they bared their teeth.

“Sorry about that,” he said, as calmly as he could. He didn’t want this kid to get aggressive with him, he needed them to be calm so he could escape and get the proper authorities. He tried to step backwards, only for the kid to snarl and swipe at him. Their nails were surprisingly long and sharp, and his foot landed further back than he intended at first. The kid withdrew, crouching over their mutilated sparrow.

“Alright, I get it. I’ll stay still.” He brought his other foot back, only for it to crunch on glass. He peered closer at his feet, seeing wires and glass. It looked, at first glance, like the smashed remains of a camera. But the only reason to have a camera in a closed attic that no one lived in was to keep an eye on something.

Or someone.

The kid was still glaring at him, though they had stopped baring their teeth. He gestured at the feather gripped in their hand.

“I need that back, alright? I can get you out of here, but I need my feather. Can I have it?” He held out his hand for the feather, gently pulling to him again. The kid crouched lower to the dead bird, hissing at him and splaying sparrow wings that he hadn’t seen earlier.

“I’m not trying to take your… your friend. I just need my feather back. See?” A few feathers drifted from his wings and hovered around his hands, dancing in the shadows. The kid froze, watching the display. Their eyes widened, tracking one feather, then the next, as their grip slowly loosened on the stolen feather. He started to slip it from their hand, only for them to snatch it back with a distressed, almost feline chirp, and pull it back close to the bird. They almost tucked it under the body, staring at him in fear and not a little anger.

The kid curled around over top of the bird and feather, as if keeping them safe from him. But the kid didn’t have a good grip, and he was able to slip the feather away from them. He felt bad, they looked ready to cry. But they didn’t make another sound, just stared after the feather as it and the rest attached themselves to Hawks’ wings.

He could hear the front door opening, and he watched as the kid went from tearful to terrified, freezing, staring at nothing. But as the door closed they bared their teeth again and snarled at him, advancing as he stood to retreat. The snarls were much louder than earlier, loud enough to be heard at least a floor down.

“Oi, brat! What’s with the fuckin’ noise?” a man’s voice shouted from the ground floor. He was stomping up the stairs ever closer, each step causing the kid to flinch as they backed Hawks towards the light. He stepped on a creaky floorboard, and heard the kid stifle a whimper as the man below him cursed. He took off through the hole in the roof, leaving a feather or two behind while he crouched on a nearby roof.

“What’s with the damn ruckus?” His feathers picked up on the man’s footsteps and the low crooning from the kid. He felt the man pick one up, hands softer than the kids had felt. Then he chuckled.

“Scaring off more birds, eh? Hm. Good brat. Catching that last one was damn annoying. Good to see you learned your lesson about keeping pets. Now stay. I’m sleeping here tonight, and I don’t want you to ruin my night by making a damn peep.”

The man’s footsteps retreated, down a set of stairs Hawks hadn’t seen, and closed a door behind him. He pulled his feathers from the attic, seething as he stared over the roofs in the neighborhood. He hadn’t tracked down who owned the house, but he would make a point to now.

He remembered the kid clinging to his feather and sent one of his secondaries back to them. He felt them snatch it from the air and gently place it on something soft. The sparrow, he thought. He said something about pets, that has to be why they were so protective of it. They’re trying to make a grave as best they can.

He pulled out his phone as he took off for patrol. He had to get an investigation going into whoever that man was, whoever the kid in the attic was. And he had to make a stop before he came back tonight.

It took him a while in the craft shop, partially because one of the late-night staff was a fan and partly because he needed to be certain he had the right materials. The moon was dull, its light filtered through clouds and only just providing enough light to see. He was thankful for the feather he’d left, leading him to the hole in the roof that he dropped through. Even with the clouds, there was still a halo of light where he stood compared to the rest of the attic.

The growling started up immediately this time, and he shone his flashlight near where he heard it. The kid was still crouched over the bird, his feather carefully laid across the small body.

“Hey, it’s just me.” It didn’t seem to reassure the kid, and he tried to take a slow step forward. The kid swiped at him again, but not close enough to actually strike him. A calculated feint. His foot landed on the floorboard, and the creak it let out seemed to hit the kid like a blow. They let out a quiet yelp and shrunk back from him, turning their head away for half a second, before snapping it back and quietly snarling at him.

“Sorry. I’ll try to keep it down,” he muttered, slowly kneeling down an inch from where his foot had been. They kept growling at him until he’d been sitting still for three minutes. They kept glaring at him as he slowly reached for the bag he’d brought with him, cursing that he hadn’t just carried his supplies in his pockets.

The rustle of the plastic bag startled them, but he was able to slowly withdraw the wooden box and the glue he’d bought. It was a simple, plain wooden box with a flip lock, the kind people would buy to let their kids paint, but it was big enough to fit the sparrow’s body in, he hoped.

“It’s for your friend,” he explained, but the kid just kept glaring at him and the box. “I know you can’t properly bury them, but they can at least have a coffin, right?” They didn’t move. “I’m gonna put them in here, okay? I promise I’ll be gentle.” He reached towards the kid and their bird only to be met with more quiet growling.

“I’m just trying to help. Please don’t-” the kid lunged for his hand, placing their hand wide. It put them slightly off balance, which was the only thing that let him pull his hand away from their snapping teeth. Human they may be, but he’d still rather not find out what kind of damage their teeth could do.

He sighed, letting some feathers fall from his wings to dance around them again. It had worked before, maybe it would work again.

The kid watched them dance, eyes going wide again as they followed the twirling red feathers. He carefully sent a few down feathers towards the nails in the bird when the kid raised a hand to softly swipe at the feathers dancing above their head. Just one hand, but it was enough to slip them through.

The nails were carefully laid on the ground to avoid making noise, and the bird was in his hand before the kid noticed. They curled in on themself, whining as they watched him handling the dead bird. It jostled some, and they looked like they wanted to lunge at him, but some invisible force held them back. Fear did that to people; he’d seen it before.

He carefully placed the bird into the box and closed it. He flipped the flimsy, ill-fitting latch, and pulled one of his feathers from his wing and used the glue to stick it to the box. His work done, he carefully slid the box across the floor. The gentle scraping seemed to grate on the kid’s ears, and they snatched the box from him and scuttled further into the darkness. He waited for them to return, but they didn’t come back.

He stood slowly, testing each footstep as he walked the few feet to the light. The last thing he wanted was to scare the poor kid worse or wake the man sleeping here. He flew up and out of the hole before poking his head back down.

“Night, kid. I’ll see you soon.”

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Skylight: Prologue

480 words Hawks and an OC (Not Romantic!) Fluff with some angst, Found family sort of Content Warnings: Cursing, isolation, mentions of abuse, blood-letting, let me know if I missed any

Hawks crashes through a random roof during a fight with a villain, only to find that there's something in there that definitely shouldn't be.

AN: Had to edit the last few paragraphs after posting originally, since I realized I added a detail I didn't mean to that sort of throws off some of the oc characterization.

As days went, Hawks felt like his could be going far worse. Sure, some giant villain had just thrown him a good four blocks from the fight, sure he was crashing through some random civilians roof, and sure, a few of his feathers were shed, fluttering somewhere into the darkness of the attic he was now laying in. But hey! None of his bones were broken. He wasn’t concussed, by some miracle. And the few cuts and scrapes he got from the roof were minor, treatable with some disinfectant and a bandage.

He hauled himself to his feet, ignoring the smashed wood as he called most of his feathers back to his wings. A few were trapped under the wood, and he didn’t have time to put in more effort to get them out. He’d come back for them later, probably when he explained to the owner of the house what exactly had happened. His agency had an entire account set aside for helping repair damage to civilian property, as was standard, and a roof patch wasn’t that big a deal anyway.

He pushed all that aside as he took off through the him sized hole in the ceiling, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake as his wings beat, pulling him into the air and taking him back towards the fight. It would be over quickly once he arrived, and he was already planning the quickest, least damaging way to take the villain down, letting his lost feathers slip to the back of his mind.

The attic stood seemingly empty, shadows seeming all the darker for the beam of light that now shone down onto the old wood. The dust slowly settled to the ground, and the faint sounds of battle could be missed, if one didn’t pay close attention.

A shape moved in the darkness. It was silent, stalking closer to the light but not daring to leave the shadows. It squinted in the new brightness, eyes unused to the light after so long in darkness. It looked at the smashed wood, the circle of light landing like a halo on one bright red feather, discarded for the time being. The thing crept closer, daring to creep into the light enough to snatch the colorful thing, before scuttling on silent feet back into the shadows to admire its prize.

Movement caught the thing’s attention, something small dropping from the hole in the roof. It glared, light stinging its eyes as it stared at this new thing, a much smaller creature with a beak, barely the size of a fist. It hopped into the attic, staring at the creature that sat so very still. The small creature hopped closer, flapping wings covered in the same soft things the creature in the attic held, though much smaller, and opening and closing its little beak. The creature slowly reached its hand towards the smaller, softer, hopping creature.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

A Well-Tempered Blade

Chapter 8: Unyielding Truth

Summary: Katherine has a lousy quirk. At least, that's what everyone says. After all, who would want to be able to mimic any sound they hear? That's no quirk for a hero. But Katherine's quirk is not mimicry, but something worse; something that would get her labelled a villain the second she revealed it. So to keep her family she hides her quirk, not even telling her closest friends her secret. But secrets must eventually come into the lights, and Katherine's are no exception. 1.6k/16k, no romance, angst? oc

A/N: Yeah, final chapter! I hope you've liked the fic up to this point, and if you have any remaining questions I would be more than happy to answer them. Just a little note that I thought was funny, this chapter should be releasing on the last day of my second semester of college. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy!

Content Warnings (will be announced by the chapter): Knives, praising suicide, death, blood, gore, I think? Let me know if I missed any.

It had been weeks since she had gone missing. There hadn’t even been so much as a mention of her disappearance. It made sense to Katherine. She had, after all, tried her very best to stay under the radar. But still, it hurt. She’d had a job, after all, and friends in her apartment building. Had they even filed a missing person’s report?

The League didn’t particularly mind. Less attention went to them that way. It meant their little plan could easily be carried out.

Dabi had quickly introduced Katherine to the rest of the League, after her surrender, and while some were more friendly, Dabi and Shigaraki seemed to have no qualms about holding her secret over her head at all times. She supposed the strategy had worked, though. She hadn’t even tried to run once.

Not even now.

“It’s the League of Villains!” someone screamed. People ran past Katherine as she stood from the bench she’d been positioned at and started running past the tall buildings herself. This was not an escape plan. If she ran, truly ran, she’d be exposed. No, this was so that it could look random, like she was just picked out of a crowd.

She felt herself being drawn into Compress’s marble, felt the marble being scooped up and held, jostled around. Katherine couldn’t do much about the strange feeling from inside the marble, but she’d be sure to be more passive aggressive than usual when she got back.

Without warning, she was brought from the marble to the street. She felt Dabi’s hand wrapping around her neck through the sweatshirt she’d been given to hide her scars. The unusual heat was a dead giveaway that it was the flame user. They had gone over this plan back at the base. She was to act scared for whatever hero was there, and it was not difficult.

She almost faltered when she saw Kai, fully outfitted in his Rapids hero costume, standing before her with two of his sidekicks. She was vaguely confused for a moment, but the confusion was overshadowed with relief. An asshole he might be at the agency, but he was still a hero out on the streets. He would rescue Katherine from this situation, like he’d rescued countless others.

“Well, hero? Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to make a choice?” Shigaraki called from behind her, and she felt Dabi’s hand heat even further. This had not been part of the plan, and her fear grew to the point that tears began trickling down her cheeks.

“Please, Kai! Help me!” Katherine screamed. This was also not part of the plan, but in that moment she forgot all about her secret. All she could think about was that they would kill her if Kai didn’t save her.

“Well, Kai,” Dabi spat, “what’s it gonna be? You, or her?” Katherine silently begged Kai to get her out. To take her back home, away from the villains that had started to sound a little too sane, where she could get back to her life.

“Keep her.” Katherine felt like her heart had turned to ice. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Those words were not supposed to leave the lips of people that called themselves heroes.

“Did you even bother to look at who you kidnapped?” Kai let out a barking laugh, wiping an imaginary tear. “She’s been useless ever since we were kids! She could copy what she heard, what kind of quirk is that? She couldn’t even make it into the c-list hero courses!

“She’s just a burden to society, chasing after a dream she knew couldn’t be achieved. She even encouraged Sunē to try and do the same, even though we all knew she was going to be a villain. It’s a good thing she realized it and offed herself before she ended up that way.”

Katherine just stared at Kai. He’d recognized her. Had he always known? Or had he figured it out when she called him by his name?

But then, why wasn’t he saving her? He was a hero, he was supposed to save people. But here he was, leaving her to be killed or worse by villains, but why? It took very little effort for her to remember those times on the playground, through middle school, when Kai had shamelessly let her and Sunē take a beating, then check on them later. He had always been too scared to actually get hurt.

And Sunē.

Those things he’d said about her. That had been his friend at one point, how could he believe she would be a villain? He knew her, almost as well as Katherine did! But that last comment, that praise of Sunē’s actions ten years ago…

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Katherine’s eyes, a moment ago so full of fear and confusion, hardened with nothing short of absolute hate. She began muttering, barely moving her lips as the sounds bounced off the buildings on the street around them. The voices sounded like a crowd of people, whispering. How useful ventriloquism was turning out to be.

“Did you hear what he just said?”

“He’s not going to save her?”

“Isn’t he supposed to be a hero?”

“Why aren’t the sidekicks doing anything about this?”

“Is he just going to let those villains go?”

Kai’s sidekicks began looking around, trying to find prying eyes that did not exist. All the civilians had long since evacuated. It meant they didn’t have to see what happened next.

With a flick of her wrist, Katherine sent a dagger to the sidekick on the left. It went straight through his eye and out the back of his head. He dropped, blood beginning to pool under his head as Kai and the other sidekick turned to his body.

The knife looped behind the two, stabbing the poor man in the throat. His death was slower. Katherine and the League watched without sympathy as he bled out as Kai watched in horror. Katherine wondered if he’d ever seen death before.

She held her hand up and the knife flew to it, stabbing in and being reabsorbed. It left a nasty cut, but she didn’t care. It got Kai’s attention, and that was what mattered. He turned to her with wide eyes and blood spattered on his mask from the sidekick that had been stabbed in the throat.

“You… no. No, your quirk is mimicry. You told me, you told everyone!” he shouted, as if it would save him. He stood, preparing a blast as Katherine unzipped the sweatshirt and slid it off, revealing her arms to the sun for the first time in years. The scars tracing up and down them caused Kai to falter.

“Yes, I did. And you called yourself a hero.” Katherine grew a katana from her arm, the same that she had made for Sunē with the snake slithering down its length. Dabi released her neck, and she heard his heavy boots take one step back. Kai, recognising the threat, shot a large burst of water at Katherine.

But she had trained with him for years. She knew his attacks could be split, watched Sunē do it with sturdy branches countless times in the park. So she held up the katana and let the water flow to either side of her as the League scattered behind her. Kai saw her still standing, anger on his face.

“I am a hero! I have the certification! I have an agency! You work there!” Katherine charged forward as he opened his mouth to continue yelling, stabbing her katana through his stomach to silence him.

It pierced all the way through his body, sticking a foot or two out of his back. Kai, caught off guard, looked down at the blade, buried to the hilt in his stomach, and fell to his knees.

“No. You weren’t a hero,” she said. With a small flourish, she removed the blade from her childhood friend’s stomach, savoring the small noise of pain he made at the movement, and his reflexive clutching at the wound.

“You were just a part of the problem.” With a vicious swing, Katherine took Kai’s head off. It thudded wetly on the pavement, his body following suit with an air of finality.

The street in front of Katherine was stained red, the blood of the three people before her mixing into one big puddle. The blood began to flow around her shoes, and she found herself numb to it as she stared at her handy work.

A warm hand rested on her left shoulder, and she turned her head to look Dabi in the eye. His smirk, while still sadistic, seemed less sharp than usual.

“Pretty good for someone who isn’t a villain,” he said. Katherine blinked, looking back to the katana in her hand. She began reabsorbing it, speaking as she did.

“I am a villain. I think I have been since I decided to hide my quirk to keep my family.” As the katana finished being absorbed, Toga tackled her in a hug from the right.

“That was so cool, Kat! Does that mean you’ll stay with us? We can be knife buddies! I promise not to cut you too much!” Toga pleaded, glancing up at Katherine’s steel gray eyes. 

With a small smile, she placed a hand on Toga’s head, ruffling the younger girl’s hair. She couldn’t help but see a piece of Sunē in the girl’s unabashed excitement and bright yellow eyes. Katherine sighed, and when she inhaled again it felt like she was filling her lungs for the first time.

“I suppose it does,” she said.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

A Well-Tempered Blade

Chapter 7: Consequences

Summary: Katherine has a lousy quirk. At least, that's what everyone says. After all, who would want to be able to mimic any sound they hear? That's no quirk for a hero. But Katherine's quirk is not mimicry, but something worse; something that would get her labelled a villain the second she revealed it. So to keep her family she hides her quirk, not even telling her closest friends her secret. But secrets must eventually come into the lights, and Katherine's are no exception. 2.6k/16k, no romance, angst? oc

A/N: It's really late as I'm scheduling this and I'm having a hard time coming up with notes for this chapter. This was probably the second solid scene I had for Katherine, concept wise, though it did have some changes made to it. That said, I'm very tired, but I hope you enjoy!

Content Warnings (will be announced by the chapter): Home invasion, I think? kidnapping, interrogation, sexual harassment, knives, blackmail. Let me know if I missed any.

Katherine trudged up the building’s stairs. The re-sorting all of those files had taken five exhausting hours, even with Lily taking half the workload. But by the end of it, the files were sorted and Lily turned them in to her supervisor. She had also promised Katherine a nice dinner in thanks.

Katherine unlocked her door, dropping her bag once she shut it behind her. She slipped off her work shoes, a pair of usually comfortable black heels that had become near unbearable, and left them by the door. She walked into her room, changing out of her work suit and into a comfortable, long sleeved t-shirt, sweatpants, and a pair of house slippers.

She took out her hair, letting the tight bun she’d been in all day fall into long, straight, black hair. She opened the drawers on the table next to her bed and gave it a quick brush so she could just eat and go to bed.

She strolled out of her room, usually straight shoulders slightly stooped under the weight of a long day. She had some leftover curry from a few days ago, even if she was too tired to cook rice. Her mother had used toast when she didn’t want to make rice, Katherine remembered. She pulled the bread out of her pantry, slotting a few pieces into her toaster before pulling out the curry.

She slipped the leftovers onto the plate, pausing briefly when she heard a creak. Just as quickly as she’d heard the noise, she dismissed it. It probably was just the building settling for the night.

Dabi silently cursed the floorboards. He’d been walking around this apartment for hours, how was it that he managed to miss this one creaky spot? Thankfully, Katherine discarded the noise.

The microwave was on now, humming as it heated up something or other. He opened the door to the spare bedroom, slowly walking out to avoid making more noise.

The microwave stopped with a few beeps. Opened with a click. A plate slid onto the counter as the microwave door clicked shut. The toaster popped a moment later. A drawer slid open and shut, silverware clinked, and a knife scratched against a piece of toast.

Dabi stopped walking, only a few feet from being seen from the kitchen or dining room. He knew Katherine always ate with her back to this hall. He’d been watching her for weeks, after all. Little habits like this were important to know, when you were thinking about kidnapping someone.

Katherine pulled out her chair and collapsed into it with a tired sigh. She used the butter knife and pushed some of the curry onto her toast. She didn’t know if she’d have the energy to eat, at this rate. Her eyes were already drooping, and she was tired enough that she imagined footsteps approaching her.

A cloth pressed against her mouth and nose, and arm running around her body and pinning her arms to her sides. She jumped in surprise and tried to scream, taking a breath of the sweet fumes coming from the rag.

She kicked, trying to push her chair back and give herself some mobility, but whoever was there had set themself so she couldn’t. As she writhed, trying to hold her breath after that first inhale, she started to get dizzy.

“Goodnight,” her attacker whispered in her ears as she stopped fighting to escape. She was just fighting to stay awake at this point, a losing battle. She closed her eyes, and no matter how hard she fought she couldn’t get them to open again. She could feel the cloth being removed from her face, her limp body being picked up, but it felt distant. Insignificant. She finally passed out all the way, hoping that this was all another bad dream.

Katherine woke with a headache. She debated opening her eyes, not wanting to greet the day with this headache and not enough sleep. She felt cold, too. She must have kicked off the blankets last night.

Which was odd. Katherine never moved in her sleep. As she woke up more, she realized that she wasn’t in her bed, but tied to a chair. Her head was hanging down, and she opened her eyes slowly to see her legs, still clothed in the sweatpants she’d put on after work.

The chair was wood, and as she paid attention to it it seemed old and unsteady. The floor was a gray brown, covered in dust and a few stray rocks. She hoisted her body up, headache railing against her temples as she did, to observe the room.

There was one door, off to her left. It was rickety, and had water damage on the bottom. What was once a bright brass doorknob was now a dirty brown without any hint of shine. The walls were the brown of old yellow wallpaper. There were some bigger rocks around the edges of the room, the largest not even the size of Katherine’s palm, along with a few pieces of broken wood that looked like they were once chairs.

She looked behind her to see the one clean thing in the room. It was a mirror, and Katherine wondered if it was really a mirror or if it was one-way glass. Either way, it was clear that this room was meant for holding and interrogation. If nothing else made that clear, the rough rope tied around her wrists and legs did.

The doorknob shook slightly in the door, and Katherine turned around to see the door open. A man walked through, tall, and with black hair. He was covered in burn scars, healthy flesh stapled to the purple, burned skin under his eyes, along his cheeks, and on his hands. He had a white t-shirt on under a long, tattered, black trench coat.

But the most striking thing about him was his eyes. They were a piercing blue, almost glowing in the dim light. They seemed to bore into Katherine’s own silver ones, digging through her head for her secrets.

“So, you’re awake,” the man said. Katherine stayed quiet, watching as the man shut the door behind him. He, similarly, watched her as she drew herself up to sit straight, her face bored as the villain leaned against the wall in front of her.

“You gonna introduce yourself? It’s quite rude not to, you know.” He started to walk, circling Katherine as she refused to answer.

“Well,” he said after a minute, “one of us has to have manners here. I’m Dabi. And you are…?” he tried again. Katherine refused to talk, staring straight ahead as the villain circled her. With a sigh, Dabi stood in front of her and held a hand in front of her face, a small blue flame dancing on his fingers.

“I’m starting to get really tired of your attitude. Now, tell me your name, or I’ll burn your pretty little face off.” Katherine stared at the flame a moment, fear in her eyes as she considered. Dabi inched the flame closer, and she broke.

“Katherine. My name’s Katherine,” she said quickly. The flame went out and Dabi smiled, pulling at the burn scars on his face.

“There, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?” he said, once again circling Katherine. She could feel her heart pounding in terror as he did, not wanting to let the villain out of her sight but not wanting to let him know how afraid she was by trying to follow his movements.

“So, Katherine. I’m a part of an organization, of sorts. We know you had a run in with… one of our friends, about two weeks ago? In an alley?”

Katherine would have tensed if she wasn’t already. How did they know about that? There hadn’t been anyone there. What were they going to do to her? Was this villain a hero that had found out what she did? It had all been in self defense, she swore! She didn’t mean to kill him, she didn’t!

Did she?

“You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to him, do you? We were looking forward to meeting him again and he just disappeared. Right around the time you two met.” Dabi’s voice made Katherine shiver, and she hoped he mistook it as fear for him instead of fear of being found out. She shook her head adamantly, looking down at the floor.

“I-I don’t know what happened to him. He… he tried to grab me, drag me into an alley and,” Katherine swallowed, tears pricking her eyes at the memory of how his face looked as he fell.

“But I managed to run away. Used my quirk to distract him and ran,” she lied.

“Really, now?” Dabi said from behind her. She could hear a fire in his hands, feel the heat as it danced out of sight. She doubled down on her lie.

“My quirk is mimicry. I can sound like anything I’ve heard before. Cars, animals, people. You name it.” Dabi walked around to face her, flames still in his hand.

“Is that so?” he said slowly. Katherine looked up to meet his eyes, putting as much defiance as she could in her eyes and voice.

“Of course it is. You can check any file I have since I first manifested my quirk. It’s mimicry,” she said in his voice. His blue eyes widened slightly at the perfect copy, but that was it. Until his smiled turned from slight amusement to sadistic glee.

“So you can copy voices. This just keeps getting better and better.” Katherine swallowed hard, praying she hadn’t just guaranteed herself a crispy end. Dabi leaned in terrifyingly close, staring into her steel gray eyes.

“But I think we both know that isn’t your real quirk,” he whispered. He pushed the top of the chair back, placing a foot on the rising leg to keep the chair from falling all the way back. Katherine was left hanging at a 45 degree angle, shaken and breathing quickly. All she wanted at this moment was to get out of this place, to get away from the villain staring straight at her.

“It is, I swear!” Katherine said, not taking her terrified eyes off of Dabi, in case he decided to try to burn her.

“And why should I believe you?” he hissed. Katherine was fighting tears now. This villain kept pushing closer, kept demanding answers after she gave them. Worse was he knew her secret, and she had to find a way to convince him otherwise.

“Please, I promise, that’s my quirk! I promise! Please, just leave me alone!” she begged, not that she actually expected it to work. Which was why she was quite startled to feel the front two legs of her chair hit the ground.

“So, you really are telling the truth,” Dabi said more than asked. He didn’t believe it for a second, but he needed to catch her off guard. She had been expecting intimidation when he opened up that question. But if that attack in the alley had caused her to use her quirk, then maybe the same approach could work again. He swallowed his disgust at the idea as he prepared to execute it.

“Well, then this has all been a big waste of time.” He turned to face Katherine, who still watched him like a cornered rabbit. “I don’t like wasting my time, Kat. Though you don’t seem much like a cat. More a helpless little mouse,” he said with a smirk, leaning down next to the woman’s ear.

“But maybe I can still get some use out of you.”

In less time than it took Dabi to blink, something shot towards his face. It brushed along his cheek as he almost fell back, leaving a shallow cut along the burns with that barest of touches. As he regained his footing he heard the ropes hitting the ground, followed by a few quick footsteps.

Katherine stood before him, shining knives that had not existed a moment before held in her hands. Even from across the room, he could tell they were just as sharp as the first. One sleeve had been sliced open to reveal several scars along her arms, including two or three that seemed to be hollowed out.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed, staring dead at the villain that stood nearly a full head taller than her with the ferocity of a cornered tiger. Dabi smirked and took one step closer, curious to see just how far she would go.

 As his foot hit the ground, Katherine let go of one of the knives in her hand. It flew towards Dabi’s face, stopping barely an inch from his right eye, and he watched as another knife slipped from one of the hollow scars into Katherine’s hand. His smirk turned into a grin.

“I thought you said your quirk was mimicry?” he mocked. Katherine’s face went from confusion, to shock, to determined.

“I guess I did,” she said. Before she could try anything Dabi swiped the knife in front of him away, darting straight for the woman that he was certain was about to try and kill him. Caught off guard, Katherine was grabbed and pinned to the wall. She would have fought, but she could feel Dabi’s hand heating around her throat. It was uncomfortably hot, but wasn’t burning her.

Yet.

“You know, we could use people like you. People with powerful quirks. People who are under the radar.” Katherine let out a strained laugh, fear making her brazen.

“And why would I help a villain like you?” Katherine knew, if it had been anything but the situation it was, if she hadn’t already been revealed, she would have been shaking and terrified. As it was, she was too panicked to register anything but anger.

“Because, there’s people on the other side of that door. People that have heard everything you and I have said. They know. And even if you get away, you’ve been recorded this whole time. We can spread word of what you are, who you are, and there’d be nothing you could do to stop us.”

Dabi wasn’t precisely lying. The door was flimsy, and he’d be surprised if no one had heard at least snippets of his and Katherine’s conversation. But the audio recorder in his pocket had caught the conversation in full. Even if she managed to get away, the information could be shared and spread with minimal effort. A few words to the right people, and she’d have heroes breathing down her neck.

Katherine glanced at her reflection on that window. It must have been a window, she thought. How else could she have been recorded? 

She thought again about killing Dabi, and anyone else that had heard, and destroying any record of her quirk. But she would never know if she got them all, never be certain that one hadn’t gotten to the footage before her and ran off with it. With gritted teeth, she closed her eyes and recalled her knives, absorbing them as she raised her hands in surrender.

Dabi released her, taking a few steps back to let her breathe. It was a small courtesy, one he did not usually grant. But something about Katherine told him that he’d be safe giving her that space. The woman had done her best to hide her quirk since she’d gotten it. She would do anything to keep it hidden.

Katherine glared up at the villain. He knew he’d won, and she hated it. She hated feeling like she was trapped under his thumb. She thought that maybe, just maybe, it would be worth it to try and escape anyway, recordings be damned, but she checked herself. She’d come too far, built too much of herself on a false identity, to stop now. So, with impotent fury in her eyes, she asked Dabi one thing.

“What do you want?”

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

A Well-Tempered Blade

Chapter 6: Smoke and Mirrors

Summary: Katherine has a lousy quirk. At least, that's what everyone says. After all, who would want to be able to mimic any sound they hear? That's no quirk for a hero. But Katherine's quirk is not mimicry, but something worse; something that would get her labelled a villain the second she revealed it. So to keep her family she hides her quirk, not even telling her closest friends her secret. But secrets must eventually come into the lights, and Katherine's are no exception. 1.8k/16k, no romance, angst? oc

A/N: Yay! More canon characters! Well, one specifically. I'm coming to realize that I didn't do the best job at incorporating more character interactions between the main cast of villains and Katherine, which I'm choosing to chalk up to writing this a while ago and setting the story up to move too fast to take time to see those interactions and relations. But with my excuses out of the way, hope you enjoy!

Content Warnings (will be announced by the chapter): Home invasion, I think? Let me know if I missed any.

Katherine spent the next two weeks more afraid than she had been since she first heard her parents speak about her quirk. Everyone who walked into her cubicle was an officer coming to question her. Every creak in her floor was a team of heroes waiting for her to come home so they could bring her in. She could barely relax enough to sleep.

“Heroes have caught the newest Stain copycat. Thanks to police collaboration with an anonymous source and the Rapids hero agency-” Katherine shut the news report from the day before off. She had seen the news explain the evidence used to track the villain, and the hero efforts that went into his capture. It was a lovely feeling, processing his paperwork.

The fear was beginning to wear off. If she had made it this long without being caught, it would probably be okay. That didn’t stop the guilt, though.

Sure, the man had tried to assault her. But what if he’d had a family? Had she taken him away from them? Were they worried? She’d never know. She’d cut his life short.

But she also felt a cold satisfaction in her achievement. She had kept herself safe. She had stopped an unchecked monster. And she had done it using her quirk. It wasn’t hero work, but how many young women had she saved by using her quirk? How much safer would people be, with that man gone?

She was lost in those thoughts, as she had been since her actions. A small chime went off on her still open computer, bringing Katherine back into the present. It was five o’clock. She had to go. She had another order to fill, and wanted to get started right away: the designs she had discussed with the customer were gorgeous, and impossibly intricate. She’d need all the time she could get for them.

She grabbed her bag, checking that she hadn’t left anything that needed to be brought home, before leaving the cubicle and starting the walk home. The setting sun painted the skyscrapers in a gorgeous orange hue, making it look like the buildings were burning, but without pain or fear. Her phone rang, much to her surprise. She dug the device from her bag and answered, holding it to her ear.

“Hello, Soroyan Katherine speaking, how may I help you?”

“Katherine, please, you’ve got to help me!” Lily practically screamed into Katherine’s ear through the phone. Katherine jerked it away from her ear for a moment, slowly bringing it back as she paused on the sidewalk.

“Please, Lily. Calm down. What happened?” she asked. She could hear Lily taking a deep breath on the other end of the line. Then another.

“Okay. So, you know those files I was supposed to sort? About the recent arrest?” Lily asked, anxiety clear in her shaking voice.

“Yeah, you were telling me about how you were happy to have such a big assignment.”

“Well, I brought them home earlier to work on them at home, so I could get it done early, and I brought them on a USB that I planned to bring back, but on the way some guy bumped into me and I dropped it and then he accidentally kicked it into the road, and-”

“Lily, hey, calm down. I’m on my way. What do you need me to do?” Katherine asked as she turned around, walking back to the agency. She was in for a late night, she knew. But she couldn’t just abandon Lily to do this on her own. She was supposed to be showing the new girl around, and she couldn’t say to herself that she’d done that if she walked away right now.

Shigaraki had done his job well enough, Dabi thought. Could have been a little less obvious about destroying those records, but it would definitely slow Katherine from coming home. That would give him plenty of time to get set up.

He, Toga, and Twice had been watching Katherine for two weeks now. Never again had they seen her use her quirk, even in her own home. She must have really trained herself out of using it. Dabi began planning how to get her to use her quirk. After all, she was of no use to them if she wouldn’t use it.

He signaled Kurogiri that he was ready to go, and the smoke-covered man opened a portal. Dabi stepped through, hands brushing against the rag and jar in his coat pockets. His foot hit the wooden floor just inside the front door, and he took a moment to look around.

 He’d seen the place from a distance, but had never actually been inside. He was standing in a small hallway. Two steps forward to the left was a small, clean bathroom. Across the hall from that was the bedroom. He quickly discounted both as hiding places for now.

A few paces past the bedroom the hallway opened into a large room, split into a neat kitchen on the left by a counter and a living room that led onto a small balcony to the right. Past the kitchen was a small table with two chairs. Up against a half-wall across from the table was a rolling chair and computer desk, missing only the laptop.

Traveling straight past the kitchen, dining table, and living room, Dabi came to two closed doors. One stood ahead of him, the other to his right. He opened the door in front of him, his hand coming away from the knob slightly dusty.

It was a guest bedroom, complete with a large window, double bed, and small dresser next to the bed. There was an attached bathroom with a conjoined shower and tub, as opposed to the bathroom in the entry hall with only a shower. It was the perfect place to hide, though Dabi wondered why Katherine hadn’t just taken this bedroom. It clearly didn’t see much use.

He walked out of the guest room, checking the last door he’d found. It was just a laundry closet: Washer and detergent on top, dryer on bottom, ironing board tucked into the little room on the side. With no more rooms to discover, he decided to do one last bit of research about Katherine.

The best place to start would be her actual bedroom, and he strolled right in like he owned the place. He was surprised to be met with an unmade bed and drawn blinds, seeing as how organized and bright everything else had been in the apartment.

Aside from the bed, pushed against the right wall with room on either side, there was a nightstand on the left side with a lamp, charger cord, and alarm clock. Across from the bed were two closets, and Dabi opened the nearest one quietly. No one might be home, but neighbors could still hear things through thin walls.

The first closet held nothing but clothes. A few business suits and casual outfits, two pairs of shoes, and a small dresser with three drawers. A small label on top simply labeled it as ‘UNDERGARMENTS’, and Dabi felt no need to look further. The second closet, though, was more interesting.

He opened it and found several sheaths for different kinds of blades, not a one of them empty. There were throwing stars, daggers, and swords of various cultures. Each one looked exquisite, and bore a tag near the hilt. They were all made by Katherine’s company, Sunēkuai Blades.

He picked up a sheath with throwing stars. They were shaped like a peach blossom, and barely sharp enough to cut butter. He set them down, intrigued by a long box held on a shelf above the other various weapons. He reached up, careful not to move things out of place too much, and pulled the box down.

Inside were photos upon photos. He saw images of a smiling girl with dark hair, clearly Katherine at a young age, and two others: a man and a woman. Her parents. They were all smiling, young Katherine holding a sign that read “It’s my first day of school!”

There were other things in the box, under all the photos. Dabi carefully moved the contents of the box around until he unearthed two katanas. One was in a simple brown sheath, the other in an intricate green and silver one. They had notes tied to them as well, and a picture. 

He picked up the plain katana, seeing a picture of a teenaged Katherine and her father in front of a smithy. Katherine looked sweaty in the photo, grinning and holding the very katana in Dabi’s hands. Her father was smiling behind her in pride, a hand behind her back in support. The note simply read “My first blade.” When Dabi opened the katana, he found it as sharp as anyone could ask for, if a bit clumsily made.

The second one was slightly lighter, and seemed to glint even in the dim light of the bedroom. He opened it to find it just as sharp as the first, but with some kind of green streak through it. Opening it the rest of the way, Dabi saw a green snake winding its way down the blade, seeming to spit the point from its fanged mouth. He carefully resheathed it, not wanting to leave a trace of himself if all of this somehow went south.

He glanced at the picture attached to the sheath. It was a picture of teenage Katherine, not much younger than the other photo, with her arm draped over another girl’s shoulder. This new girl had snakes for hair and unnerving yellow eyes with slit pupils. She was smiling alongside Katherine in a park, both dressed in a middle school uniform.

The note simply read, “For Sunēkuai. I think you would have liked this one. Rest well.”

Dabi put everything back almost reverently. A part of him wondered why he would bother. It wasn’t like she would notice, even if he somehow didn’t manage to get her. But he couldn’t bring himself to treat her memories with anything but respect. Perhaps it had something to do with the person herself.

As Dabi had looked through file after file on the young woman, everything had said that her quirk was mimicry. There were no files, or hints of files, that said otherwise. She had hidden her quirk from everybody, and doubtless faced ridicule for it. It spoke to her patience and resolve that she had never revealed herself, even when attempting to get into the hero course at various high schools.

Dabi shook the thoughts from his mind. He had a job to do. A job that would be made much easier if he got on with looking for information and preparing his hiding place. He closed the closet and strode from the room.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

Little bit of soft hawks, parent hawks sort of, short imagine

Okay, so I have this thought that Hawks has no idea how to be a person. Like, dude can't cook for himself beyond microwave meals and can't make his bed type deal. So, obviously, the HPSC decides to just drop a kid on him because the kid has wings too and their parent's a villain so they need to keep a close eye on them.

And he's got no clue what to do, but he manages to struggle through, trying to figure out how to parent this kid, which requires figuring out how to be a person himself, while also being a hero. He figures out childcare, and how to cook, and how to interact with this kid, and it takes a while (because the kid misses their parent) but eventually the kid comes out of their shell and starts to really look up to Hawks as a parent. Of course, other stuff is happening, but I'm choosing to leave that information out for now.

I just have this vivid image of Hawks having a nightmare of losing the kid one night and waking up at 2 a.m. to see them standing in his doorway holding a plush. And the kid just walks up to him and gives him the plush because it helps them with their nightmares and he's so touched because this kid has clearly also woken up from a nightmare and their first thought is to make sure he doesn't get any more nightmares himself (even though he knows the plush won't actually do anything). And he's just like, maybe we can share this plush for tonight, and cuddles with the kid and the plush so that his kid can have their nightmare protection and so he can feel safe knowing he isn't going to lose them and he has to stop because he didn't even realize that he'd started to think of the kid as his but he would rather die than stop being their parent.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

A Well-Tempered Blade

Chapter 5: Kat's Out

Summary: Katherine has a lousy quirk. At least, that's what everyone says. After all, who would want to be able to mimic any sound they hear? That's no quirk for a hero. But Katherine's quirk is not mimicry, but something worse; something that would get her labelled a villain the second she revealed it. So to keep her family she hides her quirk, not even telling her closest friends her secret. But secrets must eventually come into the lights, and Katherine's are no exception. 1.9k/16k, no romance, angst? oc

A/N: I have posted this story before, and I kicked myself for days afterwards for not catching the opportunity for a pun, so I'm remedying that now. Here I was able to start showing the payoff for the backstory I put in, and we finally get to see Katherine start interacting with known characters and not just characters I've made. Welp, hope you enjoy!

Content Warnings (will be announced by the chapter): Sexual harassment, sexual assault, death, murder, knives. Let me know if I missed any.

Katherine dragged herself into her home at 10 p.m., shutting the door and locking it behind her. She was no longer in her suit from earlier, having changed when she arrived home earlier in the day.

She’d been out running errands for her neighbors. Several of the people in her apartment building were elderly, and needed help getting things like groceries and mail. A few were visited so rarely by their own families that Katherine spent time every week to simply sit and talk with them, or help them bake something.

She had been asked by the woman above her to help with cleaning the apartment, and the second floor had been having plumbing issues for several days. Katherine fixed it, much to the landlord’s joy, and had helped to drive an elderly man that lived three doors down to his doctor's appointment and back. After all of that, Katherine still had to clean her own house and get her own food. Considering the hour, though, she opted to clean over the weekend.

Katherine held a takeout box from a local restaurant that made the best chicken teriyaki. She trudged to the kitchen and set the box into the fridge. She would shower next, but then she had a few more files to sort from work. It was the consequence of asking to come in late and then not being able to begin when she said she would, even though it wasn’t her fault that the interview had been so drastically delayed.

After a well deserved shower, Katherine sank down on the couch to begin sorting those files. It was another three hours before she was finished with the sorting, and Katherine’s back ached from sitting still so long. Her eyes stung from the screen, and she heard her back popping as she stood and stretched. She set aside her computer, plugging it in to charge, then walked into her room to sleep. She flopped on the bed, and didn’t even have time to get under the covers before she passed out.

Katherine’s alarm jolted her awake a few short hours later. Much as she wished she could shut it off and sleep a little longer, she couldn’t afford to be late after yesterday. With a long suffering sigh, Katherine turned the alarm off and rolled out of bed. She took a quick rinse in the shower, brushed her hair and teeth, and made herself a bowl of cereal.

After she scarfed it down, she made herself a cup of instant coffee in a thermos. It wasn’t as good as the cafe down the street, but she couldn’t wait. She gathered her wallet, keys, and coffee and went out the door.

She arrived at work almost a full half hour early, and set about on the daily file sorting. It came as no surprise to her that she had more files to sort than usual today. Her manager was definitely upset about the poor performance the day before. But Katherine refused to complain, merely sipping her coffee as she scanned the files and sorted them with the quick efficiency of someone accustomed to the task

“Nice of you to join us,” her manager said as he walked by. She shrugged it off, continuing her work. She barely nodded when Lily greeted her an hour later. She was so hellbent on getting through her whole workload that she worked through lunch without even noticing.

By the time five o’clock rolled around, Katherine was done with the day’s work and had begun on tomorrows. She stood and resisted the urge to stretch as she walked towards the building’s entrance.

Katherine’s car was several blocks away. Parking was always full near the building, as the few heroes and several of the managers often stayed overnight. Katherine had to walk past several dark alleys, and always tried to keep her guard up. But she was tired today, and unprepared when a hand reached out and dragged her into the alley. She was too shocked to even cry out.

“Hey, there, pretty lady,” a sleazy looking man said. He had Katherine pushed against a wall, around a corner in the alley so that they weren’t visible from the street.

“Where’re you headed, all alone in a place like this? I could keep you company. You know, walk you to your car, make sure no one… gets you,” the man said, leaning into Katherine’s face. She ducked away from him, heading towards the corner to get into view of the street.

“No, thanks. I’m quite fine on my own,” she said, tremors in her voice. Tired she may be, she was no idiot. She recognised a possible assailant when she saw one. She was grabbed again, a long arm wrapping around her waist and pulling her further around the corner. Katherine was tossed against a dumpster, hitting her head on the full metal container.

“You know, it’s really not safe for little ladies to be wandering around the city unsupervised. Someone might take advantage of you, you know.” The man crouched down in front of Katherine, trapping her between him and the dumpster. He leaned in, his scraggly face close enough to hers that she could smell the alcohol and cigarette smoke on his breath. He grabbed her chest and squeezed before Katherine could smack his hand away.

“I would recommend you reconsider, pretty lady.” Katherine twisted the man’s wrist off her chest, and he hissed in pain. She tried to direct him off her, but in her seated position couldn’t do much. She couldn’t collapse backward, and the man glared at her with anger in his eyes.

“Oh, you’ll pay for that,” he said. He raised his fist, and Katherine held out a single hand, turning her head to flinch away. The next thing she heard was a thump, and she opened her eyes to see the man had fallen backwards onto the pavement. Floating in the air was a tiny blade, a knife barely the size of Katherine’s pointer finger.

She scrambled to look at the man that had been a faint second away from assaulting her. His eyes were opened. Or rather, his eye. Where his right eye should have been was a hole, containing a few fleshy bits in it. Katherine saw a small hole behind the eye, the tiniest trickle of blood leaking out of it. That’s when it hit her.

She’d just killed someone.

With. Her. Quirk.

Katherine almost screamed and leapt off the body. Almost. She’d been lying for years about herself. If anyone could control themselves in a situation like this, it was Katherine.

She knew she couldn’t take it to the police. That would land her in jail for lying about her quirk, as well as murder. So that left hiding the body.

Katherine did a quick sweep, double-checking that no one was in the deserted alley. Satisfied, she rolled up both sleeves, revealing scar after scar on her arm. She had cut them into her arms after Sunē’s death to hide the sheaths better. The real ones quickly became apparent as a broadsword emerged from each.

She opened the dumpster, and the swords pushed aside a sizable amount of garbage. Then one flew and slipped itself under the dead man. Lifting him carefully, the sword moved the man into the dumpster, flipping him off it so that the body would lay flat. Then, the swords recovered the body with garbage. Satisfied that he’d been sandwiched between the refuse of the city, Katherine closed the dumpster.

She checked the area the man had fallen to see no sign of blood. The small blade was still just floating in the air above where he fell, and the broadswords waited at Katherine’s back. She stuck out her arms, and the blades resheathed themselves, the larger ones leaving some iron dust behind that couldn’t be reabsorbed. Katherine brushed it off near the dumpster, pulled down her sleeves, and started walking toward her car. But, for all her years of keeping her secret under wraps, for all her years of experience lying, she couldn’t stop the small smile that fixed itself to her face.

Twice stepped out from behind the dumpster where he’d been waiting for hours. He knew the man that had just been killed frequented this spot. He’d been staking the place out, waiting for the right time to kidnap the now dead man.

The League had some… business with the man. He’d stumbled into their bar once, blackout drunk, and tried to pull a similar stunt on Toga. Thankfully, the bar had been full at the time. He had gotten away with minor burns and bruises, but there wasn’t a single person in the League that was happy with that.

But the problem seemed to have taken care of itself. And given the League a potential new recruit.

“Shiggy! You’re gonna wanna hear this! It was awful, don’t listen,” Twice yelled as he entered the bar. Shigaraki could be heard stomping through the building towards the main bar. Kurogiri was the only other person in the bar, at the moment, and he didn’t even look up from taking inventory of the bar’s contents.

“What, Twice? You better have that dustball, or I swear I’ll disintegrate you!” Shigaraki yelled as he came closer. He wasn’t quite in the room yet, which meant Twice had to give the information quickly. If Shigaraki came into the room and Twice was empty-handed, he’d be dust before he could open the door.

“I couldn’t get him. I didn’t even try to catch him! Someone else showed up and took care of him instead!” Twice yelled. Shigaraki stopped in the doorway. He glared at Twice from across the small room, and Kurogiri finally looked up at the pale haired man.

“Someone else? You knew right where he was going to be! How did you lose him to someone else?!” Shigaraki yelled. Kurogiri held out a smokey hand to Shigaraki, clearly about to speak before Twice cut him off.

“It was this seven foot ninja! Some lady he pulled off the street did him in. He was trying to attack her, and the next thing I knew he was dead. She seemed pretty freaked out about it. She was really chill about the whole thing. She summoned some swords and used them to hide the body in a dumpster.” Shigaraki pondered the information, and Twice wondered if he should start heading for the door. Just in case.

“What did she look like?” Shigaraki asked, and Twice knew from the tone that he’d live to be solid for at least another day.

“She was about 5’6, and she had black hair. She was in some kind of business suit, and it looked like she was wearing a badge. It was for the Rapids Hero Agency! Couldn’t see her name, though. Oh! And when she pulled up her sleeves, it looked like she had scars all over her arms.” Shigaraki nodded and turned to Kurogiri.

“Can you find her?” Kurogiri nodded.

“Of course. Though, without a name it will be much more difficult to locate her.” Shigaraki waved a hand.

“I don’t care. I want to see this girl. If she took someone down as quickly as Twice says, she could be useful. Or we’ll just kill her for killing our… friend.” Shigaraki snarled the last word, clearly hating the very thought of that disgusting man.

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

A Well-Tempered Blade

Chapter 4: With Hard Work

Summary: Katherine has a lousy quirk. At least, that's what everyone says. After all, who would want to be able to mimic any sound they hear? That's no quirk for a hero. But Katherine's quirk is not mimicry, but something worse; something that would get her labelled a villain the second she revealed it. So to keep her family she hides her quirk, not even telling her closest friends her secret. But secrets must eventually come into the lights, and Katherine's are no exception. 2k/16k, no romance, angst? oc

A/N: These were some of the first solid scenes I had for Katherine when I was conceptualizing her. This was my starting point for her in the creative process, and I built all of her backstory to lead here, while making sure it could carry her further in the story. I'll stop talking and let you read. Hope you enjoy!

Content Warnings (will be announced by the chapter): Police, interrogation, knives. Let me know if I missed any.

10 years later

Katherine sighed at her desk. It seemed she had an endless supply of reports to sort through, approve, and send off. She considered getting up to eat something, but the footsteps of one of the heroes made her quickly reconsider.

Katherine had been working at a hero agency since she graduated high school. She couldn’t cut it as a hero, she knew, but this way she was still doing some good. Helping the good guys. She believed herself when she said it didn’t cut at her that she was so low in the company hierarchy, even among the non-hero employees. She was proving something with every correctly filed arrest and damage report: she could still do good in the world without being a hero.

“Hey, Katherine! What does ‘FUA’ mean on someone’s identity?” The newest hire asked. Lily was an American, born and raised, and she had been delegated to Katherine because her American mother had taught her English. Katherine turned her chair to face the cubicle behind her.

“It means ‘file under arrests.’ You have to watch out for arrests, collaborations, rescues, et cetera. If you don’t file them properly, the agency can get fined and then we’re all in trouble,” she explained to the blonde.

“Ahhh, gotcha. I’ll make a note of that,” Lily said, scribbling something on a sticky note. It joined the multitude of sticky notes around her monitor. Katherine chuckled slightly, wondering exactly how the girl managed to pay attention to her computer with all the bright colors. She turned back to her own monitor, sorting through the files.

She stretched when five o’clock came around. She snatched up her keys, wallet, and phone, and headed out the door. She had to get home and change. She had an order to fill.

Katherine had begun researching different knives after her best friend’s death. Both because she needed to know different kinds for her quirk and because she had started taking knife fighting courses. One of her best guides had been an introduction to smithing.

Katherine had wanted to make one of the knives the book detailed. She had begged her father to help her get her hands on the iron, wood, and leather needed for the knife, as well as take her to the rentable blacksmith space she had found online. It had been worth it when she finished her first blade.

Katherine’s knack for blades and her love for making them inspired her to start her own business. Sunēkuai Blades. She donated 75% of her earnings from the company to suicide prevention hotlines, suicide education, and the like. The other 25% went towards getting more materials.

She made knives, swords, and other blades for self defense, kitchen use, or simply as collectibles. The ones she really liked she made doubles of and kept for herself, intending to display them. As much as the business helped other people, it helped Katherine as well. She hadn’t used her quirk since she opened, six years ago, and it had built her from light and wiry to strong and thick-set.

When she finally reached the blacksmithing area, she was excited. Smithing was the highlight of her day, when she got to do it. It was a few hours that she could be with the things she loved.

She had an order for a collectible today. They were a set of throwing stars shaped like peach blossoms. The customer had included a sketch of what they wanted, which was a welcome relief. It gave Katherine a template to work towards, and a fun bit of art to look at.

The room sweltered in the dry heat of the furnace, and there were a couple of people making their own things already. Some were hammering away at metals, others were polishing nearly finished creations. Katherine went over to her reserved furnace and began melting down the iron she was going to use.

It was three hours before Katherine walked back into her apartment. She was sweaty, tired, and in desperate need of a shower and food. Not necessarily in that order. She snagged a container of leftover udon, heated it, and went to watch the news. She could have done so in the kitchen, which looked into the living room and out onto the balcony, but the couch was more comfy than leaning on the kitchen counter.

She fell onto the couch, flipping the tv on to the news channel. It was just some news about what arrests were made today, any big collaborations between agencies, and the works. Stain’s name was tossed around here and there. Katherine slurped her udon only half listening as she debated checking for more orders before bed.

“In other news, there is a new villain on the loose. They are being charged with the murder of pro Hero Burst.” Katherine stopped eating, looking at the screen. It wasn’t every day that someone killed a hero. It caught her interest.

“While the culprit is unknown, they did leave a knife at the scene.” An image of a simple knife with a wooden handle popped into the top right of the screen. “Police are trying to find any information they can from the evidence left at the scene, and if anyone knows about what happened they are encouraged to step forward and-”

Katherine shut the tv off and reached for her phone. She dialed the police, standing and walking towards her computer. She had to find something buried in those files.

“Hello, what’s your emergency?” a woman’s voice asked from the other side of the line.

“I need to speak to whoever is in charge of the investigation into Burst’s murder.” The line was quiet for a moment, a few tapping keys the only sound.

“You’re looking for the tip hotline. Do you have a paper and pen handy? I have the number right here.” Katherine jotted down the number and quickly called it.

“Hello, what can I do for you today?” a man asked. Katherine cleared her throat and began.

“Hello. I have some information about the Burst murder.” There was some typing. The man spoke again, terse and suspicious.

“Name?”

“Katherine Soroyan.”

“Age?”

“26.” The questioning went on for several minutes before the man finally gave Katherine what she needed.

“Alright. Please come in tomorrow at 10 a.m.”

“Thank you sir. Have a good night,” Katherine said. She heard the receiver click without response. She set the phone down, sending a quick email to her boss that she had to be late to work tomorrow. She was rarely tardy, so she hoped he didn’t get upset at her. With that taken care of, she began to dig through her files.

Katherine walked into the police station, holding a folder and wearing a suit. She still had work after this. She couldn’t afford going home to change.

She took a seat, waiting to be called to her interview. It was 9:30 a.m. when she sat down. By the time she was called in for her interview, it was 10:30. She didn’t know if she was going to be able to make it to work when she said she would, and frantically texted Lily to explain that her appointment had been pushed back unexpectedly. She had no sooner sent the text than someone came to the lobby for her.

She was guided down a few halls, passing water dispensers and vending machines as they sat against beige walls. After several turns, Katherine was instructed to sit down in a well lit room containing only a metal table and three chairs. The walls were black and covered in jagged foam, save for one wall with a pane of one-way glass.

Katherine waited another ten minutes before the police and a hero showed up in the room. Katherine almost felt her blood run cold as she saw who the hero was. It was her boss: the pro Hero Rapids.

Kai.

When she had chosen to work for the Rapids agency, she had known it was Kai she was working under. He was a fairly small hero, someone who knew the names of the people in the neighborhoods he patrolled. It had been something Katherine appreciated, at first. But the few times they interacted at work he had been unnecessarily harsh to her. She wondered if he recognized her, even now.

“Ah, Miss Soroyan. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the officer said as Kai stared at her. There was recognition in his eyes. And anger. She desperately hoped it wasn’t directed at her.

“My name is Detective Ito. This here is pro Hero Rapids. We’re working with his agency to track down this hero killer copycat. You contacted us yesterday, saying you had information?” Katherine nodded, training her eyes on the officer as he spoke.

“I do. That was my knife.” The bluntness stunned the chief for a moment, and Katherine realized it sounded a lot like she had just confessed to the murder.

“Rather… It was a knife I made. I have my own company on the side, I hand make custom blades. Anything from a whittling knife to display katanas, I make them.” Katherine set her file on the table, pulling the papers out.

“This knife, as well as two others, were commissioned about five months ago. This first one,” Katherine gestured to a paper with an address, a description, and a picture of the hunting knife that had killed a hero, “was the first commissioned. The next two were ornamental. You’ll find the mailing address on all of these orders.”

Rapids picked up the papers, looking at them carefully. He snorted a minute later, tossing the papers on the table.

“There’s no name. What good is this if there isn’t a name to go with them?” Katherine opened her mouth to answer the hero, when he cut her off, beginning to stand. “Come to think of it, how did you even know it was your knife? Were you collaborating with the killer? Did you see your knife and panic that it might get traced back to you? Are you throwing your partner under the bus so you can live to kill another day? Are you-”

“Rapids, that’s enough!” Detective Ito cut in. Rapids glanced back at the man before sitting down with a ‘harumph.’ Detective Ito sighed and turned to Katherine.

“Rapids does raise some good points. Why did you know it was your knife? Why did you contact us so quickly?” Katherine waited a beat to see if she was allowed to answer.

“I’ve been making blades for ten years. I make them by hand. I spend hours on every one, making sure they’re properly made. There isn’t a one I wouldn’t recognise,” Katherine explained. If Rapids recognized why that would be important, he made no sign. He just kept glaring at her.

“As for why I contacted you… I guess the best reason is I was angry. I make my blades to help people. The functional ones are used near daily in kitchens and wood shops all over the city. The decorative ones are displayed in some of the finest collections. I take everything I earn from my blades and put it back into making more, and everything left over goes to suicide prevention.

“So to see someone using my knife, a knife I poured hours into, that I made to make someone’s life a little easier and to help someone considering taking their life, to see that knife used to kill anyone feels like a perversion of everything I meant for that knife to be.” Katherine almost felt insulted at the question. Why wouldn’t she want this murderer off the streets? Why wouldn’t she tell police right away if she had information, especially regarding her blades?

Rapids cleared his throat after Katherine was done. He looked her in the eyes, and she though there was a spark of guilt in them. But he blinked, and it was gone.

“Thank you for your information. We will have to keep the files, you understand, but you are free to go.” Katherine nodded, rose, and bowed to the detective and hero in a polite ‘farewell.’ Then she turned and walked out the door.