#hawks was hard to place in the au cuz he's got all this sneaky shit going on

[mtjester]

More BNHA steampunk AU thought dumps!

I desperately wanna get out some ideas on Hawks, the au’s problem child.

On one hand, BNHA Hawks has wings, and there is wiggle room in the au with the human experimentation for him to literally have wings, the way Ojirou literally has a tail. On the OTHER hand, steampunk=machines, and clockwork machine wings are dope as hell. And then we have the dilemma of Hawks as a person. He was born to a shitty family, then picked up to be a hero by the big security government people, then chosen to infiltrate by playing villain. He’s got this Icarus “fly too close to the sun and get burned” thing going on. So, where to fit Hawks in?

I was talking with @docbe, and we thought it’d be cool if we kept up with the “infiltrate the bad guys” bent as well as the “kind of a little bit owned by the government” side of things. As far as wings go, here’s what I’m thinking: Hawks is a genius inventor with a particularly intuitive understanding of flight. His father’s bullshit lands his whole family into trouble, which the Ethical Science Commission levels against him to get him to work for them. So his wings are mechanical...at FIRST. The commission has him go undercover to work with the still-nameless Bad Science Gang, which is actually several groups doing evil science shit but for different reasons--Hawks is specifically infiltrating the pseudo-religious, cult-like faction that spouts off philosophies about “the New Human,” and that is subsequently trying to artificially create the next step of human evolution through science. They produce pamphlets, which is what Hawks uses to communicate in code to others. In his undercover role, Hawks adopts the story that he is trying to biologically engineer humans to be actually, truly capable of flight. In the end...maybe he does get his ACTUAL wings, huh?

Also he gets a sliver of an opportunity to help Tokoyami escape by making a tiny “mistake” that gives Dark Shadow the leverage he needs to break out.