The sky over Okinawa was a mocking shade of azure, a clear, crystalline expanse that felt entirely too bright for a world that was currently choking on its own blood.
Keigo Takami, Hawks, sat on the edge of a weather-beaten stone shisa statue atop a high-rise, his red wings tucked tight against his back. The wind up here was salt-heavy and warm, whistling through the gaps in his primary feathers like a low, mournful flute. He hated the humidity. It made his wings feel sluggish, a physical manifestation of the weight he had been carrying since the "Golden Age" began to rot.
He was supposed to be looking for "peaceful outliers", criminals trying to buy a quiet life in the islands while the mainland burned. But as he looked down at the bustling streets of Naha, Hawks found himself longing for a simpler time, a generation where the lines between the sky and the earth were clear. Instead, he was trapped in a cycle of chaos that felt more like a terminal illness than a struggle.
The order to kill Lady Nagant was a cold, jagged stone in his gut. He hadn't found her yet, hadn't even caught a scent of the woman who had preceded him in the shadows, and in his most private moments, he hoped he never would. He knew he would pull the trigger, the Commission had bought his life, his name, and his soul when he was just a boy.
He owed them the blood they asked for. But the thought of her, the predecessor who had finally broken under the weight of the lies, made his own feathers itch with a sympathetic dread. He didn't know her full story, and he probably didn't live anything close to it in the commission, but knowing some of the people that had "vanished" he could surmise that she may not be the big bad villain she was made out to be.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, a sharp, staccato vibration that signalled a priority update from the Commission.
He pulled it out, the screen reflecting in his golden-brown eyes.
He'd spotted Akira Furuhaya days ago, lurking near the bus terminals, his gaunt face and hunched shoulders practically screaming "fugitive." Hawks hadn't reported it then. He'd told himself he was waiting for a lead, but in reality, he just didn't want another body on his conscience. He didn't know the detective's real story, the Commission didn't share "why," only "who", but he knew that the man wasn't a villain. The departments he worked in typically spoke highly of him before getting to the parts that everybody now knew him for.
The screen flickered with a new dossier. Priority Alpha. Eliminate variables.
The faces of Akira Furuhaya and the international hero known as The Crawler stared back at him. Hawks felt a flicker of genuine confusion. Koichi Haimawari was a documented sidekick, an American asset with a clean record. Why was the Commission ordering a terminal strike on a hero?
"Doesn't matter," Hawks whispered to the wind, his voice a dry, tired rasp. "I don't get to ask why. I just get to fly."
He looked down, his enhanced vision zooming in on a street three blocks away. To his eyes, the scene was bizarre. Akira was jogging forward, his face pale and frantic, catching up to two figures that seemed to have materialized out of the humid air.
One was a darker-skinned teenager with shock-white hair, a kid Hawks didn't recognize. The other was The Crawler, who had collapsed in the gutter and was currently vomiting with a violent, rhythmic intensity.
Hawks didn't wait to analyse the physics of how they got there. He didn't care about the vomit or the kid with white hair. He just wanted it to be over. He wanted to do the job, bury the variables, and go back to his fake sense of normalcy in the high-rises.
He stood up, his wings expanding with a sharp snap. He plucked two primary feathers, long, crimson blades that were as sharp as surgical steel.
I can take Akira first, he thought, his mind entering the cold, clinical state of a predator. The Crawler is incapacitated. I'll take the detective out, secure the hero, and deal with the kid as collateral. Speed is the only mercy I have left.
He dove.
He was a red blur, a needle of speed that tore through the sound barrier with a localized boom that rattled the windows of the nearby cafes. Gravity was a suggestion, the wind was his servant. He was silent, lethal, and perfectly aimed.
He reached the street level in a heartbeat. He saw the sweat on Akira's brow. He saw the way the ex-detective's eyes widened, sensing the shift in air pressure, but knowing he was already too late to move.
Hawks brought the feathers down, aiming for the carotid artery with a precision that would ensure a painless end.
"Sorry," Hawks whispered, the word barely a breath against the gale.
But the space didn't remain empty.
A ripple moved through the air, a violent, spatial shudder that felt like reality itself was being folded like paper. Before the feathers could touch Akira's skin, the white-haired teenager was there.
Yoshi stood directly in Hawks' path, his hand raised. He didn't look afraid. A wicked, jagged smile split his face, his obsidian eyes locking onto Hawks with a predatory intensity that made the Number Three Hero's blood run cold.
The kid didn't just block the strike, he leaned into the pressure, his presence vibrating with a dark, ancient weight that shouldn't belong to anything human.
"The Number Three," Yoshi said, his voice a flat, dangerous rasp that carried over the sound of the wind. "You're leaking an intense amount of bloodlust, Hero."
Yoshi's fingers brushed the edge of the crimson feathers, and for the first time in his career, Keigo Takami felt the terrifying sensation of truly being caught in the cage.
"I think," Yoshi added, his smile widening into something monstrous, "that you've just made a very expensive mistake."
___
Yoshi Abara stood in the center of the street, his hand outstretched, the air around his palm shimmering with a violent, translucent distortion. He didn't look at the feathers vibrating inches from his fingers, he looked at the space where the air felt… thin.
A faint, high-pitched ringing echoed in the back of his skull, a ghostly residue of a memory that had been surgically excised. He felt a profound sense of déjà vu. He had been somewhere else. He had seen something. But... he can't remember.
The only thing that felt real was the red blur currently attempting to decapitate Akira Furuhaya.
"Close one," Yoshi said, his voice a flat, hollow rasp.
Hawks didn't stop. He pivoted in mid-air with a grace that was sickening to witness, his wings snapping open to arrest his momentum. He hovered ten feet away, his golden-brown eyes narrowed behind his visor, two crimson feathers vibrating in his hands like tuning forks.
"Step aside, kid," Hawks said, his voice a professional chill. "This doesn't involve you. Akira Furuhaya is a fugitive of the state. And he will be taken care of as such."
"Oh really?" Yoshi tilted his head, the spatial distortion around his hand intensifying until the pavement beneath him began to crack. "I know the law, Birdie. Kill orders are reserved for the Tartarus breakers. Men like King Fin or Meteor. Not an ex-detective whose only quirk is a weird appetite. This sounds a little strange."
Hawks didn't blink. "Move!"
In the heartbeat that followed, the street became a blur of red and obsidian.
Hawks moved. He sliced through the atmosphere. He became a flurry of sharp, high-velocity cuts, his feathers acting as a thousand independent blades. He circled Yoshi with a speed that defied human tracking, a crimson cyclone intended to overwhelm and disorient.
Yoshi didn't move his feet. He simply reconfigured the world around him.
Ripple.
Every time a feather was about to find purchase in his skin, the distance between the blade and the boy expanded by ten feet in a millisecond. Hawks would lunge, expecting a strike, only to find himself yards away from his target, his momentum carrying him into empty air.
He's fast, Yoshi thought, his mind working through the geometry of the fight. The speed… it's close to All Might before the he entered that state that turned him into a mindless beast. But there's no weight behind it. He's a needle trying to stitch a fallen tail on an ox.
Hawks realized the frontal assault was failing. He pulled back, his wings flaring wide. Dozens of feathers detached, hovering in a cloud around Yoshi, each one vibrating at a frequency that hummed in the bones.
Hawks dove into an alleyway, his feathers following him in a tight, aerodynamic formation. It was a lure. He wanted Yoshi in a confined space where he would be limited.
Yoshi giggled, a dry, joyless sound. "Clever."
He followed. As Yoshi entered the narrow alley, Hawks' trap snapped shut. The feathers began to crisscross the space, creating a web of vibrating crimson wire that hummed with enough tension to slice through a tank. Hawks himself hovered at the end of the alley, a feather-blade held at his side, preparing for the final, blinding lunge.
"Got you," Hawks whispered.
But Yoshi didn't look at the feathers. He looked at the heavy, rusted pipes lining the alley walls and the puddle of stagnant water at Hawks' feet.
"You calculated the distance of the alley, Birdie," Yoshi said, his obsidian eyes flashing with a predatory light. "But you forgot to check the integrity of the architecture."
Yoshi clenched his fist and engaged the Ripple Effect on the three meters of space directly behind Hawks.
He collapsed the distance of the alley walls.
Suddenly, the ten-meter gap Hawks had been using to calibrate his flight path was reduced to three. The pipes on the walls were spatially compressed, their internal pressure skyrocketing until they burst in a coordinated explosion of steam and scalding water.
Hawks, caught in the sudden spatial shift, over-calculated his turn. His wings hit the suddenly-constricting walls, his feathers tangling in the very web he had created. The steam blinded his enhanced vision, and the sudden change in air pressure sent his equilibrium spiralling.
For a heartbeat, the Number Three Hero was a tangled mess of red silk and iron pipes, pinned by the geometry of the very trap he had tried to set.
Yoshi appeared beside the still-vomiting Crawler, grabbing him by the scruff of his teal hoodie. He reached out and snagged Akira's arm, the ex-detective staring at the alleyway with a look of pure, unadulterated shock.
"He's fast," Yoshi muttered, looking back at the alley where Hawks was already beginning to cut himself free with frantic, high-speed slashes. "But he's still just a bird in a cage."
Yoshi looked at the "Small House" estate in the distance, the ringing in his ears intensifying for a fraction of a second as he felt the "missing" time pull at his soul.
"We're leaving," Yoshi said.