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“Sensei, can I talk to you?” Aizawa raised his head at hearing that particular voice. Tokoyami was a quiet student that usually didn´t give many problems, so there was never reason to talk to him more than the usual between a student and teacher, making this a strange occurrence. “It´s… important. And… kind of personal too.”
“What is it, Tokoyami?” he asked, trying to look reassuring. The kid needed that. “Do you have a problem at home or…”
“No, I… it´s not me who has the problem, but… I don´t know how to address this” the bird headed boy rubbed his nape before continuing. “Guess I will just say it: I´m worried about Hawks” his teacher raised an eyebrow. “I know I shouldn´t come to you with things like this, he is not a student or something like that, but… he has been behaving so strangely lately, as if he is depressed about something or the like…” the boy shook his head. “It´s probably only in my head anyway. Forget about it, sensei.”
Tokoyami took his leave then, still clearly worried about the issue. His sensei might have listened, since the affected was not a member of his class or something like that. The problem was… Shouta was not so sure he should do that. He meant… the problem was clearly affecting his class. First Todoroki and then Tokoyami? Something was clearly bad if they worry to the level that two of the most private students of his, one that had only recently begun to really trust in him, decided to come to him with the issue. Besides, there was something that was bothering him since he talked to Dabi. Didn´t the villain said that Hawks had a not so nice past with Endeavour? Then why the hell was the Winged Hero actively seeking to work with the Flame Hero? Maybe it wouldn´t be so bad to arrange a meeting with Hawks.
The next week he did a number of things in his free time that wasn´t exactly in his agenda. He looked Hawks´ website to have a general understanding of his patrol routes and arrange a “casual” meeting. Then he asked some of his coworkers from the underground about… some places in Kyushuu to arrange meetings in so no one could eavesdrop. After that he did the same to his coworkers at UA so some of them could attend to his homeroom while he had a short trip. And, after he exchanged a few favours with both, he headed out to Kyushuu with a plan to ambush the N°2 Hero. He got his chance sooner than he thought.
“Thanks… Eraser?” Hawks was surprised to see that particular underground hero standing over the villain he was pursuing. Even more that he had been surpassed in speed by him. “What are you doing here? Aren´t you supposed to be in Musutafu?”
“And you should be on patrol with Endeavour, no?” the man didn´t change his posture or his demeanour, but he didn´t fool Aizawa at all. After so many years, he had learned well to read even the subtlest shows of anxiety and Hawks reeked anxiety. “I came because Tokoyami is worried about you.”
“Worried… Tokoyami?” Crap!! Had he been acting so strange as to have tipped his intern? Then Touya definitely knew something was weird, with how well they knew each other!! He needed… his feathers puffed up without his control and it took him an entire minute to regain control of them. “Sorry about that, teach. I will straight things up with the kid next time I see him, tell him he doesn´t have anything to worry about…”
Eraserhead raised an eyebrow, not fooled at all by that show. He had been dealing with criminals, limelight heroes and (worse) teenagers enough time to notice someone masking something after a façade. And that was one of the worst performances he had ever seen. Quickly as to not tip off the other hero, he grabbed Hawks hand and dragged him down the alley they were in and through many more until they reached what looked like an abandoned house. He quickly dragged the blond inside the basement and to a secret room in the basement, where he pressed a button.
“Ready, we can talk. And you better tell me the truth” the man opened his mouth to defend himself, but was cut before a sound came out. “You have your boyfriend, his brother and another of my students worrying about you.” He said as he activated a coffee machine. “Better tell me before I take it out of you.”
“I told you, nothing is happening” the other hero said, weary. “Touya is just a worrywart. And… I have had Commission things to attend to lately…”
“See this place” Aizawa signalled around himself. “It was created BECAUSE of the Commission. We in the underground know that the HPSC sucks at ethics, so if we want to get some work done, we have to have our own little blackholes like this. With how many underground heroes have disappeared after getting too deep into Commission business, it´s a wonder they don´t know we have them” he turned around to grab the pot. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please… with milk” the teacher prepared the cup and handed it over to the N°2. They drank in silence for a moment. The other was weary, knowing that eraser was planning something, but… “I… promise that I´m going to straight things up with Tokoyami, so please…”
“Are you ready to tell me what is bothering you so much?”
“Nothing is bothering…” suddenly he got tongue twisted and he didn´t know why. What the bloody…
“You were acting out enough to make two of my students, one of them that doesn´t trust adults, worry and your freaking villain boyfriend gave me riddle-like warnings to talk to you, so forgive me if I don´t believe you” the teacher gave him a look. “Besides, that reaction from before tells more than your words ever could.”
“How… what the hell is in this coffee?!” he asked, looking down at the cup in his hands. He shouldn´t have drunk it, but he felt so nervous that…
“Only something to encourage you tell me the truth, courtesy of one of my fellow underground heroes. And it was not in the coffee, but the milk” he crossed his arms. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Not happening, I´m keeping my mouth shut until we both have to get out of here.”
“I have the whole week”
“Don´t you have a class to teach in the morning or…”
“Have someone covering up for me” Aizawa took another calming sip of coffee. “And from where I am, I think you are the one that is running out of time, no, Hawks?” he shuddered. If he went missing for a straight week, his handlers… “Whatever we talk here, is going to stay between us, okay? Unless is something relating a criminal case or…”
“It is, can I go now?”
“You will have to explain me first”
“I… you…” the bond sighed. Better finish this up. “The HPSC is planning a raid to end the League of Villains once and for all. Before they could join their new allies, the Paranormal Liberation Front, in their better hideout.”
“And?” could this issue be that simple to solve? Why was Hawks mopping about it if he only had to call Dabi to make sure he was not with the League during the Raid? “Just give Touya a call before the raid so he isn´t there.”
“I… I can´t. The Commission is aware that he and I… shared a connection before and… I think that´s why they sent me to him in the first place” his hands clenched to fists. “What I´m trying to say is that they are aware of who he is. Of what he could do to… to Endeavour” Aizawa´s eyes widened. What was he trying to imply? “That´s why they have put his capture as a bigger priority than even Shigaraki bloody Tomura. They have invested too much in Endeavour to let some stupid child with grudges ruin it.”
“Wait, are you telling me the Commission is behind Enji Todoroki?” the raven asked, receiving a nod as an answer. Woow. He knew that the Commission helped the bastard to cover a few things regarding his house life, but from that to actually actively backing him.
“That´s how Endeavour had gotten scout free of several infraction, even highly illegal things. You might not know, but he is the hero with the highest count of villain kills in all Japan. And has… questionable methods.”
“What are you telling me?” Hawks was a second away from snapping his cup after hearing that. “Hawks, come with me. You can tell this all to Principal Nezu and the other UA heroes, we can plan something, find a solution…”
“I can´t…”
“I know you are scared of them and I´m not going to say I know what they have done to make you join their ranks, but…”
“I said I can´t!! You don´t understand!! I really can´t!!” the young hero was now losing it, trembling. Whatever that happened, it was worse than he thought, Aizawa now understood as he saw Hawks trying to control himself. “This… this talk has gone on enough, I need…”
“Hawks” the teacher grabbed him, talking as if he was directing to one of his own students when they needed him. And it apparently worked. Shouldn´t be so surprised, Hawks was barely older than them and, by some standards, still a kid. “Please tell me, I want to help you.”
“There is no helping me”
“Then get a weight out of your chest, that might help”
“I… they have my dad” he confessed. The underground hero already knew more than he should, after all, what was a little bit more? “He and my uncle… they are locked in Tartarus. And not exactly… they were villains, but… they weren´t that bad and I… I´m at fault for their capture. It was all my fault.”
“Hawks… they would have been caught regardless…”
“No, they… were smart enough… and… and Endeavour only manage to catch them because I was friends with Touya…”
“Problem eyas, explain” Aizawa said as he handed the sobbing hero a handkerchief.
Before that night, Shouta never thought he would despise Enji Todoroki more than he did when he found what he had done to his family. Now, he was sure he had committed a mistake. Hawks tale was… just a show of how low people that were supposed to be on the light side fall to achieve their plans. Beginning with Enji, who had no morals despite being a hero. He meant… what human being stood so low as using his (supposedly) dead son to lure another child to a trap? All to capture a pair of villains? Little Hawks had only wanted to see if his best friend was okay, so happy to have received the message that he was alive after Setoko… but it was a trap. He had taken Enji right to his family´s hiding place and then been used as a hostage to assure his father´s cooperation. To crush a kid´s hopes that way, thorn away his family and then throw him away in the worst place possibly, the HPSC… just what the HELL?! What kind of hero did that?!
And the Commission, exploding a child´s guilt and love for his dad to manipulate him. He knew that they were unethical bastards, but… should he even be surprised? Really? He had known that they were willing to sink lower than the dirt. Even so, he really thought there were limits. But turning a child into a soldier, practically torturing him, holding his family hostage over his head… God, Hawks must have been utterly terrified. Still be. If any little failure could mean his dad would be tortured and he could do nothing but watch… No wonder he had reached N°2 so young!!
“How could they do something like that?” Aizawa asked. “I mean, I know it´s Tartarus, but there must be limits to what is allowed and I know people there that would have reported highly illegal torture if it was happening between their walls some way or another…”
“But no one is supposed to know” he sighed. “The Commission have their own secret level where they could do whatever they want. It´s there where they put the special prisoners they want to keep under their thumb” Hawks slapped his had over his mouth. “I shouldn´t have said that…”
“Hawks…” Eraser suddenly had one creepy thought that might… it was just that, he had seen the photos and paraphernalia Hawks done in the past. “Exactly how much of what they tell you to do, do you really consent to?”
“I don´t understand. They order and I do…” his eyes widened. “I… I have said enough. Just forget everything I said, okay? Tokoyami… I will solve that in the morning. Will call him, okay? Don´t go doing strange things!!!”
Hawks practically run out of the place, utterly scared, leaving Aizawa to ponder things. What should he do? He had come to help the young hero so his students could breathe easier, but had casually tripped over a difficult situation. Again. Or worse than last time, because helping Todoroki meant to take on another hero, a top rank, yes, but only one hero, but this time he had dirt on the Commission and… well, this was bad. Then something came to his mind. Underground heroes had always wanted to raid a Commission building, no matter which. The problem was doing this without telling the HPSC that the snitch had been Hawks…
“Hey, Saya?” he called one of his fellow undergrounders. “Can you help me with something?”
After that call, he returned to Musutafu and went straight for his husband. Hizashi must really be a mind reader, because he had a pot of coffee and a bottle of sake on the table when he arrived. He probably had taken a sip himself to prepare his mind for the mess his spouse brought home this time. There was even a cat available to pet!! And the children were not in the vicinity!! Damn, he must be reeking a dark aura.
“Hi, kitten, what happened with the Commission that put you in such a mood?”
“How do you know it was the Commission?”
“Hawks ties with them seemed rather… strong for a hero, so I thought that whatever was putting Tokoyami´s and Todoroki´s feathers on end, had to be related to them.” The blond passed him the coffee first. “So, what did that unethical bastards do this time?”
“Oh, nothing new. Only child slavery and torture in many levels” Hizashi´s glasses felt to the ground at those words. “I talked to Hawks in a black hole… you know, where we have an EMP to cut all the communications to the exterior and it turned out that his ties with the Commission aren´t exactly his own choice.” He passed a hand through his hair. “They are holding his father hostage over his head.”
“How?”
“That was another surprise, apparently Hawks come from a family of villains” another surprise that nearly sent Mic to the ground. “Yes, I was surprised too.” His expression hardened. “But that´s not the problem now. The real issue is that the Commission wants to get rid of Touya and they are using Hawks to do it. And he couldn´t do anything, because then they will hurt his father, badly.” Then something came to his mind. “I think Touya knew it, that´s why he tried to send me to Hawks when we talked last time.”
“But… isn´t the father in Tartarus? How would they be able to…”
“Without us knowing? Well, it seems like the Commission has it´s own secret level in Tartarus where they could do whatever they want” Aizawa ignored the coffee and went for the alcohol. “Anyway, it´s not like I could find it on my own, so… I asked Saya for her help.”
“Owww, this is going to be good” the Voice Hero smiled. “Should I find an excuse to visit Tartarus soon?”
“Are you really coming with me?”
“Too good a chance to mess with the Commission to lose, kitten”
----------------------A few weeks later-----------------------
In the end, there was no need to schedule a visit to Tartarus. Not with Gran Torino and Tsukauchi calling them after capturing Kurogiri. And, while he was really shaken and anguished after hearing what happened to Oboro, he still had his mind on the mission. Oboro… Oboro would agree. He would have wanted to help those people in the Commission´s secret level, no matter that they were villains. So, in the middle of their chat with Shirakumo´s corpse, he dropped a strand of hair into a console. It was all that was needed to enter the servers.
Saya Hatori, aka Pro-hero Code, was a technopath even the Commission was afraid of. They have tried to recruit her into their ranks too, but she was too weary of governmental institutions to accept. And she was right, as Aizawa´s call had proved. Normally she wouldn´t do something like this, but considering everything… well, the thing was that she agreed to scan the systems of Tartarus, looking for irregularities. Irregularities she found with ease.
“It´s not going to be easy” she said when Aizawa and a little group of underground heroes met with her a few days after. “The place is harder to raid than I-Island itself, for not saying Tartarus. Besides, it has something the island didn´t have, a trap system that will let the sea in if raided, killing everyone inside immediately.”
“Bit heartless, no?”
“What were you expecting from the Commission?” answered Eraser, putting on his googles. “That´s why this raid has to be made like this… unexpected even by the police and as quick as we confirmed the secret level existed.”
“Wouldn´t that cause us trouble?”
“Only if we don´t bring the ones inside with us” the dark clad hero said, thinking about Tsukauchi. “Let´s go.”
“Will find you outside on the other side” assured Code, entering the system again.
The sudden intrusion of a bunch of heroes was the last the guards on Tartarus expected that afternoon, but finding a complete other level of their prisoner, secret to many but a few… the only thing they could say was that they weren´t ready for the horrors that they found inside. Tsukauchi, who was carried personally by Aizawa, was astonished and disgusted. And it was shared with all the people around them, as they stared at the broken people in the cells around them, bound to some kind of torture or immobilization devices. Shouta walked with the policeman, trying to understand what the Commission was really doing there. Why were they torturing this people for? Only to keep people in check or… to get information or… or what? Whatever it was, was it really worth it?
“Hey!! Help here!!” someone called from a cell on the other side. Eraser run and entered, finding a struggling man with familiar eyemarks around his eyes. Familiar as in Hawks marks… but that´s where the familiarity ended. This man looked beefier and feral than him. He was also screaming like Hizashi when he saw a bug. On the other side of the cell a man with a striking similarity to the Winged Hero was strapped to a device, red wings cuffed shut and their owner unconscious.
“Get away from us!! You damn…”
“Calm down, we are here to help” the villain didn´t seem so sure, showing his teeth to the hero. He approached and whispered, as he was sure who this people were.
“Your nephew sent us, let us help.”
The prisoner wasn´t convinced, but he allowed the heroes to unstrap him from his own device, muttering something about emitters. He demanded to carry his brother out of the cell and, once out of that place and in their way to the infirmary, the vulture (as Aizawa was sure he was one) seemed to calm down. He also responded surprisingly well to orders once he was sure that the people weren´t going to hurt him or his little brother.
“So… Keigo sent you here” Shouta tried to hide his surprise at hearing that name. He had never heard Hawks civilian name before, after all, so it was strange to hear someone addressing him that way.
“He more like mentioned this place and his predicament and I decided to help”
“It´s hard to believe. Emitters usually don´t help mutants out of kind of their hearts.”
“Some of us do” Aizawa answered, crossing his arms. “Besides, I hate the Commission. It was a great opportunity to fuck them right up the arse.”
“Hummm” the predator bird mutant´s gaze softened a bit. “Whatever. I thank you anyway.” He extended a hand to touch his brother´s hair. “He hasn´t been looking well the last few days, since those bastards took him away from something. Hasn´t woken up for at least two.” The raven clenched his fists. This was probably his fault, if he hadn´t intercepted Hawks and interrogated him… no. That conversation leaded to this moment, where traumatized people were safe from the Commission´s cruel methods. He can´t go back now. “Anyway, it´s Shin. He would find a way to return from hell itself if it´s to meet Keigo again.”
“And talking about him” Aizawa handed over a paper, the cover of a magazine staring Hawks. One of the less sexualized ones, because he wasn´t going to be the culprit of a new jailbreak. “You both should at least write to him soon. I have written my address you can send me the letters and I would make sure he receives the letters.”
“Maybe” the vulture watched the paper with something in his eyes… was that concern? “Tell me, Eraserhead, it´s it possible to be concerned and proud of a person at the same time?”
“I would say it depends on the circumstances.”
“I see” the prisoner answered, eyes still on the magazine cover. “Mutants shouldn´t rise high, Eraser, it´s something all should comprehend. Emitters will always find a way to knock us down and the sooner we learn that, the sooner we will be safe” he took that thing down. “He will never be N°1.”
Aizawa could have told him anything, but he decided to just leave. If that was how he thought things were… well, he was old enough to accept his faults. Besides, there was something off in his voice when he said that. If he wasn´t lacking a backstory, he would say that he was dealing with someone that had a trauma related to quirkism or experienced severe quirkism before in his life.
A few weeks later Aizawa surprisingly found himself staring at a letter from Tartarus personally delivered by Tsukauchi. A letter that was addressed for someone else. He handed it over to Tokoyami at the end of the class to be delivered, with the promise to tell him his mentor´s reaction. The crow headed boy returned that day to the dorms with a surprised expression on his face, telling his teacher how Hawks had actually cried when he read it.
“But, at the same time” Dark Shadow continued where Fumikage stopped. “He looked happier than in a week. So Fumi and I want to say thank you, sensei!!”
“Yes, thank you”
Aizawa nodded and let them go. It was great that Hawks was happy. That child deserved a little bit of happiness after everything he went through. And maybe next time he could actually see his family face to face instead using him as a mail box. To distract himself he started reading through the files he got after raiding the Tartarus secret level. Surprisingly, he ended up with Junto and Shinyo Takami´s files, finding some irregularities with their life resumed. Survivors of the Birdflock incident… what the hell was that? He looked it on internet and found about a small group of villains that caused trouble a few years before he even entered UA. They were called like that because they were all predatory bird mutants, leaded by a vulture-quirked man all media called the Bone Breaker.
Hummmm, a vulture. Just like Junto. Could he be…
Wait, the hero in charge of this incident was Yoroi Musha. Aizawa himself had never had much contact with the old hero, but he was the oldest hero in the ranking and the one that lasted longer defending his place in it. He had some… old fashioned way of thinking that gave Aizawa second thoughts when he authorised his students work with him. And now that he mentioned that, Ashido has been looking a bit down since she worked with him, no? Maybe it was time to talk to his students about the heroes they were apprenticing under.