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“You need to plant your feet better to control your blasts,” Dad says, and Touya scoots his feet—toes first—back and forth until Dad nods in approval. Touya smiles to himself and lets his flames loose, grinning as the target catches. He can’t believe dumb old Fuyumi actually asked him to skip training with Dad to play soccer with her instead. “Now release,” Dad tells him, and Touya carefully lets his fire peter out, although it takes him longer than Dad likes.
The target is charred black, and smoking still. Dad inspects it carefully, even walking around it to see if any of Touya’s flames reached the other side. The wood isn’t made to catch, making it perfect to train Touya’s firepower.
“Is it better than last time?” Touya asks, bouncing over to check it himself. He already knows it is—Dad talks all the time about what a quick study he is, how fast he learns and improves. Any day now, Dad’ll teach him his ultimate move, and then Touya really will be like a hero.
“Take a look yourself.” Dad motions him over, and points at the back of the target, where small parts of the wood are still on fire. “Before, this would’ve gone out by now.” Dad ruffles his hair, and Touya stumbles at the force before planting his feet a little better. “Your firepower’s getting stronger every day.”
“Stronger than yours soon, right?” Touya tugs at his pants, and even though Dad always says he’s too big to be carried anymore, he still picks him up. “My firepower’s gonna even be strong enough to beat All Might soon!”
Dad laughs, and flips Touya upside down, holding him by his ankles as he squeals indignantly. “You’ve got a few years until then. Maybe start by learning to turn your flames off when I tell you to.”
“But the longer I go, the hotter I can make ‘em! Isn’t that the whole point?” Touya pouts, crossing his arms over his chest until Dad finally lets him down. He lets out an oof as he falls back onto the grass. The blades always make him itch—Mom says he has dumb old allergies and should take that gross purple medicine for it—but Dad just tells him to be tough, and Touya’s nothing if not tough. Nothing like Fuyumi, who cries every time she gets a scratch from playing.
Dad hums in thought for a minute before grinning at him, and Touya smiles as hard as he can back.
“Let’s test it out.”
Another hour later, Touya kind of regrets it, even if he refuses to say it out loud. Dad got called into work and took off with barely a goodbye, just telling Touya to go inside and find Mom while he took off for the office. And now Touya’s stuck in the kitchen with her fussing over him like he’s a little baby.
“Oh sweetheart, you’re burning up. Did your father not let you have a break? You’re completely overheated,” she fusses, pressing a cool hand to his sweaty forehead. It does feel kinda nice, but he still whines and pulls away. Fuyumi stares from her spot at the table, where she’s been eating frozen grapes while Touya’s been busy training. Which totally isn’t fair. Mom always gives her the best snacks while he’s with Dad.
“Mom, I want grapes too.” She wipes at his face, and the napkin comes away gray with ash from the target he burned. “You didn’t give them all to Yumi, did you? Grapes are my favorite.”
Mom’s eyes do the little squinty thing that happens when she’s confused. “Since when? Last week you said you hated grapes.”
Ugh, stupid Mom.
“Well, I like them now! And I want some! In the blue bowl, the one that’s just for boys.”
“Okay, okay.” Mom puts a cold washcloth around his neck before getting up. “Go sit at the table and keep that on. You need to cool down before going back out to play, okay?”
Touya rolls his eyes—but only when Mom turns around—and ignores the way Yumi gasps. She tattles immediately while he pulls out his chair at the table. This is why he likes hanging out with Dad better. Yumi’s always so annoying.
“Mom says it’s rude to roll your eyes,” she says matter-of-factly.
“And Dad says tattletales don’t get dessert after dinner.” Dad didn’t actually say that, but Touya thinks he’ll agree with him.
Yumi pops a grape in her mouth and leaves it in her cheek while she talks. “You’re mean.” She puts another grape in her other cheek.
“I bet you can’t fit more than four in your mouth at once.”
Yumi immediately grabs two more grapes and stuffs them in her mouth, making her cheeks bulge out. Touya tries to poke them, but she puts her head down on the table and covers her head with her arms.
“That’s only four, you gotta do one more!” He’s pulling at her to try and get her up when Mom walks back in with his bowl.
“What’re you two doing?” she asks, setting his snack in front of him and sitting across from them at the table. Yumi lifts her head up again and Mom’s eyes go wide.
“Spit those out! You could choke!”
Yumi coughs once, and a shiny, spit-colored grape rolls across the table. Mom grabs her and pops the rest out using her fingers. Eww.
“Touya told me to see how many I could fit in my mouth!” Yumi says, tears welling in her eyes. “It’s his fault!”
“What!” Touya kicks her chair. “It’s not my fault you’re too dumb to not choke on your food!”
“Touya—”
“It’s not my fault!” he yells at Mom, trying to ignore the way his own eyes are watering. She always takes Yumi’s side, just because she’s a baby and a stupid girl. Touya jumps out of his chair and stomps his way back outside, ignoring the way Mom calls for him. This is why Dad is so much better. He never gets mad at Touya like Mom does over dumb stuff.
The target from earlier is all but gone, and the remaining wood disintegrates and falls to the ground when he kicks the post. A tear makes its way down his cheek, and he wipes it away furiously on his shirtsleeve.
The sky is starting to get dark when the backdoor opens and Dad finds him sitting by the fence.
“I heard you argued with your mother.”
Touya refuses to look at him, instead resting his forehead on his knees. “She likes Yumi more than me.”
Dad sighs and sits beside him on the ground. “Why do you think that?”
“Because they’re both girls. And Mom always does extra stuff for her. And Mom always believes her over me.” His voice is embarrassingly shaky, so he stops talking so Dad doesn’t think he’s really upset about this.
“You know, most people like All Might over me.”
“That’s ‘cause they’re dumb,” Touya sniffles. “And ‘cause All Might does a lot of dumb extra stuff like those talk shows instead of training or patrolling like you.”
“Do you think being liked is the important part of being a hero?”
“No way!” Dad’s looking at him expectantly, so Touya goes on. “The most important thing is to be the strongest, and beat everyone else. That’s the best kind of hero there is!”
Dad ruffles his hair. “Then don’t worry about small stuff. Fuyumi and your mother can spend time together, and we’ll focus more on your training. Okay?”
Touya nods and scoots closer to his dad’s side until he wraps an arm around him. Touya’s too big for hugs like this, just like he’s too big to be held, but no one else is outside with them right now, so it’s like it doesn’t even count.
That night at supper, Touya has to struggle not to stick his tongue out at Yumi when she runs right past him to hug Dad. Because even if Mom likes her best, Yumi could never be a hero. And that’s why Touya’s Dad’s favorite, because he can. And because one day, they can be heroes together.
“Great job, Hawks,” the woman in the suit says.
Living with the hero people is so different from being at home. He has his own room, and it’s almost as big as his whole house was before. There’s no holes in the walls, and the roof doesn’t leak water when it rains. His Endeavor plushie sits on his new bed instead of stuffed in a garbage bag where Dad can’t find it. The only bad part is they made him wash it, so it doesn’t make the whoosh noise he’s used to hearing when he presses its belly.
He told one of the people in suits about it, since they told him he could ask for anything he needed, but instead of fixing his Endeavor, they brought him a replacement plushie, and tried to take his old one.
He’s really glad he got them to let him keep his. He doesn’t need a new Endeavor. His is fine, even if it’s broken now. He’s used to broken things, anyway.
And even if he can’t play as well without the woosh noise, they give him lots of playtime here. They’ve shown him a bunch of new games, and he gets to use his feathers for all of them and they let him be as loud as he wants. No one gets mad or yells or hits him. Sometimes they ask him to play the same game over and over, though. He kind of wishes he hadn’t shown them how he could hear people in the next room with his feather, since now they keep asking him to count them and stuff. It was only fun the first few times.
He misses Mom.
“Are you alright? Would you like a snack?” the woman beside him asks. They’re always offering him food, too. Especially since he spent the afternoon with the doctor. That day was the worst one he had since coming here. Too many shots that pinched his skin and made his arm all sore, and the room was cold. Even if they did give him a sucker afterwards for being brave, it wasn’t worth it.
He shakes his head no, and then looks down at his feet as his stomach rumbles, giving him away.
She pats his head gently. “It’s okay, Hawks. You can eat as much as you want here. It’s important to eat when our bodies tell us to, so we can grow up big and strong, okay? Just like Endeavor.”
His eyes go wide, and he nods and picks out a pack of pretzel sticks from her bag. They let him watch TV when he’s done with playtime for the day, so he knows how big Endeavor is. It seems impossible that he could ever grow that big, but maybe if he eats all the food they give here he has a chance.
“Are you ready to play some more?” she asks as soon as he shoves the last bite into his mouth, and he nods eagerly. Today he gets to play their funnest game, the one where he makes all his feathers fly around the room and try to hit things. They told him it was like tag for his feathers, but they acted weird when he had to ask what tag was.
He hasn’t asked if they’ll play regular tag with him yet, since they only like for him to play games with his wings.
It’s really hard to hit the tiny balls that bounce across the room. They move super fast, and it’s really hard to see them. He’d asked before if he could play with bigger balls, to make it easier, but they only have the little ones here. The game goes on for a super long time before they ask him if he’s ready to be done and he nods eagerly.
She sits down on the floor with him as he sips from the water bottle they gave him. It’s bright red, like his wings, and makes a tinny sound when he taps on it with his nails. He really likes it, but he tries to only do it when he’s by himself in his room, since the grownups start to look like Mom when she went a while without one of her beers.
“Hawks, have you ever flown before?”
He looks down at the floor and shakes his head.
“Really? Have you at least tried to pick yourself up with one of your feathers, like you did for those people you saved?”
He shakes his head again. “I didn’t know I could pick up something that heavy until then. I was always too scared to try with just one feather in case I dropped.”
“What about with your wings?” she asks, pressing her hand against the crest of his wing. He doesn’t like it much—his wings feel so much—but they told him before he should get used to people wanting to touch him. It’s part of being a hero, to make sure everyone likes you.
“It’s too hard to move all the feathers together like that. They’re not like regular wings, I can’t just flap ‘em.”
She hums in thought, and the next day, instead of going to the big white room downstairs for playtime, they take him to an upstairs room with lots more people. He stumbles over his feet when they usher him in, trying not to shrink behind their legs to hide. Heroes don’t hide; they face their fears so no one else has to.
“Is this the new one?” The woman who asks wears a bright white coat that stretches all the way to the floor, and thick glasses that keep sliding down her nose.
Once, after his mom fell asleep on the couch, he’d watched a scary movie with a guy who dressed just like the woman in front of him. The guy in the movie made an entire person on his own, except the man he made was green and big and scary. When Dad came home and found him still awake and on the couch in the living room, he’d acted even scarier than the green man.
“Yes, this is Hawks. He’ll be in our care for a long time, so we hope you’ll assist in his training.”
The woman scoffs, but crouches down and starts running bony fingers through his feathers. He tries to smile at her, but she doesn’t look at his face, instead ruffling the vane the wrong way so it felt weird. When she’s done looking, she stands and talks to the agent behind him, still not looking at him.
“I have a few ideas, but let’s start with nets first, since it’ll be the easiest to take on and off.”
She grabs what looks like a bunch of wires off her desk, and he takes a step back. She huffs at him.
“He isn’t gonna run, is he? I’m not the type to chase a kid around.”
“That won’t be necessary.” The agent crouches down and puts her hands on his shoulders. “Hawks, we’re gonna try a new game now, okay? One where you practice moving all your feathers together instead of separately. We’re just going to put some things on your wings first to hold them all together until you get used to it.”
“I don’t…” He squeezes the fingers of his left hand in his right, then switches. “I’d rather play our normal games. Can we play those instead? I don’t like things touching my wings.”
She sighs, and he knows he made a mistake.
“Hawks, sometimes heroes have to do things they don’t want to, so they can protect other people. Does that make sense?”
He nods hesitantly. He didn’t want to leave his mom, but he did it anyway, because they told him he could save people just like Endeavor one day.
“The nets are going to help you learn how to use your wings in a new way, okay? So that you can fly to people who need your help as fast as possible. Isn’t that what you want?”
He does want that, more than anything.
He takes a deep breath, and lets go of his hand to clench both into fists at his sides. “I’ll play the new game.”
She smiles at him, and he tries his best to smile back.
When they drape his wings in the netting, and tie it tight tight tight so every feather sticks close, he imagines himself flying over cities, looking for people who need his help. When they leave the nets on even when he goes to bed that night, he tells himself it’ll be worth it, one day, when people see his wings and know someone’s come to save them.
Because he’s Hawks. A hero.