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THE FALL OF NO. 2 WING HERO: HAWKS
Only five short years ago, the Wing Hero Hawks burst onto the scene in Tokyo. Handsome, charming and witty, this hero captured the hearts of the nation, while surprising the public with his natural talent and swift manoeuvrability as a hero.
Hawks, owner of the Fierce Wings quirk, cuts a striking figure against the sky. Large red wings arc out from an oversized khaki coat, fur lined, and matching trousers. His boots are dark, soft leather, and he wears both headphones and a yellow-tinted visor when he fights. His form-fitting shirt in black, with geometric yellow lines, and his ears are pierced with red jewel studs. Hawks, recently revealed to be Takami Keigo after five years of relative anonymity, is a dreamboat, with the highest number of posters sold since All Might’s last major merch drop, ten years ago.
And while he managed to pull on the nation’s heartstrings, he also had another side. Another layer, one sinister and blood-soaked.
Hawks was not what he made himself out to be.
[Image ID: Hawks at his debut, eighteen years old and grinning as he flew way above the ground, two children perched safely in his arms, several feathers zipping about to save others from a burning high rise.]
A perfect introduction to hero society: the perfect save. On 9 August 2XXX, the Fushiguro-Alina Company building in Tokyo was set ablaze due to a faulty staff room microwave and a forgotten fire safety audit. Of the 323 lives in the building, not a single one was lost. Because Hawks arrived on the scene.
On the streets, heroes and first responders evacuated hundreds, but the top floors held 42 trapped civilians, unable to make their way down the building. Hawks appeared in a flurry of red feathers, and within minutes, he’d landed every one of those 42 civilians on the ground without incident, including the two young children accompanying their mother to work that day.
His interview on the scene showed off his vibrant personality and quick thinking, and he skyrocketed into the hearts of the Japanese public, landing himself in the top 100 by the end of his first week on the job – an unprecedented approval rating.
This, it now seems, was part of the scam.
The Hero Public Safety Commission (HPSC) has not commented on this matter, but whistleblowers from inside the company have admitted it: the rankings were falsified to move Hawks up the charts quicker, to give him the big splash he needed. Some have even speculated that the fire was also a purposeful blaze to help Hawks’ debut – though evidence backing up those claims has not been forthcoming.
Hawks’ first year was very successful, working his way from his week 1 debut of 98th to his week 52 ranking of 23rd. By the end of his second year, he was 10th. By the end of his third, 4th.
Only a handful of weeks after his three-year anniversary, he surpassed the two year holder of 3rd place, Best Jeanist. Hawks was now in the top three. He was on talk shows every weekend, starred as a model in fashion campaigns and appeared regularly as a celebrity judge on worldwide televised competitions and reality shows. He patrolled almost daily, had new saves and reports banked almost hourly, and his approval ratings showed him to be miles ahead of then-number two hero, Endeavour, and creeping steadily up on the record holder of number one hero, All Might.
The new revelations out of the recently finished war against the League of Villains has thrown all of this into question. All of the perceived hard work, the believed trust and spirit – Hawks, or perhaps more accurately, the HPSC, has burned it all to the ground.
[Image ID: A class photo with the faces of twenty-three students blurred out. In the centre, the only non-blurred face is unsmiling, blonde, with gold eyes and blonde hair. There are little dark triangles at the corners of his eyes.]
Takami Keigo was born on 28 December 2XXX to a mother, Takami Tomie, who could control two additional eyeballs that floated beside her body, and a father, only known as Takami, a low-rank villain currently imprisoned for theft and murder, eventually caught by Endeavour. His victims were killed by the slices of the feathers embedded in his forearms, which could shoot out of his body and return on command. Their son’s eventual quirk would blend his parents’ together seamlessly and give him the power needed to become a famous hero.
However, his childhood was not fit for it.
Takami was regularly on the run, and Takami Tomie gave him save haven whenever possible. However, reports from that time imply a hostile relationship between the two, and sources close to the family claim that the household was a dangerous one for Ms Takami, as well as her young son.
It should’ve changed after Endeavour’s arrest of Takami, but instead the family no longer had income and found themselves on the streets. It was only a few months before HPSC operatives came across the young winged child, and bought him from his mother. The price is still unknown, but one has to wonder how much a mother would charge in such a situation.
From that moment onwards, Takami Keigo was a ghost. A missing boy vanished from the real world and implanted in a second, shadow one. Whistleblowers have confirmed through classified documents that young Hawks was not the only agent raised and trained in under the HPSC’s care; for a time, he was in a class of six or seven, who alternated in and out. By the time he was thirteen, he was trained alone, and those other agents vanished from documentation. The mystery of the missing children is currently under investigation by an external auditing company, and Hibino Aoi of Vulture Japan in his ongoing series, The Children Japan Stole.
What was the intention, however? What was the grand plan that encouraged the HPSC to illegally acquire children and train them for combat from a young age?
It becomes clear with one key figure: Gun Hero Lady Nagant.
[Image ID: Lady Nagant with her spirals of purple-pink long hair, black jumpsuit and purple visor over her right eye. From her elbow, a large sniper rifle extends.]
Lady Nagant, Quirk: Rifle, was a hero who went by a fake name. While the world thought of her as Ashiro Kaori, her name was revealed at her sentencing: Tsutsumi Kaina. Her family sold her to the HPSC when she was six after a quirk counselling session revealed the depth of the potential of her ability, and her parents were being evicted from their home. What they thought would save their family and allow them continued access to their daughter, turned out to be false.
Tsutsumi became an agent, and because of that, she became non-existent.
That is – until her debut at eighteen years old. She didn’t rocket up the charts like her successor, Hawks; she instead climbed her way up over several long years with a dangerous, often lethal quirk. However, her fans adored her, and her drive to be a good hero seemed sincere – but only eight years into her hero career, Lady Nagant spiralled down.
Fans noticed her becoming dazed or unaware while on patrol, her gaze flat and her reaction times slowing. Then, in a now-famous moment, Lady Nagant terrified school children when they attempted to shake her hand as she screamed in horror before escaping the situation. She admitted in a recent interview that “[she] was so disillusioned with the killing by that point, that all [she] could see on those kids’ hands was blood”. Days later, Lady Nagant was arrested for the murder of HPSC official, Ichikawa Saito, before additional charges were levied as a (now-assumed falsified) investigation into twenty-two other murders Lady Nagant committed was released by the HPSC. Lady Nagant had killed not only criminals and villains, but other heroes.
It would be another decade before Hawks appeared on the scene, and with a totally different quirk and attitude to heroism, no one would ever connect the two.
Not until the League of Villains dropped their HPSC files, that is.
[Image ID: Hawks in the street with Endeavour, fighting a white nomu.]
Here is the downfall of Hawks, as promised.
Hawks was a boy flying too close to the sun. He soared up the hero ranks, swept high into the blue sky above Japan, and then he started falling, a modern-day Icarus. The descent has been rapid; we expect his bones to break on the surface of the ocean.
As released in both the League of Villains data dump and the recent hero reports on the end of the war against the League of Villains, Paranormal Liberation Front, and their leader, All For One, Hawks has been working directly for the HPSC for all five years of his hero career. While he was once beloved for appearing from nowhere, no hero school to his name (which made him feel especially relatable for those unable to attend such prestigious schools as Yuuei or Shiketsu), it now makes him an obvious participant of industry planting by the HPSC.
In a post-arrest interview, League of Villain member and Paranormal Liberation Front lieutenant Mr Compress said, “Hawks was a great ally to have; a lot of spirit and comradery with that one! Pity he was a mole, but we also kind of expected him to be.”
The HPSC placed Hawks, famous, number two hero in Japan Hawks, into the League of Villains. To prove his mettle, he produced the dead body of Best Jeanist – thankfully a fake, after Jeanist’s work in Kamino Ward left him with only one lung and out of the public eye for the duration of his recovery. Hawks then was brought into the Paranormal Liberation Front, where he gathered details on the organisation for the HPSC’s work against them, but in the process also took part in their activities.
The white nomu attack central Fukuoka, for example, was a planned attack that Hawks was aware of in advance. The ensuing battle created over 30 million yen of property damage and fifteen injuries. Hawks is also alleged to have been a part of a number of PLF attacks, events and planning – including the plans for the release of All For One and the prisoners of Japan’s seven prisons.
While he ended up fighting against the PLF and League of Villains, his wings getting badly burned in the process, Hawks’ time with the League has resulted in trust in him wavering, especially since Mr Compress’ tell-all interview post-war.
On the topic of Hawks within the PLF, Mr Compress said, “I thought the guy was great. A real go-getter. Got along with everyone. Twice loved him, Toga loved him – hell, even Spinner loved him, and Spinner was in a phase where he wasn’t willing to like anyone new at that point, since we’d gone from a group of, like, eight, to a hundred-thousand overnight.”
“But it was Dabi,” Mr Compressed continued, “who Hawks was really close to. I mean, they hated each other, but they were also next to each other all the time, and one didn’t go anywhere without the other. They were always snipping at each other, gonna make a roast chicken out of you this and you have a pisspoor skin routine that. But Toga told me that she once saw them making out, so make of that what you will.”
The accusation of Hawks not only actively engaging with and aiding the League while undercover, but pursuing a romantic affair with one of its leading members, was the final nail in the coffin that was Hawks’ hero career, lodged even deeper into the wood after reports of the largest cross-agency mission in Japan’s history – the attack on the PLF HQ – resulted in the death of League of Villain member Twice at the hands of Hawks. Further, the reports state that the kill – already a taboo for a hero – happened with Twice’s back turned.
And now, with rumours swirling that Hawks’ Fierce Wings quirk might’ve been lost to All For One forever, even more rumours persist that he is still working with the HPSC, even after the mass exodus of over seventy percent of high level employees.
Perhaps Hawks – or Takami Keigo, as he might one day become again – will splatter on the pavement, now his wings have melted and the fall has been so damaging, or maybe he will attempt to rise again – perhaps dragging on the coattails of the heroes most stubborn about singing his praises, Mirko, Best Jeanist, and Endeavour.
Although, then again, Endeavour is no one Hawks should be replicating at a time like this.
*
Hawks closed the article, exhaled slowly through his nose, and then calmly threw his phone across the living room. After it had satisfactorily clattered against the floor, he stood and collected it, before scrolling down his contacts until he found All Might’s.
He listened through the ringing until All Might picked up.
“Hawks, my boy,” All Might said. “Have you thought about the proposal?”
“Yes,” Hawks replied. “I have. Tell them I’m interested in the HPSC President job. I can meet with them on Monday.”
He could hear All Might’s glee down the line. “Excellent! I’ll make the call now. You’ve made the right choice, my boy.”
“I think I have, too,” he agreed, before All Might hung up.
Hawks looked out the windows of his penthouse, stared out across a saved Japan. He would not be the splatter on the fucking pavement. Even if his wings were gone, he would soar again.