Coiled Dragon

part 9

1

Hawks leaned his head back against the cold wall. Exhaling, he slid down against the wall and ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

He really shouldn’t have taken this mission.

Not that he had much of a choice. The Commission wanted him to come so he came. He might have more freedom than some of the other past recruits but he was still on a leash. Hawks had been diverting most of his attention into trying to infiltrate the League of Villains but he didn’t slack off on his usual hero work either.

Back when the scandal with UA blew up, he heard that the villains were interested in talking to Bakugou Katsuki but the boy ran away from home. The League had no idea where this Bakugou kid went either. They put in a request with underground contacts for information on the blond teen and Hawks knew for certain that there were a few in the Commission looking into this information in order to get him a “peace offering” to speed up his integration into the League. They wouldn’t just deliver the child over. No, but Hawks would be the one to tell the villains where to find Bakugou.

He had been thankful that no one ever found anything concrete.

A small part of Hawks felt bad for the kid, even if Bakugou seemed to deserve all the hate being thrown his way but he was mostly curious. Bakugou vaporized as if he was a ghost and no one on either side of the law could find him. Things only started to make some kind of sense when reports of him showing up in Yokohama came in. Of course, it became easy to disappear in a city that no hero or regular villain would be willing to set foot in. Not to mention, Bakugou somehow managed to get the owner of a large corporation to help him out.

One mystery was solved and now they got a thousand more thrown into their laps.

As much as Hawks wished for freedom, he was still the Commission’s star recruit. As such, he had his ways of getting classified intel. Yokohama had always been a taboo subject within the hero community and the government. It wasn’t formally independent but when it came down to it, that was what it basically was. Hawks knew HPSC had worked with ability users before and they were interested in that kind of power too. However, abilities weren’t genetically based and thus, it was harder to conduct research on it.

Body modifications with science, however, was much easier to understand.

Hawks heard people talking about the young prodigy of Huang Corp before. A few organizations had tried to throw him an olive branch for his genius but he had no intention of leaving Yokohama or using his brain for crafting new weapons. The Commission had been interested in him due to rumors that he wasn’t an ability user. No one could make it big in Yokohama without some kind of firepower to back themselves up and it was said Huang Zeku had work done on himself that gave him inhuman powers.

Young but hard to fool. Dangerous and cold like a blizzard. Huang Zeku’s reputation wasn’t the greatest in the classified files. Instead of a law abiding citizen, he was more of a walking humanoid arsenal in the files.

So how did Bakugou know Huang Zeku? How important was Bakugou to him? What could they gain from this information?

The calculations started churning well before Hawks got the call to meet the Commission’s president. He could practically hear the gears inside these politicians’ heads turning. Hawks told them about the wedding and if he was being honest, his attempt back at the wedding reception was a complete gamble. He didn’t want to grab Bakugou but it was obvious that the situation wasn’t something talking alone could solve and he had orders (always these damn orders) to test Huang Zeku out.

And Hawks witnessed the terrifying dragon first hand. It was a giant beast and not at all holy like what was described in the ancient tales. Menacing and abhorrent, it was a monster crawling out from the depth of hell and even more disturbing than Nomus. Nomus at least resemble people. The dragon was a savage beast whose presence alone symbolized death.