Winds of Destiny: Rising ~ {Hawks x OC}

Chapter Ten: Fate or Karma

Misaki stared at the wall on the other side of her office in dismay. Projected across the expansive surface was all of the research she'd been conducting on the backgrounds of any currently identified Nomu DNA contributors over the past few months. She hadn't yet been able to establish any clear connections within their lives, so she'd decided to try looking into their deaths instead. She'd just recently concluded that they had all died at different times and places from the others. It was becoming clear to her that the deciding factor for what made someone a target of the Nomu creator had more to do with their quirks than anything else.

And it was that line of thinking that had led her on a manhunt for any incidents resulting in the deaths of anyone whose quirk even remotely resembled Kurogiri's warp quirk. They had been unable to successfully procure a DNA sample from the villain's fog-like body, which left her with only this ambiguous, analytical method of identifying who he really was. If he was in fact a Nomu, as the Task Force suspected, his quirk was likely an amalgamation of several individual quirks which gave it that particular effect. She'd identified three already that might have fit the profile before she'd stumbled upon the one she was currently researching.

Turned her eyes back to her computer screen, she read through the first line of the obituary displayed there aloud, "Shirakumo Oboro, hero name Loud Cloud, was killed while using his quirk, Cloud, to shelter a group of children from falling debris."

As she scrolled down to the bottom of the online article, she found an imbedded video link and navigated her mouse down to click on it. The grinning face of a teenage boy with an infectious smile and laughing eyes filled the screen. He was cuddling a small kitten while riding atop a fluffy orange cloud. His somewhat translucent blue hair flowed in the wind almost like a flickering flame and Misaki was struck by a sudden flashback to her brief encounter with Kurogiri in the alleyway in Hosu.

His hair... It moved the same way Kurogiri's fog did.

"Cloud..." She trailed off thoughtfully, closing both the video and the obituary before pulling up the Commission's registered quirk database. She typed her query into the search bar at the top and read through the description of the quirk that popped up on the screen a moment later.

Quirk: Cloud

Type: Emitter

User: Shirakumo Oboro (deceased)

Description: The ability to create clouds of varying sizes and densities that can carry several kilograms worth of weight and move at great speeds through the air.

It wasn't a perfect match, but it did fit the profile she'd developed about the possible component quirks that could have made up Kurogiri's Warp quirk. Biting her thumbnail, Misaki glanced down at her phone on top of the desk for a long moment before reaching out to pick it up. She tapped one of the numbers in her recent call list before bringing the phone up to her ear.

"Tsukauchi here," the voice of the lead detective on the League Task Force answered when the call connected after two rings.

"Detective, it's Torimodo Misaki. Do you have a second? I want to run something by you," Misaki asked, trying to keep the trepidation out of her voice as she spoke.

She heard the sound of a door closing in the background as he said, "Go ahead."

Taking a deep breath, Misaki hastily replied, "I have an idea about Kurogiri. I'm sending you over a news article. Let me know when you get it."

She quickly forwarded the link to Shirakumo Oboro's obituary to the detective's encrypted email.

"I got it. Shirakumo Oboro? You think he's connected to Kurogiri somehow?" Detective Tsukauchi asked, his tone taking on a cautious edge.