Winds of Destiny: Rising ~ {Hawks x OC}

Chapter Thirteen: Dinner Date

"You're kidding! Again?" The voice of one of the workers whom Hawks had been helping load boxes of supplies into the villa with suddenly called out.

The main reason he'd been helping out with the supply chain was to gather intel. He wasn't given many opportunities to visit the other locations, but he'd been able to get a good idea of where they were and who was running them based on the supply schedule. Unlike the main villa staff, the regular workers didn't suspect him and were eager to talk when he approached them. He'd been careful to keep his inquiries light, leading them into spilling info on their own without outright asking for it; a trick that had been instilled in him during his specialized training with the Safety Commission.

"Something wrong?" Hawks asked, setting down the box he was carrying and turning toward the worker.

The man looked up from his phone with a worried expression as he explained, "Heroes raided another one of our black-market facilities! This time in Gunma. If we keep losing resources like this, it's gonna put a big strain on our production timeline."

"No kidding," he said, raising his eyebrows and leaning back on his heels.

Heroes raiding black-market production facilities? He hadn't heard anything about it. It wasn't something the Safety Commission had sanctioned, which meant it was probably coming from the Police Force. If the Safety Commission didn't know that the facilities the police were raiding were related to the Liberation Front, they wouldn't have had any reason to blacklight the operation.

"How did the heroes even know about that facility? We just established it last week!" One of the other workers exclaimed.

A third worker crossed his arms and nodded with a severe expression on his face. "This is the third time now. There's gotta be a leak somewhere, right? I mean, what else could it be?"

Whoever the idiot was who was tipping off the police was going to end up blowing the last five months of undercover work Hawks had been doing to take down the League. A few of them already suspected his intentions of being ingenuine. Even though he had nothing to do with it, they would probably think he did and start cutting him out of important business. No way in hell was he going to let that happen, regardless of this guy's good intentions.

Hawks raised his hands up in front of him and grinned at them. "Come on now, there's no need to panic. I'll talk to the guys upstairs and see if I can figure something out, okay?"

They all turned to him with relieved expressions and one of them called out, "Thanks, Hawks!"

~*~

Hawks waited in the restroom down the hall from the meeting room where several of the Liberation leaders had been going over plans to tighten up security on their warehouses. The Meta-Liberation members were busy arguing with the League members who had expressed concerns about one of their followers being a snitch. Thankfully, no one had mentioned yet that they though he might be involved. He called his feather back from down the hall when he heard the chairs scrape against the floor, signaling him that they were preparing to leave. He made a show of washing his hands before walking out of the restroom, just as Re-Destro and Skeptic were walking past.

"Oh! Hey guys!" He called out with a wave.

"Hawks. Fancy meeting you here," Re-Destro greeted him with a leery tone.

He shrugged nonchalantly. "I was just helping out some of the guys on the loading docks."

The Liberation leader slid his gaze over to Skeptic, who nodded as if to confirm Hawks's whereabouts.