Winds of Destiny: Rising ~ {Hawks x OC}

Chapter Twenty-Five: Moving On

Misaki stood in her kitchen, washing off her plate from lunch before setting it in the drying rack on the counter and pouring herself a steaming mug of coffee. Walking back into the living room, she set the mug down on the table and flopped herself down on the couch, taking a moment to enjoy the satisfying sense of accomplishment she was feeling at the moment. She had finally finished writing the new programming for ROAM, and she had to admit that she was actually pretty impressed with the results. She could only run a simulation with a small amount of test data on her home computer, but once it was up and running on a processor that could handle the real-time dataflow, she fully expected it to be able to do exactly what it was designed to: forecast potential villain activity.

She'd managed to get her confidence percentage up to around seventy-five percent using the test data she'd requisitioned from the police force. The police commissioner hadn't been too keen on just letting her into their server now that she was a civilian contractor, and no longer an employee with the Hero Public Safety Commission. She had given him a brief rundown of the kind of information she was looking for and he had grudgingly agreed to allow her access to the data of five different convicts with varying types of criminal backgrounds who had recently escaped from prison, ones who had a particularly long list of past crimes for her to factor variables from. The man had always been a bit of a curmudgeon, but not nearly as bad as Shadou-san was. Not to speak ill of the deceased, but she wasn't exactly crying about being out from under the hostile scrutiny of that naysaying watchdog – not to mention the spiteful board of commissioners.

Misaki opened her eyes after a minute and stared up at the ceiling. She hadn't really allowed herself any time or energy to think about what had happened after Jaku; about all of the ways that her life had suddenly changed pretty much overnight, or the lives of the people she'd known and had been close to that had been lost. She felt like such a hypocrite, encouraging others to face their feelings while hiding from her own. She'd thrown herself into recoding ROAM as a distraction from having to deal with all of the loss she'd experienced in such a short amount of time. The sudden passing of her mentor, seeing the grave condition Hawks had been in at the hospital, losing her job and only source of income, not to mention the potential adoption of Eri. Maybe one day she'd find the resolve within herself to take her own advice.

With how crazy everything was in the country at the moment, and given the fact that Overhaul had broken out of Tartarus with the rest of the villains, she and the principal had decided that the safest place for Eri to be was at UA for the time being. Even though he wasn't able to use his quirk now that he'd lost both of his hands, there was still a possibility of Overhaul coming after Eri, in order to attempt to use her quirk to restore his. Misaki would still be able to visit and help with her training, but as far as the adoption went, they had both felt that it was better to wait until things were more stable and the potential threat against her was eliminated.

That was one of the main reasons she'd initially agreed to take on the commission from Shira. The first time she'd tried to use ROAM to track Overhaul's movements, he'd been surrounded by the protection of the Shie Hassaikai and his loyal Eight Bullets. ROAM had been in its infancy as far as monitoring potential villain activity, and she'd been more focused on tracking the movements of the League than the Shie Hassaikai. This time was different; it was personal. Overhaul was on his own now, without his family or his quirk to protect him. He was vulnerable – and she would not fail to track him down a second time.

The sound of her phone ringing from atop the bar counter across the room broke her out of her musings. Lifting herself up off of the couch, she headed over and picked it up, noticing the number on the screen was blocked. She hesitantly pressed the answer button before bringing the device up to her ear and tentatively asking, "Hello?"