[ENG]Shoto Todoroki : Modern-day Terrorist

Chapter 147 - The Conspiracy

Hawks knew something was wrong the moment he saw Shoto burst into his office.

The day had begun like any other.

Hawks had gone to Nagano, both to reassure the civilians and to make sure his apprentice was doing his job properly.

And the boy was doing well, from what he'd been told: apart from some grumbling, he didn't bat an eye at the workload, didn't refuse orders, and wasn't too unpleasant with his colleagues.

Hawks had lunch with some of the top brass at the city's hall, then returned to Tokyo to catch up on some paperwork at his office.

As the next day was Shoto's day off, Hawks, in a merciful mood, decided to leave the boy alone and spare him another long meal where he would (presumably) get more than a little drunk.

Thus he was in his office, filling out incident reports for the minor interactions he'd had with villains, a document of an entirely different nature - and of an entirely different gravity - in his hand, when Shoto had barged in unannounced.

Hawks had been working on his weekly report to the Commission for nearly half an hour.

Usually all he needed was a few lines - usually summed up in 'r.a.s.' - which were supposed to summarize events or information likely to be of interest to the Commission, but since he'd taken Shoto under his wing, his superiors had become much stricter.

They wanted information about the boy and had openly asked Hawks to establish a relationship of trust with him.

Which Hawks had done, like the good, loyal little soldier he was.

"A power like his... we don't want to rush him, but you know what I mean, don't you?", Ryota had told him, "He has to be on our side, first to clear our conscience, but most importantly to prevent anyone else from getting their hands on him".

Hawks understood, of course.

If he'd been any other Hero - say, a civilian who'd acquired a Hero licence at the age of seventeen through a Hero training school - he'd have thought the Commission paranoid, perhaps even abusing its powers for obscure purposes.

But Hawks had seen the world, the real world, the one that wasn't shown on television, the one that didn't revolve around costumed Heroes parading with movie stars on red carpets or in perfume ads.

Beyond the countries that had managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps after the Quirks' arrival, there was chaos.

Small factions fought over land and resources, human trafficking and slavery were rampant, civil wars broke out here and there, and blood and despair spread like the plague.

Hawks wasn't there to say who was right or wrong : no one had that right.

What he could say was that he had seen children of six or seven born with powers capable of rivalling the gods and single-handedly overturning the balance of power in a region.

He had seen their innocent hands spread death like divine judgement, felt the terror and hope that the existence of even one such being could inspire.

First, you tried to control them - and when you couldn't, you killed them.

The first time he'd seen one of these children, Hawks was fourteen: the girl, standing on a desert dune in the blazing sun, had her arms outstretched, her eyes fluorescent, and suddenly a thousand men had fallen to the ground, dead.

No one had tried to control her.

"Men are born equal, but some are more equal than others", Ryota had told him when he was younger.