Beautiful Disasters- Hawks x OC

Chapter 60

After she and Keigo had talked it over, Mariko called Araya and confronted him about being a complete jackass. The conversation escalated into a full-blown argument between the pair- the height of it occurring after he tried making a joke out of Hawks being too sensitive and she yelled at him and called him an insensitive piece of shit- and hanging up on him.

She'd refused to speak to the male and was ignoring him completely forcing Hayato to act as a liaison between the two of them until they made up. Unfortunately, that didn't seem like it would happen any time soon as Mariko had no intention of forgiving the ravenette until he apologized and promised not to mess with Hawks, while the male was trying to spend as much time with her as possible in hopes that the situation blew over quickly. The result of their differing ideologies was an extremely uncomfortable planning session held at the female's apartment at Araya's insistence.

She, Hayato, Araya, and Keigo all sat in the living room as they discussed different plans while simultaneously ignoring the elephant in the room that sat between the two childhood best friends.

"I think I should just show up," she told them honestly. "For a group that tries to plan out their moves so carefully, I think it'll be to our advantage if I just show up unannounced. It doesn't go with their setup, but the end result'll be the same won't it?" she asked, turning to Keigo. He was the expert on the League of Villains after all.

"That depends on whether we're right about them wanting to kill Shimizu," he admitted. "Otherwise, your whole end of the deal goes to waste."

"What if you tell the truth?" Hayato suggested. "Tell them you come from Division 1. You're conducting an investigation and are here to negotiate under the assumption that our interests align. They probably don't know much about how we operate if they know of our existence at all. Most likely they'll think we just want to apprehend Shimizu instead of killing her."

"You mean pretend I'm a misinformed agent?" she asked.

The blonde nodded. "Until you determine whether our interests really align. If they do, then we open the line of communication. If not, you get out of there. No harm, no foul."

"And if they kill her for knowing the base location?" Keigo asked.

"Her best card, in this case, is that she's a federal agent. The league has limited resources and mobility. As it stands they're like a small gang in terms of threat level. The last thing they need is the full force of the military on their asses for killing her. Even if they're all psychotic, if they're organized enough to pull off the operations they have so far, at least one of them'll have enough brains to figure out that she's not worth killing."

Araya nodded in agreement. "I'm game."

Mariko glanced at Keigo, a silent question if he disagreed with anything.

"What's your excuse for knowing where they were and that they were looking for her?" he asked.

"We've got informants everywhere," she told him.

"So what, I'm getting my cover blown?" he asked.

"No, we know that the League has multiple informants. They won't know it's you unless you let them know there's some sort of relationship between you and Mariko. The success of both your mission and ours rests on you guys acting like strangers," Hayato explained.

Hawks sighed, unfortunately, this was the best option. "Fine," he seceded.

Araya clapped his hands once: a universal sign for "or work here is done." He looked at Mariko for a moment and furrowed his brow- the brunette hadn't spared him a single glance the entire time he'd been there (much to Keigo's delight). "Meeting adjourned or whatever. Mari, can I talk to you for a moment love?" he requested.