Winds of Destiny: Falling ~ {Hawks x OC}

Chapter Twenty-One: Disagreement

Misaki returned home shortly after leaving the Hero Public Safety Commission headquarters. She hastily kicked off her boots and tossed her bag onto the entryway bench after closing and locking the front door behind her. She quickly moved around her apartment next , checking all of the locks on the windows and doors before snapping the curtains closed and backing up into the middle of the living room. She nearly jumped out of her skin when her back hit an unexpectedly solid surface and she reflexively swung her elbow back into the side of the intruder. Her arm was caught and her wrist was grabbed, and she was sent spinning around to become trapped in someone's arms. She gasped, recognizing the familiar embrace, and shifted her wide eyes to stare up into Hawks's stern looking face in shock.

She sighed in relief before closing her hand into a fist and knocking it against his chest over his coat. "Don't scare me like that!"

He stared down at her with narrowed eyes, his voice low and suspicious as he asked, "What are you doing?"

Gulping at the unfamiliar severity of his expression, Misaki backed away a step before asking, "What do you mean, what am I doing?"

He didn't look amused at her attempt to dodge as he slowly crossed his arms and stared back at her. "Who do you think is going to be coming through those doors and windows?"

She turned away from him, feeling more than a little bit uncomfortable under his heavy scrutiny, and walked across the living room toward the bedroom as she shot back at him over her shoulder, "Other than you? What are you doing here anyway? You didn't tell me you were going to be in town."

"I heard your conversation with the President earlier," he admitted darkly.

Stopping in her tracks, Misaki's eyes widened and she cursed softly under her breath before crossing her arms across her chest and turning around to glare at him from her bedroom doorway. "You really should work on your stalker tendencies, you know?"

***

He held her glare with a stern expression on his face as he asked, "Why did you lie?"

"I didn't," she curtly replied before turning and walking into the bedroom.

Sighing in irritation, Hawks dropped his arms and stalked across the living room after her. "Don't try to lie to me too, Misaki. I know you better than that. That wasn't just some report of a League sighting you told her about was it?"

Misaki tossed her jacket down onto the end of the bed and flopped down on the edge with a heavy sigh. "The President asked me to look into the background of a villain called Stain."

"The Hero Killer?" He asked, his shock clearly evident in his tone and his widened eyes.

She looked away as she grumbled, "You know that file you were so interested in the other night? It was filled with information I'd collected about him. She wanted me to try to see if I could find anything in his background that might have hinted at a possible League connection."

"Why did she ask you to do that?" He incredulously wondered aloud. That kind of investigative work wasn't something the President would have typically entrusted to her secretary.

Misaki shrugged. "I don't know, she didn't tell me. It kinda seemed like it wouldn't really be a good idea to turn down that kind of opportunity though, ya know?"

He couldn't really fault her for trying to further her career. He was sure she'd been eager to prove herself after being handed such an important assignment. It wasn't that he thought that kind of work was outside her abilities. In fact, investigative analysis was one of her major strong suits. But he also knew that she could sometimes get tunnel vision when she was focused on something she felt strongly about; so much so that she could even make herself sick, like she'd done after the attack on UA.