Bird of Prey @birdofpreyzine - Tumblr Blog

Oct 28, 2021

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Hey everyone! We're finally able to post our work for @birdofpreyzine and I wanted to share this fic with everyone! I've loved talking about mutant discrimination in BNHA and this is really me putting a lot of my thoughts in fic form, in the form of a discussion between Spinner and Hawks. It's rated T and it's non-shippy (there's some implied spinhawks but it's a throwaway line).

I had a really good time in the zine. Big thanks to the mods for working so hard, and please go look at the account and share the art and fic other people have made. You can also read under the cut if you choose to, or just click the ao3 link.

Summary: Once upon a time, a little boy looked through the pages of Hero magazines, wishing of the day he could turn the page and see someone just like him. Once upon a time, another boy smiled for the camera, spread his wings, and sold him a lie.

It's only years later that Spinner learns Hawks is a good liar.

Shuichi spends his afternoons after school dreaming of places he’d rather be than tending the register at the one conbini in his town. The walk there always makes him feel even more lonely; in such a small place, it’s obvious that few students would choose to be part of the so-called going home club, not when most of the local entertainment was to be found in clubs and each other.

He doesn’t have that option.

Today, he dreams of an ocean. He's been to one, once, when he was very young and his mother had the energy to venture out of their little mountain town and down to a city by the ocean. He remembers being overwhelmed; so many people, unlike home, and so… colorful .

The people were colorful too, unlike home. Some even looked like him.

So, every time he opens the cash register to drop coins or utters an irasshaimase in response to the bell that alerts him to new customers, he wishes its waves instead. A group of girls he recognizes as his kouhai enter and he wishes their talking and laughing was the squawking of seagulls.

The girls pay him little mind noticeably, but that’s how it usually is. An obvious sort of show of not looking at him.

Shuichi just continues cleaning.

The girls crowd over a magazine rack that’s reserved for the latest hero magazines and tabloids. He just restocked it, too, taking his time and inwardly cheering for how good it will feel to go home and read all the latest ones. He loves the new editions of Heroes Weekly, loves looking at the profiles of all the new up-and-coming heroes.

“Oh, wow, look at this one!” One of the girls says loudly, opening the magazine and showing the other girls a two-page spread Shuichi can’t see from the register. Her friends peer over her shoulder.

“He’s new, isn’t he? He’s so…”

“Good-looking! Wow, he’s dreamy… are those real?”

Shuichi resists the urge to roll his eyes. Heroes weren’t meant to be hot or pretty; they were meant to be cool. Inspiring . Just like it felt to look at his almost life size poster of Gang Orca. Ridicul-

“Don’t you think he looks, well, bird-ish?”

He stills.

“Yeah, well, that’s his…thing, isn’t it? His theme.” A bird-themed hero? How…dumb.

“I mean, look at those wings, what else can he make a theme after? Do you think that’s eyeliner or…?” Shuichi looks at the girls. It was strange, hearing them discuss a man’s attractiveness like this, a man who sounded, well, like a mutant . An animal mutant, no less.

He’s heard things about girls with mutations, especially animal mutations. A boy at school had spoken in depth of that other new rookie hero, Miruko, and her thighs. When it was a girl, it was “cute”, he guessed. Not too mutated, a classmate had whispered, looking at him as if he couldn’t hear. Still human-looking enough .

Unlike Shuichi.

No, Shuichi has come to learn that on the spectrum of Acceptable Mutant, he’s on the unacceptable end.

“It’s probably eyeliner,” One of them mumbles as she reaches for some snacks, followed by another girl getting some drinks. “It’s kind of hot; gives him a bad edge. He looks really young, doesn’t he?”

“Well, it says he’s only 18,” The girl still holding the magazine closes it, tucking it under her arm as she joins the other two at the counter. He rings them up monotonously, trying very hard to not make eye contact even though he can tell they are trying not to stare at him, at his scales. The girls leaving through the door feels like releasing a breath he didn’t know he was holding in — but the door doesn’t close fast enough for him not to hear a “ugh, he always looks so weird!”

Sometimes Shuichi wonders why the only place that hired him ended up being the only conbini here. Like a cruel joke to be played on him, as if everyone didn’t try to avoid him enough in this town.

Towards the end of last year, in middle school, Shuichi had watched as all the boys around him in his tiny school had gotten chocolates from the girls in their school. His dread had risen as he realized there’d be one boy without any.

Him of course.

Whatever. It didn’t hurt. He has games and hero magazines and manga to care about. But at the end of his shift, when he makes his own purchases of soda, Mutiny Games points, and a fresh new stack of hero mags, he reaches for the one the girls had been looking through.

When he gets home, it’s the first thing he looks through as he flops down on his bed, a large poster of Gang Orca smiling down on him. He flips through each page when he finally stops on a glossy two-page spread of a new hero with large red wings. The spread seems like the hero is in mid-takeoff, wings spread wide but with a clear shot of the man, well, boy? He looks younger than the age given in the profile — and given it’s eighteen he must have just graduated, though the school isn’t listed. He’s also clearly pretty, or handsome, Shuichi doesn’t know the difference except that it’s some sort of tangible quality that draws people in a way he’s always yearned to be able to do but never has.

But Shuichi’s pink eyes are drawn to something else. Smaller things — the texture of hair that looks merely fluffed up and wavy and wind-blown but to sharper eyes doesn’t look all that human in its stiffness, or eyes that show sharp slitted pupils even through a visor. Contrary to the girls’ guesses, Shuichi doesn’t think that’s eyeliner. Those eyes don’t look human, no, and they send a shiver up Shuichi’s spine. Some reptilian instincts he doesn’t (want to) feel particularly connected to arise and make him so aware that those are raptor’s eyes looking down on him. Not for the first time Shuichi asks himself if anyone else would feel that immediate tingle of fear he does, or is it only Gecko?

(Is there a Shuichi without Gecko? Are they separate things or the same?)

The sudden irrational fear fills Shuichi’s stomach with something shameful and bitter, a product of knowing just how it is to be looked at and judged down to the last molecule, a foregone conclusion of genetics and quirk factors, judgment he should know better to cast upon others but it’s hard when it’s all he’s ever known to do.

There’s little about him — a hero name, a quirk name, a location, and a blurb that tells Shuichi he’s just debuted at the age of eighteen and might break the top ten within months.

Hawks.

There’s a mention of an exclusive online interview done with Hawks by the magazine, so Shuichi quickly pulls it up on his phone and sees the young hero in a radio booth that looks too small for him and his wings and yet there’s a wide, bright smile etched on Hawks as he is welcomed to the show.

It’s clear from the first minute on that the good-looks are not merely photogenic — he’s charming, even animated, if not slightly off beat in humor. But not in the way anyone would be turned off. Everything about this man seems magnetic and just ‘enough’ to be different, but not repulsive. His jokes, his mannerisms, and his mutation all seem to be perfect and likable.

Shuichi doesn’t know why he’s starting to feel nauseated.

“So, your quirk is named Fierce Wings.”

Hawks perks up when the quirk is named, feathers fluffing up with him. Shuichi has never seen anyone so proud of a quirk before. Or anyone so openly uncaring about how he comes off to the baselines.

“That’s the name! These wings come in real handy,” Hawks practically fucking chirps , flicking one of his wings. “Versatility is really what they’re best at.”

“They do more than just help you fly right? We’ve seen that video of you taking down the Hakata Horror with feather swords, and how you managed to evacuate all those civilians from the ruins...”

“Yeah,” Hawks chuckles. “It’s like having two limbs full of hundreds of Swiss Army knifes. I can make them hard and inflexible, or as light and soft as down. I can hear and feel through them too, that’s how I got all those people out.”

The interviewer leans forward, clear interest in his eyes as he goes in. Somehow Shuichi knows exactly what he’s going to ask, and he feels his chest tighten with rage.

“But that’s not the only thing, your wings, I mean, that you have. No disrespect intended but your eyes…”

“Like a bird’s?” Hawks asks, smile wide and bright as he tilts his head to the side, undoubtedly avian-like. “You want to ask me about my other mutations? Don’t worry, man, it’s all cool — I’m not offended, why would I be?”

Shuichi’s mouth drops and Hawks keeps going.

“Honestly, it’s real funny everyone is so cagey about asking us about mutations outside our quirks, or inside them. I think it’s ruder to pretend they’re not there, as if it’s something to be hidden. Real talk? I rather be called a mutie and insulted than for someone to pretend as if the things I used to save people every day and make me me aren’t there. Yeah,” He stops to tap his visor. “These are raptor eyes.”

Shuichi barely manages to catch a brief flash of something clouding Hawks’s eyes, and with some small bit of awe he realizes the avian hero had merely blinked his third eyelids, much like Shuichi’s only pair of eyelids were his brilles.

“I think a lot of heteromorphs, especially us animal ones, get too easily offended about the differences between us and baselines and end up trying to fit in.” Hawks finishes, leaning back. “What, you want me to get mad at being called a bird?” There’s raucous laughter as he tips his head back and his whole-body shakes with it. Shuichi has heard less noisy shoebill flocks.

The host chuckles too, but the laughter is a bit more nervous, as if merely following in the hero’s lead. As the blond settles down and returns to looking straight at the camera, there’s a far sharper look to those slitted pupils and golden irises. It makes that shiver return to Shuichi’s spine as something in him tells him to run .

“Well, I am a bird and I’m proud of it.”

Shuichi swipes away from the video and tosses his phone away in disgust.

He’s not sure what he wanted from Hawks in the first place. Someone like that, who throws around words like mutie so casually, probably has never felt the sting of that word in the first place. Even in his own family, he isn’t safe from the judgment, with all of the mutant and the lack of a good quirk present in him. Distant cousins from the parts of his family that left the countryside haven’t fared much better — one did a stint in jail but from his mother’s rantings another third cousin or something was so talented and blessed with such a good reptilian quirk that she was shoo-in for some big hero school in a few years.

The only thing Shuichi remembers about that particular family member is that she, much like the blond hero, favors the human-looking. Acceptably mutated, like Hawks and Miruko and Uwabami. Never one to make “Looks Like a Villain List” like Gang Orca does all the time.

Sometimes Shuichi wondered what it was like to be a hero. He could only dream of it. With a useless quirk like Gecko…

Well, even his own family laughs at him

And it’s easier for them, he supposes, mutated enough to be extraordinary but not cursed. Maybe that’s why his own eyes devour every single tic and minutiae of the mutant heroes, looking for signs, subtle mutations that the baselines might not see, but those like Shuichi can. Like a way of exposing them — “you’ve got all the baselines fooled but really, you’re just like me” . They can’t hide from kin even if they’ve clearly been treated better for their mutations than people like him.

It’s negative, unhealthy, and Shuichi knows thinking like this isn’t good for him. It leads to self-pitying spirals of calling in sick to school and work and not leaving his room for days because it’s so much easier to lose oneself in videogames than find strength to go and face a world that is relentlessly cruel to people like him.

It’s not fair.

“End up trying to fit in,” Shuichi mutters again, in disbelief. He could never fit in no matter how much he tried. Like that was possible when simple things, like blinking like a baseline, weren’t possible for him. Just thinking about that interview makes him think of Hawks like some trained parrot — there to squawk on command and get a good laugh from all the baselines relieved at some mutant finally saying the truth they’re too scared to in public.

Mutants weren’t the same as the rest and they’d never be.

For the life of him, Shuichi doesn’t get how Hawks can think that’s a good thing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One fact about PLF meetings is Spinner hates them. He’s usually one of the few holding the League fort down anyway because Dabi skips out, and Compress is also a flake, so it’s usually him, Toga, and Twice, and well, that’s a recipe for disaster these days. And if Dabi and Mister are both gone, well then, he gets snarky comments from Trumpet and Skeptic about the ‘devotion’ of the League to the PLF and he starts wishing Tomura was back.

Not that he doesn’t really want that anyway, regardless of the Meta Liberation Army stooges.

(No, he doesn’t actually…miss him. He just kept them together, somehow, even in aimlessness.)

Today, however, seems to be a day about breaking rules because both Mr. Compress and Dabi are here and so is someone else who rarely gets to go to these things.

Hawks.

Hawks is here.

It’s definitely Jin’s fault because the guy loves Hawks. Constantly talking about him, and now dragging him everywhere like the hero’s a safety blanket, which makes sense because Twice apparently has been taking lessons from Hawks, overwhelmed by these meetings. It’s like the bird mutant became the unofficial Twice translator or something. It’d be funny if Spinner liked Hawks.

He doesn’t.

He was bothered by him as a teen reading gossip rags and he’s bothered by him as a grown villain trying to figure out why a sunny bright hero like him is here and doesn’t have an off button on his….

Fakeness?

What Spinner’s trying to say is… Hawks is sus .

Nothing still seems real about him to Spinner, and he’s glad that mostly everyone else agrees by keeping hundreds of little cameras nestled in those garishly red wings of his. Unfortunately, on the MLA side, Skeptic seems to like Hawks despite spying on and through him, and Redestro’s happy about how much Hawks seems to be into Destroist theory.

For now, the hero seems to be content to only speaking up when Twice’s having trouble getting some concept across or something.

So, when things go wrong, it’s not him.

It’s Dabi.

“…if we encourage corruption, what’s left for us?” Spinner spits out, angry at Trumpet for even suggesting they start bribing heroes they know look the other with some villains with cash to get them to join the PLF. “Do we need the numbers filled with people not even loyal to the cause and here for cash? Isn’t that exactly what we’re fighting against? The heroes motivated by money than any desire to do anything heroic? Stain might be locked away, but there’s millions of people out there looking for someone to carry on his ideals, we can’t just throw them away and spit in their faces.”

One thing you should know about Dabi is that if he shows up, he’s usually quiet, keeping his distance. Maybe he sits up and naps and everyone mostly ignores this because the League have long learned to let the guy get all the rest he can because he needs it. Also, because he has the balls to do that in front of the MLA and it’s a very admirable kind of fuck you, Spinner thinks.

But there’s also the times when Dabi is into it, and that’s when you learn he’s also a dick.

“Oh, yeah, because you’ve appointed yourself the new Stain, right, Lizard? His second-coming, a new prophet, huh?”

Like that. That’s him being a dick.

Honestly, Spinner doesn’t even know why Dabi would even decide to play devil’s advocate; he hates heroes, or anyone remotely connected to authority. But Spinner’s long learned that even people like Dabi can be cruel in ways they shouldn’t be.

“No, but you think Shigaraki would like it if we opened the doors to the same heroes we’re fight-“

“The handman’s not here, Gecko, so don’t speak for him eith-”

“Man, you really like your animals, huh?”

Spinner has been trying not to look at Hawks this entire time, given he’s one of the heroes he doesn’t want here.

Another reason is that he’s tired of dealing with Dabi’s words and putting up a fight every time the flame user decides to single out his mutations and it feels embarrassing to let it happen in front of Hawks.

But Hawks is smiling, widely, as he balances his head with one elbow propping it up while on the table, and yet that smile doesn’t match raptor-like sharp yellow eyes. It’s like looking at Toga sometimes, those pupils slit so thinly that Spinner wonders if it’s a sign how quick someone like Hawks can cut someone open.

And now they’re directed at Dabi, who looks bemused and uncowed.

“You have something to say, hero?”

Hawks snorts. “Just that if you really want to show off your zoology know-how you should go to the zoo. Might even be educational, dude, since apparently you have no idea what an actual lizard looks like.”

A few people chuckle at this.

Icy blue eyes narrow at him, but Hawks is still grinning. You could literally cut the tension with one of his feathers, and Spinner knows he’s not the only one watching this with trepidation.

Dabi looks like he might mouth off more but the chuckling from both parts of the PLF seem to leech the urge to continue being a bastard and he makes a noise like he’s sucking in his teeth before languidly getting up and moving to walk out. Before he fully leaves, he looks at Trumpet and says, “Your idea is as stupid as this entire meeting.”

No one comments once he’s gone and it’s Mister who makes the meeting move on.

It moves on quickly but there’s a strange feeling in Spinner’s gut left behind, and it increases whenever Hawks speaks up. Shuichi isn’t an idiot; he knows what just happened.

Hawks just stood up for him.

Hawks, who doesn’t mind being called a bird, makes a joke out of calling his fans his chicks, wearing the dehumanization like some badge of honor. That Hawks decided to cut Dabi down for his name-calling, when Hawks would have likely laughed and agreed if it had been him.

A mixture of anger at being pitied — is it so obvious that he was uncomfortable? — and a strange sort of gratefulness arises in Spinner and he doesn’t know what to do with either. But, above all, Spinner doesn’t understand Hawks.

It’s really this that makes him call out to Hawks as the meeting ends and the room clears, stopping the hero mid-exit.

“Hawks.”

“What’s up?” Hawks turns back, smiling brightly and Spinner regrets this already — it's like the man has some customer service personality he doesn’t turn off.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

The smile lessens a bit and Hawks shrugs. “Not much to do. Dabi’s like that, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit and listen to it. Or that you should take it.”

The same niggling feeling of embarrassment rips through Spinner and he wonders if it shows on his scales.

“I usually don’t,” he tries to defend himself. “Really. It’s just more annoying with him than anything because he’s...”

“The kind to poke holes where he can?” Hawks finishes for him, one feathery eyebrow raising. “Yeah, but it’s still okay to shut him down. He owes you more respect than that, Spinner.”

He blinks his brilles at him. Respect, huh? What happened to the man who went on a debut interview, declared himself a mutie, and then said heteromorphs were too sensitive? Or was that fake just like whatever else Hawks puts up; his smiles, his convictions, his reasons for being here? Is Hawks just one of those people who say whatever needs to be said in every situation, shedding beliefs like a lizard sheds skin?

“I’ve heard you say the opposite.” Spinner says, and there’s more than a little anger in his words. “Years ago. Did the industry change your mind?”

There’s a hint of surprise on the avian hero’s face as he mentions the interview.

“Didn’t figure you for a former hero otaku,” Hawks says, tilting his head in birdlike curiosity. “If it’s the one I’m thinking of, that was when I debuted — I don’t know if I can even find it these days.”

Spinner scoffs at the slight dig — this society is so full of hero worship that is it any surprise a teenager stuck in the sticks would be a hero otaku? It matters little, anyway, because he’s not one now.

“It’d left an impression.” He doesn’t need to say that it wasn’t a good one because it’s clear it wasn’t.

Hawks strokes his tiny wispy goatee while looking at Spinner thoughtfully.

“I think it’s less about what we take offense to now, and what we should want to be proud of.” Hawks says, moving to take his gloves off. As one slips off, Spinner notices that there’s scarring around his cuticles, and that the nails themselves are not the color baselines have, as if the keratin was closer to a raptor’s than a person’s.

“We shouldn’t be upset when they mark us different. It should be something to be proud of.” He affirms.

There it is.

The admission of fakeness — because Spinner can hear it in his voice; Hawks isn’t proud. Or, with those surgical scars, he’s likely not allowed to be. But Spinner doesn’t have in him to be kind about this because he bears his own scars, even if they’re not as visible and they hurt.

“That’s easier to say when you look like you do.” Pink eyes scan the face made for movies, the pretty wind-swept blond locks that look halfway to feathers, the enormous wings that seem like something out of a fantasy game. “When it’s people like me it’s damn hard to want to be proud rather than just wishing someone could see you as a person.”

A frown finds its way on Hawks’s face and for a moment he looks sad.

“I’m sorry people made you feel that way,” He leans over and touches Spinner’s shoulder briefly, startling him. “I know what it’s like to be both too much and not enough. My heteromorphic traits were far more apparent than either of my parents.”

The hand leaves and Spinner shudders, not used to being touched like that.

There’s less of the cheer now, replaced with a pensiveness that feels more natural than anything else he’s been selling them. Hawks looks lost , and Spinner realizes that even if it’s different, this society’s been weighing down on him too.

“What you said, about being a person... It’s true for me too.” Hawks says, putting his gloves back on. “My fans... my bosses... sometimes they just talk about my wings like it’s all there is to me. Sure, it’s usually nice things they say, but I wonder if they see me or just my wings. And while it’s nice to be wanted, people pick and choose what they want from us so often, don’t they? They want my wings, but I partially wear a visor because my nictitating membrane might scare civilians I’m saving, and my nails are off, and I have to get my toenails trimmed all the time. But all of that makes me...me, doesn’t it? I want to be proud of all of me, not just one part. But being open doesn’t mean we should be targets, too, Spinner, because ultimately don’t we just want to be free to be ourselves?”

The smile is back, but Shuichi thinks it might be honest and earnest for once.

“You were as chained as the rest of us,” He whispers, in shock and sadness.

Hawks shrugs and nods. “I guess so.”

It’s weird, feeling empathy for a hero like Hawks. Having a shared experience. But isn’t that what Spinner wanted all those years ago as a boy scanning every hero magazine and tabloid hungrily for a face like his?

Someone who understood.

“I think,” Spinner says, stuttering over his revelation. “I think I finally get why you’re here now.”

Hawks chuckles and the mood lifts.

“Glad to have cleared that up. But, really, Spinner, it was nothing.”

And as the hero leaves, Spinner thinks to himself if everyone had that same attitude towards small kindnesses that Hawks had just shown, the Paranormal Liberation Front would have far more empty seats to fill — because that boy who read those magazines nightly after school wouldn’t have needed to be here.

He allows himself a second of imagining what that boy would be doing these days in a kinder world, what places he would have seen by now outside the village that raised him, and then banishes the thought from his mind.

There’s work to be done before the world Spinner dreamt of will stop being a dream, and he’s nothing but devout.

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