And while you're at it, check his personal files, the ones he keeps on the private phone he carries.
Those words haunted her. For three days, they replayed themselves during her quiet moments — before sleep, while she ate her breakfast and on her walk to work. She tried to ignore them, but it was impossible to shake them loose when that treacherous villain's voice clung to her like stinking cigarette smoke.
"I can't..."
She lingered in the door of his personal office, blue eyes glued to the plain desk he so rarely lounged behind. As his secretary, it was her job to tend to his messes and ensure his most important space was organized. There were certain drawers she didn't touch, as she was sure that she would feel the same if she had someone tend to her desk. He was allowed his privacy, and she wanted to respect that.
The longer she gazed at the desk, however, the thinner her resolve became. Every passing second added to her anxiety, the what if's and doubt thick and dripping into the foundation of trust she had built with the hero over the last year.
"This is stupid. I shouldn't listen to a bad guy."
She should have turned away then, but she didn't. She stepped forward and closed the door beside her, glad for the fact that her boss's sidekicks weren't around.
With quiet footsteps, she crept forward. She couldn't imagine that he trapped the desk when the office sat so high up the building, but she was exceedingly cautious as she rounded the desk and pushed his chair aside.
"I'll just look. I won't find anything in there, anyway."
She ignored the drawers she normally looked through. He gave her permission to rifle through those, so it didn't make sense that he might hide a strange phone there.
The first drawer was empty. No surprise there. He didn't seem the type to fill his desk with garbage or useless trinkets. The second drawer had a stack of papers and pristine folders, and the third was the same.
"Where would he even hide another phone?" She tried to search through the second and third drawer, but it was as she lifted the hefty stack of envelopes that she felt something strange. She set the stack aside, save for the bottom most envelope. It was thicker and heavier than the rest, the lump inside distinctly phone-shaped.
"I can't tell what it is." She tried to justify putting it back and ignoring it. "Even if it is a phone, it — it could be for a lover or something."
She stared the envelope down, sweat beading along her hairline and palms. A quick flip, and she realized that the envelope wasn't sealed. She assured herself again and again and she could put it back after opening it and discovering the contents inside.
But she didn't.
She opened the loose flap, pulled out a small phone and stared at the screen as it brightened in her palm. Her hands shook, even as she grasped at her own fingers to calm the violent trambling.
Her habit of speaking into the air ceased now that she knew she was too far into her search. It was pointless to pretend that she hadn't found it, and it seemed just as pointless to stop there. She needed to know more, and the only way to learn was to access the phone.
If this phone was treated the way any other phone was, it likely had a pin. She had only a small handful of tries before it locked her out for good. That meant she needed to be careful and keep her guesses to a minimum.
There were the obvious choice, but attempting the digits of his birthday and birth month failed. She tried to switch the formatting, but that too failed.
"What would it be?" She tried to wrack her mind, but there were so few numbers associated with the hero. It made her wonder: what was the truth, or was she a horrible secretary? He made her feel as if he were the best he'd had since his start as a hero, but it felt like an easy claim to question now that she knew about the phone.
"Knowing him, it's probably something random." She jammed at the screen with her thumb three more times, each try denying her access. "Of course, I'm not going to be able to get in."
This was likely a ruse, or a clever trick meant to amuse the villain that had told her about the phone to begin with. For all she knew, it had always been here. He could have a habit of keeping old devices, and Dabi had only gotten under her skin because there was a chance that Hawks had a phone somewhere in his desk.
She had one last try, then she would have no choice but to put it back.
"Let's be a little silly then." She shrugged and tapped in her own birthday. He had made it a point to tell her once that he wouldn't forget it. Their relationship was meant to be professional, but she had believed him when he made that bold claim.
The screen unlocked, and regret seized her chest.
"He didn't..." He had, and now she had to dig deeper. Her first thought was to check his contacts. There was a single entry, the name a single emoji. There was plenty of room to make assumptions, but she had to know for certain to whom the number belonged,
She knew in the not-so-distant future that she would wish she hadn't pressed the 'call button, but she did because it would kill her all the sooner if she didn't.
The knock had come in the middle of an exhausting workout, but she almost missed it under the constant thump of her feet hitting the floor and the thrum of her music in her ears. Fur matted down with sweat, the grizzly bear tugged open her stubborn door. The dang thing always stuck, but there was no point complaining to the elderly landlord when every apartment in the complex had issues.
“Uh. . .” Blinking, Anita looked from one end of the hallway to the other. No one. “Weird.”
She was about to close the door and dismiss the interruption as a prankster when she took a chance and glanced down. To her surprise, she found a small rabbit standing at her feet.
“Oh! Hey, short stuff. Didn't see you there.” She grinned a sharp, toothy grin and crouched down. “Wait a sec. Aren't you the li'l cop rabbit? I'm not gettin' arrested, am I?”
“Alright, so you’re not totally human.” Hands on her hips, Anita let out a long and deep exhale. Her day had been all manner of odd since the very moment she woke up, but the last thing she expected to do was encounter an alien — or something she assumed was alien. Seeing as how the stranger had antennae and strange eyes, she couldn't believe for a moment that they were human. “You’re not gonna beam me up to your ship and probe me, are you? ‘Cause I ain’t int’a that.”
"I'm locking up now, so you can stop worrying. I know a lot's happened, but I can walk home on my own. There are bound to be a few heroes patrolling at this time, right?"
Himari took in a deep, calming breath and let it barely escape through her nose when the voice coming through her phone continued to insist that it was too dangerous for her to walk alone. "I promise I'll text you when I get home, just to prove I got there safely. And I'll text you every five minutes on the way there."
The voice continued to chatter away as she locked the office door, a plethora of scenarios presented to her at a frantic, almost paranoid pace.
"I know there are more villains now. I know I need to be careful, but it's not like one is going to just show——" All it took was a turn, and her night was rather abruptly ruined. White hair, patchwork skin and a devious grin that made her blood run cold. He stood there, real and corrupt and only a foot away. "——up."
The hand holding her phone lowered, thumb tapping at the screen so she could end the call. "You're the one that called out Endeavor and Hawks. W—Why are you here?"
