False Reality

Speaking Up

Keigo meets Rai at the site of the crime scene knowing she wouldn't have moved from when Keigo told her about it. The sight of the folded up car is hard to look at even now he knew Y/N was safe. Rai's twitching, which isn't the best start, but this had put it all into perspective for him. He wasn't going to roll over as easily as he had been for years.
After all, his fetchling had almost met a grisly end because of a mission that hadn't even been necessary, apparently.
He doesn't put his Hawks grin on as he approaches, his face set in stone as he walks up to her. The second she catches sight of him, she crosses her arms over her chest and practically scowls at him.

"Well?" She asks when he's close enough.

"She's fine. Thanks for the concern." He says, eyeing the body bag on the floor.

"You know what I mean, Takami. Don't test me right now, this is a PR nightmare." Rai says, her voice dropping an octave and her lip twitching even more. "Did she at least try to put up a fight?"

Keigo looks at the mangled remains of the car and then back at the older woman, raising a fluffy eyebrow slowly and hoping that's answer enough for her. Apparently it isn't, because she continues to glare at him, waiting for a response.
Deciding to aid her in helping where she was going wrong by asking that, he gestures with one arm back towards the car, letting his eyes linger on the dried blood and brain matter on the window exaggeratedly.

"What's she meant to do against that?" He asks dryly.

"Hmm. Go beyond, plus ultra?" Rai asks sarcastically in return, glowering at Keigo with her eye beginning to twitch too, now. "Why are we paying for her schooling if she's not even going to try when it matters? I've already had Aizawa on the phone to me because she was refusing to do work because she 'didn't want to be a hero'. I'm at my wits end, Hawks. Get your brat under control."

Keigo bristles. "You expect a fourteen year old to go against a guy that's strong enough to literally bend an armoured car? It looks like it drove at high speed into a wall!"

"I expect her to try." Rai hisses, sighing and pulling her cigarettes from her outer jacket. "This is unacceptable. I'm gonna have to try and correct this entire situation. Did she even see who took the child?"

"Who else is it going to be? The League came to get her." Keigo says, rolling his golden eyes to their sides.

Rai struggles to light the cigarette in her mouth, throwing her lighter harshly to the floor after the fifth attempt of trying to light it and then giving a frustrated yell when, unsurprisingly, it explodes.
Keigo watches, unimpressed as her temper finally snaps and she turns to look at him with fire and hatred in her eyes.

"You could try harder you know. We worked so hard to get that girl for you." She snaps.

"I didn't ask for a kid." Keigo reminds her with a shrug.

"And?!" Rai snaps once more. "She has wings! Powerful ones! She was specifically selected for you!"

Keigo's bushy eyebrows pull together in confusion. "What do you mean?"

A flash of...something crosses over Rai's face, but it's gone in a split second. "Don't worry about it, Hawks."

"Spit it out." Keigo says darkly. "Why was a kid specially selected for me?"

Rai scoffs. "It's no different to quirk marriages. We look out for quirk matches, and place the orphans with the suitable home for them."

Keigo goes to open his mouth to say something but she cuts him off quickly.

"It's doing them a favour and making you look good while doing it, so I don't want to hear your bitching. Your ratings had gone up a high percentage since you'd taken on the girls." She practically growls. "It was hard to orchestrate but apparently neither of you can be bothered to try hard enough to make it work. Honestly!"

She wipes her face with her hands. "She's got to go. I'll find a way to cancel the contract."

"What?" Keigo asks in pissed-off disbelief.

"We can't afford to keep someone like her under the Commissions name." Rai says simply, her anger turning into cold-bloodedness. "She'll embarrass you and the HSPC even further if she's given allowances."

"She hasn't embarrassed me." Keigo says.

"Self harming in a hospital to the point she needed stitches isn't embarrassing for you?" Rai asks in disbelief. "The fact that she lost the child we needed isn't embarrassing for you?"

"Needed for what?" Keigo asks, frowning again. "You said she was-"

"I don't understand why you're fighting me on this, Hawks. You begged for us to get rid of her for you." She sighs. "You're getting what you wanted. Be happy about it. Dismissed."

"But I'm not done." Keigo says, walking after her as she tries to walk away.

"The world doesn't revolve around you, Hawks. We have a body to clean up to make sure the family can say goodbye and we need to reopen the road so that residents can get into their homes." Rai replies coolly. "If you aren't here to help, then you can go home and help Hakuchō pack her things."

"You're being serious." Keigo states in disbelief.

Rai sighs exaggeratedly, turning around to face Keigo again with an exasperated expression. "When do I ever joke?"

"You can't do that." Keigo says, his hands beginning to shake in anger. "People aren't just toys... you can't just pick her up and throw her away because she's made a couple of mistakes... She's a teenager!"

"When you were a teenager you were already in the top ten, Hawks. Some people have it, others don't." Rai shrugs. "We're under too much strain right now to carry any dead weight."

"You're right." Keigo says, bracing himself. "We don't need any dead weight."

Rai gives him that sickly sweet smile she only ever gives people when she thinks she's won the argument.

"So I'd like to have a new handler." He says calmly.

Rai just rolls her eyes and moves to walk away from him again. Keigo follows her again. Sure, this wasn't his first time threatening to get a newly appointed handler, but he'd never actually followed through on the threat before.
But it wasn't just him that he needed to think about anymore, he had Hakuchō to think about, too. And sure, it hadn't been his choice to be a dad. He wasn't any good at it either, not really. Not like Dabi, apparently, either. But he could keep trying and learning. He wasn't going to give Hakuchō back to any kind of system, only for her to go into the hands of someone that might be in a worse position than him. She was troubled enough as it is.

"I mean it. We're done." Keigo calls after her. "I want a new handler!"

She ignores him, because of course she does. That was fine though, because he could always go over her head if she didn't want to comply. He didn't make a habit of going to the overheads for that reason, so that it made it clear that it was a genuine problem whenever he did have to deal with them.
But he needed to sort it out, and fast. He needed to make sure that he was legally Hakuchō's guardian within his own right so that Rai couldn't tear her away from him.
He flips her off again while she has her back turned to him as she talks to a forensics agent, which is probably a childish move but it wasn't like he'd be able to do much else with her ignoring him anyway.

Plus, he didn't want to end up pushing too far and ending up like one of his previous victims just for pissing her off, either.

He texts Rumi saying that he just needs a little longer, only to receive a chicken drumstick emoji back. He assumes that means that she'll allow it, but he's also going to assume that the emoji means that she's going to chew him out the second she can.
That's fine with him though, as long as he can get what he needs to do done before Rai can beat him to the punch.
He finds himself missing his wings massively when he walks off to make the urgent calls.
He'd love to be in the air right now, the fresh air on his face always helped him clear his head, and he needed that right now.

Because he was going to do it. He was going to buck his ideas up, try to juggle work and parenting even at his age, and he was going to call up a friend that worked in legal advice to see what he can do.
Not as Hawks, but as Keigo Takami, the person he'd been told not to be the second the Commission took him in.

Keigo Takami was going to adopt that little girl.
He was going to make this okay.
For real this time.