Dabi x Female! Reader x Hawks - Searing Edges

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 14: 𝚃𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚊 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚔𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚜

Things were changing — solidifying, more like. All at once, everything that had once seemed beyond your wildest imaginings had become a necessary fact of your life.

Your identity had been revealed. This was a fact.

Your sacred sanctuary, the Red Herring, had been compromised. This was also a fact.

But the scariest fact of all was that you had begun to — albeit inch-by-inch — let down the emotional barriers that you had enacted the moment your mother died; the moment your birth name ceased to be spoken by anyone — until now.

When two very different men entered into your life in eerily similar ways. They both offered you a claim to your salvation, though it is unclear to you which claim holds true. You were a compass with a magnetic needle, with Dabi and Hawks as the metal debris throwing you off your regular course of action. It was thrilling in the moment, it put you in a wild frenzy, but the directionlessness would only evoke fear in you later.

Alas, fear is an indication of some level of rationality, and what you were really afraid of might be best interpreted as reaching a point where you'd throw all caution to the wind — not feeling any gentle fear when making life altering decisions with life altering men.

Having left the dingy basement of the league hideout for the fourth time that week — your second training session had just come to a decisive end, and after quite an agonising inception. To summarise, the intensive physical combat training Shigaraki and Dabi agreed you had to undergo was exhausting, with your weak points out numbering your strong ones, and Toga refusing to pull a single punch. She sure was. . . Spunky... Among other things. That much you could easily admit. Sometimes Spinner showed up to spar too, and he was somehow kinder than Toga, yet far more critical of your mistakes. At least it more closely resembled constructive criticism with him.

The three of you noted a couple important things:

You were quick and light-footed; extremely agile.

When it came to dodging and wielding blades you had a razor-sharp focus — good power and form. A courtesy of your quirk and unforeseen weariness of sharp things.

You were a very mechanical and predictable fighter. You were hard to hit, but it was harder for you to land a hit on an opponent. Good with aim, but always picking the most obvious target. Not a fighter, just a survivor.

You weren't especially weak in terms of musculature or weight — you were likely just above average (you did hit the gym sometimes), but you didn't know how to put a lot of power behind your attacks. Afterall, your quirk allowed you to master the small, repetitive, and crucial movements; the precision required for prowess in physical combat. Not the power. Power seemed to require the execution of a singular large, sweeping movement, which wasn't particularly your forte.

You were prideful and arrogant in the sense that you felt an obligation to respond towards verbal sparring. Toga liked to exploit this. Too stubborn for your own good.

You never gave up until the very end of your matches, of which were roughly timed. Again, too stubborn for your own good.

You never stayed in one place while fighting for very long. Strength or weakness? That always depended on the fight at hand.

You were just a walking conundrum. Distracted as you were dedicated, and careless as you were careful. You took the right kinds of risks at the wrong times. Hell, this entire gamble might be the right kind of risk at the wrong time.

~

Ducking under some low-hanging wooden beams, you weaved your way through the once obscured narrow hallway that had been revealed to you in the League hideout.