Fly High, Burn Bright

Chapter 4

I froze in my tracks. Oh no. What did I do this time? Isn't it a little early for Niko to be yelling at me already? I must've really messed up. In one hand, Niko was clutching his phone angrily, while the other was already angrily waving in my direction as the head of the media department rushed towards me. As soon as they were in front of me, he shoved the phone in my face, a video playing on the screen, and I cringed a little. A low-quality video of myself was already up, the audio buzzing with an unnatural overlay. I watched the video, shrinking a little further into myself.

"If I need to get my hands a little dirty in order for others to be safer, then I won't hesitate to do so." I cringed a little at hearing my own voice.

"So you admit to fighting dirty?" The reporter replied, the feedback from the microphone being even more noticeable now that it was recorded. It'd barely been twenty minutes since then, and that reporter had already managed to upload the interview? Damn, he was fast. Niko snapped their fingers in front of me, and I realized my attention had already drifted from him.

"Care to explain why it looked like you were trying not to murder someone throughout the entire interview?" Niko growled at me, and I just rolled my eyes, pulling away from Keigo to cross my arms over my chest instead.

"That reporter deserved it. He was antagonizing me  on purpose." Niko was scary when he got mad, but I was too annoyed to back down. "I should've at least punched him for that," I muttered under my breath. Both Keigo's and Niko's eyes flew open, the hero's in surprise and amusement, while the department head's filled up with anger. I almost shied away from him. "What? Keigo probably would've punched him."

"Hey, don't throw me under the bus here!" Keigo exclaimed with his hands raised innocently. "I did nothing wrong - it's all Kira this time!"

I glared at him for a second. Thanks a ton, Keigo. You could at least agree, you know?  I turned back to Niko, whose arms were now crossed over their chest. "Fine, I admit I should've at least tried a little harder to not look as if I wanted to murder him. It was wrong and I won't do it again."

Niko raised an eyebrow again. "Seriously, Kira, at least pretend you mean it. And next time, don't blow the chance of having a longer interview. Your rankings really need a boost - the only reason you're still in the top thirty is because you're Keigo's partner. If you were working alone, you'd be so far behind, no one would even know your name." There he goes again. Can't really blame them, though. It's their job to make sure the heroes of this agency look decent in the media, and I really have been dragging everyone down... "-anking will be a lot higher if you actually spent time on making yourself look decent to the public. I bet if you tried to push away whatever murderous intent is driving you, you'd be in the top ten already, an-"

My mind already drifted away. I'd heard this lecture a thousand times already - Niko would rant about how hard they were working to make the heroes of Hawks Agency look good to the public, and how excruciatingly challenging I was making his job for him. I felt a little bad for him, but on the other hand, I wasn't just going to let someone groom me for a camera to the point that I didn't even recognize myself. I shuddered a little remembering how Keigo had told me before about everything he was forced to change about himself in order to gain his spot in number two.  I refuse to let that happen to me. If I stay in the lower ranks just because I don't look approachable to someone, then that's not my fault.

"You're not even listening, are you?" Niko sighed, and I gave him an apologetic grin. In turn, they just waved their hand at me in defeat. "Whatever, I give up on you. It's hopeless anyway. Just try to actually be decent next time you have a chance to have an interview, alright? Paperwork's in your offices. Get it done by tomorrow morning." With that, he turned on his heel and marched to the staircase.

"Love you too, Niko," I shouted after them, but he just flipped me off without even looking back. Niko was cold sometimes, quite literally, considering their quirk, but he really did mean well. He'd been with the agency since Keigo originally founded it, and I'd had the pleasure of working with them for almost three years now. Sure, at times it seemed like Niko wanted nothing more than for me to drop dead from all the extra trouble that I gave them, but he knew what he was doing, and I trusted them with their judgement. That, and the fact that even I didn't want Niko as my enemy - one time, when Keigo was out on patrol and Niko and I had to run some errands for the agency, I'd had the misfortune of seeing them use their full power.

It wasn't anything much, but Niko was on his break getting a cup of coffee, and seeing as I hadn't exactly had anything better to do, I decided to accompany them. He was telling me to scram when maybe two hundred meters ahead of us, I spotted a criminal attacking a citizen in broad daylight. I'd immediately started running towards them - my quirk was pretty useless from so far away because of how hard it was to concentrate when I wasn't near my target, and long-range combat had always been a challenge for me, but somehow, Niko had beaten me to it without even moving.

He'd stuck out his hand, pointing right at the attacker, and a massive shard of ice seemed to form in mid-air as it hurled towards the criminal, slamming them into the wall of a store with enough force to leave the building shaking. The shard had narrowly missed me, but the precision of it's movement was immaculate. Niko didn't actually have a hero license, so they couldn't arrest the criminal, so as soon as I snapped out of my initial shock, I'd raced towards the now-restrained attacker who was still struggling against the ice painfully cold ice that seemed to be only freezing with time, even though the weather was blisteringly hot. I wasn't wearing my hero outfit, so I had to make-do with knocking the criminal out with a sharp blow to the back of the head and throwing them over my shoulder to carry them to the nearest police station.

I remembered asking why Niko decided against being a pro hero - they had the skill and strength, and to me, it seemed like waste. Someone as powerful as Niko should be trying to help the world instead of just resorting to an office job, but they'd just waved it off.

"I don't have the energy or heart for that," Niko had replied, leaving me seething in anger. I'd almost snapped at them. If your excuse is that you're too lazy to try to change the world, at least say it directly, I'd thought, but looking back, I was glad he stayed as the head of a department instead. If Niko had been a hero, with their precision, skill, and strength, even I would've been a little scared to deal with them. If he can't set his heart and mind on something, then I have no right to force it onto him. I let out a sigh of frustration as Keigo and I walked up the stairs to the third floor where our offices were located, and he gently ruffled my hair with one hand, a playful smile stretching over his face.

I'm not one to talk about dedicating my heart to something, though, I thought to myself as I pushed Keigo's hand away, smoothing out the places where the long strands were now sticking out. If it wasn't for Keigo convincing me to go to U.A. for the hero course, I'd probably be doing a job even more treacherous than this one. We got to the doors of my office, and I pushed them open, stepping into the neatly organized room. Sure enough, my desk already had a small stack of papers on it, and I felt my eye twitch slightly. That's going to take me forever. I groaned a little, dragging my feet across the floor as I grabbed the first sheet - the typical form that I needed to fill out after any interaction with a criminal or villain to record just how much I'd managed to do. I already dreaded the rest of the day.

Behind me, Keigo shut the door firmly, approaching me with that teasing smirk of his that I loved so much, and I raised an eyebrow as he pulled the paper out of my hand, returning it to the stack and pushing me onto my desk. 

"How about you take care of those later, hm, dove?" He whispered, pulling me a little closer. "You know how hard it is for me to control myself near something I want."