Mixing Signals

[The following day]

Buzzing met the woman's ears. Or was it coming from inside her head? Whatever the case, her frame was aching and twisted in a way it shouldn't be. She tried to raise both hands just because she wasn't sure either would do what she told them to. Her bones were chalk, her throat and mouth cotton wool, and her muscles jelly that wouldn't stop trembling. As luck would have it, or there lack of in her case, both palms had a grip on something. Liquid spilt from her left and onto her neck while a weight smacked her on the face from the right.

Groaning and rolling onto her side, she was halted halfway through the action. Ankle which wasn't hers under her elbow and foot in her face, Zero yacked when she caught a whiff of her own breath and the sight of a sole up close. Shoving the bare appendage off her side, she crawled onto her hands and knees in search of what had attacked her so early. Fishing through strewn sheets and smacking her funny-bone on the bottom handle of a dresser at eye-line, the woman's vision blurred further when even her eyes refused to squeeze shut properly. It wasn't even a hangover at this point - she was still wasted.

What time was it? Where was she? Who the fuck thought they could shove their feet in her face and get away with it?

Finding the menace which had slipped inside the case of a folded pillow, she hobbled up to her feet, then tottering back and forth like a newly birthed calf before she realized that there was a bare hip on the floor she could probably break given her weight and a misstep.

Calling the last number back, she held the device to her left ear as her free hand reached out for the wall which kept avoiding her. After a couple of rings, the gruff voice she knew to be Aizawa's croaked down the line.

"I've tried calling you for the past forty minutes." She didn't even need to see his face to know he was less than impressed.

"Yeah, it was loud...Construction."

"Did the construction make you slur, too?"

"No, that was probably the whirlwind I got dragged into last night." Finally finding the bathroom after opening practically every door - including cupboards - the female grimaced when she caught her reflection in the mirror.

"Whirlwinds in Fukuoka? You were supposed to have light snow."

Smiling as much as her face would allow without her eyes pissing out emotionless tears for the fact he had checked a menial detail, Zero stripped what little clothes were hanging off her body. "You have clearly never partied with one of the top heroes: people just keep giving you free drinks, and then they ask you to dance, and then-"

"-I'm guessing you mean a metaphorical whirlwind at this point."

"This is why we're friends. You always get me, Sho..."

"Not for long if you keep this up." Ignoring the worst possible meaning behind the snap, she cracked her neck to the left and then right, the crunch carrying down the line. "And stop doing that. One of these you're not going to realize your own strength and snap your head clean off."

"At least I'd be able to do the back of my own hair if that were the case."

"I'm not in the mood for your games today. I have a lot on here; I didn't have the time to spend keep calling you after you asked me for a favour."

"I'm sorr-"

"-Forget it. It's a good job you don't have to make yourself look presentable. I can literally hear the ethanol emanating from you burning the airwaves."

"What's the problem, are they not allowed to travel that far by themselves?"

"Both of Tokoyami and Hitoshi's parents have signed the waivers but an inter-class practice has come up last-minute. Besides, I don't think letting them be chaperoned by an alcoholic is their best choice at gaining extra credit."

Clicking her tongue off her teeth, Zero felt a sudden surge of something stronger than the ten hours of chasing shots and trying pretty cocktails sober her up. "And I think it'd be in everyone's best interest if you reconsider what you're saying. Do you know how many students - let alone first years - get the chance to work with pro-heroes? I'm sure you do. Don't punish them because you have a personal gripe with me."

"It's not personal; I'm concerned about their safety - and yours - if something goes wrong and you're unable to use your senses-"

"-Fuck you, Shota. When have I ever jeopardized somebody else because of what I do in my personal life? You're well out of order, and you know it."

"I know you never did, which is why I allowed them to sign the paperwork for next week. This exam can't be missed, so you'll have to do without them this time."

"Why'd you have to wind me up if that's the situation?"

"Because I find a small amount of amusement in it."

"I really am going to kick you next time I see you. I won't even give you the courtesy of a warning this time."

"I'm used to your early-morning pillow-talk but I really do have a busy day." The pause the man gave was quickly filled with a grunt as his desk chair squeaked and gave way to what was practically a snort. "And Zero?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm still your senior, you know? Don't call me Shota when you're throwing a hissy-fit."

Pulling back into herself, Zero scrunched her eyes and clenched her teeth. There was a sorry on the tip of her tongue but her brain wouldn't let it past. "Thanks for going through the trouble, Senpai." Pulling the device from her ear before the conversation could end on a worse note, she ended the call.

Of the few things she cared to recall from the night before, she did remember dropping her luggage off at the hotel she had been planning to stay at with Hana. Although, this room was a lot more extravagant than what they said they had free when she tried to book it online. Looking out of the space left open beneath the frosted glass window, she could see she was pretty high up. A shiver settled in her bones when she took in the meaning of the snowfall which had now accomplished its goal of actually sticking and the fact she was in just her panties. Grabbing a towel off the heated rack by the sink, she ripped back the shower curtain to turn the water on. Instead of taps, her attention shot down to a body in lacy lingerie in the tub beneath the shower. Zero stared at the woman covered in glitter and wearing a headband with springy antenna propping up pompoms. And then she stared a little harder, stepping forward. And then the comatose female choked on her own spit, flopped her head to the other side and began snoring.

Good, at least she wasn't dead.

Closing the curtain and making a U-turn in one fluid motion, Zero ragged open the bathroom door and stepped out into what she could now realize was the condo suite. A couple in the far corner inclined their heads as they rushed out whilst fastening their overcoats shut. Stepping out of the way and tripping over a body on the floor, Zero tumbled backwards onto the plush futon with its covers scattered. Hitting the ground knocked out what little air remained in her aching lungs. She didn't want to get back up again. Her entire body felt like it had been put through a spin cycle with a sack of bricks and those quilts were clouds supporting her ailing frame. Even the smell gave her a sense of comfort she thought she had forgotten. She was just going to turn over and rest her eyes on the soft cotton. She was just going to take a quick ten minutes...Rolling onto her stomach and raising her left knee up to get comfortable, she buried her head in the pillow. And then the quilt hugged back.

"Good morning."

Opening one eye, Zero groaned when she was nose-to-nose with Hawks, if not for a sheet separating them. "Don't look at me and don't smell me. Just let go of me." Trying to roll off him, she was halted by the arms and covers tangled around the back of her waist. "What are you doing?"

"I did tell you I wanted to hold you and pat you."

"And I told you what would happen if you did." Wriggling to escape the accident of misplacing herself, Zero was pulled back into the same position for a second time.

"Don't keep squirming. I'm already trying to deal with a man's morning affliction."

"All the more reason to let me move off the top of you."

"Or we could just stay like this for a little while longer."

"I'm not playing this game with you right now. I need to find my toothbrush-"

"-Hey, I didn't know you had pierced nipples."

"What?"

The man nodded upwards, his face from the chin-down still covered by the covers. Looking down, Zero snatched the towel which had slipped off in the shifting and fastened it around the top of her chest. Of course, it was not her intention to greet the man with a face-full of titties before 10am, or at any time, for that matter, but she could tell by the glint in his eyes that he was wondering why she hadn't shrieked and sprang across the room at the blunder like would be common. This was simply because Zero did not know what embarrassment was: her family's way of rearing children made sure of that. That being said, she did want to keep an amicable relationship not construed by mixed-signals with the man if possible.

"It's not like I greet people with 'hey, I'm twenty-seven, a hundred-and-seventy-four centimetres tall, single, an Aries with AB- blood: I like drinking, arm wrestling, and I spend way too much time on Wikipedia. And oh, yeah, I have several risqué tattoos and piercings. Wanna see 'em some time?'"

"That's a killer profile. I'd be down."

"Or 'up', in this case. I'm starting to feel you through the covers."

"Help a guy out?"

Sliding her hand down her left thigh, she hooked it under his elbow before he noticed what she was doing. Using the contortion of the joint and the throw of her weight, he flopped onto his front and she rolled off onto the floor. Standing up only to stagger as the man laughed into the pillow, Zero hopped over an empty bottle and went in search of her luggage.

"Do you always treat your friends like this?"

Glancing back, the woman scrunched her face. "Who ever said we were friends?"

Rolling over and getting out of the bed, Hawks stood in the natural light seeping through high windows. "You really hurt my feelings."

"I-" Zero turned around only to get an eye-full of the nude man's physique. Jaw jut out, the female struggled to keep her line of sight above his neck. "Can you put some clothes on?"

"Why, is it making you uncomfortable?" He mocked what she had asked him the night before when she had teased him with an innuendo.

"No, it's just cold and you wouldn't want it to shrink any more." Ignoring the baiting becoming anything but uncomfortable, Zero overturned the thrown cushions and articles of clothing in her search.

Pouting but clearly not hurt, Hawks looked down at himself with his hands on muscular hips. "Damn, I was told it was above average."

The click of a phone taking a photograph halted the conversation. Hawks and Zero glanced to where the sound had come from.

"Sorry, but nobody will believe me if I don't have proof."

"C'mon, the one time I-" Hawks' drawl was cut off by a stampede over the sleek hardwood flooring.

"Gimme that, you little snake!" Snatching the cellphone more than double its weight due to the charms hanging off the corner, Zero shoved the woman's head away when she clawed after it as she had just had her first-born scraped up by a demon.

Tilting his head to get a better look at what was going on, Hawks hummed. "What are you doing?"

"I'm checking to see if she got you from a good angle. What the fuck d'ya think I'm doin'?"

"I honestly can't even tell if you're just snippy and being serious, or if its sarcasm."

"I'm deleting the goddamn thing."

During the grab - and then the explanation to the man - the cell had locked and required a fingerprint. The older woman wore an audacious expression as she peered up from her spot on the ground. Zero glared down with her eye-liner smudged, her hair even more askew than usual and her towel down by her ankles. More than having to make a quick dash in her state or the fact that towel was clearly way too small, that look on the woman's face pissed her off like she had gotten away with something. She really hadn't. The pro-hero's jaw pulsed. "You do it, or I'm taking the whole fuckin' finger." She held out the device and the older woman held out a shaking hand and unlocked the security pass.

In the midst of the scrolling through more than two dozen private pictures of what had transpired the night before, each one piecing a little more of Zero's unwanted memories back into slot, her own cell buzzed on the other side of the room.

"Grab that for me, please. It could be one of the kids."

The stranger's mouth hung ajar and her eyes grew wider if that was even possible. "No," Zero answered the mental questioning before the older woman's synapses had formed them into words. "We don't have a secret brood."

Picking up the scratched black device belonging to the friend of his employee, Hawks shook the device. "Do I need to take one of your fingers, too?"

"Only if that's what you're into."

"I, no. That's not-"

"-Just check the message."

After venturing into the woman's onedrive, she found several pictures of her colleagues in the same line of work in most compromising situations. Worst of all, for herself, was a specific snap of her hanging upside down off a pole at a strip club while three people did body-shots from different locations at the same time - one of them the man beside her. And by the angle the image was taken from, it looked like he was buried eyebrows deep in her pussy. He hadn't been, she knew that for a fact. She'd be chafing from his facial hair if that were the case - she was sensitive - she'd know.

Reeling her mind back in from the imagery which did not transpire, Zero clenched the stranger's phone tighter and looked to her right. She only intended to glance to the man, but the look on his face halted her from looking away.

"What is it?" She held her hand out and the man pulled the device closer to his bare chest.

"I don't think you should look at it."

"It's my phone."

"I should say the same thing!"

"Shut the hell up, ya goddamn wench." Snatching her phone out of the man's grasp, Zero looked over the message which had been sent from one of her contacts. The message had a header - stating 'Emergency' and included an attachment. Clicking the attachment, dangerous eyes slid to the woman kneeling by the door.

Tossing her phone over her shoulder onto the futon, Zero took a step towards the stranger. "I'll give you two choices, and two only. One: you can give yourself over to the police and admit to your crimes of selling personal photographs tagged with slander, or you can have a sixty-second head-start before I start chasing you."

"Oi, Zero-" Hawks reached out for the bare shoulder marbled black and green only to be shrugged off.

Unwavering eyes glittered like green glass bottles in the sun. "Which is it?"

"I didn't send any pictures. I just keep them. I think it's disrespectful to pass them around."

"As opposed to taking them in the first place?"

"I don't have many friends and it's the only way I can get people to pay attention to me."

"By documenting what the people who put their lives on the line for you do in privacy?"

"I know it's wrong, but I don't share the pictures I take with anyone. I swear."

"Your word means less to me than a bus timetable."

Watching the rhythm of his company's shoulders rise and fall grow quicker, the sooty black smears on her skin began to glow like magma trying to resurface through ash, Hawks gripped the blonde by her arm and yanked her back.

"I think that's enough."

Spotting her way out, the woman ran for the door in panic. Making enough of a gap to get through, the stranger reached out for her freedom. Flailing forward, the heel of Zero's foot landed against the slider and halted the barrier from opening any further. Terrified eyes glanced back at the nude woman covered in eighty percent bruises and ink, her bust heaving as her arm was held back at an unintentionally obscured angle. Citrine slits surrounded by smeared black flashed. "I take it you wanna bet on that sixty-second head-start?"

"I swear, I didn't do anything besides take the pictures!"

Locking the door, Zero fell back onto the futon and wrapped a sheet over herself. "That's great to hear."

Hawks and the woman froze at the sudden change in tone. Watching the woman go from straight-up murderous to a dolt rolling in the sheets in an apparent search for something, the pair shared a quick glance.

"So..." the woman started slowly, "you're not going to kill me?"

Finding her purse, Zero held up a packet of cigarettes like she was holding up the World Cup trophy before rocking forward onto her feet and bouncing once. "Honey, I'm a hero; we don't kill people." Sauntering across the space to the balcony which overlooked the more lavish side of the city, she used her foot to open the sliding door and sat on a balcony chair. "It's still a crime to take those kinds of pictures without permission, so you will still speak with the police when they get here, and your phone will be confiscated indefinitely, but I don't feel it's necessary to throw you outta a window. The police will be here any moment."

As if on cue, four police officers knocked on the door. Before they could apprehend the so-called criminal, more pressing matters stole their attention. Hawks - who had obviously forgotten he was now the number two hero in the country - nodded to the authoritarians as if he was greeting his suburb neighbours while collecting his morning paper in a robe and dad-slippers despite being completely naked bar a throw cushion covering his front. The woman, her attention in the opposite direction, pointed towards the bathroom with a cigarette between her fingers as her bust threatened the makeshift hem of her coverings.

"There's another passed out in the bath..."

It was like the scene from a 1990's LA Vice television show: the wife had come back early from a girl's weekend in Bora Bora to find her younger husband fucking the nanny for their three adopted children; the wife murdered the nanny and left her in the bath because 'no fucks were given', sent the kids off to boarding school and was then drinking her nth Rock'n'Rolla cocktail before noon 'cause she knew she could manipulate the cops with sex or money so she just applied her sunscreen and wore her oversized shades in wait for some dumb shit to say one wrong word...

In no time at all, the officers had removed the last of the prior night's guests. The top-floor penthouse was over-turned with sofa cushions and strewn clothes. Feathers had settled on the booze-sopped surfaces and the space which had been giddy with debauchery up until a couple of hours ago was now deadly silent.

Sauntering over to the woman sitting in a sheet on the balcony, Hawks stared down on the woman paying him no mind until he got a little too close. "What?"

"I thought you were going to hurt her."

"I would have if she was the one who sent those pictures out."

"But she wasn't."

"Which is why I didn't."

"Is that how you usually do things? That woman looked as though she was about to drop dead from fright."

"Did I do something in the last few hours which makes you think I'm anything but what you picked up last night? You did say you watched a video of me and surely by now, you've done some research on me." The man looked away and she scoffed at the fact she was clearly correct in her assumption. "What did you expect from me? That I'd get drunk and let slip that I was a super-stalker?" Tilting her head, she peered up from under a seductive lash flutter. "That - by some strange occurrence - I'm not like what people say about me?" Taking a drag on her vice, Zero shifted in the adjustable chair and crossed one leg over the other at the ankle. Inhaling the fumes, verdant eyes took in the city filled with mist and snow-capped high-rises. "I really hope you're not that naïve."

"I want you to get dressed."

"Says the man standing there with his dick out? At least I'm wrapped in a sheet."

"We're going somewhere."

"Are we?"

"Just do as you're told."

Shooting up and knocking her seat over with the backs of her calves, Zero narrowed her eyes and stepped chest-to-chest with the Number-Two-Hero. Long index fingernail dangerously close to his eye and teeth bared, the woman snarled. "Don't push your fuckin' luck, 'kid'. I stopped listening to what men told me to do a long time ago. You are no different."

Expression softening, Hawks took the wrist closest to him and yanked it above her head as he pushed back. "I've listened to you all night and enjoyed every second of it but that's the one thing you're wrong about." Taking another step forward, Zero mirrored his action until she couldn't any more. Stood on the end of the sheet the woman was wrapped in, Hawks quirked his brow, cocky smirk twisted on his lips. "You ain't ever met a man like me."


 

Updated: 14th July 2020 - 00:28