shellphones | [ text ]

Yeah, someone was. Like I said, they didn't hit me, but it's probably weird to have someone like me lurking around. Don't really want to spend my time dodging.

Aren't there like, multiple kinds of bird people native to this world?

(Like the Peacocks and shit? Or do people just see "not a bird I'm familiar with" and immediately start shooting?

...It's probably some asshole deliberately shooting at bird people for some reason.

Fuck.)

So I've heard, but I haven't seen any yet. It's not that big of a deal, I probably startled someone.

There were a bunch of peacock people living on a giant starfish a while back.

(They think it was the starfish, at least.

As for the person shooting birds... for now they just make a note to look into it later. If it is someone doing this deliberately, they're about to get beat up, robbed, and handed over to law enforcement.)

I just got here, I'm still exploring, but in most places so far I haven't seen any bird people.

Alright.

Do you know where the starfish has gone now? I'd love to meet them.

No, the islands like that are usually only accessible at certain times of the year.

You're from a world with superheroes, so I'm guessing your powers are pretty unique, right?

That's right, I am.

They are, in a lot of ways. Some people have other animal-like features, but my quirk is how I use my feathers and my wings so that's unique to just me, as far as I know.

Sounds about right. Powers in my world are all unique too.

I think I've seen quirks mentioned before. You're from the world where basically everyone has some kind of ability, right?

That's right, they do. My ability is my wings and how I use them.

The feathers seemed pretty sensitive, and the way you used them made them seem more like extra limbs or organs than the feathers of an actual bird.

(Actual bird feathers are basically just hair or scales. They wonder how feathers like this work. Does he have to molt and grow new ones? Does it hurt if they get damaged?

..Might as well see if they can fish more information out of him, given how much he seems to like talking about himself.)

[ He's more than happy to talk about anything that's in his official profile - anything actually personal? Not a chance. ]

Yeah, something like that. I do a lot of rescue missions, they're good for finding missing people and pulling them out of dangerous spaces as each feather can hold about two hundred pounds.

(What a coincidence! His personal life isn't actually all that interesting to them yet, though they have made a note that he might be lonely given how interested he was in meeting the peacocks.)

That's pretty impressive. How many can you control at once?

(So his quirks is the equivalent of an alpha level boost. Damn.)

[ Hawks has no expectation of privacy for the most part, the life of a celebrity is what it is. He figures this is no different. ]

All of them. [ He has several hundred feathers, although if he's stripping them all down, things are going bad. ]

(Meanwhile, back when Sidestep was actually Sidestep they took advantage of every privacy law in their corporate hellscape home and gave up rights to royalties for any merchandise produced involving them to maintain the secrecy of their identity. It was necessary for their safety, though it didn't save them in the end.)

Damn. You got some kind of intelligence enhancement to make you able to handle that?

(Play the adoring fan, let him boast about his powers, satisfy their own curiosity.)

[ He chuckles. Clever, clever. ]

No, not at all, of course not. I'm not that smart.

[ Yeah that sounds true. ]

(And well, they have no way of knowing if it's true, if he's pretending to be humble, or if he's deliberately misleading them.

It could be that his feathers act on his desires but aren't constantly under his conscious control when he's using them in large numbers. Or any number of other possible explanations.)

If you say so.

[ He can, it was a lot of training. Each feather can act independently, at his conscious command, although there's no intelligence modifier. He's naturally smart. ]

I didn't even go to school. I got my license independently.

(A thing Sidestep would be very impressed by if they found out.)

That actually makes you look more, not less smart.

(He learned how to succeed without the aid of tutors or teachers or the other resources an education provides.

Not someone to underestimate.)

So is it just your country or your whole world that requires a license for hero work?

[ He had tutors of a sort, enough to know the things he needs to and nothing more. It's a complicated situation, but while most heroes hold the prestige of their school, Hawks does not. ]

The whole world requires it. It's something that was decided upon with all the quirks coming in, before I was born anyway.

The ranking is country specific. I don't know where I'd end up worldwide. In speed, possibly number one. All Might could've beaten me in a sprint, in his prime, but he's retired.

Huh. Back home you can't really get multiple countries to agree to anything.

(It's like if regular Earth had all the wars and few to none of the treaties.)

Nice to know ranking people is the same though.

Can't say I know how that came about.

Rankings are determined on a few metrics, but the biggest are your resolved cases and public opinion and support. Frankly, I think the second one matters the most. Our Number One is only fourth in public support, but he has so many resolved cases, he makes up for it.

Might be because it's so much more widespread in your world that people had to figure something out.

It's not so official in our world, various fan sites and forums have ranking lists for the top heroes and villains, though there's a few that top the lists pretty consistently everywhere.

They make a huge event of it, every six months, the top ten take the stage and parade around for the audience, we all get to say something to thank them for their support and that's about it.

The ceremony is meant to appease people I guess. The public likes it. It's a hassle and a half and it distracts from what my job actually is. It's like the modelling and endorsements I have to do on top of my patrols. Adds to the notoriety. Interviews, too. Real hard to get around all that. Endeavor can because he's so abrasive. The rest of us just have to play the game.

Rumi escapes some of it, that lucky rabbit.

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