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From up high, the virtual world of the Interface looks much as it must do for anyone else. Hawks doesn’t often think about that, or the implications of his love of the air, of distance and space. But there’s freedom in flying, no two ways about it, and who the hell doesn't love freedom?
Catch him dreaming of cages.
His wings wrap around him in an embrace, a reassuring blanket of awareness a little like a shield. Do other people really smother themselves in blindingly thick fabric cocoons to feel safe? How do they stand it? How do they not go mad from ignorance? If there’s any security in the world, it comes from information, and Hawks takes no small amount of pride in knowing he is the most aware it is possible for a human to be. The most informed man to ever live, always, at any moment.
It’s a secret, obviously. At least, the full extent of it is, because it doesn’t make much sense to throw his edge away. And okay, so perhaps it’s a little underhanded to let ordinary people think he’s so much less than he really is, but there’s a good reason, and it’s not as if he has any intention of putting his unfair advantage to any ill. That’s the whole point, right? All his training, all those hours and days and weeks and months and years of his life, put to this exact purpose.
He’s a weapon of good, an instrument of justice. The, if he wants to be particularly blunt about it, because All Might’s been going for decades now, hours-per-day ticking down a little more each month or so in the last few years, and realistically that only ends one way, right? The man is human, he’s got to retire eventually. And when that day comes, he’s reliably informed, someone needs to be waiting in the wings.
…As it happens, Hawks is pretty well covered in that department.
What do people do when they don’t have a higher purpose guiding them, he wonders now and then as he flies through clouds which—apparently—ought to feel cold and damp. No one thought to code that part in, naively believing humanity wouldn’t aspire to reach up for the sky which reality had denied them. Hawks isn't complaining. It makes it all the more enjoyable to just soar, looping and diving now and then, simply because he can. He’s fast enough, he can afford the luxury of a little fun on his commute.
There’s room for a thousand and one diversions here in the upper troposphere: from aerial acrobatics, to distracted thoughts which flit in and out in the time it takes him to cycle through his feathers’ reports. This far up, the only thing of note is himself, and it leaves room for the novelty of a little introspection.
But eventually he closes in on his destination, as he always must. And then he’s diving down, down, into the noise and chaos which makes up the world below, and the space to think gives way to pure information, and the whispers of Keigo which escape in such quiet moments are smothered once more. The boy’s a man’s a hero. A weapon and an instrument.
In the chaos, there is no time to wonder if that makes him more, or if it is simply all. More importantly, in that constant bombardment of sensations on the ground, there is no space to dream of something else.