Reinstated pro hero Lady Nagant, civilian name Kaina Tsutsumi, does her best to not have expectations for how her day will go, which lets her look at a situation with less bias than someone who does have expectations.
If a hero expects to encounter a villain and sees someone running while looking around? They're likely to think of that person as a villain looking for an escape after seeing them. If you have no expectations? Then you're more likely to stop and think about the situation. Maybe they're running from a villain, or maybe they're looking for someone who can help them with an emergency. It's happened more than once, someone being arrested by a hero under suspicion of being a villain or criminal only for police questioning to discover that they had important information regarding a crime in progress, unfortunately allowing the actual villains to get away.
Even with her doing her best to not have any expectations regarding the day, though, she's fairly certain that it's not unreasonable for her to have some basic expectations. For example, seeing what looks like a slightly larger and more intimidating green version of Ryukyu's dragon form flying over the city. She should be able to go through her day off with the expectation that she wouldn't see something like that.
So seeing said dragon quirked individual nearly fly into a building has her 'nonplussed', to put it lightly. When the person's tail smashes into the corner and sends concrete and glass debris crashing to the ground, she just knows that she's going to be the one they call in to deal with it. Sure, calling the literal Dragoon Hero: Ryukyu would probably be the better idea, but at the moment she's in Okinawa dealing with a 'family situation'. And since there aren't a lot of flying heroes who also pack enough strength to bring down someone like that…
Tsutsumi sighs when she hears her phone start to ring, just like she predicted. With clearly reluctant movement, she reaches into her pocket and pulls it out. Bringing it to her ear, she doesn't hesitate to say what needs to be said.
"I need a vacation."
"Back of the line," Mera's tired rebuttal comes over the speaker. "I'm guessing that you saw what looks like a dragon?"
Idly wondering if she can get out of her imminent orders, she denies the claim. "Nope. Call Hawks."
"I did, but he's a ways out. Our analysts are thinking that it's an animal with a quirk instead of a person," Huh. That's rare. Especially with such a drastic mutation. "but just in case we want you to aim for the wings to ground it instead of going for a kill."
Well, at least that's something.
`~`
Lady Nagant stands on the rooftop a HPSC helicopter dropped her off on, staring through her scope. She zooms in on the beast's wings, though the random dips, sways, and listings make it more difficult than if she was aiming for the center mass. It's almost like it's drunk. Still, she doesn't hold the title of the best sharpshooter in Japan for nothing. (Something that Snipe constantly grumbles about.)
She takes a deep breath, holding it in while she aims the barrel of her quirk at the soft membrane of the animal's wings. She lets it out slowly as she pulls the mental trigger, firing the bullet. It arcs through the air, its signature purple streak leaving a clear trail for anyone to trace back to her. But even if they followed it back to its source, she's trained in hand-to-hand combat. Not that it will matter with a grounded-
She blinks when her bullet seems to reach the beast and just… vanishes. That's all she can describe it as. The beast doesn't react, not even a flinch, which leads her to believe that it wasn't hit. Because even if it has enhanced durability, it should still react to the fact that something hit it. Especially given how hard her bullets hit. So, frowning, she pulls out another lock of her hair twisted into a bullet. Taking careful aim once more, she fires, keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of what happened to her first shot.
She has to blink again when she sees her second shot land, but not elicit any sort of reaction. She frowns when a bad feeling builds in her chest. Setting up another shot, she instead fires it at the beast's stomach, feeling her eyebrow twitch when it still fails to do anything once again. Frustrated, she uses her scope to zoom in towards its head, planning to aim for the jaw in the hopes that she'll manage to do something. But when she gets a look at its face, she stops.
She blinks and takes a second look, confirming what she saw. Seeing that she was right, she lets her quirk deactivate, her arm snapping back into place as her gun compresses within it. With her weapon away, she throws her hands in the air and spins around on her heel, heading towards the stairs leading down the building.
"Nope. Fuck that. I don't get paid enough to deal with this shit."
`~`
"Er, say that again?" Hawks asks uncertainly with a hand over his earpiece. Because to him, it sounded like…
"Lady Nagant tried to ground the beast by taking out its wings, failed, and said not to bother her on her days off anymore without tripling her pay."
Hawks really doesn't know what to say to that. Any of it. The fact that his predecessor couldn't even take out the thing's wings is a surprise, to say the least. And he's not sure if he can do any better. Seemingly thinking the same thing, Mera informs him of the new plan.
"So, instead of attacking it, we're going to hope that it's intelligent enough that you can communicate with it. If not, try to go for any weak points you can find. At the very least, try to draw it away from any population centers."
"...I need a vacation."
Mera snorts over the comm. "I'll slot you in behind Lady Nagant. She asked for the same thing."
Hawks chuckles before confirming that he's closing in on the beast and going silent, his eyes narrowing as he studies the beast. It looks like a western styled dragon as opposed to eastern style; bulky instead of sinuous. Deep green scales coat every part of its body, from legs to tail except for the membrane of its wings which are a darkened silver. From what he can see from where he's descending, two horns curve forward before raising to a point above its head.
Hawks frowns as he gets closer and closer, eyes riveted on those horns as something wiggles in his memory. Something about those horns is familiar, but he's positive that he'd remember more than just the horns of a whole ass drago-
"See ya later, Chicken Cannibal!"
Hawks snorts as he waves goodbye to the strange girl, idly wondering if her horns ever get in the way of styling her hair. He himself has to pluck the feathers that grow in his hair to maintain his 'popularity'. Though with the HPSC getting overhauled, maybe he can start leaving them alone? Unlike the feathers for his wings, those aren't meant to come off. "Yeah, yeah. See ya for the next race, Pyro Lizard."
Izumi snorts. "Cute, but I'm no mere lizard." She gives him a wide, sharp-toothed smile before beating her wings and launching into the air.
"I'm a dragon."
The hero pulls to an abrupt stop, staring at the dragon as it starts pulling ahead of him. Not fast, and it's not flying steady, but it is pulling ahead. He shakes himself back to his senses after a moment and continues moving closer to it, raising a hand to his earpiece and contacting the person who deals with the things that are way above the rising hero's pay grade.
"Heeeeyyy, Mera," he says casually. "So, completely random hypothetical question here, no bearing on any situation whatsoever, but you wouldn't have happened to be contacted by the DAB, right?"
It takes a moment of silence before the Head of the HPSC's confused voice answers. "Huh? No? Why would they?"
Hawks is getting closer to the head, really hoping that he's wrong and the girl every hero has been expressly warned against agitating does not have the ability to turn into a freaking huge ass dragon that makes Ryukyu's transformation look like a teen version. Because come on, that would be crazy, right? Plus, since the DAB hasn't contacted any heroes or the Commission, it's definitely not Izumi. Right?
His hopes are dashed when Mera makes a surprised noise. "Huh. Would you look at that. I actually am getting a call from them."
Fuuuuuccckk. "You should probably answer it," Hawks points out lightly, firmly keeping his internal panicking suppressed. Another thing the program he went through trained into him.
Still, since he's probably right and this dragon is most likely Izumi, he continues his flight towards her head. If nothing else he can apologize for Lady Nagant shooting her and hope she accepts it without wanting vengeance. Backdraft had three broken ribs alongside a couple of ruptured organs, and Squido was in a year-long coma.
So, to say that he's hoping to smooth things over is an understatement. What he actually thinks will happen is that she'll get offended and want to break Lady Nagant's arm for shooting at her. Maybe take a bite out of her if she's hungry.
Maybe he can buy her off with food? It worked well enough last time, and with any luck he can pass off the bill to the HPSC for saving their necks!
He's right above the probably-a-girl's head when Mera's voice comes out of the earpiece again, decidedly more strained than it was a few minutes ago. Unfortunately his words are drowned out by Hawks' curses when the dragon suddenly beats their wings harder than before and jerks up, forcing him to roll out of the way to avoid an impact. But they don't stay there! They dip back even farther below him than they were before! He has no idea what they're thinking, which just makes the upcoming conversation all the more stressful for him.
He puts a hand to the earpiece, staying where he is while keeping a wary eye on the dragon below him. "Missed that, what'd you say?"
Mera repeats the message, clearly holding back his panic. "The DAB told me that the girl we aren't allowed to annoy is in fact the individual we sent you to intercept."
"Yeah, I figured that would be the case. They have any suggestions on getting her to calm down? Or deal with whatever caused her to grow so big and go on a flight?"
"...They have no idea what's going on, and are asking you to try and talk with her to figure out why she's flying around."
Hawks snorts as he goes to fly down next to her head once again, keeping more of an eye on her wings than he was before. "Nice to know that I'm first up to be the sacrificial lamb. Just so you know, if she eats me I'm coming back to haunt you. After I do my best to give her indigestion."
He pointedly turns it off before he can hear Mera's reaction, which he has no doubt will be funny to anyone around to see it. Too bad he's stuck out here instead of there. He's much too young and handsome to die. Still, he has a job to do and he plans on doing it.
So he flies down to her head to make sure she can see and hear him, fully prepared to go through a song and dance like they had when they first met. But instead, what he sees causes him to lose his concentration badly enough that his feathers stop keeping him afloat.
Thankfully, suddenly plummeting from the sky works as an incredible wake up call. So after the few seconds it takes for him to steady himself and rise to his previous height, he's had at least some time to think about what he just saw. Because there's absolutely no way that he saw what he thought he saw.
Contrary to that belief, though, when he's alongside her head once again the evidence is staring him right in the face. Or rather, it's not. And any further doubt is put to rest when he hears a deep rumble come from her chest and expel out her mouth along with a burst of green flames.
That's a snore.
She's snoring.
And her eyes are closed.
"SHE'S ASLEEP!?!?!?"