Hinata Haibara's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Hinata lowered her hand. The stranger stood at the crater's edge, phone melted in their grip, eyes fixed on her face. They'd counted every blast. Every failure. The wind pulled at her coat and she realized she hadn't spoken to another person in weeks. The radio on her belt crackled before she could respond. Static, then a voice cutting through: evacuation failing, creature downtown, spreading with every strike against it. They needed someone who could hit it once, hard enough to end it before it multiplied beyond control. The stranger watched her face as she listened. Behind them, the ruined apartment building she'd destroyed three days ago stood like a monument to what happened when she didn't hold back. Six stories reduced to crumbling stone and shattered windows from a single miscalculation. The voice on the radio kept talking, kept asking, and Hinata looked at the smoking crater at her feet. She'd come here because ice was the only thing she could afford to hurt. But Ichiban City was full of people who couldn't survive her mistakes. The stranger stepped back from the crater's edge. "They're asking for the thing you're afraid of," they said. Hinata pressed the radio to answer and felt her hand shake. This wasn't control. This was just aiming her failure at something that deserved it. She took the job anyway.