The Amazing Hawlucha Man

Chapter 13

Alex had learned two things so far that night. The first was that his new suit was more or less fireproof. The second was that Sergeant Matsuri cursed like a sailor when she was pissed off.


He and Hierro crashed through the third story window of a supposedly abandoned tenement house while Matsuri kicked down the door on the ground level, each blow punctuated by yet another curse. “Son of a bi… Motherfu... there we go!” There were a series of crashes as the door was knocked off its hinges and Matsuri’s booted feet stomped across the first floor landing. “Hawlucha Man, you have visual on the runners?”


Alex glared at the unkempt old man huddling in the corner of the dingy room. He muttered to himself and hugged five Pidove close. Alex inclined his head and walked out onto the landing. They weren’t here to clear out squatters. The man’s door had been broken down, and the door at the far end of the landing was standing ajar. “No visual, but they came through here.”


“Damn it! All right, I’m heading out the back.”


He and Matsuri were pursuing the leaders of an opiate ring that Matsuri had been chasing down leads for since before the Sins’ attack. In the aftermath of Sloth’s downfall and the Sins going dormant, the drug suppliers had cut ties with Gluttony and thrown in with the Baron’s organization and expanded their Avenbrooke operation. Matsuri had enlisted Hawlucha Man’s help in ambushing them in what they had hoped would be a quick sting operation, but Antoine and Thomas Coquille had managed to slip out of their main supply base and had led Matsuri and Alex on a mad chase through their safe houses.


Alex ran across the landing and vaulted out the broken window onto the fire escape. The building across the way had no windows facing the alley, so he had to assume the drug czars had taken to the roof. He called this down to Matsuri and sprinted up the fire escape. When he and Hierro reached the top, he estimated the distance across the alley. He could probably make the jump, but he thought he would need his wingsuit to clear the distance. Antoine and Thomas only had a Breloom and Sabeleye to aid them, and neither would provide much help in crossing the gap. The building stood on a street corner, meaning it was open air to the right and straight ahead, which left only the left neighbor. The building there was flush up against the tenement house, but another story taller. Hierro was already running forward, bounding up the wall with two quick leaps. Alex followed after, jumping as high as he could before dashing up the wall and just managing to grab the lip of the roof. He reached up with his free hand and felt Hierro’s hand grab his wrist, hauling him up the rest of the way.


Matsuri reached the roof just in time to watch Alex scramble up the building. “Oh, you have got to be fuckin’ kidding me!”


“Can you make it?” Alex called back.


Alex assumed by the stream of curses that she probably couldn’t. He scanned up and down the street, but the Coquilles had moved fast. He and Matsuri assumed they were taking a circuitous route to their hideout somewhere in the warehouse district, but they had hoped to head them off before the Coquilles got that far. The sprawling warehouse district was too much ground even for the entire Eleventh Precinct to cover, and too many criminals had vanished into its alleys. Alex had to assume Thomas and Antoine were heading vaguely southwest, and the most logical path for them to take would be up St. Martine Avenue, especially if they were trying to shake a pursuit.


Alex and Hierro turned back towards Matsuri. “I can’t see them, so looks like we’re going for Plan B. I’ll head towards St. Martine.”


Matsuri swore again. “The night market?”


“The night market,” Alex agreed.


The Avenbrooke night market spanned several blocks along St. Martine Avenue, clogging the streets with shoppers and revelers as they sampled food from all over the world, traded wares and got drunk. The night market was a major tourist draw for Avenbrooke in the warmer months of the year, but the bulk of the patrons were locals who just wanted fried, greasy food and to enjoy a beer outside under strings of Solstice lights. The problem with the night market was that between the stalls and the foot traffic, it effectively barred motor traffic and consequently made it very hard to police. An enterprising criminal could shove their way through the crowd and lose a pursuing officer, even if the officer abandoned their cruiser and followed on foot.


But not many criminals counted on a pursuer from the air.


Alex stretched out his arms. “You go back down to the street and loop around in your car. I’ll take the rooftops.”


Matsuri nodded. “I’ll rendezvous with you on Seventeenth.”


Alex and Hierro ran to the edge of the building and took off, soaring out over the street. The rooftop had been the tallest for several blocks, and a steady, favorable wind was blowing. Alex angled his body west, towards the gentrified neighborhoods that slowly gave way to the lights and revelry of the night market.


Rooftop gardens and elegant backyard patios flashed by below Alex and Hierro as they shot overhead, occasionally dashing across an empty rooftop. Alex could see the glow of the night market, even from several blocks away, a golden haze bleeding over the tops of distant buildings.


As they closed the gap, the wind shifted, and Alex felt himself quickly losing altitude. He spread his wings as wide as he could, but they couldn’t catch enough drag to keep him aloft. He angled himself so that he drifted over the brownstone apartments on the side of the street so he wouldn’t fall quite so far and lose precious time. The rooftops rushed by underneath him as he scanned for a place to land, but the buildings all had jumbles of machinery and HVAC equipment on the roofs, and he had no safe place to come down.


Three buildings ahead, he saw a well-lit rooftop with a terrace garden, and knew that he would reach it just before he crashed. He prepared to land, and then saw that the rooftop was occupied. A long table stretched across its length, and a dinner party seemed to be in progress. “Oh crap,” Alex muttered.


He landed on the table with a bang, and was immediately off and running. The party guests shouted in alarm and indignation as he sprinted down the length of the table, doing his best not to step in any of the food as the diners hurried to snatch up their plates. “Sorry! Really sorry! Oh, watch your wine!” He stumbled and nearly face planted into the main course before righting himself and continuing onward. “Sorry again! This all looks really good, by the way.”


When he reached the end of the table, the man sitting there stood up in a huff. “Now listen here, you—”


Alex jumped off the edge of the table onto the lip around the building’s edge and sprang off. “Kind of in a rush right now! Enjoy the rest of the party!”


Hierro drifted down to glide beside him and silently shook his head. Evidently the Hawlucha had managed to remain aloft and had watched Alex’s mishap from above. At least Hierro had the grace not to laugh in Alex’s face about it. Or at least, he didn’t laugh now, but Alex was sure he wouldn’t hear the end of it later.


They reached the night market without further mishaps, and paused on a rooftop to scan the crowd. The market itself  down St. Martine Avenue, with tents selling food, booze, and virtually everything else under the sun on each side of the street. A thick press of bodies drifted up and down the avenue, filling the night air with chatter. The shifting sea of people and pokemon made it too hard for Alex to focus on any one individual, but Hierro’s eyes were far sharper. “You got something?” Alex asked.


Hierro nodded and pointed off to Alex’s right. Alex couldn’t make out anything specific in the undulating crowd, but he backed up a few paces from the lip of the building. “Lead on, partner.” They shot out over the night market, and Alex heard several gasps down below.


“Hey, is that Hawlucha Man?”


“Hawlucha Man! Hey!”


“What’s going on? Should we be worried?”


“Look, it’s Hawlucha Man!”


Hierro stooped into a dive, and the crowd parted around the flying type as Alex alighted behind him. “Antoine Coquille. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”


Antoine whirled. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?”


“Never have,” Alex quipped back.


Antoine snarled and whipped out his left hand. Hierro shrieked as a Sabeleye burst from the shadows and Thomas Coquille rushed out of the crowd, a wicked-looking knife clutched in his fist. “Eyes on me!” Alex barked, and he saw Hierro tense. Alex swept low and drew his batons while Hierro jumped up and launched off Alex’s back, driving his taloned foot into Thomas’s chest, sending the man flying back into the night market crowd. Alex activated the electric current in his batons and clubbed the Sabeleye as it lunged. “Everyone stand back!” Alex commanded as a few men made to grab Thomas’s arms. “The CCPD and I have this under control. I don’t want anyone getting hurt!” The crowd withdrew as Antoine commanded his Breloom to attack. Alex swept his leg up into a roundhouse kick, knocking the grass type into Hierro’s fist.


“Yeah Hawlucha Man! Show ‘em how it’s done!”


“You can do it!”


“Teach ‘em not to mess with Avenbrooke!”


“Kick his ass, Hawlucha Man!”


Antoine gritted his teeth and drew a gun from beneath his jacket, brandishing it at the crowd. “Out of the way,” he snapped. The crowd instinctively parted, and Antoine sprinted through. Hierro tried to snatch Thomas as he ran by, but only managed to tear his coat. The Coquilles' Sabeleye melted back into the shadows as the Breloom bounded after its trainers. Alex and Hierro took off after them, but the Coquilles did not make it easy. They overturned carts in their wake and shoved people and pokemon down, forcing Alex to leap over them and lose precious seconds.


“Hawlucha Man, over here!” A fruit vendor waved to Alex from the bed of his pickup truck and pointed at the roof of his stall. “Jump on up!”


Alex grinned beneath his cowl as he vaulted into the truck, onto the cab, and then finally pulling himself onto the stall. Hierro sprang up behind him, and together they raced across the top of the night market. The crowd below cheered him on as he dashed over ramen stalls, kebab stands, clothing merchants and grocers. Below him, someone had managed to haul a large industrial fan out into the thoroughfare, and angled it upwards. The fan spun to life with a roar, and Hierro jumped off the roof to catch the updraft. Alex followed a second later, and the two of them shot out over the heads of the crowd.


“Thank you, citizens of Avenbrooke!” Alex called as the wind caught his wings. They blew out over the end of the night market, and saw Matsuri’s police car screech around a corner, hot in pursuit of the Coquille’s getaway van. She slowed down when she saw Alex and Hierro and stuck her hand out the window to wave them down. Alex landed with a gasp on the sidewalk next to the car, running to keep up. Matsuri reached across the center console to pop the passenger door for him while he threw open the back for Hierro. “Come on!” the sergeant cried and Alex tumbled in. As soon as he pulled the door shut behind him, Matsuri was off, her siren wailing.


Her Raichu chittered in the back seat while Hierro clutched at the upholstery. The Hawlucha had never liked cars, and he especially didn’t like speeding cars. They peeled off the main roads and onto shadowy backstreets as the warehouse district loomed. There was a brief moment where they lost the van, but when they shot through the open gates of the freight yard, they saw the vehicle abandoned by the gaping doors of a dilapidated warehouse. Alex was jumping out of the car almost before Matsuri had it in park, wrenching open the back door to let Hierro out. The two of them sprinted across the gravel lot to the warehouse and plunged into the darkness. Alex activated the night vision Jiro Sasaki had built into his suit, but his scan of the warehouse turned up nothing. He switched to thermal imaging, and his shoulders slumped.


“Oh crap.”


The sound of their entry had roused the massive colony of Zubat, Golbat, and Crobat that roosted within. The sound of hundreds of leathery wings filled the air, and Alex could only watch in horror as the poison types descended, their fangs glinting.


A blinding flash lit up the warehouse, and the bat pokemon screamed as electrical current coursed through them. Alex quickly averted his eyes, and when he saw that the harsh light had dimmed, he turned to see Matsuri standing in the doorway. Her Raichu glowed as it discharged power, driving the bats back. Matsuri ran across the warehouse, signaling for Alex to follow. “That won’t hold them for long!”


They burst out into the night air again, following the footprints in the gravel. Matsuri broke down the wooden door to the next warehouse with a well-placed kick, but drew up short when she and Alex entered into a quiet, softly lit space lined with wooden bedframes stacked three high. The sergeant scanned the open expanse and scowled. “Looks like we found the main den.”


As they stalked down the aisles of beds, Alex saw that many were occupied. All of the sleepers were wan and ashen-skinned, with deep dark circles beneath their eyes. He knew the effects of dream dust when he saw it. It was a powerful and addictive opiate, distilled from traditional morphine, but strengthened with Breloom spores and crystalized Musharna smoke to ensure a deep sleep. Occasionally, one of the sleepers would stir, their body struggling to rise to consciousness only to fall back under the heavy blanket of the drug.


“Are we going to arrest all these people?” Alex murmured as they padded across the concrete floor.


Matsuri sighed. “I don’t know. I have to take as many names as I can, it’s department policy. The CCPD tries to help, but so many of these addicts slip through the cracks. Sometimes it’s easier to just get them off the streets.”


“It’s not like they’re hurting anyone.”


“I don’t make the laws, Hawlucha Man. I want to help but… sometimes it’s out of our hands.”


“Hawlucha… Man?” One of the sleepers struggled to rise, his pale hands grasping the edges of his bunk with white-knuckled intensity.


“You go on,” Alex told Matsuri. “I’ll catch up in a second.” He and Hierro crouched next to the bunk, and he couldn’t help but gasp when he saw Pierre Espalier. The esper's face was gaunt, and his veins had begun to blacken with the effects of too much dream dust. “Arceus, Pierre, what are you doing here?”


“The Baron,” Pierre muttered, his words slurred. “He keeps me here. Between jobs. Keeps the voices quiet.” Alex saw the air shimmer as Pierre waved his hand, a tiny wall forming and breaking apart just as quickly. “I’m all under control. Out of the way.”


“This is…” Alex struggled to find the words. “Pierre, this is terrible. It’s inhumane. What happened to Mimsy?”


The esper raised his other hand, and Alex saw that a pokeball was tied to his wrist with a leather cord. “Mimsy doesn’t like to see me like this. I sleep, he sleeps too. Different sleeps.”


“I’m going to get you out of here. I’m going to get you help.”


Pierre jerked his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “He’d just bring me back. The Baron. Signed a contract.” The esper sighed, his mouth tugging up at the corners into a lazily smile. “You can’t… sometimes you can’t… " He grasped for the words. "Not everybody can be saved. Should go, Hawlucha Man. Let me have the dreams. Can’t hurt anybody in the dreams.” The mime slipped back into the drugged slumber of the dream dust, his face slackening and the tension leaving his muscles.


Alex slammed his fist against the concrete floor and winced at the pain. “Damn it,” he muttered. “Damn it, I should be able to save you. I should have…” Hierro put a hand on Alex’s shoulder and jerked his head in the direction Matsuri had gone. There was a crash, and Alex jumped to his feet and took off at a run.


He heard a gun go off, once, twice, and more glass shattered. Hierro bolted ahead of him, and he heard the Hawlucha shriek as Matsuri’s Raichu cried out in anger. There was another flash, a muffled curse, and then Alex rounded the corner to see Antoine clutching the bullet wound in his shoulder, and Thomas struggling to rise from Hierro’s attack. Their Breloom and Sabeleye twitched on the warehouse floor, paralyzed by Matsuri’s Raichu. The sergeant stood with her gun pointing at Antoine. “Last chance to come quietly,” she barked.


Antoine snarled in wordless rage and lurched forward, his uninjured arm drawing back to strike. Alex was on him in an instant, driving his knee into Antoine’s chest, his elbow into the man’s injured shoulder. “No more chances,” Alex growled. When the chemist staggered back, Alex unclipped the batons from his belt and cracked them across the man’s jaw. He twirled them in his hands and drove the blunted tips into Antoine’s abdomen as he flicked the switch to engage the stun function. Antoine’s back arched as the electric current coursed through him, and then collapsed in a heap. Alex pivoted on his back foot as Thomas moved his hands, and struck the back of the man’s head. The second Coquille dropped like a stone.


“Thanks for the help,” Matsuri said. “Avenbrooke’s a better place now that these scumbags aren’t on the streets.”


Alex nodded to the sergeant and clicked his tongue at Hierro. Together, the two of them walked past the rows of beds while Matsuri called in for a prisoner transport and medical personnel for all the addicts under the spell of the drug. Alex kept walking through the broken warehouse door and out into the night. He didn’t stop until the warehouse district was far behind him, until he could find a quiet alleyway and a sturdy fire escape, until he was on a distant rooftop far, far away from the unsettling quiet of the warehouses and the equally unsettling bustle of the night market.


He didn’t need to be there when the police arrived to escort out the somnambulists with their blackening veins and vacant eyes, to watch them loaded into a hospital transport to be whisked away to Metro General, or the detention cells nearby. He didn’t need to watch the narcotics division pack up the Coquilles’ laboratory and confiscate their chemicals, the chemicals that had ruined Pierre on the Baron’s orders.


He didn’t need to see it, because he knew what would happened next.

The first few parts of the chapter was fun, filled with Alex going on a chase while a night market was happening and then crash at a dinner party. I also thought it was sweet that several folks recognize and give Alex encouragement to kick butt.

The atmosphere then turned a 180 with Alex finding the sleepers and Pierre among them. That must've made them even more apart than before. Indeed incidents like this is beyond his scope and power.

It really is remarkable how many people in Clarus City want a bird furry son. Or maybe it isn't, given that the two main criteria for becoming a superhero in this universe appear to be (a) family tragedy and (b) a slightly unhealthy obsession with dressing up like an animal. :V

Anyway, what really stands out here, as the story slows down again after the massive battle and hostile takeover, is how we're getting to see more of Alex, rather than Hawlucha Man. Like, up till now, we've only got the odd glance at his life at university, or a couple of asides about a skitty that needs feeding – which is understandable, since this is The Amazing Hawlucha Man, not The Amazing Engineering Student, but still, it's good to look behind the mask every once in a while. Especially given that this is chapter fourteen and we still don't know that much about our hero in terms of, like, the material content of his life. I have a very strong sense of who he is, but not necessarily what constitutes him, if that makes any sense, and it's good to see that being explored.

Also, I have to say how much I love that Dominion's real name is Marinette. What level of supervillain are you when even your real name is a pun on your powers? Anyway, I think we're now rapidly towards the end of the stuff I've actually read before, too, so there's the prospect of new content on the horizon. Which I am very much looking forward to, I have to say!

One other thing:



Siegfried is consistently referred to as 'he' everywhere else in the story; I'd guess this one's a typo that presented itself the way it does when you refer to a pokémon by species rather than name. I know that happens to me a bunch.

Chapter 15

Wyatt Reeves knew he wasn’t a good man.


On his best day, he figured he was a righteous man. He was definitely on the good guys’ side, but he was no Blaziken Man. He came from a long line of lawmen, men who had always stood in the light, the shield of the people they were sworn to protect. Wyatt had fallen out of that light, and he knew the blame for that fell squarely on his shoulders alone. He was doing everything he could to be worthy of his family name again. He wasn’t a good man, but by Arceus, he was trying.


He cracked the butt of his revolver across the jaw of the bound Kuromori assassin and knocked the chair he was tied to off balance. When the ninja fell to the ground, he delivered a sharp kick to the Kuromori’s abdomen with the tip of his steel-toed boot. “Tell me what you know, you son of a bitch.”


He was willing to admit he could probably be trying a little harder.


Geronimo crouched silently in the shadows nearby, the Nuzleaf’s eyes tracking each subtle movement of the bound Kuromori assassin. Everything about his partner was silent. Wyatt didn’t think he’d ever heard Geronimo make so much as a peep. Other Nuzleaf did, from what he’d heard, but Geronimo preferred to keep his peace. What Wyatt did know was that if the Kuromori bastard so much as twitched the wrong way, Geronimo would cover him with a barrage of incendiary seeds.


The Kuromori glared up at Wyatt, as silent as Geronimo. Wyatt sank down to a crouch beside the assassin. “All right, partner. I’ve tried to be civilized with you. I know Saito is moving pieces ’round the board, and I’m getting real damn tired of being two steps behind, so tell me what your marching orders are before I start losing my temper.”


The ninja spat. “I know nothing.”


“Well that’s too damn bad.” Wyatt flicked open his revolver and slid six bullets into the chamber. “That means you're just a no-good varmint, and varmint's ain't any good to me. Last chance to try and think of something.” When the Kuromori turned his head away, Wyatt shrugged. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you, partner.” He fired five bullets into the floor around the assassin’s body before firing the sixth at the ninja’s torso. The casing broke apart the instant the bullet left the gun’s muzzle, sending the small needle into the man’s chest. The tiny electrical device in the needle sent out a small shock that caught on the web of Galvantula threads the first five bullets had created around his body. The assassin convulsed as hundreds of volts of electricity coursed through his body.


Wyatt sighed as the man’s eyes rolled back in his head. As he walked off the abandoned factory floor, Geronimo fell into step beside him. The Nuzleaf glanced up at him, and Wyatt shrugged. “I know it was overkill, but he was starting to piss me off.” He tugged at his hat brim and slotted another bullet into his gun. He raised the revolver to the sky and fired. The bullet made a loud shrieking noise as it arced skywards, and Wyatt heard distant police sirens that would soon be heading to his location to pick up the (hopefully) unconscious Kuromori.


Geronimo jumped up into the bed of Wyatt’s pickup truck, perching on the large toolbox full of locks, keys, drills and cylinders. Wyatt folded up the tarp that had covered the Kuromori on their drive out here and stuck it under his smaller toolbox before swinging into the driver’s seat. The Reeves Locksmith truck started with a groan, and Wyatt guided it out of the abandoned industrial park and back towards the heart of Ridgewood.


Wyatt took off his stetson hat and put it on the passenger seat. The Gunslinger persona had come about after a series of unfortunate circumstances and a rather abrupt fall from grace. Like every Reeves man going back as long as anyone cared to remember, Wyatt had been a lawman. The specific titles had changed over the years, from sheriff to detective to chief investigator to beat cop, but there was a storied tradition of his ancestors protecting and serving their community. Wyatt had been a sergeant in the Ninth Precinct of the CCPD, and had the dubious honor of being the only Reeves man in history to abuse his position of power.


Wyatt Reeves had been a dirty cop.


It had started small enough, turning a blind eye to drug runners in exchange for a small cut of the profits and the like. It had just been enough to cover his expenses. But then the drug runners kicked him higher up their chain of command, eventually all the way to Eva Muller, even before she became known as Gluttony. The takes had gotten bigger, but the things Muller was asking him to do became harder for his conscience to stomach. When Marcus Braun took control of the underworld and it was all the police could do to keep the city from devolving into total anarchy, Wyatt saw the way the wind was turning (and his comrades in arms dropping left and right) and cashed in his chips with Gluttony to became her obedient little Lilipup. Eventually, the CCPD wrestled back a measure of control, right about the time Wyatt was starting to overplay his hand.


He was caught, went to court, and was only spared a prison sentence thanks to a few connections on the force. He sank into an alcoholic haze for a couple months, until some of Muller’s thugs came knocking at his door again. When he refused to answer to Muller’s beck and call, the situation escalated, and Wyatt had been forced to use the pistol that he had (illegally) taken with him when he had been dishonorably discharged from the police.


The cops responded to a neighbor’s panicked call, but the two thugs had rap sheets the length of Wyatt’s arm, and the lead detective on the case had been a friend, so his gun had been confiscated and the whole thing was quietly swept under the rug. But the confrontation had changed something in Wyatt, and he was no longer content to drink himself into a stupor. He had failed to uphold the oath he had sworn to protect Clarus City, and it was time he made up for it.


He privately contacted the captain of the Sixth and arranged for special dispensation to carry his grandfather’s old revolver and engage in some pro bono vigilante work. The captain had been hesitant at first, but Wyatt had always been the best shot on the force, and precautions were set that if Wyatt ever crossed the line, the police would be well within their rights to take him down.


Or at least, that was the story the captain was telling. The real story was that Wyatt happened to know a few times the captain had been on Eva Muller’s payroll too, and he had threatened to go public unless the captain stayed out of his way and let Wyatt serve his penance. As far as Wyatt was concerned, sometimes it was more important to be righteous than to be good.


Once that had been settled, Wyatt took up his maternal grandfather’s trade as a locksmith to pay the bills. He’d always been fascinated by locks, the elegant artistry of all the delicate pieces fitting together. It was for the same reason that he loved his paternal grandfather’s revolver, with its sliding latch and spinning cylinder, the way each bullet slotted perfectly into the chamber, the satisfying click of the firing hammer when he feathered the trigger.


The police radio he wasn’t supposed to have crackled to life on the dashboard. “Police pursuit on Twelfth towards Belfry. Subjects are in three black sedans and one SUV. Likely Kuromori, responding officers are urged to use caution.”


Wyatt quickly calculated the distance in his head before reaching behind him and sliding open the rear window of the cab. “Hold on tight, Geronimo!” He floored the accelerator and wrenched the wheel of his truck around to take a side street. With his left hand he checked his bandolier, counting how many of each type of bullet he had left. Enough to stop a few more ninja assholes, probably. The old truck protested as Wyatt swung onto Belfry Street and double-parked on the wrong side of the road. He could only hope that no overzealous meter maid on the graveyard shift would brave the confusion and write him a ticket.


Wyatt settled his stetson on his head and rested his hand on the wooden butt of his revolver as he strode down the last hundred yards to the intersection of Belfry and Twelfth. The Gunslinger settled his stance as Geronimo bounded up a fire escape to perch atop the snarling stone Druddigon on Ridgewood Credit and Trust’s façade. The distant police sirens were getting louder, and Wyatt could hear the squeal of tires coming down the street. He had figured the Kuromori would make for the Niji Kumo Temple, where the Johtonian monks were rumored to aid the assassin clan in exchange for generous contributions from Saito Kuromori.


But to get there, they’d have to go through the Gunslinger.


The black vehicles were coming into view now, and Wyatt counted at least four police cars in pursuit. He raised his gun, flicked the hammer back, and pulled the trigger.


The bullet skimmed across the ground and embedded itself in the pavement just in front of the first black sedan. A second later, as the car’s fuel tank passed over it, the bullet exploded. The back of the car was flung into the air by the force of the blast, and the overturned vehicle skidded across the ground for several yards before coming to rest mere feet from where Wyatt stood.


The second car raced forward, only to have its windshield shattered by a barrage of seeds from Geronimo. The driver lost control, and Wyatt shot two more bullets into the car’s tires, puncturing them and causing it to spin out and crash into a fire hydrant. The third car was accelerating now, trying to run the Gunslinger down before he could cause any more damage. Wyatt tutted and spun the cylinder of his revolver, shattering the windshield with two rapid fire shots to the same point of impact. With the glass out of the way, he fired his sixth bullet, one of his sleeping rounds, into the driver’s neck and stepped out of the way as the car careened past him, clipped a light post, and finally collided with a stone stoop, cracking the masonry but stopping the car.


“Yee-haw!” the Gunslinger whooped. If he’d learned anything from those fancy uptown heroes, it was that you had to keep up the persona, no matter how hot the fight got.


The SUV was still barreling forward, and Wyatt was out of bullets. He had enough time to dive out of the way, but he steeled his nerve and held his ground. As the van hurtled towards a narrow cross street, something raced in front of it, and with a shriek of rending metal, the front of the SUV was cleaved in two. The engine sputtered and exploded, and the Cavalier’s armor gleamed as they whirled their Rapidash around.


“Thought I heard you coming,” the Gunslinger said.


“I AM NOT HERE FOR YOU,” the Cavalier boomed. The police cars surrounded the mangled Kuromori vehicles, their guns drawn. Stunned and rattled Kuromori assassins were stumbling out of the less damaged cars, but the Cavalier paid them no heed. The cerulean tassel of the Cavalier’s Honedge was wrapped around their unarmored right wrist and forearm, and they used that to point at a nearby rooftop. “I HAVE BEEN CHASING HER.” A shape detached from the shadows of a nearby rooftop, melting from the gloom and disappearing into the next patch of darkness.


“Well hell,” the Gunslinger drawled, slotting bullets into his revolver. “Vixen. We just walked into an ambush, didn’t we?”


“IT WOULD SEEM WE’VE BEEN OUTFOXED.”


“Please never make a pun again.”


A broad-shouldered man stepped out from the open doors of the Kuromori van. He slowly raised his hands over his head as the police officers went for their guns. “Easy now,” the man said with smirk. “Don’t go getting excited. Gunshots make my cousin jumpy.”


The Gunslinger gritted his teeth as his mind worked furiously. If Tarou Kuromori were here along with the Vixen, then the ninjas had banked hard on this operation. Saito Kuromori’s son lacked his father’s subtle mind and his uncle’s conniving acumen, but what he lacked in brains he more than made up for in brawn. All Kuromori operatives were skilled in hand to hand combat, but most favored a limber acrobatic style that allowed them to stay in motion and keep their foes wrong-footed. Tarou, on the other hand, was a brawler, plain and simple.


“I’ll focus on him,” Wyatt murmured to the Cavalier. “You keep your eye on the Vixen.” He saw the knight’s helmet rise and fall slightly, though the Cavalier’s eyes never left the rooftops.


“I’ll admit, you took us by surprise,” Tarou went on. His eyes flicked up Twelfth, but Wyatt didn’t waste time tracking his gaze. Tarou wasn’t famous for his poker face. He was stalling, waiting for reinforcements. Wyatt had stopped the convoy earlier than the Kuromori had hoped, and that meant that the jaws of the trap weren’t completely closed yet.


He could use that.


Wyatt slowly reached up and tugged the brim of his stetson down over his eyes, drumming his fingers along the rim in a specific pattern. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Geronimo stiffen atop his perch, and the Nuzleaf crept back into the shadows. No one had paid the Gunslinger’s silent partner any mind, and that gave them a chance to get out ahead of this. “It’s a shame you all had to get involved,” Tarou was saying. “Our only target was the Cavalier. But since you’re here…” He flicked his wrist, and a slender throwing knife appeared from his sleeve. Tarou turned on his heel and hurled the knife through the eye of the nearest officer. The other surviving Kuromori had managed to gather their wits, and in the brief spell of confusion, they drew their weapons and fell on the assembled police officers.


Gunshots cracked and knives flashed as the ninjas struck. Wyatt whirled around, emptying his cylinder of the six sleeping bullets he had loaded. Six Kuromori dropped. The bullet casings were designed to break apart when leaving the muzzle, propelling the darts inside forward. The darts were laced with a fast-acting neurotoxin of refined Ariados venom that paralyzed the victim and rendered them catatonic. Unlike some of his other bullets, these weren’t very lethal, but they did sting quite a bit.


Tarou and his Machamp fought side by side, lashing out at the remaining officers. The Cavalier swung their Rapidash around, battering away a leaping Sableye with their shield and lashing out at a Weavile with their Honedge. The Gunslinger reloaded and fired five bullets into the darkness behind the melee, taking cover behind one of the wrecked vehicles as he waited. A moment later, several shapes passed under the distant streetlights. Wyatt inhaled, held his breath, and then fired.


The electric web his bullets had woven flared briefly as several of the Kuromori reinforcements dropped, their bodies convulsing. Several more fell to their knees, but a few had managed to make it through. Before they reached the rest of their comrades, a barrage of seeds struck down the first two and the Mienshao racing along with them, and a pulsing indigo orb collided with a leaping Toxicroak. By the time Geronimo had landed, Wyatt had reloaded his gun with sleeping darts to pick off any other stragglers.


The Cavalier had rallied the surviving police. The sergeant who had led them had fallen in the first counterattack, and no one was bold enough to try and countermand the Cavalier’s booming authority. Their Rapidash darted up and down the street, and their Honedge hummed as they lashed out. The Cavalier’s armor and shield were pitted with marks from the Kuromori’s bullets, but they gave no quarter. More of the assassins jumped from the rooftop, and Wyatt emptied his gun before they could interfere. As he hastened to reload, another figure jumped out over the street. Unlike the black cloth hoods most of the Kuromori wore, this one wore a carved wooden mask made to look like a snarling canine.


“Look out!” Wyatt shouted as the Vixen leapt towards the Cavalier. The Cavalier’s Honedge tightened its grip on their forearm and whipped the knight’s arm around in time to parry the Vixen’s daggers. The Vixen slid across the pavement, and a burst of light shot from her belt. Her Ninetales appeared in a flash and pounced at the Cavalier’s Rapidash. Though the warhorse was well-trained, it shied away from the fox even as Tarou closed in. The muzzle of his gun flashed, the bullets pinging off the Cavalier’s shield.


The remaining Kuromori had closed ranks on the Ridgewood police, cutting them off from the Cavalier. Wyatt saw the knight turn the dark eye slits of their helmet to regard him, and the armored hero gave a brusque nod. They kicked their Rapidash into a trot, curving away from Tarou as the Vixen sprinted after them. Several of the other Kuromori took off after her. Tarou reloaded and took aim, but Wyatt shot the gun from his hand. The mangled piece of metal fell to the ground, and Tarou clutched at his fingers. “What the…?”


The Gunslinger smirked. “Yippie-ki-yay, bitch.”


Tarou snarled in impotent rage and fumbled for his second sidearm. The heir apparent of the Kuromori clan fired off a shot as soon as he had freed the gun from the holster. Wyatt heard the bullet ping off a railing some ways down the street. He clicked his tongue and shot Tarou’s hand again. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you shooting from the hip only works in the pictures?” Wyatt spun his gun around his index finger and fired off three shots from the hip, a Galvantula thread bullet to each of Tarou’s shoulders and the trigger bullet to the center of his chest. The Gunslinger emptied the spent casings and slotted six more bullets into his revolver as the electric current coursed through Tarou’s body. “You best be gettin’ on home, boy,” Wyatt drawled. “Your daddy's going to want to know just how badly you fucked this up.”


“You’ll pay for this,” Tarou snarled through clenched teeth.


Wyatt scoffed and shot the ground at Tarou’s feet. A small explosion cracked the pavement, making Tarou flinch back. “Well, ain’t I just quaking in my boots,” Wyatt replied.


“Kill him!” Tarou barked, and tossed a smoke bomb at his feet.


The remaining Kuromori broke off from their fight with the surviving police officers and raced towards Wyatt. He settled his stance and fired, but the Kuromori and their pokemon were wise to his game now. They zigzagged across the remaining distance, making themselves a harder target. His gun clicked as it cycled back to an empty chamber, and Wyatt swore. He was useless in hand to hand combat, and there was no time to reload.


It was a damn stupid way to die.


A spray of seeds flashed across the street in front of Wyatt, and then Geronimo was in front of him. The Nuzleaf slid across the pavement and pivoted, leaping towards the Kuromori. A white glow radiated off his body, and a smell like burning chestnuts filled the air. “Geronimo, no!” Wyatt screamed.


There was a flash, a concussive bang, and a rush of air. The few Kuromori still on their feet reeled in the aftermath of the explosion, and Geronimo crashed to the ground, his small body smoldering. Before the Kuromori could gather their wits, the thunder of hooves echoed up and down the street. The Cavalier barreled by, their Honedge glowing with spectral light and their armor stained with blood. The ghostly blade rose and fell in the flat light of the streetlights, and the Kuromori dropped. The Cavalier reined in their Rapidash, and the warhorse’s sides heaved with exertion. The Honedge steamed as it drank in the blood along its blade.


Wyatt ran to Geronimo and cupped the grass type’s head beneath his hand. The Nuzleaf’s eyelids fluttered weakly, and Wyatt let out a relieved sigh. “I thought we agreed we weren’t gonna to use that technique anymore, partner.” Geronimo shrugged and managed to smirk. “Yeah, yeah,” Wyatt said. “You saved my ass again. You can gloat about it later. You going to be okay?” Geronimo nodded, and sank back into unconsciousness. Wyatt returned him to his pokeball, turned to the surviving police officers, and gestured up and down the street. “Can y’all handle this?”


One of the officers nodded. “We’ve radioed for backup already.” The officer carefully checked a knife wound on his arm. “Gunslinger… thanks for the help. If you hadn’t been here, things could have been a lot worse.”


Wyatt privately thought that if he was more like one of those uptown heroes and not just some righteous vigilante, things could have gone a lot better. There would certainly be fewer bodies.


Still, he nodded to the officer and walked over to the Cavalier. They hadn’t dismounted, and Wyatt wondered if their legs got sore sitting like that all night. The Cavalier regarded him silently for a moment before disentangling their hand from the Honedge’s tassel. “I THOUGHT IT BEST TO DRAW SOME OF THEM OFF.”


“It gave us some room to breathe,” Wyatt replied. “But if you hadn’t come back when you did, Geronimo and I…”


“WOULD BE DEAD. YES.”


“Right. Well. Thanks for coming back, partner.”


“WE ARE NOT PARTNERS. MY PURSUERS WERE DEALT WITH,” the Cavalier said. “I HAD UNFINISHED BUSINESS WITH THE REST OF THEM.” Wyatt looked at the blood staining the Rapidash’s coat and the Cavalier’s greaves. The fire type didn’t seem injured. The Cavalier let the silence hang in the air for a moment. “THEY ARE CRIMINALS AND KILLERS. NO ONE WILL MOURN THEM.” They paused again. “THE VIXEN GOT AWAY. HER KNIVES WERE POISONED. WITHOUT ARMOR TO STOP HER BLOWS, YOU ALL WOULD HAVE PERISHED.”


“Tarou escaped too.” Wyatt holstered his gun and sighed. “They’re getting bolder. Tarou said he laid the ambush for you. You worried about that?”


“I HAVE NO REASON TO FEAR VERMIN LIKE THE KUROMORI. IF THEY FOCUS ON ME, THEY CANNOT PREY ON THE WEAK.”


“Well, I admire your confidence, par—I mean, Cavalier. But they’re going to be gunning for us hard now. We need to be ready for them.”


“SO LONG AS THEY RISE, I SHALL BEAT THEM BACK.” Easy for the Cavalier to say, Wyatt thought. With a suit of armor like that and a warhorse to parade around on, the Cavalier had the kind of firepower to back up their boasting. But he was just a crack shot with an antique gun and a partner who always had his back. The Cavalier saw his glance down at Geronimo’s pokeball. “SEE TO YOUR PARTNER. I WILL CARRY ON ALONE TONIGHT.”


Wyatt nodded and started to walk away. “GUNSLINGER,” the Cavalier boomed again. Wyatt turned. “WHEN THEY COME AGAIN, I SHALL BE READY. I HAVE FAITH THAT YOU WILL TOO.” They thumped their right fist over their heart in salute. Wyatt reached up and tipped his stetson before limping back to where he had parked.


Sometimes, the path of the righteous man could be a real pain in the ass.

Anyway, there was another hero in this chapter, right? I think I have two things to say about the Cavalier, and neither of them are particularly trenchant, but I figure that ship probably sailed a while back, so here we are. One, I just want to recognise that the Cavalier cut a car in half somewhere in the middle of the action. No commentary, just like, that was a thing that happened, and I don't think it should go unrecognised. Two, I can totally see how they themself are bulletproof in their armour – I seem to remember that that used to be a thing they did with plate armour, like an armourer would fire a gun into the breastplate to leave a dent by which their customer would know that this was pretty likely to stop them getting shot – but man, they are very lucky that nobody ever tries to shoot the horse. Often these fights separate out into pokémon versus pokémon and human versus human (which is itself an interesting cultural thing), but in a life-and-death situation, I'd imagine any taboos about putting a bullet in the fire unicorn would probably go out the window.

Yeah, I did say neither of these were particularly insightful. :P Anyway! It was a pleasure, as always. I'll be looking forward to remembering what happens next whenever it is that I end up reading it!

Ah, internships in big corporations. They have this certain feel to them that you capture quite nicely here; I like how Alex spends most of the first part of the chapter just looking at things like an outsider, which is exactly how 90% of these things start, iirc. Although I think signing on a tablet is a little more swish than anything I ever experienced. I don't know if that's a thing that some places do or if that's just a reflection of the way the pokémon world appears to be slightly (or massively, in the case of the giant orbital platform locked in geosynchronous orbit to Kalos' power plant) technologically ahead of our own, so that technology is more pervasive. Probably it's just a thing that some places do, especially ones on the cutting edge like Sasaki Industries.

Chapter 17

A quick sprint, a leap, the flashing of lights down below, an abrupt landing, and repeat. The sequence, at least, was familiar enough to Alex, even if the scenery wasn’t. The cracked, aging stonework and shadowy alleys of Avenbrooke were a far cry from the terraced roofs and tree-flanked streets of Lenox Hills. But despite how much the rooftops changed, the rush of adrenaline as he jumped, the wind in his face and the swelling of his wings, that was always the same.

“You’ve got to keep up, Hawlucha Man!” Volcarona Mask shouted as she and Aethon flitted past. Her partner’s broad wings churned the air, and Hierro swooped to catch the favorable current. “Can’t let the bad guys get away!”

“Easy for her to say,” Alex grumbled. “She doesn’t have to run.” Volcarona Mask clung to the back of her partner with a leather harness clipped to her waist. It allowed her to keep her hands free, and she was dexterous enough with the clasp to free herself in an instant to drop down on her foes from the sky, quarterstaff whirling. It offered her the kind of mobility Alex could only dream of, and he would admit to being more than a little jealous. But, he figured, when you had been in the hero business as long as Volcarona Mask (and had access to the entire Forbes fortune), you got to have all the cool stuff you wanted, and have a partner that was effectively a solar deity too.

Blaziken Man and the Dryad had arranged this particular team-up after hearing about an ongoing Sin weapon smuggling operation in Lenox Hills, overseen by Pride. The Dryad had obtained intelligence from one of her sources in the police department that Ambrose Fletch, a notorious Unovan gunrunner, was making a deal with the Sins to supply them with newer and more powerful weapons skimmed from the skirmishes overseas. Jiro and Lakshmi didn’t want the Sins getting their hands on that kind of firepower, but they also couldn’t play their hands too early, or the deal would just be rescheduled once more weapons were gathered. They needed to take out both the cache and the gunrunner in one fell swoop, and that meant a two-pronged operation.

The Dryad and Blaziken Man had offered their assistance to the CCPD’s Fifteenth Precinct and attacked the warehouse with the Dryad’s Rose and Iron legions in the hope that the notoriously paranoid Fletch would do a runner. That was where Alex and Isabelle came in. They were both the perfect mix of endurance and ambush predators, hunting their quarry from above and waiting until they were exhausted and mistake-prone before swooping down and finishing the job.

Alex and Hierro sprinted across the top of a trellised townhouse and soared out over the brightly lit main parkway of Lenox Hills. The Dryad had ensured that the street was lined with stately juvenile oak trees, and a stream ran down the center, looking far clearer than the remaining trickle of the Aven Canal that bisected Alex’s home borough.

Fletch’s car barreled down the thoroughfare, scattering pedestrians enjoying the warm summer night and ambling between the many fashionable cafes and cocktail bars that marked the commercial heart of Lenox Hills. Isabelle swooped down next to Alex again. “We’ve got to get him off the main roads!” Alex nodded and angled back towards the rooftops again. It was likely that Fletch had firearms in his car, and if they tried to corner him somewhere with civilians around, they ran the risk of collateral damage.

Aethon dove as Fletch’s car approached a turn, and Volcarona Mask hurled down a flash grenade towards the car’s driver-side window. There was a brilliant white flash and a loud bang, and the car’s driver jerked the wheel the other way, down a narrow side street. Alex headed off the turn as Aethon shot out ahead, dropping down between the buildings and scattering fiery scales on the street. The Volcarona continued to force the car down ever more narrow and winding streets, making the driver go slower to make hairpin turns while allowing Alex to remain in pursuit.

When the car tried to turn back towards the theater district, Alex hurled one of the two flashbangs Isabelle had given him to goad the driver into turning into a parking structure. Alex and Hierro shot through one of the narrow openings in the concrete to land on the car’s hood as it tried to turn around on the second floor.

The driver fumbled a sidearm from his waistband and shot through the windshield, but Alex had already rolled off the hood and drawn his batons. Fletch and two of his men clambered out of the car and summoned their pokemon. Hierro dodged around a Gurdurr’s clumsy lunge before sweeping the fighting type’s legs out from under it and sending it crashing to the ground. Alex was sure that after sparring with Siegfried, the Gurdurr would prove to be little trouble. When it tried to rise again, Hierro spun around with a double roundhouse kick, sending the Gurdurr flying into two leaping Bisharp. A Druddigon snapped at Alex, and he thrust one of his batons into the dragon type’s mouth. When the beast clamped down on it, Alex activated the electric current and left the reptilian pokemon convulsing on the asphalt. Fletch’s Sawk vaulted over the car and swung out with a right handed jab.

Alex managed to parry and match the Sawk blow for blow, but quick as a striking Seviper, the Sawk seized Alex’s wrist and shifted its weight to throw him against a nearby concrete pillar. Before it could, Volcarona Mask dropped down through the narrow gap between the third floor and the ramp leading up to it, her arms tucked into her sides. She sprang over a parked car and flipped through the air, wrapping her legs around the Sawk’s neck. She tightened the pressure, and the Sawk released Alex, scrabbling at its neck to disentangle her lock.

Fletch took a shotgun from the backseat and slotted two shells into it. Alex dashed forward to disarm him, only for the second henchman’s Cryogonal to snatch his ankle in an icy chain. He could feel the cold seeping through his suit and settling into the skin of his leg. The ice type hovered behind him, the blue glow of its eyes shining malevolently. Fletch smirked and raised the shotgun, but before he could pull the trigger, Alex hurled his second flashbang at the arms dealer. The man snarled as he was temporarily blinded by the light, and the momentary distraction was all Hierro needed to bound over and kick the Cryogonal into Fletch, trapping him beneath the ice type’s bulk and freeing Alex’s leg.

By now the Bisharp had rallied, and Fletch’s henchmen closed in. Volcarona Mask brought the Sawk down and sprang to Alex’s side. She unslung her metal quarterstaff and twisted the middle of the shaft, splitting it into two long batons.

“Batons were kind of my thing,” Alex said.

“Jealous that mine are bigger?” she quipped back.

“If you were a guy, I’d think you were compensating.”

Isabelle scoffed and turned to stand back to back with Alex. The first henchman swung in, only to catch a backhanded swing of Isabelle’s left baton and a kick to the abdomen. She bounded over a car and battered back the Bisharp. She pivoted on her heel and brought her quarterstaff back together, powerful magnets in the shaft securing the two halves. She slid into a crouch and swung the staff around, knocking out the legs of the second henchman. “You Unovan bastards need to learn not to mess around in Volcarona Mask’s town.”

Fletch had shifted the Cryogonal off, and was scrabbling for his shotgun. Alex kicked it out of his reach and stepped on Fletch’s wrist, making the man wince in pain. Fletch reached for the pistol in his waistband, only to receive a jolt from Alex’s stun baton. “Can yours do that?” Alex asked Isabelle. When Volcarona Mask said nothing, Alex smirked. “Guess size isn’t everything.”

Officers from the Fifteenth soon arrived to take Fletch and his men into custody. Isabelle handled the debriefing with the police and rendezvoused with Alex when they drove off. “Looks like Jiro and Lakshmi are still wrapping things up with Pride’s cache, but according to the cops it should all be over soon.” She stretched and waved Aethon down from the parking structure’s roof. “It’s probably going to be a quiet night in Lenox Hills with all the police on the streets, but it’s early yet. Might as well go on patrol. You in?”

Alex glanced down at Hierro and shrugged. “We don’t really know the lay of the land here. It’s easier back home when I know where I’m going.”

“You can’t stay in your borough forever, Hawlucha Man. I’ll give you a tour, maybe we beat up some bad guys, and tomorrow night you can go back to cleaning up your home turf.”

Alex nodded. “All right. Give me a lift back up to rooftops?”

They turned away from the brightly lit gentrified center of Lenox Hills and the Dryad’s curated arboretums. The townhouses grew less stately, the greenery lining the roads less robust, and the foot traffic sparser. When Isabelle and Aethon slowed down, Alex stopped at the edge of a rooftop. “It’s quiet here. In Avenbrooke, that means something bad is about to happen, but here that just seems normal. My instincts are getting mixed signals.”

Isabelle unclipped from Aethon’s back and dropped down to stand next to Alex. She gestured out over the rooftops. “Lakshmi’s been keeping the peace here for years. Most criminals have moved out to the fringes of the borough where her reach isn’t so wide. Outside the usual noise of the commercial districts, it’s always pretty quiet around here. Anyone trying to cause trouble in Lenox Hills knows they have to be quiet about it or they’ll draw Lakshmi’s grass types down on them.”

Alex tried to reckon the image of graceful and compassionate Lakshmi in her multi-hued sarongs with what Isabelle was telling him. “So the arboretums are how the Dryad keeps Lenox Hills safe, right? And the more arboretums there are, the more there’s a deterrent to crime.”

“Not to mention that with each new arboretum, more of the borough gets cleaned up and reclaimed.”

“But what about the people that displaces? Just the average people who used to live there?”

“Lakshmi only creates arboretums on land that’s been vacant.”

“I mean what happens to the people who can’t afford to live here once an arboretum is created? Where do they go?”

Isabelle shrugged. “Elsewhere. Would you rather the Dryad just let the Sins and whoever else have the run of the borough just because some people get priced out?”

“Well, no, but…”

“I try not to concern myself with ‘buts’. The way I see it, it’s a question of the greater good.”

“People being forced from their homes is for the greater good?”

“That’s a little hyperbolic, don’t you think? But I’ve done the moral calculus, Hawlucha Man. As far as I’m concerned, it’s worth it.” Volcarona Mask’s voice was hard as flint. “If that’s the price the city pays to deter crime, then so be it. With every bastard we take down and put away, the world becomes a better place. If that means some people get displaced and need to move to Ridgewood or Greenpoint, then I’ll live with that.”

It didn’t sound right to Alex, but he wasn’t sure he had the right words to argue the point. Isabelle likely had worked out the moral calculus and settled on a solution that salved her conscience, but she was Isabelle Forbes, inheritor of the largest corporation in the hemisphere and the sole beneficiary of her parents’ fortune. The consequences of her actions very rarely reached her behind the walls and gates of Forbes Manor.

Isabelle raised an eyebrow. "I mean, come on. If you had the choice to wipe out crime in Avenbrooke for good at the expense of the rent going up, wouldn't you do it?" Before Alex could respond that if the rent in Avenbrooke went up any more, he couldn't afford to live there, the night air was split with the sounds of commotion, shattering glass and gunfire. Volcarona Mask twirled her quarterstaff and whistled to Aethon. “Looks like philosophy class is over, Hawlucha Man. That’s our cue.”

She and Aethon shot off over the rooftops, and Hierro sprinted after them. Alex was just a moment behind as they cut northwest. The steady report of gunshots got louder as they angled towards a wide thoroughfare. In the glare of the streetlights, Alex saw that a fire hydrant had burst, and a car with a dented front had stopped a little ways distant. A police cruiser was blocking off the street, and two officers were trading fire with a handful of Pride’s men from behind the cover of their cruiser.

Aethon soared out over the street and unleashed a column of blistering heat, almost instantly turning the water from the burst hydrant into a cloud of searing steam. With a beat of the Volcarona’s wings, the steam traveled down the street, sending the gangsters scurrying for cover. Isabelle hurled three flashbangs from Aethon’s back as she jumped out of the sky, landing with a somersault and unslinging her staff in one fluid motion. She was on her feet and battering away a lunging Arbok an instant later. The steam from the hydrant and the smoke from her flash grenades sharply cut visibility on the street. Neither side was willing to risk an errant shot as Volcarona Mask stalked across the concrete, unseen by any but those up above. Alex and Hierro soared out over the road, and Hierro dove after Isabelle.

There were flashes in the smoke as Pride’s men summoned their pokemon. A Staraptor shot up above the fog and shrieked as it flew at Alex, only to be battered away by Aethon. As the Staraptor reeled, Alex swooped towards it and struck twice with his stun batons, making the avian pokemon crumple and fall to the street.

Spots of bright light lit up the fog below as Isabelle threw more flash grenades to further disorient her opponents. A deep roar rattled the windows up and down the streets, but Alex couldn’t make out anything in the roiling mist save for a few blurry indistinct shapes. He could hear the sounds of grunts, metal hitting flesh, and the more bestial cries of pokemon. Somewhere in the midst of it all was Hierro, but the Hawlucha was keeping silent, and Alex was too far away to hear the skittering of his talons on the concrete. Even the thermal imaging on his suit was useless; the ambient heat of the steam blurred the images too much to give Alex any clear indication of who was who.

Abruptly, Aethon plummeted down towards the street, his wings beating the air and working it into a cyclone. Alex caught the updraft and rode the wind higher as two Golbat and a Honchkrow surged upward. The fog on the street lifted, revealing Isabelle and Hierro locked in combat with Pride’s thugs. Aethon laid down cover by spreading fiery scales in the enemies’ midst, and Isabelle dragged the ends of her staff through the embers, setting the weapon ablaze. Pride’s men fell back as a Golem lumbered forward, but the rock type was soon engaged in a defensive action against a flurry of Hierro’s kicks.

Alex swerved and pivoted to dodge the Golbats' gnashing fangs, and managed to strike one of the pair with a well-placed kick. Before it had righted itself, Alex had swung around to bring his batons to bear on its companion and shot down to the reeling poison type. He seized its leg in his left hand and whirled in the air, hurling it at the Honchkrow. The dark type squawked and turned to avoid the Golbat as Alex pulled his wings in close and shot at the ground. When the Honchkrow pursued, Alex angled his body and caught an updraft before spreading his wings wide again, soaring back up past the Honchkrow before looping again and shocking the bird with his batons.

On the ground, Isabelle swatted a Mightyena’s muzzle and sent the canine back with a yelp. The police behind her laid down cover fire as Aethon continued to hold the enemy back with fiery dust. A Beartic snarled as it appeared from one of the gangster’s pokeballs, and Isabelle separated her quarterstaff to catch its fists as it brought down its claws. The force of the blow nearly sent her to her knees, but she gritted her teeth and pushed back, using the Beartic’s natural aversion to fire to press her advantage. Despite her best efforts, the raw strength of the ursine pokemon threatened to win out. Isabelle let a growl build low in her throat before it burst out in a full-throated roar.

“Don’t you bastards know who you’re dealing with? I’m Volcarona Mask, bitch!”

She ducked out from under the Beatic’s arms and bludgeoned it with her batons before slotting them back together and delivering an uppercut to the ice type’s jaw. The Beartic staggered backwards, briefly stunned, but it recovered quickly and caught Isabelle with a punch, sending her sprawling to the ground with the wind knocked out of her lungs. The Beartic raised its claws above its head to deliver what would be a crushing and likely fatal blow.

“Hierro!” Alex barked from the sky.

The Hawlucha kicked away his human opponent and sprang into the air, angling towards a Magneton charging an electrical strike. Hierro struck the electric type off its magnetic axis and hurled it towards the Beartic, and the startled Magneton discharged its stored voltage, blasting the ice type with a current of powerful electricity. In the confusion, Hierro bounded over one of the Sins’ cars and launched himself into the air for a drop kick on the stunned Beartic.

As Hierro attacked, Isabelle jumped to her feet and shouted a command at Aethon. The Volcarona unleashed a searing blast of hot air that drove all of the enemy pokemon back. Alex alighted on the ground behind their trainers and swept the legs out from beneath two of them and jabbed his left baton into the sternum of the third and turning the stun pulse up to its maximum setting.

The police advanced and handcuffed Pride’s incapacitated thugs. “Thanks for the save,” Isabelle said.

“Ah, it was no problem.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Isabelle replied with a laugh. She reached down and ruffled Hierro’s feathers. “Your partner did all the heavy lifting this time.” Hierro cooed appreciatively, and Isabelle sighed. “You mind if we take five, Hawlucha Man? I could use a minute to catch my breath after that.”

Alex had to admire her composure. For someone who had looked death in the eye just a moment ago, she was certainly taking things in stride. “We’ve covered a lot of ground tonight. A break can’t hurt.”

Isabelle smiled. “Cool. I saw a bodega like a block away. Let’s grab something to drink.”

“Oh, I, uh, don’t actually have any money on me.”

“Dude.” Isabelle opened a pouch on her belt and revealed a roll of bills. “Chill. I’m Isabelle Forbes, I can spot you a snack. What do you want?”

“Uh, water for me, lemonade for Hierro?”

“Sounds good.” She waved to the police officers. “You boys got this? We have other Feebas to fry tonight.”

Isabelle led Alex down the street and into a corner bodega. The bell above the door chimed brightly as they walked inside, and the clerk looked up from behind the register. “No way,” he gasped. He leaned over the counter, looked out the storefront windows and gasped again when he saw Aethon placidly hovering in the air. “You’re… you’re you! I mean, you’re Volcarona Mask and Hawlucha Man! From the news!”

Isabelle gave the clerk an airy wave and strode to the glass doors of the refrigerators at the back of the shop. Alex turned to the clerk, shrugged, and followed after her. Isabelle plucked three bottles of lemonade and one water from the racks and handed two of the lemonades to Alex. “First time meeting a fan?” she whispered.

“Pretty much.” Whenever he was out in public as Hawlucha Man, things were usually going to hell. He knew that people were starting to take notice of him in Avenbrooke, but to say Hawlucha Man had fans was probably a stretch.

Isabelle plunked her bottles down on the counter and drew out a crisp bill from the roll in her pouch. The clerk punched their total into the register in a daze. “Do you, uh, want a receipt?”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Isabelle replied. She dumped her loose change into a small dish on the counter and handed Alex his water. As they were about to leave, the clerk cleared his throat.

“If it’s not too much trouble…” He reached under his counter and pulled out a polaroid camera. “Can I get a picture?”

Isabelle flung an arm over Alex’s shoulder before pulling him in close and fixing her features into a winning smile. Alex tried to give his least awkward grin. The camera flashed, and the picture printed out the front. The clerk waved it in the air to clear the image and laughed. “My boyfriend is never going to believe this. Two superheroes in my shop?”

“Have a good night, dude!” Isabelle said, stepping through the door and making the bell jingle again. “He seemed nice.” She scanned the rooftops up and down the street and nodded to a faded billboard atop a tenement house. “Let’s sit there.”

Alex and Hierro found a fire escape to scramble up, and a few minutes later, they were sitting on the iron catwalk in front of the billboard looking out over the roofs of Lenox Hills, with midtown rising up in the distance. Alex and Hierro tapped the plastic necks of their bottles together in a toast and each took a sip. Isabelle held Aethon’s lemonade up, and a long, thin proboscis shot from the Volcarona’s mouth to drink down the sugary nectar.

Isabelle kicked her heels against the catwalk and took a drink of lemonade. “I just want you to know, I don’t think you were wrong before.”

“Huh?”

“About the whole greater good thing. I don’t think you’re wrong. We should be trying to make life better for everyone in the city, and to do it as equitably as possible. But I don't think I'm wrong either, you know? To bake this particular cake, we’re going to have to break a few eggs, and that’s going to mean people are going to get priced out and have to move around. And that’s an acceptable loss as far as I’m concerned. It’s still making the city better, and that’s the important thing.” Isabelle took a sip of lemonade. “It’s just that deterrence is half the game here, you know? The bad guys have to know the price of being bad is getting a beat down from Volcarona Mask, or Blaziken Man, or Hawlucha Man, or whoever, and then get a trip across the bay to Redstone for their trouble. And if they’re properly afraid of us, they’re going to do fewer bad things because the price is high enough that they don’t want to pay. So if being good at my job means these guys pack up and leave town and make their neighborhoods a better place, then I’m cool with that.”

“To be honest, I don’t think much past stopping the bad guys.”

“That’s fair. I’ve had a few more years to think about this.”

Alex nodded. “Five years now, right?”

“Give or take a few months.” Isabelle shrugged. “Pretty much since the Sins showed up.”

Everyone knew the story of the Sins’ first salvo against Clarus City. After Marcus Braun had conquered the city’s underworld, he turned his attention on the city’s elite. The most prominent families of Clarus City had gathered for an annual charity gala at the Crown Royale hotel, and once almost all of the guests had arrived, several explosions ripped through the hotel, killing nearly everyone present, including Harrison and Madeline Forbes and Marcel and Felicity Harcourt. The city reeled as it tried to reassemble a municipal government and process the loss of the most visible figures of the city’s social scene.

In the resultant chaos, Jiro Sasaki created his Blaziken Man armor to fire a return salvo against the Sins that the police seemed unwilling to undertake. In the following months, the Hammer and the Dryad took to the streets, and not long after that, Volcarona Mask had her first appearance. The press had been captivated by the young heroine, perhaps even moreso than Blaziken Man’s own explosive debut.

Knowing what he knew now about Isabelle Forbes and her night gig, it helped Alex put a few more pieces in place towards the enigma that was Volcarona Mask. Alex glanced over at Isabelle. “How old were you when you started?”

“I was fifteen when Johannes started training me, right after my parents died. I started going out there and kicking ass a few months later when I was sixteen.” Isabelle puffed out her cheeks and sighed. “Let me tell you, dude. This is totally not where I thought I’d be when I was a kid. I mean I’m, you know, twenty one years old, right? All the girls I went to boarding school with all went to like, college or whatever. If I’d been normal, I would be at a nightclub or something right now, or procrastinating on my, I don’t know, statistics homework?”

“You can do both of those things at the same time, for the record.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“So why not give it up? Why not go back to being Isabelle Forbes full-time?”

“At the beginning, I think I was trying to avenge my parents,” Isabelle said with a shrug. “Total cliché, right? I think I grew out of that, though. I realized pretty quick that no matter how many bad guys I beat up and threw into Redstone, it wasn’t going to bring my mom and dad back. Eddie, you know, the Phantom? That’s why he’s doing this. He just wants to get back at the people who took his parents from him and left him here to clean up the mess.”

“But not you?”

“Not anymore. After a little while, I started framing it in my head as making the city a better place, making sure nobody else has to deal with what I went through. Like, making sure that when the Sins go down, we’ve done enough good to make sure nobody comes up to take their place. And that kept me going for a while, but mostly I realized I was in it for the rush. I think I’m a little addicted to it now. It feels good, right? Flying around, beating up the bad guys, all of that. I like what I do, and I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m kind of awesome at it.”

“I noticed.”

“So what about you, bird brain? What’s your skin in this game?”

Alex shrugged and looked out at the twinkling lights of Lenox Hills and the soaring glass and crystal spires of midtown across the river. “I just… I just do it because it’s the right thing to do. I mean, Hierro and I, we can do these things, and not everyone can.” Hierro perked up at the sound of his name and chirped low in his throat. “Right, buddy?” Alex ran his hand through his partner’s feathers. “Avenbrooke needed someone to step up and protect it from the Baron and worse. No one else was going to, so I did.”

“That simple, huh?”

“Well, yeah. I just think that if I could do what I’m doing now, and I didn’t, I’d never be able to live with myself. And I know it’s dangerous, and I know that people like you and the Phantom and Johannes probably have better reasons for being out here risking everything, but I… this is what I do. This is who I am.”

“Dude.” Isabelle put a hand on his shoulder. “I get it.” She sprang to her feet. “We’re fighting the good fight, because that’s what superheroes do!” She threw her head back and whooped. “Come on, bird brain, break time’s over! I’m fired up now!”

Alex crushed his empty water bottle in his hands and jumped up next to her. “All right, back into the breach.”

Volcarona Mask stuck out her fist. “Hell yeah.”

“Hell yeah.” Hawlucha Man bumped knuckles with her and hauled Hierro to his feet. Volcarona Mask whooped again and swung into the harness on Aethon’s back. Together, the four of them flew off once more into the night.

The part where Isabelle and Alex were having exchanges over the size of their batons was fun, heh. Then their conversation concerning rent is an interesting one. Like, it shows how while Isabelle has good intentions she still comes from a rich privileged background and I don't blame Alex for being mixed on that at first.

I liked the bodega scene, cute the two has a fan and all. Isabelle and Alex's conversation after that was a nice moment with them.

What is it with dragon pokémon and weird tribalistic superiority, huh. Purity of bloodline is an odd theme with dragon users in these games; I suspect there's some bit of Japanese culture at play there that I'm not getting, 'cause it always reminds me of Dracula first and foremost.

Anyway that's not really relevant, let's move on. Echo has always seemed like a really cool and slightly under-utilised character, so I'm very glad to see we're finally getting a chapter following her! Like, she's a good – if familiar – concept, the star performer who offstage is anxious and stammering, and I've often felt that for someone with a really different skillset to most of the other heroes (she isn't a drop-kick-a-dude-through-a-window kinda person), she hasn't seen as much development as the rest. And it's nice to have a very direct alternative perspective on Hawlucha Man and his prowess; lots of other characters have hinted that they think he's really impressive, but I don't think anyone has been as blunt about it as Echo and said wow, this kid sure can beat the shit out of a guy.

I'm not 100% clear on how Echo's powers work, exactly; like it's implied near the end there that her sonic blasts affect her allies as well as her foes, it's just that they had a chance to brace, but throughout the fight she seems to be blasting the guys on the ground without it really bothering the Hammer or Hawlucha Man. Possibly you can direct sound like that? I don't actually know enough about acoustics to know if that's a thing. I was also going to say that it seems like her strategy of standing in a very visible place and not being a hand-to-hand combat murder machine is just asking for someone to sneak up behind her and hit her on the head, but like, that actually happened and Crescita just straight-up threw the perpetrator off the roof, so I guess that told me.

I'm also a little surprised that nobody's figured out who Echo is yet. I guess I don't actually know if she's a successful singer, but I got the impression that she was, given that she's managed to fund her superhero tech, and so I'd imagine people know her voice. On top of that, she has a very distinctive team of pokémon who seem like they might well be part of her professional life, to. Possibly there's a message board out there somewhere on which people are like INGRID SORENSON is ECHO, if you just LISTEN to her VOICE you can tell and just nobody believes them because the thread is sandwiched in between one about chemtrails and another about autocratic lizard people.

Anyway, yeah! Another fun fight, and another of these cool diversions that give the characters of Clarus City the feel of living people whose lives just happen to intersect around this one story that Alex is pursuing. Nicely done!