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Post by Firebrand on Apr 20, 2019 1:46:45 GMT
Chapter 29 A citywide day of mourning was declared when the news broke. A gleaming chrome coffin lay in state in the atrium of city hall for two days, and the line of people coming to pay respects to the city’s fallen hero never ebbed. A heavy police presence around the wake deterred the Sins from exacting any kind of retribution or counterattack. The coffin was closed, naturally. Alex never found out how much of Johannes the crews sent to sift through the wreckage had found, or if they could identify any of his remains at all. From the sound of things, when Johannes had brought down the Hive, he had brought most of the Sins’ vanguard down with him. That, coupled with the losses that Clarus City’s less scrupulous heroes had inflicted on their ranks and the damage the rest of them had done, the remaining Sin operatives had gone deep underground. A hasty note from Stocks left in one of his dead drops confirmed that the rest of the Sin leadership had survived, though they had all taken injuries and were content to lick their wounds for now. The heroes had agreed amongst themselves that it would be safest for them to avoid Johannes’s funeral, except for those of their number who were notable public figures whose absence would draw more attention than otherwise. Alex joined the crowds that thronged around city hall to pay respects to the Hammer during the state viewing, and only had a few seconds in front of the shining coffin before the press of the crowd behind him forced him along. As he emerged from city hall blinking tears from his eyes, he saw Ingrid wandering listlessly around the plaza. Their eyes met for a moment, but they both turned away without saying anything. They couldn’t know who was watching, and they wanted to be alone with their grief anyway. When the funeral rolled around two days later, Alex and Hierro watched the live stream on Alex’s laptop from the roof of their apartment building. The early autumn sun was bright, and the cheery weather only darkened Alex’s mood. Ever since he became Hawlucha Man, Alex had eschewed alcohol, but as he watched the mourners file into St. Dunstan’s cathedral, he broke the seal on a bottle of the cheapest vodka he could find and took a long pull, coughing and gasping as it burned his throat on the way down. Hierro had curled up, his shoulders hunched and his feathered crest limp. Alex reached out a hand and slowly ran it through his partner’s plumage, losing himself in the repetitive motion of smoothing Hierro’s feathers. The Hawlucha leaned into the touch, and the two of them sat in silence as the funeral service began. The camera panned across the crowd, and Alex got occasional glimpses of Isabelle, Edgar, Lakshmi and Jiro. Edgar kept his face carefully impassive, but there was a haunted look about his features, a new darkness in his eyes, a kind of defeat that was in stark contrast to the avenging fire that took hold of him whenever he talked about the loss of his parents. Lakshmi sat several rows back from the front, nearly anonymous in her black gown and veil that was such a drastic departure from her usual vibrant outfits. Isabelle stared resolutely ahead, and though Alex could see that the makeup around her eyes had smudged, her hands gripped the bench of her pew with white-knuckled intensity. After the president of the Avenbrooke Institute of Technology gave a speech praising Johannes for his achievements in aerospace engineering and his contributions to the space elevator, Jiro limped up to the pulpit to deliver his eulogy. His features were drawn and sunken, and he seemed to be struggling under a gigantic weight. Though his beard was neatly trimmed as usual, there was an unkempt quality about it, and his eyes looked haunted. Alex took a pull from his bottle at the thought of Clarus City’s heroes being reduced to this, and once he caught his breath and got the burn to subside a bit, he took a second swig for good measure. Jiro struggled through the eulogy, extolling Johannes’s virtues as a man and as a hero in fits and starts, trailing off frequently as he was overcome with emotion. Finally, in mid-sentence, Jiro finally broke. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” He crossed the altar and laid the palm of his hand on Johannes’s coffin. “I’m so sorry, my friend. You deserved better than me.” The image of Jiro Sasaki weeping over the coffin would be on the front page of every newspaper in the city the next morning. When the pallbearers took up the coffin and the mourners began to file out, Alex closed his laptop and tried to get to his feet. Hierro had to jump up and help him regain his balance as he staggered drunkenly towards the stairs. Alex glanced down at the bottle in his right hand and realized half of it was gone. Together, he and Hierro made their way down to his apartment, and Alex sagged onto the couch, while Hierro took up his usual perch on the back of the armchair. Alex set the bottle of vodka on the table for a moment before picking it back up again. There wasn’t much else to do now but finish it. Alex and Hierro sat there for the rest of the day, watching as the shadows in the apartment lengthened. Finally, when the streetlight outside flickered on, Alex tried to stir himself, but his head was so fogged with drink that he just let himself sink back further into the couch. The city could look after itself tonight. Its heroes had done enough. ***
A few days after the funeral, when the crowds had thinned out, Alex and Hierro made their way up to Origin Gate cemetery way uptown. It took three subway transfers and most of the morning, but the time passed like a blur to Alex. He was still in a state of mild shock, but after Johannes’s funeral, he had managed to keep himself out of his cups again. The plot wasn’t hard to find; it was covered in a mound of flowers, wreathes, and written prayers. The name, dates, and epitaph were completely covered by the pile, and loose petals littered the ground nearby. A small brass bowl atop the headstone was full of smoldering incense sticks, and the fragrances mingled with the scent of the flowers into something cloyingly sweet. Alex tugged up the hood of his sweatshirt and produced two candles from his backpack, one black and one white. Johannes hadn’t been a Unovan, but Alex figured he would appreciate the gesture. He set the two candles on either side of the incense dish and lit them with a cheap lighter from the bodega near his apartment. Hierro reached out and took his hand, and the two of them stood before the stone with their heads bowed for a time. The hood of his sweatshirt was deep and cut off his peripheral vision, but when he felt Hierro squeeze his hand, he glanced to the side. Isabelle stood beside them, with the collar of her thin black coat turned up to cover the lower half of her face. The slight breeze whipped her hair around her head, and her eyes were distant. When she finally noticed Alex looking at her, she jerked her head to the side. “Mom and Dad are buried over there.” “Oh.” “Yeah.” They stood in silence for a while longer, and finally Isabelle sighed. “The first time I came here, after the funeral, he was with me. I probably couldn’t have faced their graves again if he hadn’t been there.” Though her mouth was hidden, lines around Isabelle’s eyes shifted as she smiled. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “He bought me a lemonade afterwards. Something sweet to balance the bitter, he said.” She sniffed. “If it hadn’t been for him, I probably would have turned out like Eddie.” “Vengeful and angry?” “I was going to say a fucking moron, but sure.” They shared a smile at that, and Alex let go of Hierro’s hand to stroke his partner’s crest. “He was the best out of all of us,” Alex said. “The strongest, the bravest, the most… heroic. What are we going to do without him?” “Our best,” Isabelle replied. “He told us to make him proud, so I’m gonna do it.” She dashed the tears from her eyes. “I’m gonna punch Dominion’s goddamn teeth in, that’s what I’m gonna do.” Alex cringed. “Iz, she’s something else. When I went up against her I… I couldn’t do anything. All she had to do was look my way and I was out of the fight. If Johannes and the others hadn’t shown up when they did, I—” “I’m the heir to a trillion dollar company, birdbrain. I’ve been trained to resist an esper getting in my head since I could talk. Jiro might not have been able to hack it, but I’m way better at it than he is.” Her hands curled into fists. “He should have brought me along. Things might have been different if I was there. If I just could have…” Isabelle sighed and scuffed her designer shoes in the graveyard soil. “That’s the problem we have, isn’t it? To do the kind of stuff we do, to be the kind of person we are, you kind of have to be an arrogant asshole, don’t you? To look at every problem you see and say, ‘Yeah, it’s my job to fix that,’ and every time something goes wrong to say, ‘That was all my fault.’ Don’t you ever feel that way?” Alex thought it over for a minute. “I guess?” “Jiro’s got it the worst of us, I think. Being the first one, he feels like he’s responsible for the rest of us, that he has to be this paragon. If something happens to us, it’s his fault for not protecting us. That’s why he needed to fight Dominion alone, even after he made a big deal about us all coming together.” She jammed her hands into her coat pockets. “No one’s seen him since the funeral. Complete and total isolation. He’s not seeing me, or Lakshmi, or even the Takedas. He thinks it’s all on him, even though Johannes chose this.” Isabelle sighed. “I’ve never seen him like this before.” “We’ve all been hit pretty hard. Maybe he just needs some time?” “This is the first time Jiro’s lost.” At Alex’s puzzled look, Isabelle clarified. “Jiro’s never lost. Every fight he’s been in, every bad guy he’s gone up against, he’s won in the end. So first Dominion had him dead to rights, and then he loses Johannes? He doesn’t know how to process it, let alone how to cope.” She shrugged. “Have you seen any of the others?” “Just Ingrid, and only for a few seconds at the wake.” “Eddie says she’s taking it really hard. I’ll let him try and take care of her before I step in. Greenpoint sticks together, or whatever. Eddie bought the fallen Hives, by the way. When the contractors and developers started hemming and hawing about the damage, Harcourt Limited scooped up the property and took it off their hands. He mentioned cleaning it up and putting up some affordable housing or whatever. Opportunities for local business too.” “That’s surprisingly noble.” “You’re tellin’ me. He’s going to lose a bunch of money on it. Archangel’s gone into seclusion, but he’ll be okay. Just has to even out his psychic vibrations or whatever. Lakshmi’s doing some hardcore gardening to process this stuff, but she’ll pull through. I’ve got no idea how the Ridgewood guys or the Ronin are holding up, though.” “The Ronin’s handling things like he usually does,” Alex replied. “The Eleventh found the bodies of six Sin operatives in the last three days. I hear Captain Unova’s been pulling double patrols.” When Isabelle rolled her eyes, Alex shrugged. “He’s really not a bad guy when you get to know him.” Hierro chirped in agreement. “What about you? You seem to be doing suspiciously well.” “I’m compartmentalizing,” Isabelle said. “I compartmentalize like a fucking champ. I got the initial shock out of my system at the funeral, and I’m probably going to have a nervous breakdown and throw a fit in a couple weeks when I can’t bottle this up anymore. I’ll, I don’t know, smash some priceless fucking pottery my great-great-grandfather bought and get it out of my system.” She ignored Alex’s concerned look and squared her shoulders. “But until then? I’m stepping up to do what Johannes would have done. He and Jiro trained me to be the best, the hope of Clarus City, so that’s what I’m going to be.” “You can talk to us, you know. Hierro and I.” Hierro crossed behind Alex and took Isabelle’s hand. “We can go find a billboard to sit on and chat, maybe beat up some bad guys if it makes you feel better. Johannes trained Ingrid and I to help take some of the burden off of you.” Isabelle smoothed Hierro’s feathers before reaching over the Hawlucha’s head to sock Alex’s arm. “Played you like a fiddle, huh?” “What?” She grinned. “It wasn’t even hard! I figured you’d be all mopey and down on yourself, but the second you heard that I was taking it harder than you, you’d put your funk aside and help pick me up. It’s a win-win; I get to vent for a few minutes and you get your do-gooder mojo back.” “How did you know I was going to be here?” “I gave the guy at the bodega on your corner two hundred bucks to send me a message if you went into the subway. I figured you’d come here before anything else.” “You’re really something, Iz.” “A freakin’ masterpiece, I know.” When Alex gave her a wan smile and rolled his eyes she socked his arm again. “See, that’s what Johannes would have wanted. I’m sure if we dug him up right now, he’d be rolling in his grave from all of this moaning and groaning we’re doing over him.” She sighed. “He’d say some clichéd crap about how we’ve gotta keep moving forward and never give in to despair, and as corny as it would sound, it would work.” “Figures that the one hero we can’t afford to lose is the first one to fall.” Alex watched the two flickering flames atop Johannes’s tombstone. “The last thing he said to me was that he was proud of me, that I was a great hero and that I had his respect. He couldn’t have known, but that was exactly what I needed to hear right then.” “Of course he knew. He was Johannes.” “Are you sure you’re ready to be the hope of Clarus City?” “No, but who is when it comes to stuff like this?” Isabelle stared off into the middle distance, but some of her color was coming back. “With Johannes gone and Jiro out of the equation, someone needs to step up. Once Dominion dusts herself off, she’s going to be spitting mad, and Archangel thinks if we don’t do something about it, she’s going to have a hissy fit and do her best to level the city. We need someone who’s going to carry on the torch and lead from the front, and I’m the best we’ve got. I’m not like Jiro, and I know I can’t do this all on my own. I’ll be counting on the rest of you all to back me up.” She raised an eyebrow. “Speaking of which, this weekend you’re going to come to mansion and spar with me. We can’t have you getting rusty. I need a strong number two to back me up.” “I’m nobody’s sidekick, Iz.” “I think Hierro might beg to differ.” She crouched down next to the Hawlucha. “You’re the one doing all the heavy lifting around here, aren’t you?” Hierro puffed out his feathers and preened. Isabelle straightened with a grunt. “But I’m not talking about a sidekick, birdbrain. I mean I need someone I can count on watching my back when this all boils over. Johannes was right, at the end of the day, you’re a damn fine hero. You’re no Volcarona Mask, but…” “You know, Jiro was a lot better at this sort of thing.” “Well, he had years of practice. Just one more thing I have to catch up on.” Alex took his hand out of the pocket of his hoodie and held out his fist to Isabelle. “You’re a pain in my ass, but I’ll always have your back.” “Hell yeah!” They went through the motions of the elaborate handshake she had designed for them, culminating in a fist bump. “We’re going to kick so many asses, birdbrain, you have no idea.” Alex blew out the candles on Johannes grave and laid his hand on the headstone for one final goodbye. When he looked up, he managed to crack a smile. “Thanks, Iz.” “Anytime, dude. You want to grab a lemonade?” |
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Post by Firebrand on May 12, 2019 15:55:15 GMT
CHAPTER 30
Salvatore idly bounced a tennis ball against the cell door, angling it so that it bounced over to Viktor on the lower bunk on the opposite side of the cell. The steady thud-thump, thud-thump had a hypnotic effect, and he could pass hours this way, lulled into a trance by the repetitive motions. Gian sat on the top bunk above Viktor, paging through a cheap murder mystery paperback from the prison library.
Even if Sal wasn’t necessarily happy to be locked up in Redstone, he was at least not unhappy about the arrangement. Sin operatives enjoyed certain privileges and protections within the compound, both from other prisoners and the guards on the Sins’ payroll. After word came from the mainland that Dominion had subsumed the Kuromori into her organization, some of the inter-faction tensions within the prison had abated, and the Baron’s incarcerated men, finding themselves suddenly outnumbered, were content to do what they could to keep their noses down.
That news had come on the heels of the Purge, and just days later, when they had heard about the heroes’ assault on the Ridgewood compound, and Sal was forced to admit being in Redstone was probably a blessing in disguise. While he probably had nothing to worry about in the Purge, the higher-ups might have banked on his loyalty to do some of the unpleasant work he had heard about, and while he probably would have followed his orders, Sal never liked the idea of turning on his own. And even if he’d weathered the Purge, he had no doubt that he and Gian would have found themselves on the front lines when the heroes attacked, and even though Gian could have made it out of that all right, Sal would probably be dead.
With the city looking more like a war zone, being locked up was a price he was willing to pay to keep his head on his shoulders. It was no luxury hotel, but Sal had to admit that Redstone prison might have been the best thing to happen to him in years.
Sal wasn’t sure who had pulled the strings to get him a cell with Gian, but he appreciated the gesture. How Viktor ended up with them, Sal wasn’t sure, but he figured whoever filed the paperwork assumed that since they were in the same crew when they were arrested, he and Gian knew the guy. The bruiser wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but when a fracas started in the prison yard when news of the Purge reached Redstone, Viktor had immediately moved to back up Sal and Gian, and Sal could appreciate that in a man, even if he was a cheat at cards.
The thud-thump of his game of catch was interrupted by the steady thunk of a guard’s nightstick on the cell doors as he made his rounds. As far as Sal could tell, this guy wasn’t on the dole of any of the major factions, and did what he could to introduce just a little bit of discomfort into the prisoners’ daily lives. The tapping the doors was just one of his games.
Sal felt a prickling on the back of his scalp as the thunk came closer to his door, and Viktor fumbled his throw, making the ball come in at an odd angle. The guard’s Hypno shuffled along in front of him, generating a weak psychic pulse from the hallway along the cellblock. It was just enough to be a mild irritant, and any prisoner dozing off in his cell would be abruptly woken up by it. Gian’s brow furrowed as he focused on the page in front of him, the psychic interference ruining his concentration. “One of these days,” Viktor grumbled in his heavily accented voice, popping the knuckles on his right hand. “One of these days, I will punch that man in his mouth.”
“Easy big guy,” Sal said as he swung off his bunk and retrieved the ball. “He just wants to get a rise out of you. We aren’t giving him the satisfaction.”
“Four more years of this,” Viktor muttered.
“Three maybe, if we behave ourselves,” Gian replied.
“Going to be a long three years.”
“Yeah, but at least by the end of it, the three of us will probably still be breathing,” Sal said. “At the rate things are going on the outside, I don’t know how many of our guys can say the same.”
Viktor sighed and lay back on his bunk, staring at the underside of Gian’s mattress. “I am not liking this,” he finally said. “I don’t know which of my friends died and who was hurt. I am not liking that Dominion sends them to their deaths. Mostly I am wondering what would have happened if Tolya and I had been there. I am missing him more than usual today.”
At the mention of Viktor’s Electabuzz, Sal’s thoughts turned to Vito. The Skarmory was in PPS custody now, but Sal knew his partner was savvy enough not to make a fuss. Pokemon like that, sometimes the PPS rehomed them, or sent them to a ranch outside the city. Vito was getting up there in age, and Sal knew he would have had to retire him soon anyway. He heard of plenty of guys who tracked down their pokemon once they got out of Redstone, using bribes or underworld contacts to get their partners back from the PPS if they had to. Sal knew he would go looking for Vito once he got out, but if the Skarmory had a better deal now than he had with Sal, he wasn’t sure he’d try to get his pokemon back.
He liked to think that Vito was out of the city, somewhere with a nice big field to fly over and plenty of warm air currents to cruise on. It was the kind of retirement Vito deserved after putting up with Sal for so long, and if Sal were to try and take him away from that, then what kind of friend was he?
If he was honest with himself, he was thinking about retiring himself. He’d been a criminal for most of his life, and seen bosses rise and fall. It wasn’t an old man’s game, and he wasn’t young anymore. With the espers and heroes vying for control of the city and duking it out in the streets, a guy who had been around long enough should know when the game had changed, and when to call it quits. After his stint in Redstone, he was thinking it might be nice to quietly slip away and start over somewhere far from Clarus City. It wasn’t easy to make a life as an ex-con, but it was possible.
The light coming in from the small window in the cell door abruptly dimmed, signaling that lights out was soon. Gian marked his place with a scrap of paper and tossed his book down to Sal, who set it on the cell’s tiny, immovable table. The three men reclined on their bunks, waiting in silence for the lights to turn off. Sal’s body had already recalibrated to the prison routine, and despite the hard, shapeless mattress, he usually fell asleep fairly quickly after lights out.
But tonight, not long after the florescent tube over his head dimmed and went out, a crash from outside the prison made Sal snap up, suddenly completely alert. Sirens rang outside the prison walls, and harsh red lights flicked on in the hallway outside as Sal heard backup locks engage on the cell door, plunging Redstone into lockdown. In the hall outside, he heard guards shouting and pokemon yapping and howling. Gian jumped off his bunk and peered out the tiny window in the door, but after a moment, he shook his head.
“I can’t see anything. Whatever’s going on, it’s not in here.” He sat down next to Sal, and Viktor sat up on his bunk. The three of them sat in silence as they strained to hear sounds from outside, but the concrete walls of the prison were thick, and dampened even the wailing alarms. Sal faintly heard crashes and what sounded like a deep basso roar, accompanied by the sharp cracks of gunfire.
Prisoners in other cells shouted and pounded on their doors, and Sal wanted to yell at them all to shut up so he could try to figure out what was going on, but he knew he’d never be heard over the ruckus. He couldn’t be sure, but the sounds of gunfire seemed closer now, the sharp cries of pokemon echoed from somewhere outside the cellblock.
Then, as abruptly as it began, the commotion stopped. The prisoners quieted as they all tried to figure out what was going on. Viktor moved to stand up, but Sal held up his hand. If the guards came back, he wanted the three of them to be sitting calmly in their cell, and give them no reason to think they had stepped out of line. Down the cellblock, he heard a crash, like something heavy impacting one of the doors, and a pokemon’s growl. Another door slammed open, and an indistinct conversation could be heard.
Gian’s fingers twitched, curling around an invisible sword hilt. Sal’s cousin hadn’t yet lost the muscle memory of reaching for Dantès, and Gian did so every time his finely-honed street brawling instincts set him on edge.
Something banged against the metal of their cell door, impacting it hard enough to leave a crater. Three more bangs followed, and then there was a shriek of rending metal as the door was torn from its hinges and hurled away by a psychic force.
A man with an eye patch stood beside a slowly rotating Claydol, holding a clipboard in one hand. “Genovese?”
So much for retirement.
“That’s me,” Sal said.
“What?” The man glanced up and scowled. His one-eyed gaze flicked from Sal to Gian, and then back. “Oh, the cousin. Yeah, you might as well come too. And you, big guy. Up and at ‘em, I don’t have all night.”
Gian stood in front of Sal and Viktor, stretching out his arm to hold Viktor back. “What’s going on here?”
The one-eyed man heaved an exasperated sigh. “What’s it look like? The boss is calling you three back in.”
“This is a prison break?”
“Oh, you catch on quick,” the man in the eye patch said sarcastically. “Look, I got other appointments tonight. You coming or what?”
The three prisoners shared a glance and stepped out of their cell. All throughout the cell block, Sin operatives were breaking down doors with the help of their pokemon. Sal watched as a Machamp yanked a cell door off the wall with a roar, hurling it down to the ground level with an echoing crash, liberating four of Pride’s enforcers. Three operatives with machine guns took up position in front of the cell next door, and one of the women gestured to her Kadabra. The psychic type opened the door with telekinesis, and the operatives opened fire on three of the Baron’s thugs within.
The one-eyed man cleared his throat. “We took care of the guards, but we don’t have all night. I’m going to take care of the other guys on my list, and then I’ll walk you out.”
Before Sal or the others could reply, he and his Claydol moved down the line of cells and liberated two Kuromori assassins, and then three members of Wrath’s crew. When he stopped for a third time, he muttered something to his Claydol, and the psychic type began to glow and spin faster. A splash of blood appeared on the tiny cell window, and the one-eyed man nodded and moved on to the next cell.
Once he had opened another door and let out the last of the prisoners on his list, he gestured to the liberated Sin personnel and motioned for them to follow him out of the cell block. The other operatives were shepherding their own charges, and Sal fell in line behind the one-eyed man. “I know you, don’t I? You’re one of Pride’s guys too.” he said as they exited the cellblock. “Kowalski? Krakowski?”
“Otto Kozlowski,” the one-eyed man said. “You broke my nose back when we were kids in Ridgewood, Genovese.”
“You expect me to remember every guy I ever punched in the face? What’s going on here?”
“I already told you, prison break. Boss’s orders, or I would’ve paid you back for my nose.”
If Sal had tangled with Otto back when they were young bucks in Ridgewood, it must have been over two decades ago. “When you say ‘boss’, are we talking Richelieu? Or…” Sal trailed off as he saw the limp forms of prison guards and their pokemon sprawled on either side of the hallway up ahead. A Hypno with a bullet hole through its head was slumped against the wall.
“You think Pride would be letting out a bunch of Kuromori? This comes from the top.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Genovese. Once you get back to the mainland, that could be bad for your health.” Otto sighed. “Our numbers got thinned in the Purge, but as far as Dominion was concerned they were acceptable losses, what with the new blood we brought in with the Kuromori. But then the heroes showed up and put a lot of our guys out of commission. The fact is, we’re running with a skeleton crew right now, and we’re thin on the ground. The boss realized we had a lot of talent on ice over here across the harbor, and she decided it was time we brought you all back into play.”
Sal tried to keep his face impassive as they passed by another cluster of dead guards and pokemon. “How long do we have before the mainland sends backup?”
“Who knows? They probably heard something, but we took out their comms.”
They paused in the entrance of the prison. The reinforced gates had been blasted apart by what looked like a powerful explosion, and bodies were strewn across the room. A few were black-clothed Sin operatives, but the vast majority were prison guards. Sal swallowed the bile that rose in his throat as they stepped over the bodies and out into the misting rain outside.
Although the walls inside Redstone were featureless concrete, the exterior was made of sandstone quarried from the mainland. It stood as an imposing bulwark on an otherwise barren and rocky island. A tall fence of barbed wire encircled the island’s perimeter, but it was hardly necessary. The island dropped off to steep cliffs along the entire island’s circumference, and it was hemmed in by rocky shoals except for a small passage where the Clarus Corrections Department had built a small, heavily guarded pier for docking the prisoner transports that left the city twice daily.
The transport that had delivered the evening’s shipment of prisoners had been demolished, and part of the bow could be seen sticking up from the churning waters of the harbor. Three black boats waited in its place, with spotlights turned on the pier. A pair of Gyarados loomed up beside the Sin boats, their fangs glinting in the moonlight. Otto smirked and glanced at Sal. “The orders came from the top, but Pride gave us her favorite toys for the job.” Otto laughed at Sal’s shocked countenance. “What, you never met Scylla and Charybdis before? Richelieu only lets the ladies out to play on the big ops.”
The two Gyarados lowered their spiked heads and leered at the assembled prisoners. Their nostrils flared, and the three-pronged fins at the sides of their fanged maws flared out. Sal took an unconscious step back as one of the great serpents turned her face towards him and bared fangs as long as Sal’s forearm that glittered in the spotlights. Viktor muttered something that sounded like a prayer under his breath.
Another group of prisoners tramped out of the compound, this time from the smaller women’s wing. “Reina!” Sal called when he saw the woman’s matted and multi-colored hair. The anarchist looked up and didn’t exactly smile, but she raised her eyebrows in a pleasantly surprised way.
“They busted you out too, huh?” she said. “I’m not one to look into a Delibird’s sack, but this is…” She trailed off as she looked up at the Gyarados looming over them. “It’s a lot.”
“That’s the last of them!” one of the enforcers called to the men at the dock. “We got everyone on the lists.”
There was a shouted command that Sal couldn’t make out, and one of the Gyarados rose up in the water, shifting her coils in the craggy shallows to stretch up as high as she could. A stark orange-white light appeared in her gaping maw, throwing stark shadows around the pier. The Gyarados unleashed the hyper beam at the ruined front gate of Redstone, and the heavy masonry shattered under the blast. She tracked the beam along the wall of the prison, bringing it down on itself as the blast vaporized the stones. The rumbling of the prison walls as they collapsed was almost loud enough to drown out the screams of the prisoners still trapped inside.
Otto’s single eye sparkled as he watched Redstone collapse in on itself. The Gyarados sank back into the churning waters of the harbor with a sound that was eerily close to a human sigh. The one-eyed enforcer turned to Sal and the other freed prisoners. “From here on out, we’re playing for keeps. As far as the boss is concerned, anything is fair game now. You come back with us, and you’re going to be fighting for the cause, same as the rest of us. Any of you have qualms with that, you’re welcome to sit around here and wait for the folks on the mainland to come for you, or take your chances swimming somewhere else.” He smirked. “Now personally, I don’t like your odds either way. But even if you do manage to get yourself clear, Dominion is going to know who abandoned her after she went through all the trouble of setting you free. And she really doesn’t like it when people betray her.
“So what’s it going to be? Are you in, or are you dead men walking?”
With those options, Sal decided he was in, and so was everyone else.
As the freed prisoners filed onto the boats that would take them back to the mainland, Otto stopped Sal and his crew. “Genovese.” When Sal looked up, Otto shook his head. “Not you. Him.”
Gian stepped forward and folded his arms. “What?”
Otto reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out what looked like a metallic pokeball. Instead of the usual vibrant red and white, this one had one steel half and one brass half, with an iron band around the midsection. The PPS pokeball shell was designed to keep pokemon secure in their balls for transport, and could be used to contain pokemon indefinitely if they proved to be dangerous or unable to be rehabilitated. The balls were nearly impossible to open without a special key, and the stock was kept under close guard by the PPS and the city’s police forces.
Otto shook the ball and proffered it towards Gian. “You got lucky. We raided the PPS depot before coming here to get back some of the pokemon the PPS nabbed from us after the heroes’ attack. Turns out with all the stuff going on lately, the PPS isn’t processing new arrivals all that quick, so not all of your crews’ had been transported out of the city. Richelieu wants the legendary Gian Genovese back on the front lines ASAP, so she pulled this one for you.” When Gian hesitated, Otto pressed the ball into his hands. “We already took care of the lock. Come on, pop it open.”
Gian hurled the ball at the ground, where it split open and an old, battered pokeball fell out. The ball burst open with a flash of light. A glowing shape whirled around Gian’s head, emitting a low spectral hum. Sal’s cousin flexed his fingers, and Dantès shot into his hands. A shiver went up Gian’s spine as the Doublade’s tassels wrapped around his wrists and forearms, binding their nervous systems together. “Thank you,” Gian managed to gasp.
“Thank the boss,” Otto replied. “She wants to see you when we get back.”
“If you found Dantès,” Viktor said, “does that mean you have my Tolya?”
“What about Hugo?” Reina asked. “He’s my Carnivine, about this tall, his right leaf has a notch it and—”
“Did you get Vito?”
Otto rolled his eye and shrugged. “Look, all I know is that Pride wanted your cousin to have his Doublade back. We’ll sort through the rest of you when we get back to the mainland. If we have your old partners, then ain't that fantastic? If we don’t, we’ll find you new ones.”
“I don’t want a new partner,” Viktor growled. “I want Tolya back.” Otto’s Claydol burbled something and moved to place itself between the two men.
“All right, take it easy,” Otto said, waving his pokemon down. “One step at a time, big guy. Let’s get you all back to the mainland first, huh? The sooner you get on a boat, the sooner we work this out. Like I’ve been telling you, we don’t have all night here.”
Viktor nodded and brushed past the one-eyed man and up the gangplank into one of the waiting transports. Reina, Sal, and Gian followed just after him. Once the freed prisoners had all boarded, the boats turned away from the dock and shot out over the harbor, Scylla and Charybdis gliding in their wake.
Sal and Gian stood in the prow of their boat, along with several other escapees who huddled in clumps. Gian slowly moved his arms through the air, exulting in the feeling of being reunited with his pokemon partner. The Doublade buzzed with what Sal could only assume was equal happiness as its tassels snaked up and down his cousin’s arms.
Sal took a deep breath, filling his nose with the scent of the sea wind. It smelled sharper here in the middle of the harbor than it had in the yard at Redstone, like he had thought it would. He had often thought, as he wiled away the hours in his cell, what his first taste of freedom would be like when he first got out. He hadn’t expected it to have such a bitter aftertaste.
But then, Sal reflected, he wasn’t really free at all. As the lights of Clarus loomed up over the water before him, he realized he had just traded one set of chains for another.
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Post by Firebrand on Jun 8, 2019 14:16:37 GMT
Chapter 31
The rain-slick pavement made Alex’s footing treacherous, and the Sin thugs had enough backup that they figured they could be reckless. It was the kind of conditions where even the smallest error could become a fatal miscalculation, and more than ever, Alex was aware of the limits of his own mortality.
Fortunately, he wasn’t without a few advantages of his own.
An over-aggressive Floatzel was flung back into its trainer with a psychokinetic pulse, and the next thug in line was picked up by an invisible force and tossed out of the alley like a ragdoll. Archangel dropped down next to Alex, pushing his hair back off his forehead. “The good news,” the esper said, “is that with them focusing on us, the civilians have all cleared out. The bad news…”
“Is now they’re all focusing on us, and we backed ourselves into a corner,” Alex said. “Yeah, I noticed.” Hierro darted past Alex, delivering a quick one-two punch to a Fraxure to stun the dragon type long enough for Alex to dispatch it with a hard whack from his stun baton. “Seven thugs left, nine pokemon between ‘em. What’s the over-under on us fighting through?”
An enforcer charged in with a wordless battle cry, only to fall on his backside as his forehead impacted with an invisible wall. Newton snapped his fingers and dispelled the barrier before twirling his spoon between his fingers, hurling the Floatzel back again with a psychic shove.
“Not the worst odds we’ve faced,” Archangel said. “But this rain isn’t making it easy. Watch yourself out there, Hawlucha Man.”
“So long as you got my back?” Alex flashed the esper a grin, and Archangel returned it with a smile that stretched all the way to his eyeteeth. “I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Alex charged into the fray, his batons held out at his sides. He and Hierro crashed into the enemy mob, spinning and kicking and throwing up spray from every puddle they landed in to disorient their opponents. An Arbok lunged, and Alex dropped to a crouch as the serpentine pokemon sailed over his head and caught an uppercut on the chin from Hierro for its trouble. Alex slammed his baton into the poison type’s coils and it dropped with a hissing shriek of pain. An enforcer came at Hierro with a machete, and Alex was at his partner’s side, catching the blade on his baton and knocking the enforcer’s legs out from under her to knock her flat on her back. Two touches from his batons put her out of the fight, and then Hierro was leaping over his back to slam into a pair of Mightyena with a roundhouse kick and a full body tackle. Bodies flew through the air as Archangel picked off targets beyond Alex’s reach, and brittle translucent barriers appeared in the air around Alex and Hierro to cover their blind spots, shattering into tiny iridescent shards when hit, but giving Alex and his partner the time they needed to react and handle the incoming threat.
Alex grunted as an Accelgor slammed into his flank, nearly throwing him to the ground. The bug type unleashed a series of lightning-fast strikes to Alex’s abdomen, driving the air from his lungs. Hierro lashed out at the Accelgor, but the insect danced back too quickly for the Hawlucha to get in a clean hit. Hierro raced after it, his claws skittering across the concrete. Alex sucked in a breath and tried to call out a warning, but he was too late.
The Accelgor’s body began to glow, and an explosion of light and force burst from the bug type’s exoskeleton. The full force of the Final Gambit struck Hierro full in the chest, and the Hawlucha tumbled head-over-tail feathers across the pavement. The bug type’s trainer drew his sidearm and took aim at the injured Hawlucha. Alex sprinted down the alley, his blood pounding in his ears. He slid across the wet concrete, skidding to a stop just in front of the man and slamming his elbow against the man’s forearm. The enforcer’s shot went wide, but Alex lost his balance and stumbled to his knees. He had just enough time to think Oh crap before the man recovered and leveled his gun at Alex’s forehead.
At this range, there was nothing Alex could do to stop the shot, and the man wasn’t going to miss a target right in front of him. His instincts screamed at him to run, but his muscles were frozen in place.
“Don’t!” Archangel screamed. The man’s eyes flicked up at the esper, and Archangel raised his hand in a placating gesture. “Don’t shoot him! If you do…”
“You’ll what?”
“You’ll serious piss me off.”
“I’ll take my chances,” the man said with a smirk. Alex saw his finger twitch on the trigger. He squeezed his eyes shut to brace himself for the sudden explosion of pain, and then whatever came next.
The pain didn’t come.
After a few heartbeats, Alex slowly opened his eyes and saw the bullet hanging suspended in the air, barely a centimeter from his forehead. The enforcer’s eyes were wide with panic, and Alex could see the man’s frenzied breathing as he struggled to move. His eyes darted back and forth, and Alex realized that once he filtered out his heart pounding in his ears and the man’s labored breathing, the night was eerily quiet.
Then he noticed that the rain had stopped.
The raindrops were literally frozen in place, as though time in the alley had stopped just as the enforcer had pulled the trigger. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Archangel said. He rose higher into the air, his eyes glowing with a spectral inner light. All of the other enforcers and thugs seemed to be frozen in place, and he stared down at them with naked contempt. “You may want to stand back, Hawlucha Man,” the esper said. Alex scrambled to his feet and ran to Hierro’s side, bundling the Hawlucha into his arms and retreating deeper into the alley, just to escape the weight of Archangel’s gaze.
With a flick of the esper’s finger, the bullet meant for Alex dropped to the ground with a ping. As soon as it touched the concrete, the preternatural calm of the alley was shattered as Archangel unleashed his fury. Humans and pokemon alike were hurled in every direction, slammed against the concrete walls of the municipal buildings on either side, tossed through windows in sprays of broken glass, or sent tumbling into the street. One of the thugs struggled to his feet, and Archangel seized a piece of broken masonry in his telekinetic hold, angling it so that a piece of jagged rebar was pointed directly at the man. With a flick of Archangel’s wrist, the rebar shot into the man’s leg with enough force to break through the stone of the wall behind him. Archangel snapped his fingers, and the rebar twisted to have two ninety-degree bends, making it impossible for the man to free himself.
“I’m tired of playing by the rules,” Archangel said. His voice seemed to resonate, echoing in Alex’s ears and making the air itself tremble. “Why should I have to handicap myself when vermin like you are running roughshod all over my city?” An enforcer and her Mienshao were hurled against the wall to Archangel’s left, and the esper pushed hard enough to crack the stone around them and leave a crater-like indentation. “You humans are only good at breaking things.” He closed his hand into a fist, and a wave of force rippled out from him, tearing up the stone of the alley. “But my patience with you and your boss has run out. I’m not going to hold back anymore.”
The man with the gun rose up in the air, his limbs outstretched. Archangel folded his arms in front of his chest and the light in his eyes grew brighter. There was a crack as the bones in both of the mans’ wrists snapped, and then further cracks and pops as Archangel worked his way through the bones in the man’s fingers. The man screamed in pain as Archangel snapped the man’s forearm, and Alex saw white bone poking through his skin.
“Joshua,” Alex rasped. “This is going too far…”
“I’m done being merciful,” Archangel replied. “No more ‘be not afraid’.” He twisted his wrist, and the frozen raindrops congealed in front of him in a shifting globe of dirty water. “If Dominion wants to grind this city under her boot, then I’m going to push back with everything I’ve got. I’ll give her something to be afraid of.” The water in front of him separated into long, thin lances that flashed in the distant glow of the streetlights. Before Alex’s eyes, the watery lances froze, becoming jagged spars of ice.
“Calm down,” Alex said. “Johannes wouldn’t have wanted this!”
“Johannes is gone!”
“And this is how you honor his memory?”
The split-second of hesitation was all Newton needed. The Kadabra appeared in the air beside his human partner, and the air between them rippled. The glow faded from Joshua’s eyes, and he slowly descended to the ravaged ground of the alley and sank to his knees. The rain began to fall again.
Newton grabbed Alex’s wrist in a three-fingered hand and placed the other on Joshua’s shoulder. Alex heard the sound of rushing wind and saw a brilliant flash of light, and then suddenly everything was quiet and still.
Alex fell to his knees, and beneath his hands he felt the worn fibers of an old, threadbare rung. Somewhere in the distance, a Noctowl hooted, and water gurgled as it rolled down a drainpipe. A soft breeze made branches in a nearby tree rustle, and Alex allowed himself a moment to let the calm wash over him as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of his new surroundings.
He felt Newton stumble past him, and then rusty springs in an aging bedframe squealed as the Kadabra settled onto the mattress, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders like a cloak. Alex grunted as he hefted Hierro’s weight in his arms and laid his partner down across from the Kadabra. He sat down on the edge of the bed and removed his mask. “Where are we?” he asked, turning to Joshua’s indistinct shape on the other side of the small room.
The esper dragged his body into a simple but solid-looking chair beside an equally simple desk. “Home sweet home,” he muttered, seeming to fold in on himself. He reached out with one hand, and a lamp jerked across the desk, rocking back and forth on its cord until Joshua managed to push the switch with his telekinesis. The soft amber light revealed a spartan cell barely large enough to hold the bed, desk and small bedside table it contained. A narrow closet full of the starched white collared shirts Joshua preferred stood ajar on the opposite wall.
At Alex’s blank look, Joshua stirred himself enough to clarify further. “This is an Arcean monastery just outside the city. When the military cut me loose, the brothers here took me in. The lifestyle helps me keep my powers under control, and being outside the city makes things better for everyone involved.” He sighed. “Newton knows this is home base, so he can generally teleport me back here from anywhere in the city, but going such a long distance is tough on him.”
“How far out are we?”
Joshua jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The outskirts of north Clarus are about fifteen miles that way. Brother Gerard is taking the car into the city for groceries tomorrow morning, and he can give you and Hierro a ride at least to the uptown subway. I’ll give you some of my clothes so you don’t have to ride back to Avenbrooke in costume.”
“Thanks.” Alex shifted his weight, making the bed squeak. “Uh, you want to talk about what happened back there?”
Joshua pushed his rain-soaked curls back from his face. “I lost control. I’ve spent years training to keep my powers in check, but after losing Johannes and seeing that bastard ready to take you and Hierro away too…” He quickly dashed the tears from his eyes. “I wasn’t going to let that happen, and I let my anger get the best of me. And I’d do it again too, if it meant keeping the people I care about safe.”
Alex inclined his head. “I know how you’re feeling right now. After everything that’s happened… I can’t lose anyone else either.”
“This is all because I’m too weak.”
“Dude, I just saw you rip through those Sin enforcers with your mind. You can throw eighteen wheelers around like softballs with your mind. You stopped two hyper beams cold… with your mind. You’re the strongest esper in the city by, like, a couple orders of magnitude.”
“Second strongest.”
“You ripped apart Dominion’s bunker with a flick of your wrist, and it was all she could do to keep standing. Your telekinesis is miles better than what she can do.”
“My telekinesis is stronger than hers, yes. But overall, I’m much weaker.” At Alex’s blank look, Joshua sighed. “Look, you know how espers are classified, right? Class one, two, and so on? And yes, Dominion and I are both class three espers, but that doesn’t mean we’re equal. My telekinetic abilities are stronger than any class three on record, but I’m really a one-trick Ponyta. Outside of throwing things around with my mutant brain, I can’t do much else. I have some weak telepathy that lets me communicate nonverbally with people I’m close with, so long as they’re in the same room, and enough psychic empathy to make being in big crowds uncomfortable.” He shrugged. “The empathy thing is probably a blessing though. If it was even a fraction as strong as my telekinesis, being anywhere near a city would be unbearable.”
“So effectively, you only have one trick,” Alex said. “It’s a damn good trick. But Dominion has a few more things in her toolbox?”
“To put it in layman’s terms, yes. Her ability to get into minds and twist them around is just as strong as my telekinetic power. From what I gather, she’s got the ability to pick up on the thoughts of those around her without even trying, but she’s got trouble digging through memories or anything that her subject isn’t actively thinking about at the time.”
“So when she was in my head, she didn’t get my address? My secret identity is safe?”
“If she’s left you alone this long, I think that’s a safe bet.”
Alex sagged back with a sigh of relief. He had been on edge for days, waiting for Dominion’s goons to show up at his door and haul him off. “So she’s got mind reading and mind control. But Clarus City is a big place, with a lot of people and pokemon, and that means a lot of thoughts buzzing around. Shouldn’t that… have some kind of effect?”
“Not really. Both Marinette and I were instructed how to shield our mind from background noise like that when we were in military custody. It was harder for her, but she was ultimately better at it than I was.”
Behind Alex, Hierro groaned as he slowly rose to consciousness. The bottom drawer of Joshua’s desk slid open, and a bulky white first aid kit floated up into Alex’s lap. “I have some Sitrus berry gel in there,” the esper said. “If you rub some on Hierro, he should get some of his energy back. And obviously take anything you need for yourself.”
While Alex set about patching up Hierro, he found a plastic container of dried Oran berries in the kit and passed them over to Newton to snack on. Alex applied the gel to Hierro’s chest, and he felt the Hawlucha’s breathing even out beneath his hands. Satisfied his partner was safe, Alex finally stripped off his costume and changed into a pair of athletic shorts and a t-shirt Joshua had found for him. “So the military… you were with them for how long?”
“Eight years, almost nine. When most kids were going out on their pokemon journeys, I got packaged off to a secret facility in the desert to be poked and prodded.” Joshua didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in his voice. “They were interested in me at first, once I proved I could juggle five fighter jets with my brain. But ultimately, there’s nothing I can do that a few powerful psychic types working together can’t either. Nah, they were always more interested in Marinette.
“When I first showed up, she wasn’t so bad. Nice to me sometimes, even. We knew we were both two test subjects, so there was a kind of solidarity in that.” Joshua shrugged. “It’s pretty messed up in hindsight. But for years, it was all we knew. She had been there longer than I had, of course. She was more used to the tests, but as we got older, they got more intensive, and more invasive. For me, it was all about pushing my upper limits.”
“What about Dominion?” Alex couldn’t call her Marinette. It was hard to think of her as an actual person, someone who had shown a younger Joshua kindness and compassion. After she had sifted through his mind and turned him into a puppet under her control, he couldn’t conceive of her as anything but a monster.
“We took our tests separately, so I don’t know everything. But from what I gathered, the military was always more interested in her. A esper with the kind of powers she had was far easier to control than a psychic pokemon. Even the more intelligent ones have trouble understanding complex orders and abstract concepts, which makes their telepathy unreliable in the field. But a human operative who could control enemy forces for long periods was an invaluable resource.” Joshua rummaged in another one of his drawers and pulled out a thick folio of papers. “This is everything about me that got declassified when the military esper program shut down a few years ago. It took a while, but I tracked all of it down and complied it here.”
Alex flipped through the pages of complicated data, squinting to make it out in the low light. “Project Archer?” he asked when he noticed that was printed atop every page in the folio.
“My codename. Sums up what they thought about my powers. Good for throwing things around and not much else.” He smiled ruefully. “I changed it to Archangel, because I thought it sounded cooler.”
Seeing years of Joshua’s life laid out in text before him made Alex feel strange, and he passed the files back to the esper. “Has anything like this been declassified for Dominion?”
“The military is willing to acknowledge that Project Puppeteer existed, but anything more than that is wrapped up in so much red tape. It’s impossible to track down anything solid. I’ve got to assume that Marinette has hunted down and destroyed anything she can find.” The esper put his file back in his desk. “That said, I’ve filled in some of the blanks myself. I know that once they’d established her benchmarks, a lot of her testing focused on multitasking; controlling multiple people at once, reading minds while controlling them, doing all of that with crowds of people, and so on.”
“So how good is she?”
“When it comes down to simple commands, she can probably influence a few hundred people in a small area. Anything more complex and she’ll run up against some trouble. She’s pretty good at filtering through the noise and pulling out what she wants, and she can exert her control over people for a long time. All of this information is a few years old, and it’s clear she’s only gotten better since the military turned us loose.”
For a time, the only sound was the faint pattering of rain against the tiled roof above their heads. Hierro stirred a little, and Alex wrapped the Hawlucha in a spare blanket. The flying type settled and quietly sank into sleep. While Alex ran his fingers through his partner’s feathers, Joshua toweled off his sodden hair. “I understand why Marinette ended up like this. She’s holding a grudge for all the time she lost in the program. For years, we were hooked up to all kinds of monitors with electrodes and needles, with no freedom or privacy. We were at our handlers’ beck and call. When the program shut down and we were let go, I was young enough to look on the bright side and put it all behind me. But she wanted payback.
“All of her handlers are dead now, from what I’ve heard. I don’t know what her end goal is in all of this, but it’s a mistake to think that she’s this calculating mastermind. This is all just her lashing out with a teenage revenge plot.”
Alex remembered Dominion’s stunned reaction when he had managed to throw his baton at her. “It’s all just a game to her, isn’t it? She’s making it all up as she goes along. That’s why she’s so capricious, why there’s no pattern. She just moves her pieces around because it’s fun for her to make us all dance on her strings.”
“And that’s why we need to be on our toes,” Joshua replied. “She never expected us to punch back like we did. The Redstone break is just the beginning; it’s her putting her pieces back on the board. If I know Marinette, she’s going to start making riskier plays. With the Sins and the Kuromori under her control, she’s got more incentive to go bigger and break more. When we attacked her compound, we spit in her eye, so as far as she’s concerned, this is personal now.”
“We’re going to have to train harder.” Alex’s hand curled into a fist, bunching the sheets under his hand. “We need to get strong enough to stop her once and for all, now more than ever.”
“And the clock is ticking.”
“Right.” Alex glanced down at Hierro, and then back at Joshua. “When the time comes, are you going to be able to do it? The more I think about it, the more I feel we won’t be able to stop Dominion without you. You say she’s stronger than you, but…”
“She is stronger than me, and I don’t think I can win in a straight up fight on my own.” A golden glow sparkled in Joshua’s gray eyes, and his hair floated up around his head. “But when the time comes, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you and the rest of our friends can take her down, even if I have to burn through every bit of power I have.”
Alex held out his fist, and Joshua reached across the gap between them to bump it with his own. The brief contact sent a rush of sensation up through Alex’s arm and into his chest, and for the briefest moment, he could feel the howling maelstrom of power that Joshua held inside himself, and could only marvel at the intense control the esper must have to exercise at all times to keep it under control.
Joshua flicked his finger, and a dark shape slid out from under his bed. “I think our partners have made themselves comfortable already, so Newton’s camp bed is all yours.”
Alex sank down onto the thin mattress with a groan. “What about you?”
Joshua sat atop his desk and pulled his knees into the lotus position. “I’ll be fine here. A little meditation will do more for me than sleep will at this point.” As Alex watched, Joshua’s seated form lifted off the desk and rose several inches in the air. As he drifted off to sleep, he heard Joshua chuckle at something.
“What?”
Joshua shook his head, and his golden curls glowed in the faint silver glow of the moonlight coming through the shades. “No, it’s… kind of stupid, and a little embarrassing.”
“Oh come on.” Alex propped himself up on his elbow. “How many times have you watched me get my ass handed to me? You don’t get to talk to me about embarrassing.”
“Oh, all right,” Joshua said. “It’s just that this… well, it’s kind of the first sleepover I’ve had in years.”
“Dude, we need to get you out more.”
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Post by bay on Jun 11, 2019 6:33:57 GMT
Wow, it's been so long since I last visted this story. Gonna make quick comments on the chapters as I was reading!
-Alex and Captain Unova teaming up together was fun! Them using moves from the Brycen movies is cheesy but great.
-I too thought it's interesting Gwen was able to bypass Dominion's abilities, wonder if that's gonna be a thing in later down the road. The car chase was quite fun, and oh all out gang war that should be fun.
-Cute Duosion keeping Alex airborne. Indeed a Steelix running around the streets is big trouble, good thing that's been taken care of. We also get Alex and Pierre meeting again, and Peirre not wanting Alex's help. Again, Alex, take caer of yourself! Yo've been pushing yourself too hard again.
-Interesting Sal-centric chapter there. I like the idea of Hondege/Doublade fencers, and Sal witnessing why Hawlucha Man has been talked about. Nice appperances by Echo and Phantom too, and I was amused by Phantom's kids TV show quote.
-Oh boy quite a bit is happening here. Sins going against each other, and the Kurmori under new leadership. I like Ronin's scene there where he tries to save a few folks and inspired others to do the same.
-Hah, great Edgar went to the board meeting and got what was his back. Also, expected all the heroes wanting to take Dominion down, but something tells me it won't be a walk in the park.
-So Chapter 28 we have a big "heroes taking a stand" chapter here. I expected Alex to want to help Jiro out with Dominion there. He's just as stubbon as Gwen, heh. Him calling her an arrogant (beep) is probably the most we've seen him angry. Ouch over the group losing Hammer. The way he went down was quick but effective.
-Poor Jiro, he's really taking that lost hard there. I liked Alex and Isabelle's conversation there. The two awkwardly supporting one another during this grieving time. Looking forward how the heroes will move forward from here.
-Ohhhh, prison break! Those are always fun. Not sure what to make of Otto yet, but I'm curious of his role in your story. Also interesting Doublade is brought back.
-Glad that Alex was able to stop Joshua for getting things out of hand. Interesting Joshua's backstory over him being in a monastery and the different between Dominion and his abilities there.
Andddd I'm finally caught up! Lots of neat developments there, can't wait for more!
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Post by Firebrand on Jun 29, 2019 14:33:30 GMT
Chapter 32
“This is the place,” Alex said, looking up at the illuminated clock face across the plaza. “And now he’s late.” Hierro huffed out a breath and puffed out his feathers. “Yeah, totally a dick move,” Alex replied. “If I were a cynical man, I’d say he’s just keeping us here so that his goons can go stir up trouble on the other side of town. Now, I’m not that cynical,” he continued, “but lucky for me, the Ronin is.”
Hierro tittered in what passed for laughter for the Hawlucha. “So can anyone blame me if I fired off a quick text to our local mass murderer and told him to be on his toes for any of the Baron’s tricks tonight? I certainly don’t think so.”
“A monologue, Hawlucha Man?” the Baron called from the plaza below as he and a trio of guards climbed out of a sleek black town car. “By Arceus, you heroes really are going in for the clichés now.”
Alex and Hierro kicked off the roof of their building and glided down to the street level. The Baron’s guards reached for their weapons as soon as Alex’s feet touched the ground, but their boss waved them down. “You’re late,” Alex said.
“Yes, I rather caught that part.”
When Alex had gone to check one of Lust’s dead drops, he hadn’t expected to see a message from the Baron inviting him to a parley. The uncontested crime lord of Avenbrooke had been playing cautiously ever since the Hammer’s funeral, and after some deliberation Alex and Hierro had decided to meet Pirozzi under the flag of truce to see what the little prick had to say for himself. Alex told the Baron this in only slightly more delicate terms.
“It’s been a while since our last little chat, and I found myself wanting some of your refreshing company,” the Baron said. “Ever since you and your friends rushed into Dominion’s stronghold half-cocked and guns blazing, the underworld has been in a rather tumultuous state of unrest. So I’d like to hear, from the Mudsdale’s mouth, as it were, just what the motherfucking hell you heroes were thinking?”
At the vehemence in Pirozzi’s tone, Hierro stepped forward to interpose himself between his partner and the Baron. The fighting type flexed his claws, and the Baron’s grunts went for their guns again. “Oh, enough,” the Baron snapped, just as Alex said “Hey, easy.”
The young hero glared at the Baron. “Dominion had become too large a threat to ignore, and after she set the city on edge on Purge Night and took over the Kuromori, we needed to strike a decisive blow and take her down. It didn’t work out like that, but we managed to significantly cripple her organization, and we’ve had her on her back foot ever since.”
“Oh sure,” the Baron snarled. “She’s been making all kinds of mistakes lately, like breaking out every operative she’s got from Redstone prison and systematically hunting down all of my capos!” He took a deep breath and gathered his composure. “Regardless, none of this is news to me. What I am asking is why didn’t you come to me?”
“Uh… what?” Hierro glanced over his shoulder and gave Alex a blank look. Alex shrugged and turned back to the Baron.
The Baron sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You… have you never heard ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’? I want Dominion gone more than anyone else in the city. That damned psychic bitch is bad for business.”
Alex smirked. “Legitimate business or…?”
“Immaterial. If you had only come to me, I could have sent my men in along with you, and maybe we could have salvaged something from that massive clusterfuck you heroes caused. Maybe then everyone could have gone home safe.”
Hierro hissed out a breath, and it took every ounce of self-control Alex had not to knock the Baron flat for that jibe. Instead, he dug his fingernails into the meat of his palm hard enough to nearly break the skin, and when he had managed to compose himself, he shook his head. “The intel on the raid was need to know, and you sure as hell didn’t.” He clicked his tongue at Hierro and turned away. “Now, if we’re done here…”
“Not quite,” the Baron interjected. “There is… another matter I want to discuss, but not here.” He opened the back door of the town car and gestured inside.
“You want me to go with you, my arch nemesis—”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Go with you, to a second location. Do you think I’m a total idiot?” The Baron opened his mouth, and Alex held up a finger. “Actually, don’t answer that.”
The Baron sighed and rolled his eyes, clearly growing impatient. “All right, fine. If my word that you will not come to harm isn’t good enough for you, I’ll give you three reasons you’ll be completely safe if you just get in the damn car. The first,” he said, tapping the taillight of the car with his finger, “is that my car costs more than most people will make in a decade. I am rather fond of it, and I would hate for it to come to harm through your antics. The second reason,” he continued, counting off on his fingers, “is that the upholstery in the car cost me roughly half of the car itself to get it installed, and disposing of you on the way would completely ruin it.”
Hierro glanced over his shoulder at Alex, and an incredulous look passed between the two of them, but the Baron paid it no mind. “The third and perhaps most compelling reason is that the second location I will be escorting you to is my home, where I own no small number of priceless objects that I do not wish to come to any harm. Knowing you and your partner, any attempt on my part to have you disposed of there would cause no end of damage to my property before my men finally managed to take you down, and that’s a cost too dear for my blood. And that’s not even getting into how tiresome it would be to remove your bodies from the premises.”
“So you’re saying we can trust you to not do us any harm because you’re a materialistic prick?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it in so many words but—”
“Okay, we’ll go. But a few conditions.”
“You aren’t exactly in a position to negotiate, Hawlucha Man.”
“I’m in a position to kick your goons’ butts five ways to next week, punch your teeth in, and key your car for good measure, so I’d say I am.” The Baron growled, and Alex smirked. “First, my Hawlucha stays with me at all times. Second, I keep my batons on my person, but I won’t pull them out unless provoked. Third, your bodyguards stay here, and you personally drive me to your place. Both hands on the wheel at all times, where I can see them.”
“I am not a chauffeur!”
“That’s the deal, Carlo.” Alex had to exert an effort of will to keep from cracking up at the Baron’s indignant countenance that had gone a vibrant Tomato-berry red.
The Baron thought it over for a moment and inclined his head. “Fine. Get in the car, and make sure your Hawlucha doesn’t scratch the leather.” He stalked to the driver-side door and threw it open, settling himself on the seat. Alex and Hierro slid into the back, and Alex made sure Hierro kept his talons clear of the upholstery.
As the car slid out of the plaza and into the nighttime gloom of the Avenbrooke streets, Alex sank back into the leather seats with a soft, contented groan. The Baron was right, the upholstery was luxurious, almost enough for him to let his guard down. The Baron fumed quietly in the front seat, and Alex left him to stew in it. If he was willing to put up with this kind of treatment, then whatever he had to talk to Alex about must be serious. Or he was putting on a convincing show to get Alex killed.
Just in case, Alex popped the lock on the car door and made sure he was ready to throw it open at a moment’s notice.
They passed out of the jumble of streets that made up central Avenbrooke and turned towards the district of upscale brick townhouses that had been converted into apartments. This was the chic part of Avenbrooke, but in time even it fell away as they continued further east, to the old manor houses on the Avenbrooke-Greenpoint line, remnants of a bygone age of Clarus City’s mercantile past. The Baron guided the car up to a large metal gate that barred access to a wide driveway flanked by hedgerows. He silently rolled down his window and glared into the small security camera mounted by the gate, and the barrier swung open on mechanical hinges.
Carlo Pirozzi’s mansion was opulent even by the standards of Clarus City’s upper crust, stopping just shy of being tastelessly gaudy. Tall marble columns flanked the entrance, and a fountain burbled in the center of the looping driveway. Golden light shone out from several of the tall windows on the mansion’s façade, but aside from a few shifting shadows within, it seemed empty.
But looks were deceiving, so when he and Hierro warily stepped out of the car, they were ready to duck behind it for cover if they so much as heard a firearm click.
“If I wasn’t already so irate, I’d be offended you weren’t taking me at my word,” the Baron grumbled as he hustled up the steps to the front door. A well-dressed footman received them, taking Alex in with a look of only mild surprise. Alex had to admire the man’s professionalism, at least. The Baron dismissed the man with a distracted flick of his wrist, and Alex scanned the man’s profile as he quick-stepped away, making sure that there were no concealed weapons.
The crime boss of Avenbrooke pointed to a room off the foyer. “Go wait in there. Bruce will keep an eye on you.”
“I thought you wanted to talk. I’m here, so talk.”
“The matter we’ll be discussing requires a certain… visual aid.”
Alex sighed and gestured for the Baron to lead on. Hierro followed behind him, his claws clicking on the tiled floor. They emerged into a richly decorated parlor with several elegant antique chairs arranged around what Alex assumed was an expensive carpet that looked to be woven with golden thread. A flute arrangement played from a record on a turntable, accompanied by chimes and a violin. A grand piano stood off to one side, and on the other side of the room, a Blastoise crouched. The hulking water type glanced up with a low growl as Hierro crossed the threshold, but seeing the Baron, it settled back on its haunches and settled for fixing the Hawlucha with a hooded glare.
Bruce Giordano stood before an easel and a table with an artful arrangement of fruits, cutlery, and a vase of flowers, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, and the paintbrush and palette he held looked comically small in his thick hands. The hulking man looked up from his canvas as his employer cleared his throat. “The next time we need to arrange a chat with Hawlucha Man,” the Baron said, “you’re coming with me. If he’s this difficult again, I want you to hogtie him and bring him here in the trunk.”
“I’m right here you know,” Alex said.
The Baron just huffed out a breath and turned on his heel. “I’m off to fetch our other guest.”
Giordano and Alex were silent until the Baron’s footsteps had faded into a different part of the house. The giant turned back to his paints and smirked. “You got him real pissed.”
“One of the few perks of my job,” Alex replied. He edged around to get a look at Giordano’s canvas, and was mildly impressed. The bodyguard had ably captured the still-life before him, but something about the way he had chosen his colors and arranged the shadows of the composition gave it a slightly surreal look. Something about it was just off, but in a clearly intentional way that Alex couldn’t put his finger on. “That’s… really good, actually.”
Giordano dabbed at the canvas. “Well, I sure hope I didn’t spend four years at the Clarus Institute of Art and Design for nothing.”
“You… what? But you’re… well…”
“Pirozzi’s big dumb muscle?” The corner of Giordano’s mouth twitched up. He continued painting for a moment before stepping back and squinting at the canvas. “Needs more… hm. More shadow here.”
“So this is how you unwind after a long day of busting heads?”
“Something like that. My paintings are pretty good at laundering money for the boss, so he encourages the hobby.” When Alex scowled, Giordano smirked. “If the Baron needs to collect from someone, and we want to obfuscate the paper trail a little bit, they ‘buy’ one of my paintings to make the exchange look above board. I do forgeries too, sometimes, but I’m not crazy about the work. Mostly it’s just to mess with some big collector when they piss off the boss.”
Alex’s hands drifted down to his batons. “Is this one of those things were you’re only telling me this because you’re going to kill me?” Hierro positioned himself between his partner and Giordano’s Blastoise, but the giant water type barely spared the Hawlucha a second glance.
“What? Fuck no.” Giordano barked out a laugh. “Boss said you’re here under truce. I’m just bragging. You know I’ve got four paintings in the CMAC under three different names?”
“For real?”
“Yup. I have a standing bet with some of the boss’s capos that I owe them a beer if they figure any of them out.” Giordano dabbed at his palette. “They never do, obviously. I doubt any of ‘em have even been inside the CMAC, the uncultured savages.”
Pirozzi cleared his throat behind them. “Well Bruce, if you’re quite done fraternizing with the enemy…” Giordano rolled his eyes and gestured for the Baron to continue. The crime boss stepped out of the doorway and gestured someone forward. Alex and Hierro instinctively tensed, but when the person behind the Baron stepped into the light, Alex saw it was just a thin teenager, his face hidden in the depths of a black hoodie.
The young man gave his head an imperious toss and glowered down his nose at the Baron. Pirozzi’s lip curled, and Giordano set his paints down as he stepped around his easel. An Ariados scuttled into the room, snapping its mandibles as it crouched at the boy’s feet, hissing and spitting at the Baron. Genbu stirred in the corner again, angling one of its cannons at the crimson insect. Alex couldn’t help but feel like the scene playing out before him was nothing new, and that all of the participants had gone through the motions several times before.
“Hawlucha Man,” the Baron said. “Meet my ward—”
“I’m not your anything,” the boy snapped.
Aside from a slight tightening of the Baron’s jaw, he continued on as though the interruption had not happened. “My ward, Kaito Kuromori.”
“Kuromori?!”
“Kaito is the illegitimate son that Saito Kuromori was happy to forget.” Pirozzi smirked as the boy clenched his hands into fists and jammed them into the pocket of his sweatshirt. “A little accident with one of Saito’s mistresses,” he continued. “Saito kept his existence quiet, and I’m not entirely sure even Tsukiyama knew about him. But I heard about Saito’s dirty little secret several years ago, and took pains to keep tabs on little Kaito. When the Vixen had her little coup in the Purge, I swooped in and took him under my protection.”
“Did I ask for your help?” Kaito growled.
The Baron continued ignoring him. “I thought it would be prudent to keep the secret heir to the Kuromori clan on the board and out of my enemies’ hands, but Kaito has proven… difficult. It seems that he has no wish to pursue his destiny as scion of the ninja clan, nor does he seem interested in helping me in my own endeavors, despite my generosity. No, instead, he wants to be hero, of all things.”
Kaito stepped forward, locking eyes with Alex. “I’m a Kuromori, and my father made sure I received the same training anyone else in the clan gets. But I don’t want his legacy! I want to use my training for good. I want to make sure bastards like my father can’t hurt and exploit the people of this city anymore. I want to stop people like the Baron.” His shadowed eyes grew suddenly intent, and his voice took on a pleading note. “I want to be just like you.”
“You see what I mean?” Pirozzi said. “I can’t get him to see reason, and I’m tired of him sulking around my house. I figured if he wants to be a hero so badly, I might as well just turn him over to you.”
Alex scowled. “A hero with Kuromori training could spell trouble for you down the line. You’re not the kind of person to let a risk to your business walk free. Why tell me all of this? Why go through all the trouble?”
“Because for all that Kaito wishes to deny his heritage, he is still Saito Kuromori’s heir. It’s possible that he has a more valid claim to leadership than Yuuko Kuromori. He’s a symbol, and I think he might have more value to me in the long term if I keep him on the board, rather than taking him off it now.”
“You’re a coldhearted bastard.”
“I’m a businessman.”
Alex stepped forward and put his hand on Kaito’s shoulder. “I’m done listening to this guy. If you want to be a hero, follow me.” He glared at the Baron. “Are we done? Because I’m done.”
“If you say so, Hawlucha Man.”
Alex and Hierro swept out of the mansion, and he heard Kaito and his Ariados scrambling after them. Alex didn’t stop to look back until they had crossed the Baron’s lawn and reached the large front gates, which swung open on soundless hinges. It wasn’t until he and Kaito had crossed the threshold and the gates had closed behind them that he finally stopped.
“Oh crap. Did you have stuff in there?”
Kaito shrugged. “A toothbrush and a change of pants. It’s whatever.”
“Okay good. That totally would have ruined a perfectly good exit.” He flashed the teenager a grin, and got a tentative half smile back.
Though Alex managed to keep a reasonably calm face, inside he was panicking. He could barely afford to take care of himself, let alone a teenager. Under different circumstances, he would have taken the kid straight to Jiro and let him sort things out, but Jiro was still in his self-imposed exile, and hadn’t been seen in weeks. If he was honest, his first choice would have been to go to Johannes, but…
With those options off the table, he was a little more limited. He couldn’t exactly show up at Forbes manor with the heir to one of the city’s most notorious crime families in tow and expect Isabelle to look after him, and he certainly wasn’t about to dump Kaito on Edgar. Captain Unova had a couple kids, but Alex couldn’t ask him to take on the responsibility of a teenager on top of all that, and no one else in his network seemed responsible enough to look after him, or had the means to do so. He racked his brain for a solution that wouldn’t put him on half rations, and then an idea struck.
“Being a hero isn’t easy,” he said. “I’m risking my life every night, and I’ve been in more close shaves than I care to admit. I’m not even sure I’m qualified to be taking you on as… an apprentice, I guess?”
“I can fight,” Kaito said. “I told you, I have Kuromori training and—”
“I’m not doubting you,” Alex replied. “But I couldn’t live with myself if I took that on faith and got you into a situation where you got hurt. Especially since you’re still a kid, and I guess I’m kind of responsible for you now and…”
“I can look after myself!”
“Yeah, like I said, I believe you! But I kind of want to see what you can do for myself. I know the Kuromori are experts at hand to hand combat, and they’re all natural acrobats. But if you have to go up against the Kuromori, or the Baron’s thugs, or the Sins, what can you do that’s going to get out on top?”
Kaito snapped his fingers, and his Ariados leapt into the air and onto his back, latching around his midsection with its legs and becoming something like a chittering, insectoid backpack. “When it comes to moving around the city, Hanzo and I are second to none. He can use his silk to swing the two of us around, like a grappling hook, you know? And then we drop down on our foes from above, just like you.”
“G-Grappling hook?”
“Watch this.” Hanzo’s mandibles clicked and a thick length of spider silk shot from its jaws to the top of a nearby lamppost. Once the thread connected, Kaito and his pokemon partner jerked into the air on the elastic silk and shot upwards, and before Alex knew it, the young ninja was perched atop the pole.
“Dude,” Alex gasped.
“I can swing from building to building like this too, but,” Kaito gestured around, “the houses here are too far apart, and set too far from the street.”
“Okay, color me impressed. What do you say we head back to the tenements a few blocks that way, and I’ll take you for a test run?”
Kaito bounced off the lamp, and Hanzo created another length of silk that the young man slid down on. “Sure, let’s go. The further we get from here, the better.”
A short time later, when Alex had managed to find a fire escape to clamber up, he and Kaito stood poised at the edge of a rooftop. “We’re headed to Greenpoint,” Alex said, gesturing with his chin. “All you’ve got to do is keep up with me; I’ll call out the directions as we go along. Think you can handle keep up?”
“I don’t know, Hawlucha Man. Do you think you can keep up with me?”
“Watch it, kid.” Alex took a few steps back and bounced on his heels. “Ready? Go!” He and Hierro shot out over the edge of the building and spread their wings, gliding over the gap to the next rooftop and breaking into a run. The faint thwip behind him told Alex that Kaito was in hot pursuit. With a quick step and a leap, Alex surmounted a raised HVAC unit and threw himself off it, catching an updraft and spiraling up into the air before stooping into a dive.
Hanzo shot two lengths of silk, one on each side of an alley, and used the flimsy cradle to catch himself and Kaito as they fell. The elastic silk stretched out before snapping back, catapulting Kaito high into the air, well past Alex, where the young ninja turned in a somersault before his Ariados grappled onto the next building.
Hierro cruised up to his trainer and cast Alex a significant glance. “Yeah, he’s pretty good,” Alex admitted. “But we’re just getting warmed up, right?” They glided down to a ledge of a taller building and raced up the fire escape to the roof, the highest point for several blocks. As Alex judged his jump, Kaito shot up past him, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.
“Winded yet, old man?”
“I’m not even ten years older than you! And no!” He pointed northeast, towards a shadowy patch of Greenpoint, north of the Warren. “That’s where we’re headed. You up for that?”
“Easy.”
“Then let’s get moving!” Alex launched himself off the ledge, cutting through the air like an arrow before spreading his wings wide to generate lift. Hierro clawed his way up to a higher vantage point before back flipping off the radio transmitter affixed to the top of the tower, soaring over Alex’s head on soundless wings, his razor-sharp eyes scanning the rooftops below for their next jump point. Kaito whispered a command to Hanzo, and the Ariados affixed a length of silk to the building they stood on before Kaito jumped, using the thread as a bungee cord to arrest their fall. When the cable snapped taunt, Hanzo detached the silk and swung them over to the next building, using the two-strand technique to launch Kaito skyward again.
In no time at all, they had cleared the Avenbrooke line, and began to soar over the twisting, narrow streets of Greenpoint. When Alex and Kaito landed atop a long warehouse, both young men were panting slightly and trying hard not to show it. “So,” Alex said as he tried to discreetly catch his breath and roll a cramp out of his shoulder, “you want to be a hero. Have you given any thought to your hero name?”
“Only like every day for a year,” Kaito replied. “I’m going to be Spinarak Man!”
Alex glanced down at Hierro, and the Hawlucha cringed. “Uh… are you sure?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know, I just don’t see a Spinarak themed hero catching on.” Alex patted Kaito on the shoulder. “It’s okay, we’ll workshop it.”
Kaito rolled his eyes, but Alex was already moving on. He was loathe to admit it, but the young Kuromori was keeping him on his toes. The kid was more than capable of keeping up with him, and his instincts and agility seemed to live up to his boasting.
When they reached the Warren, Kaito was even more in his element. The narrow byways and chaotic jumble of roofs proved ideal for him to swing his way through, even as Alex struggled to find buildings high enough to jump from and maintain a steady glide. Kaito’s footing was steady and sure on even the most lopsided and slippery of shingles and roof tiles. The wary denizens of the Warren ducked into the shadows as they watched the hero and the ninja pass overhead, undoubtedly thinking that Kaito was a full-fledged Kuromori being pursued by one of the city’s heroes and not wanting to get caught in the middle of their fight.
As they neared the edge of the Warren, a scream echoed from below. Alex and Hierro immediately angled their flight path to investigate, and saw an older woman shielding two young children behind her as a pair of pale, sunken-eyed men advanced, each one holding a knife. A Growlithe crouched at the woman’s heels, snarling at the attackers. When the fire type lunged forward, a Drowzee emerged from the shadows behind the men and hurled it backwards with a psychic pulse. A Murkrow jumped from the second man’s shoulder to attack it again, but before it crossed even half of the distance, Hierro screamed down from the sky and slammed the bird into the pavement. Alex was only a heartbeat behind, dropping into a roll and coming up with his stun batons in hand. Before the Drowzee managed to launch an attack, Alex had brought his baton down on its proboscis and overloaded the psychic organ with as much voltage as his baton could muster.
The men snarled and hurled out two more pokeballs, summoning a Raticate and Ninjask. Alex and Hierro dropped back to stand in front of the woman and the two children. “Don’t worry,” Alex said. “My buddy and I will keep you safe.” One of the kids whimpered, but the woman, probably their grandmother given her apparent age, nodded to Alex and pressed the children further back.
Alex noted that the two men had severely sunken cheeks, and the veins on their arms had darkened to nearly black and strained against their skin. That meant they were somnambulists, so desperate for their next hit of dream dust that they had taken to skulking the back alleys of the Warren to mug the already-destitute of what little they had left. Addicts like this were becoming more and more common lately as the Sins’ drug pushers stepped up their campaign to spread dream dust even further.
Narcotics wards and shelters were overflowing, but plenty of addicts were slipping through the cracks. The psychic effects of the drug were proving highly potent, and from what Alex heard, Noboru Takeda was no closer to a curative drug. Taking down somnambulists always made Alex feel a little guilty, but when they started attacking innocent people, he felt that his duty was clear. He had to protect those immediately in danger before he started trying to solve all of society’s ills.
When the Raticate pounced, Hierro darted forward, slamming his fist into the normal type’s snout. In the Warren, Hierro knew better than to ignite his claws; too many of the old tenement buildings were made of wood, and all it would take was an errant spark and the whole district would go up like a powder keg. The two men with knives circled, but Alex focused instead on the Ninjask. The bug type surged forward, its wings humming as it closed in.
Alex jumped to put himself in the insect’s path, but the Ninjask swerved away, circling around the hero before Alex could react and making a beeline for the older woman. “Too slow!” Kaito shouted from over Alex’s head, and a length of silver-white silk shot past Alex’s field of vision, hitting the Ninjask’s thorax and sticking fast.
Kaito landed in a crouch, one hand tracking up to the silk thread extending from Hanzo’s mandibles. As soon as he touched the ground, the young ninja yanked the thread and spun on the balls of his feet, jerking the Ninjask back and hurling it into the chest of its trainer. The second somnambulist rushed at Kaito, but the Kuromori heir danced back, out of range of the clumsy knife strike. As soon as his weight settled on his back foot, he pushed off it and jabbed his fingers into a series of pressure points, making the man’s arm go numb. Kaito seized the knife as it fell, even as the somnambulist pulled his left hand back for a punch. Hanzo sprang off his partner’s back, falling on the man with a shriek and a flurry of limbs.
Kaito flicked his fingers, and the stolen knife tumbled end-over-end through the air, sinking up to its handle into the second somnambulist’s right shoulder just as he managed to struggle free of his Ninjask. Kaito sprinted towards him, laying the man flat with a right hook to the side of his face.
Just as Kaito turned to grin at Alex, an invisible force lifted him off his feet and hurled him against the wall of the alley. Alex whirled and threw one of his batons to Hierro. The Hawlucha snatched it out of the air, and hero and pokemon each delivered a blow to the Drowzee, knocking it out for a second time.
After making sure the two somnambulists were out of the fight, Alex took their pokeballs and returned all four of their pokemon as Hanzo spun the two men into a cocoon. Once that was taken care of, Alex crouched in front of Kaito and helped him to his feet. “Sorry, that one’s on me. I thought I took care of the Drowzee.”
“Nah,” Kaito groaned as he massaged his back. “I should have seen it coming. I got overconfident.” He quirked up an eyebrow. “But I doing was pretty awesome up until then, right?”
“It was… competent.”
“Oh, come on! I basically took those guys all on my own.” He grinned at Alex. “Sure, maybe I need a bit more practice, but am I hero material or what?”
“You know, the other Kuromori I’ve met aren’t nearly as talkative as you.” Alex softened the words with a smile. “Still, you’ve got potential.” He turned to the woman. “Are you going to be able to get home from here? My sidekick and I can—”
“I’m not a sidekick!”
“We can escort you, if you need it.”
The woman shook her head. “We’ll manage, I think. It’s just another block.” She smoothed her Growlithe’s fur. “Thank you for your help. If you hadn’t come by…”
“All part of the job, ma’am.” Alex snapped off a jaunty salute, and Hierro copied him. “When things go bump in the night, the heroes of Clarus City are there to keep you safe.” Hierro jumped into the air, and Hanzo latched onto Kaito’s back. The three of them ascended to the rooftops, and the Ariados sent down a length of silk for Alex to grab onto. The bug type hauled him up, and Alex watched as the woman herded the two children around the corner and into the safety of their tenement building before taking off at a run over the rooftops of the Warren again.
“You know, I could get used to that,” he remarked to Kaito as they ran.
“What, the me saving your ass part, or the free lift up a building part?”
“Both, if I’m honest.”
Once they were clear of the Warren, it only took them a short while to reach their destination. As they got closer, Alex had them drop down to the ground level so that he could read the street signs. When they finally arrived at the address the Shadow had told him about, an old gray house on loan from the Clarus Archdiocese, Kaito paused at the base of the stoop.
“What is this? I thought I was coming with you?”
“Kaito, I live in a studio apartment that’s not really big enough for me, Hierro and my Skitty. I can barely afford to feed the three of us most of the time. I can’t take care of you, but this place can.” At Kaito’s stricken look, Alex put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m just a phone call away. If you need anything, I’ll be there to help, I promise. You want to be a hero, and I support that. But you’re also what, fifteen, sixteen? You deserve to be a normal kid for at least a little while.”
“During the day. Just during the day.” Kaito folded his arms. “At night, I’m going to be a hero. Like you.”
“Sure. I don’t know if Shepherd Matt is going to agree, but I’m sure as hell not going to stop you. Come on.” He led Kaito up the steps to the doors of St. Ulfi’s House and pressed the buzzer. After a few minutes, a bedraggled man appeared at the door in his pajamas, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“What? Can I… oh. Hello, Hawlucha Man.”
“Shepherd Matthew, I need to call in a favor.”
The Arcean Shepherd blinked sleepily. “I’m not sure what I can do for you but the Lord does say—”
Alex motioned Kaito forward. “He needs a place to stay. His father died recently, and his mother... uh…”
“She’s gone too,” Kaito said.
Alex glanced at the Shepherd. “He needs somewhere to go, and I remembered that the Shadow, that is, Bridget, she said…”
Matthew seemed to shake himself awake. “Right. Of course. St. Ulfi’s House will take in any youth who has nowhere to go. Please, come with me, ah… I didn’t catch your name.”
“Kaito,” the young man said. “Kaito Kur… Kurama.”
“Yes, well, right this way…”
The Shepherd walked into the house, and Kaito moved to follow him. He paused on the threshold, and Alex gave him an encouraging smile. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll be here whenever you need me. I promise.” He told the young ninja his phone number, and made sure Kaito committed it to memory. “Any time you need me, just call.”
“And you’ll help me be a hero, like you?”
Alex put his hand over his heart. “I promise.” When Kaito stepped inside, Hanzo skittering at his heels, Alex walked down the stairs to the street, where Hierro waited. The two of them walked down the street, scanning the alleys for a suitable fire escape to climb back up to the rooftops. As they walked, Alex wondered if this would have been what Johannes wanted. Certainly, the Hammer had often talked about passing the torch of heroism down to the rising generation, but Alex knew that being a hero was a heavy burden to bear. He wasn’t sure if he should have tried to dissuade Kaito from such a course, especially at such a young age. But the young Kuromori was certainly skilled, and his prowess would undoubtedly be an asset in the fighting to come. Alex kicked a pebble down the sidewalk and sighed. He could only hope to be half the mentor to Kaito that Johannes had been to him, and to do everything he could to keep the young ninja safe.
And if he was honest, he was eager to Hanzo in action again. The Ariados’s use of silk for maneuverability and combat had piqued Alex’s interest, and he could get used to an easy way to scale the face of buildings. Maybe having a young sidekick wasn’t such a bad idea after all…
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Post by Firebrand on Jul 20, 2019 15:51:55 GMT
Chapter 33
Alex sprinted across a rooftop and hurled himself into the air, angling towards the rattle of gunshots several blocks distant. The roars and bellows of powerful pokemon clashing echoed in the night air, and gouts of fire shot up over the tops of buildings. Police sirens screamed as the officers of the Eleventh hastened to cordon off the fighting, and panic was rising in the streets.
The clash had erupted out of nowhere. Alex and Hierro had just rendezvoused with Detective Reyes to make an arrest on a dream dust supplier when an explosion lit up the sky some ways distant. The police dispatch radio in Reyes’s cruiser reported that a building belonging to one of the Baron’s shell companies had been attacked, and Sin cutters were now moving on the location. Alex assumed that since Dominion had cemented her hold on the other four boroughs, she was moving on Avenbrooke and using her forces to draw the Baron into battle, where she could cripple his organization as ruthlessly and efficiently as she had the Kuromori.
There was no time to reach out to other heroes for backup. From the sound of the reports, fighting was already intense and only getting worse. Even waiting for Echo or the Phantom to cross over from Ridgewood would just give more time to fan the flames. Alex could only hope that the Ronin was somewhere nearby and willing to help, because whatever was happening needed to be nipped in the bud as soon as possible.
Alex and Hierro alighted on a rooftop that overlooked the battleground, and saw several of the Baron’s cutters crouching behind vehicles and pressed into alleyways, taking potshots at the black-clad capos that were hemming them in. Julia Richelieu stood behind an armored truck, barking commands into a cellphone, her Seviper coiling around her heels. Alex ducked into the shadows and surveyed the rest of the Sin force. It didn’t seem like any of the other Sins were present, and the capos Pride had brought with her seemed to be mostly from within her own organization. He didn’t see any Kuromori ninjas or the tattooed muscle-bound northerners that Greed actively recruited, nor did any of Wrath’s ragtag anarchists seem to be in attendance. That, at least, was a small blessing; he need not worry overmuch about bombs or incendiary devices. Perhaps Pride had pulled some of Gluttony’s hired muscle to fill out her numbers, but that was nothing Alex and the Eleventh couldn’t handle.
A Luxio controlled by one of the Baron’s men launched a thunderbolt that arced low to the ground, crackling across the pavement and igniting a bit of spilled gasoline. Two cars nearby exploded into brilliant coronas of fire, and Pride’s people hastened for cover.
Police in riot gear appeared at the edges of Pride’s forces, drawing fire from her cutters, but they were hesitant to advance. Richelieu’s Pyroar stalked forward and expelled a wall of fire on the eastern flank, forcing the police to scramble back as a handful of water types came forward to deal with the flames.
Hierro clacked his beak at Alex and gestured down at the street. Alex nodded and prepared to jump. As much as he didn’t relish the idea of saving the Baron’s men, the top priority was driving the Sin forces out of Avenbrooke. At the very least, the Baron could be counted on to maintain order in the borough, and Alex’s skin crawled at the notion of the underworld falling completely under Dominion’s control.
With a wordless battle cry, he and Hierro shot out over the street and came down swinging on a group of cutters closest to the Baron’s men. Fire blossomed around Hierro’s fists, and Alex knocked two cutters flat with a series of precise punches. A Heliolisk fanned its neck ruff as it gathered a static charge, but Alex stunned it with a hooking roundhouse kick. As the electric type staggered, a Donphan charged out from an alleyway, trampling the reptile under its bulk. The Baron’s cutters charged after the ground type, holding aloft guns, machetes and knives.
A scarred man glanced at Alex as he strode by. “You going to get in our way?”
“Let’s just get these bastards out of our town,” Alex replied. “Those of us left alive can work out our differences afterwards.”
The man nodded and whistled to his Crobat. The purple flying type darted through the air, lashing out with the tiny claws at the tip of its wings. “Giordano is on his way with backup,” the capo continued as he slashed his machete across the torso of one of Pride’s cutters. “If we can hold out until then, he’ll kick these bastards clear out of Avenbrooke.” As he pivoted on his heel, a Servine seized him in its constricting vines and held him in place long enough for its trainer to open the capo’s throat with a backhanded knife slash. The capo’s Crobat screamed as it dove at the Servine, only to explode into a fine mist of blood as one of Pride’s machine gunners turned its fire on the poison type.
Alex swore as he danced away from the dying man and whistled to Hierro. The Hawlucha bounded over to Alex and took up position at Alex’s back, where they could cover each other’s blind spots. Hierro’s breath came in quick gasps as the two of them fended off attacks on all sides, trying to keep the carnage at bay. Alex scanned the chaos, picking out Richelieu some ways distant. There was no guarantee that taking her out of the fight would get her men to retreat, but Alex figured it was worth the gamble.
With the Baron’s capos and Pride’s cutters preoccupied with killing each other, he and Hierro could fight their way through the press and distract her enough that she wouldn’t be able to coordinate her men. If they managed to take her out, so much the better. Alex clicked his tongue to his partner and gestured with a flick of his chin, and that was all Hierro needed. The two of them barreled through the seething melee of humans and pokemon, vaulting over battling pokemon and dispatching Pride’s cutters with quick strikes if they could.
“Hey Richelieu!” Alex shouted. Pride whipped her head around just in time to catch Alex’s fist on her cheek, and the blow sent her reeling. “How about a rematch?” Her Pyroar pounced, but Alex cracked it across the snout with his baton. Hierro dropped out of the sky and slammed her Seviper’s head into the pavement, stunning the poison type long enough for him to kick it into the Pyroar, and both pokemon went down in a tangle of bodies. Pride reached for her sidearm, but before she could line up a shot, Alex closed the distance between them, seized her wrist and twisted.
With a shocked gasp of pain, Richelieu dropped the gun, and Alex kicked it away, where it was crushed by a lumbering Graveller. “You insolent—” Pride hissed, and Alex tightened his grip on her wrist, feeling her bones shift beneath her black combat armor. She ground her teeth and reared back before slamming her forehead against Alex’s. The hero released his grip and staggered backwards as Pride uncoiled her whip.
Alex raced in again, heedless of the ringing in his ears. Pride’s whip cracked as it cut through the air between them, and Alex forced himself not to flinch. Instead, he seized the end of the whip and quickly wrapped it around his hand. “You tried this the last time we tangled,” he growled. “It didn’t work then, and it sure as hell won’t work now!” Pride’s Pyroar had managed to extricate itself from the Seviper’s coils and lunged forward. Alex dragged Pride towards him and circled around her body, putting her between him and the charging fire type. He kicked Pride just below her hip and sent her sprawling forward. The Pyroar stopped just short of charging through his trainer, but the second’s hesitation gave Hierro an opening to race in for a spinning double kick that laid the leonine fire type flat.
As it struggled to rise again, a pressurized gout of water shot past Alex’s field of vision, and the Pyroar was hurled several meters down the street. Alex whirled around and saw Giordano and Genbu stalking through the police cordon. Giordano had traded his usual ill-fitting suit for a flak vest, and a cold fire burned in his eyes. More of the Baron’s capos and enforcers flanked him on both sides, and with a roar they jumped into the fray, paying back Pride’s cutters in blood.
Alex turned back to Pride, only to run up against a translucent wall of hardened light. “Not so fast, kid,” Giordano barked. “You leave Pride to me. The boss said he’d pay out a million bucks to the man who brings in her head.”
Pierre limped out next to the enforcer, and Alex’s heart dropped. The esper’s arms were lined with black veins, and his neck was similarly marked. When some of Pride’s men turned on the pair of them, Pierre thrust out his hand, and another wall appeared, pushing the cutters back. “Just step out of the way, Hawlucha Man,” Pierre rasped. “And then everything can go back to the way it should be.”
Alex stepped in front of Pride’s prone body, but not before making sure Hierro was keeping an eye on her in case she tried to stab him in the back. “You thinking killing her is going to make a difference? If you take her out, Dominion is going to throw everything she has at Avenbrooke! You’ll burn the city to the ground for a million bucks?”
“Every man has his price,” Giordano replied as he raised his gun. “I’m going to give you three seconds to get out my way before I shoot you too.”
“I won’t let you do this.”
Pierre turned to his Mr. Mime. “Mimsy, if you’d be so kind.”
Mimsy grimaced apologetically at Alex before flexing its fingers in front of its face, hurling Alex and Hierro backwards with a psychic shove. Alex slid across the pavement and struggled to regain his balance as Pride leapt at Giordano, a knife appearing in her hand. The hulking man fired off a few shots that went wide, and Richelieu managed to get inside his guard and drive her blade through his body armor, digging into the meat of his shoulder. Giordano bellowed in pain, but before Genbu and Mimsy could respond, the pokemon were attacked by Pride’s reinforcements.
Pride herself stalked towards Pierre, who hastily erected a psychic barrier to protect himself. Richelieu flicked her whip, and the crack made Pierre flinch just enough for him to waver, and his wall to fragment. Before he could conjure another, Pride wrapped a hand around his emaciated throat and lifted his too-frail body several inches in the air. “My boss wants to have a little talk with you,” she hissed. “She’ll make you an offer you simply can’t refuse.”
“Keep your hands off him!” Alex shouted. One of his batons slammed into the small of Richelieu’s back while he brought the other down on the back of her neck. Pride gasped in pain and released her hold on Pierre. The esper scuttled across the ravaged pavement, where Mimsy helped him to his feet. Alex kicked Pride down and leveled his stun baton at the center of her forehead. “Don’t touch him again.”
“It’s always got to be the hard way with you Avenbrookers, huh?” Pride raised a hand to a comm in her ear. “I have the esper, but extraction is proving difficult. Wouldn’t mind a little backup.”
Alex kicked Dominion’s chest again, driving the wind from her lungs. “If you lay a finger on Pierre again, I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” Pride jeered. “I know your methods, Hawlucha Man. You don’t kill. And nothing short of that is going to stop me from seeing this through.”
“He won’t kill you,” someone growled from behind Alex. “Because that’s my job.” Alex felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder and hurl him backwards. “Leave this one to me, kid,” the Ronin snapped as he grabbed Pride by the hair and dragged her to her feet. Richelieu’s Pyroar charged at the Ronin, only to be tackled by Muramasa. The Samurott seized the fire type’s neck in its powerful jaws and shook the feline back and forth before hurling it contemptuously away. When her Seviper coiled to strike, Hierro was on it, his fists blazing.
“Don’t kill her!” Alex shouted to the Ronin. “It’ll just make things with Dominion worse!”
“No promises,” the Ronin replied, but he settled for driving an uppercut into Pride’s solar plexus, rather than decapitating her out of hand.
“By Arceus, if you do, I’ll take you down too.”
The Ronin’s eyes flicked to Alex, and Alex braced himself to fight the other vigilante. “Fine,” the swordsman finally spat. “That damn esper is what they want, right? Get him the hell out of here.”
Alex and Hierro sprinted towards Pierre, standing over Giordano’s bleeding form. The esper’s head lolled on his neck, and his eyes were vacant as he held up a shining box of hardened light in the air around him. Mimsy cowered at Pierre’s heels, his face buried in his hands. “Pierre!” Alex shouted, pounding on the psychic barrier. “You need to get out of here! Pride is here for you! If you hide, she’ll—”
Pierre’s head slowly tracked to look at Alex, but there was no intelligence behind the esper’s eyes. His gaze was a thousand miles away, and Alex realized the psychic walls around him were an instinctive panic response, rather than a conscious effort. Alex pounded on the walls as hard as he could, but they didn’t so much as crack. “Pierre!” he screamed. “Listen to me! If you just come with me, I can help you! I promise, things are different now! I’ll make sure no one hurts you again! I can do it! I can save you!” But the esper’s mind was too far gone, addled from months with dream dust. Alex threw his entire weight behind a final punch, pouring all of his frustration into the blow, but it only rippled against the translucent wall. This should never have happened, he thought. Pierre should never have been dragged into this.
“On the contrary.” A chill went down Alex’s spine as he felt an oppressive weight press down on his mind. “Mr. Espalier is exactly where he’s supposed to be.”
Alex took a deep breath and squared his shoulders before turning around. Dominion calmly strolled through the chaos and bloodshed, the combatants veering away from her like puppets jerked on strings. She flicked her fingers at the Ronin, and he dropped Richelieu with a startled gasp. Alex shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, and saw Hierro puff out his feathers in his peripheral vision. “Leave Pierre alone,” Alex said. “He doesn’t deserve any of this.”
Alex felt Dominion sifting through his thoughts, digging into his memories. He tried to empty his mind, to block her out like Joshua had tried to teach him, but he could tell from the esper’s triumphant smirk that he hadn’t been successful. “Pierre was your first failure, then?” Dominion said. “The only one you could never save. Yes, passed around from gang to gang, taking on odd jobs, and all he ever wanted was a friend. But you could never be that, could you? Because he was a villain. He was on the wrong side, and there was always some excuse why you couldn’t be what he needed.”
Her eyes flashed gold, and Alex was thrown backwards against Pierre’s barrier. Dominion stalked forward, her hair dancing around her head. “So it was always off to asylums, institutions, and hospitals, where they confined him in small, dank cells and treated him like a monster. And you always told yourself it was justified, because he was caught in a system you couldn’t fight, something too big for even an up-jumped brat like you to bring down with a few punches.” The telekinetic push grew stronger with each step forward Dominion took, and Alex struggled to draw breath as the pressure built on his lungs. “Pierre belongs with me. I can finally be the kindred spirit he needs. Only I can help him out of the pit you cast him into.” She snapped her fingers, and Pierre’s barrier shattered into glittering dust.
Pierre collapsed in a heap over Giordano’s back, and the Baron’s lieutenant groaned. Dominion walked past Alex and cupped his face in one manicured hand. “I can heal you, Pierre. Will you come with me?”
The dazed look in Pierre’s eyes cleared for just a moment, and he nodded. Dominion smiled and helped him to his feet. “You poor thing. They saw you throw up your walls, but they never understood why. All this time, and no one ever realized that you were an empath. Why, I’m not even sure you did.” She handed him off to Mimsy and clucked her tongue. “Even the strongest walls can’t keep out all the negative thoughts when they’re beating them straight into your brain, and they don’t even know they’re doing it.”
“You signed a contract, Espalier,” Giordano gasped. He heaved himself up to his knees, and Alex was amazed to see that he was even breathing after Pride’s attack. “You’re the Baron’s man, from the time you signed that contract until the day you die! That’s the deal!”
“The Baron is quickly becoming yesterday’s news,” Dominion replied. She drew a small sidearm and shot Giordano in the chest. The giant man collapsed again, and Dominion aimed a kick at his head. Alex noted she had traded her stilettos for combat boots. “Mr. Espalier is just trading up.” She glanced across the space of calm at the heart of the raging melee and locked eyes with Pride. “Julia, follow me.”
As Pride limped towards her, a second gunshot rang out. Dominion staggered as a blossom of blood appeared on her shoulder. “Not another step,” Reyes said, his gun smoking. “CCPD. Put your hands in the air!” His Noctowl spread her wings on his shoulder, her eyes glowing crimson.
Dominion gritted her teeth and whirled on the detective. Alex saw Reyes’s finger twitch on the trigger, but there was no second shot. “I don’t have time for this,” Dominion grumbled. Reyes stiffened and turned slowly towards the Ronin. The ghost of a smile played across Pride’s lips as she watched Reyes’s arm shake while Dominion drew out the moment. “Take your shot, detective. We both know you’ve wanted your chance at Avenbrooke’s most notorious mass murderer for a long time. I’ll even hold him still for you.” Muramasa growled low in his throat and braced to attack the detective. But for all the Samurott’s fearsome power, it couldn’t outrun a bullet.
Alex acted without thinking. Before Dominion could give Reyes another mental shove, he tackled the detective to the ground, making the gun misfire. The sound seemed to shock the Ronin out of his trance, and he and his pokemon whirled on Dominion. “Whatever else the Ronin is,” Alex said, “he’s stood with the heroes. We still need him in this fight.” Reyes ground his teeth, but nodded.
The Ronin and Muramasa charged, but Dominion froze them both with a contemptuous flick of her index and middle fingers. She glared at Hawlucha Man, and Alex felt the invisible weight of her gaze bearing down on him. “You,” she said, “have been a thorn in my side for far too long. It is clear that Pierre harbors some small affection for you, and so I had thought to let you live this time as a kindness to him. But if you insist on interfering, then you leave me no choice.” She brought her gun around and smirked. “I’ve killed the Hammer and forced Blaziken Man into exile. Tonight, I’ll kill two more of Clarus’s so-called ‘heroes’. I daresay, I’m on a ro—”
Hierro slammed an uppercut into Dominion’s jaw, making her teeth clack together. The esper staggered back, clutching her face. “Julia!” she shrieked. “Destroy them!”
Pride nodded. “Lyceus! Tiamat!” Her Pyroar was the first to respond, slashing out at Hierro with glittering claws. The Hawlucha danced backward, trading blow for blow until the fire type scored a clean hit across his chest. Hierro stumbled and fell backwards, and fire pooled in the back of the Pyroar’s throat. Enraged as it was, and at that range, Alex knew that a fire attack would be lethal, so he moved as quickly as he could to put himself between his partner and the Pyroar.
He recalled once, it seemed like ages ago, that Jiro had told him that his suit had been designed to be fireproof. He had little occasion to put it to the test, but now was as good a time as any. He spread his arms wide and opened his wings as far as he could, shielding Hierro’s body with his own. Hierro’s eyes went wide with panic as fire erupted behind Alex, who gritted his teeth against the sudden painful heat on his back.
Jiro had been as good as his word, and Alex was not immediately consumed by the flames. The carbon nanofibers of his suit reflected the heat, but the Pyroar didn’t relent. Already, Alex could feel patches of his back growing hotter as the material was compromised. Hierro pressed his claws to the bloodied feathers on his breast, and Alex looked beseechingly at his partner. “Run,” he gasped. The edges of his wings had begun to burn, and he could feel his back blistering under the heat. It was possible that patches had already burned away. “Please.”
It was then that he heard the rasp of scales over pavement, and Hierro forced himself to his feet. The Pyroar’s flames stopped, and Alex turned his head just enough to see Pride’s Seviper poised to strike, its violet fangs dripping with venom. Hierro shoved Alex aside and ignited his fists as the serpent lunged, burying its fangs in Hierro’s shoulder. The Hawlucha seized up as the poison surged into his bloodstream, but he managed to land one explosive punch that forced the Seviper to recoil. Hierro staggered, and before he could brace himself to fight, the Seviper had brought its poisonous tail around, driving the spiked blade through Hierro’s abdomen and wrenching it out. Alex was too shocked to even scream.
Hierro fell to his knees, blood pouring from the wound. His gaze locked on Alex’s, and his eyes were wild with panic. “No,” Alex whispered. “No, no, no. Hang in there. It’s going to… we can… oh Arceus, Hierro, I’m so sorry, I…”
The Seviper drew back again, and Alex knew it was his turn now. His back screamed in pain, but he forced himself to draw his batons and face the poison type. “Bring it on.
A golden blade made of coral pinned the Seviper to the pavement, piercing it all the way through. The Seviper shrieked in pain and tried to sink its fangs into Muramasa, but the Ronin cut off its head as he swept by, felling the beast in a spray of venomous blood. The swordsman swung his sword around and slashed Pride’s Pyroar along its flank, making the beast howl.
Alex rushed to Hierro, but a sudden pain bloomed in his chest. He looked down to see a red spot of blood spreading against his dark suit. “What?” Dominion smirked as she lined up her gun for another shot, and the sudden flash of pain came again. Alex dropped to his knees and clutched his chest, trying to staunch the blood. Dominion walked forward and leveled her gun at Alex’s forehead.
“Stop,” the Ronin snarled. “If you so much as twitch, it’s her head.” He had his sword leveled at Pride’s neck. “I just tempered this blade in Seviper venom. I could kill her with a tiny cut.”
“You know I could stop you.”
“Not before I moved a fraction of an inch, you psychic bitch.”
Dominion glared at him. “You think I give a damn about Julia?”
“I think you care about her manpower. If she goes down, how many of her capos are going to break ranks and take their cutters with them? They fear you, but they respect her.”
“It would mean your death, Ronin.”
“Yeah, and the Baron would have to drop a fortune on my funeral.” The Ronin smiled ruefully. “It’s not a bad way to go.”
“Marinette,” Pride whispered. “You promised me power if I served you. I’ve kept my end of the bargain.”
Dominion’s eyes flicked between Alex and Pride. The Ronin shifted his blade. “Leave the boy alone. I’ll give you to the count of three. Two…”
Dominion slowly lowered her gun, but Alex barely noticed. His vision was darkening, and his breath was coming in shallow gasps. A small, rational part of his brain knew he was going into shock, but he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do. He couldn’t even feel his limbs.
A gunshot sounded behind Alex as Giordano heaved himself up. “Get the hell out of my town.” Dominion staggered as a wound appeared on her left leg.
“You insolent—”
Another bang, and a second gunshot wound appeared on Dominion’s right leg. She buckled, and a Goethite appeared beside her. As quickly as it appeared, it vanished, taking Dominion along. It reappeared a second later, this time whisking away Pierre, Pride and her Pyroar. Pride’s cutters began to retreat, disengaging from the Baron’s men as best they could.
Alex fell forward onto the pavement, but his hand reached out towards Hierro. He felt the Hawlucha’s claw and closed his fingers around the talons. He heard heavy footfalls rush over to him, nicotine-scented hands feeling for his pulse. “Damn it, detective, call the fucking EMTs!” the Ronin shouted. The vigilante’s hands patted around Alex’s belt and removed Hierro’s pokeball, and Alex felt Hierro’s claw disappear from his hands.
“Is the Hawlucha stable enough to transport that way?” Reyes asked.
“It’s better than carrying it in my damn hands!” the Ronin snapped back. Alex was lifted up, and he dimly registered the smell of blood, sweat and stale cigarettes in the Ronin’s coat. “Hang in there, kid,” the older man said softly. “I won’t let you go. I’m not losing another one.”
Alex must have blacked out, because when he rose to consciousness again, he was strapped down to a gurney in the back of an ambulance with EMTs hovering over him. Everything hurt, but he saw the Ronin sitting just beyond them, his face grim. He tried to reach out a hand, to strain against the straps, but the pain was overwhelming. “H-Hierro,” he gasped.
“He’s awake!” one of the EMTs said. “Get me a sedative! We can’t let him damage himself more!”
“Hierro!” Alex tried to shout as the needle went into his arm. He strained against the restraints, digging gouges into his wrists. “Please, you need to… he’s my… Hierro…”
And then everything went black.
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Post by Firebrand on Aug 11, 2019 15:26:50 GMT
Chapter 34
The ambient throb of steady pain drew Alex out of unconsciousness. As he struggled to his senses, he tried to take stock of his body. Nothing felt broken, but all sensation was distant and dulled. The fact that he was waking up at all meant he wasn’t dead, so there was that.
He stirred, and felt the slow drag of an IV drip in his arm. “Hey, easy,” someone said to his left, the voice vaguely familiar through the haze of painkillers. “Don’t try to move, you’ll bust your stitches.” Reyes moved into Alex’s field of view and rested a hand on his shoulder. “You had us worried for a bit there, Hawlucha Man.”
“Hierro?” Alex croaked, searching Reyes’s face for some kind of sign.
“He’s alive,” the detective said. “And he’s stable. But he’s in bad shape, worse than you were.”
Alex cringed and sank back against the thin pillow. “Where am I?” he rasped.
“We’ve got you in a private ward at Metro General. We’ve had you guarded ever since you went into the ICU. The Ronin wanted to be the one to do it, but we sent him off after he got patched up. He was scaring the doctors.”
“How long was I out?”
“They kept you under for five days while you recovered. Dominion’s a lousy shot, but they were clean hits. Once the surgeons got the bullets out of you, they sewed you right up.” Reyes pulled a chair closer to Alex’s bed. “While you were in surgery, the docs ran some tests. They told the captain that your body is showing signs of tremendous long-term physical strain. Arceus, kid, how hard have you been pushing yourself?”
“As hard as I need to, to keep the city safe.”
Reyes put a hand on his arm. “You’ve been out of commission for most of a week. Clarus is still standing.” He gave Alex’s shoulder a squeeze, though Alex barely felt it. “You’ve got to take better care of yourself.”
Alex reached up and felt his face. “My mask… how many people saw me? My secret identity…”
“The captain had to run your face through the system, so he knows. As far as the doctors are concerned, you’re just John Doe.”
“What about you?”
“The captain didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. I know what you look like under that hood now, but that’s about it.” Reyes pursed his lips into a thin line. “With that psychic bitch running around, the less I know, the better.” He sighed and looked down. “Listen, kid. I’m sorry for what happened back there.”
Alex tried to brush off the detective’s concern. “We all take a few hits in the line of duty, Reyes. I know what I signed up for.”
The detective cut Alex off with a curt wave of his hand. “You and Hierro got hurt because I couldn’t do my job. I had Dominion dead to rights, but she twisted me around her finger without breaking a sweat.”
“You’re hardly the only one.”
“If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed the Ronin, and then she probably would have had me kill you too. It was just so damn easy for her to—”
“Reyes,” Alex broke in. “You’re not the first person Dominion has hijacked. It takes years of training to resist an esper with even half of her power. I don’t blame you for what happened, and I doubt Hierro or the Ronin do either.”
“You’re a more generous man than I would be in your position.”
Alex struggled to push himself up into a sitting position again. “Comes with the territory, I guess. Heroes have to moral paragons and whatnot.” Alex smiled through the fresh wave of pain his movements brought on.
Reyes rolled his eyes and patted Alex’s knee. “Whatever you say. But I owe you one for this. You need anything, all you have to do is ask.”
“I’ll put it on your tab. But actually, there is one thing.” Alex gestured to a folded wheelchair in the corner of the room. “Can you bring me to Hierro? I need to see him.”
Reyes shook his head. “I wish I could, kid. But the doctors say they don’t want you being moved around for another little while. I’ll come back again tomorrow and see what they have to say. I promise.”
***
Alex continued to lapse in and out of consciousness, marking time by the passage of the sunlight and shadows on the walls of his room. The time he spent while conscious was split between gritting his teeth at the various aches and pains of his body and worrying about Hierro. Despite his doctors’ continued insistence that he was in no shape to be moved, Alex tried to convince each of them that his condition would be markedly improved if he could just see his partner. At some point, a basket of fruit had arrived from Isabelle, accompanied by a small card wishing him a speedy recovery, in a somewhat roundabout fashion. Alex figured she meant well behind all the berating him for rushing in like an idiot, and after all, she had told him that she would personally settle all of his medical expenses, since he was probably too much of a moron to have good insurance.
The next time he was conscious, a card had arrived from Edgar, expressing his regret that he couldn’t come in person, since he was presently occupied consolidating his power within Harcourt Ltd., and to visit a John Doe in Metro General might allow certain underworld elements to compromise both of their secret identities. It did, however, extort him to call Edgar on his private line if he needed anything to speed along his recovery, and mentioned that he had tried to cover Alex’s hospital bill only to find that Isabelle had beaten him to the punch.
When he woke around midmorning, he saw that the chair Reyes had sat in several hours previously was now occupied by the Ronin. The scarred silver-haired man was glowering at a trio of nurses. “Good, you’re awake,” the Ronin said. “Tell them to buzz off.”
“He’s a friend,” Alex managed to say. “Really, it’s fine.” When the nurses left, the Ronin shook his head and reached into the pocket of his jacket for a cigarette. “I don’t think you’re supposed to do that in here,” Alex said.
“Yeah, and?” the Ronin replied, raising his lighter. Alex gave him a hard look, and the swordsman relented. “Fine, I’ll do it outside.” He rolled his eyes. “Damn heroes, I swear.”
After a moment of sitting in silence, Alex cleared his throat. “Thanks for coming. And for saving me.”
“Yeah, well, taking care of a whole borough on my own is too much work.”
“Reyes mentioned that you wanted to stay behind and keep watch while I was out.”
The Ronin leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “Just wanted to be thorough. Who knows who Dominion’s sunk her claws into? I’ve been coming back every day to make sure no one gets you while you’re out.”
“Apparently you kind of freak out the doctors.”
“More like I freak out the cops. They know I saved their asses, but as far as they’re concerned, I’m just as bad as the Sins. Worse, probably. They just don’t like that they can’t figure out what side I’m on.”
“Whose side are you on?”
The Ronin was quiet for a minute, and Alex could tell he was mulling over his words. Finally, he shrugged. “You know I don’t give a damn about all this heroes and villains, cops and robbers crap. As far as I’m concerned, there’s just people who can get hurt and people who are doing the hurting. And then lately, there’s been people who are getting between the bad guys and the victims. That’s the kind of person I want to be, someone who’s going to get in the way of the next mean bastard and make him think twice about hurting someone who can’t protect themselves.
“I used to think I was on my own side, but you have a point with all your do-gooder self-help motivational crap. We are stronger when we stand together, and we need to be pretty damn strong to knock this Dominion bitch down a few pegs. So if anyone asks, I’m on your side, kid.” The Ronin held up a finger. “But let me make something clear. Your side, not Blaziken Man’s side, or Volcarona Mask’s, or the police, or whoever’s. You’ve stuck your neck out for me a couple times, so I’m going to return the favor.”
“Avenbrooke’s gotta stick together.”
“You’re damn right.” The Ronin pushed a few strands of limp silver hair back from his forehead. “Once you get back on your feet and you go to pay Dominion back with interest, make sure to count me in.” The swordsman grinned, stretching his lips back to expose his canines. “It’ll be a damn fine way to die.”
“Who said anything about dying?”
“Everyone’s number comes up sometime. If you’re going to go, you might as well go out doing something worthwhile.” Before Alex could respond, the Ronin pushed himself to his feet and crossed to the door. “I’ve had Muramasa keeping an eye on your buddy downstairs. Seems like he has a bit of a soft spot for the little guy.” The Ronin touched two fingers to his brow in salute before walking out. “When he wakes up, give him our best.”
***
The next day, Alex had managed to level himself up to a sitting position and move his limbs without debilitating pain. As he took stock of his various aches and tested his extremities, he heard someone knock on the doorframe. “Some mentor you turned out to be,” Kaito Kuromori said as he slouched through the door. “But whatever man, it’s cool, I’m used to fending for myself.”
“Sorry.” Alex grimaced. “Have you been… is everything, uh…?”
“Hanzo and I are keeping an eye on Avenbrooke while you’re laid up,” Kaito said. “So just focus on getting better. If you’re going to teach me how to be a great hero, I need you in top form.” He sat down next to Alex’s bed and took in the assortment of IVs and monitors that Alex was hooked up to. “Are you feeling… um, okay?”
“Under the circumstances,” Alex gestured down at his bandaged torso. “I’m doing as well as can be expected. I won’t be vaulting off tall buildings for a little while though.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” a new voice said from the hall. “The new kid does your job better than you, birdbrain.” The Shadow slunk around the corner and picked up an apple from Isabelle’s fruit basket. “You look like shit.”
“Your concern is touching.”
Kaito nodded to Bri. “Hey, Shadow.”
“Hey, new kid.”
Alex glanced between them. “You know each other?”
“Shepherd Matt told me he had a new ward who was slipping out at night,” Bri replied. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him as a favor.”
“Gave me a hand once or twice,” Kaito added.
Alex shook his head. “Of all the people in Clarus City, you had to fall in with her?”
“And what’s that supposed to mean, birdbrain?”
“I mean that you’re a bad influence.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, you’re probably right.” Bri reached out and touched Alex’s shoulder, and her expression softened. “When I heard what happened, I was really worried. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it sooner, but I needed to be sure it was safe to see you. If Dominion had her cutters prowling around, it wouldn’t do anyone any good if we both ended up dead.”
Alex inclined his head. “I get it. How are things out in the city right now? Everyone else has been cagey with me.”
Kaito and Bri shared a look. “It’s been quiet,” Kaito finally said. “But it’s too quiet. Everyone’s circling around and planning their next move. Dominion hasn’t made any aggressive plays, but she’s cracking down on the territory she does have. I’ve heard that the Cavalier has stepped up their game and are keeping the Kuromori in check on their side of the river.”
Bri nodded. “The Eleventh and the Baron’s men took pretty bad beatings, so they’re licking their wounds. Captain Ito from the Sixth has diverted some of her manpower from Greenpoint to help cover the Eleventh’s beat just in case, but the Baron is keeping a low profile anyway. The Sins haven’t made any more trouble in Avenbrooke as far as I know.” She leaned in. “Just between us three, I heard that Dominion got shot. The rumor mill says you were squaring up with her, so did you see what went down?”
“I know Detective Reyes from the Eleventh clipped her shoulder,” Alex replied. “Then Hierro and I got beat up pretty bad, so I’m a little hazy on the next bit, but I think Giordano got her too.”
“Oh man,” Bri said. “I hope Pirozzi stuck Bruce somewhere safe, because Dominion’s going to be on the warpath when she gets back on her feet.”
“What about the other heroes?” Alex asked. “Are they holding the line?”
“Far as we can tell. The Phantom and Echo are coordinating more with Ito in Greenpoint to keep the streets clean,” Kaito reported. “Volcarona Mask has uptown and midtown secure, and Captain Unova’s stepped up his patrols downtown. Haven’t heard much from the Gunslinger, but I’d guess he’s backing up Cavalier same as usual. Still, one guy taking potshots doesn’t make the headlines when there’s a knight storming around fighting ninjas every night.”
“I’ve heard that the Dryad has been raiding Sin safe houses all over the west side,” Bri said. “Freelancers like me are packing up shop across the river and going to ground. As far as the underworld is concerned, once her grass types move in, there goes the neighborhood.”
“I heard she leveled a couple warehouses the Sins were using to run guns, and then used some Sasaki money to buy up the land and start a new arboretum right in the heart of the industrial district.” Kaito said, his voice carrying an undercurrent of awe. “The Sins cleared out of the nearby complexes pretty quick once a couple of her Torterra put down roots.”
“Speaking of Sasaki,” Alex said, “is he still…?”
“Yeah,” Bri sighed. “Blaziken Man seems content to sit up in his tower while the rest of the city goes up in smoke.” She didn’t try to hide the bitterness in her tone. “I know we’re not technically on the same side or whatever, but it seems like life was a hell of a lot better for everyone when Dominion was still worried about Blaziken Man kicking her ass.”
Alex chewed his lip. A part of him wanted to defend his mentor, because of course no one else could understand what had happened in Dominion’s bunker during the heroes’ raid, and how Jiro had convinced himself that his failure to resist the esper there was what had caused Johannes’s death. But he couldn’t help but agree with the thief. Jiro Sasaki had set up Blaziken Man as a symbol of hope for Clarus City, but when the city needed him more than ever, he disappeared into his tower above the clouds, leaving everyone else to deal with the mess he had left behind. Alex wasn’t sure if the selfishness or the cowardice bothered him more.
Because he had been in the bunker too. He had felt the suffocating pressure of Dominion taking control of his mind just like Jiro had, and if he got right down to it, Johannes’s death was just as much his fault as it was Jiro’s. But Alex didn’t have a skyscraper to hide in, and when Dominion showed up on his home turf, he hasn’t hesitated to square up with her again, even if he knew damn well he couldn’t win.
Well, Blaziken Man had claimed the whole of Clarus City as his home turf, and the Sins had been running roughshod over it while he hid away. And maybe it was unfair of him, but Alex was sure that if Blaziken Man hadn’t been moping around his tower, Dominion would have thought twice about trying to invade Avenbrooke, and maybe Hierro wouldn’t have ended up half dead.
Alex sank back against his pillows with a sigh and closed his eyes. Bri sat up and Kaito turned to the monitors. “Are you okay?” the young man asked. “Should we call someone?”
“I’m fine,” Alex said. “At least, I’m not in pain.” He slowly opened his eyes. “Can I ask a favor of you two?”
Kaito and Bri both nodded. “Sure, just name it,” Kaito said.
“Bring me that wheelchair. I need to go see Hierro.” As the young ninja stood and unfolded the wheelchair, Alex slowly tried to stand up. When he winced in pain as his legs touched the ground, Bri took hold of his arm and helped bear his weight. “The doctors haven’t let me see him the whole time I’ve been here,” Alex said as he struggled to his feet. “They say I’m not strong enough to move around. And I haven’t been able to convince anyone to take me to him.”
Bri helped him into the wheelchair and maneuvered his wheeled IV drip over to his left side. “And you figured that if there was anyone who would aid and abet you in ignoring your doctors’ orders—”
“It would be you two, yeah.”
As Bri pushed Alex out into the hallway, the police officer stationed outside to guard his room stood to attention and moved to interpose himself in front of the wheelchair. “It’s okay, Simmons,” Alex said. “They’re not abducting me. I just want to go see my Hawlucha. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Or you can come along, if you want.” Simmons nodded and fell into step behind them.
As they approached the elevator, a nurse rounded the corner and narrowed his eyes at their procession. “You shouldn’t be out of bed,” he said.
“I need to see my partner,” Alex replied.
Kaito stepped out in front of the nurse and squared his shoulders. Despite being a full head shorter and significantly more wiry than the nurse, he didn’t back down and fixed the nurse with an icy glare. “Are you going to try and stop us?”
The nurse just sighed and waved them on. The four of them boarded the elevator, and Alex pushed the button that would take them down to the pokemon treatment floors. When they arrived, Simmons directed them down a maze of corridors to a wing dedicated to the treatment of flying type pokemon.
Another police officer stopped them at the door, but waved them through when she saw Simmons accompanying them. They finally found Hierro in a small ward that he shared with an injured Togetic. The Hawlucha lay unmoving on a narrow hospital bed, an oxygen mask fitted over his beak. Simmons hung back a respectful distance, and after a moment, Bri and Kaito stepped back too.
Alex wheeled his chair as close to the window as he could and rested his forehead against the glass. From this distance, he could see Hierro’s shallow breathing fogging the mask with each of his partner’s exhalations. The starched white sheet covering Hierro was pulled all the way up to his shoulders, hiding the wounds he had taken defending Alex.
Alex felt his throat constrict as he watched his catatonic partner. Even though Hierro had been stabilized, there was no telling when he would wake up. Even without the extensive injuries he had suffered, the Seviper venom had done significant damage to Hierro’s nervous system, and even the natural healing abilities that all pokemon had were hard-pressed to deal with the cocktail of toxins he had been infected with.
Alex clumsily maneuvered his chair to the door of the ward, startling the Togetic inside as he tried to fit the bulky wheelchair through. When he finally managed it, he jerked his IV in behind him, forcing down the fresh jolt of pain in his shoulder. When Bri made to follow him, Alex held up his hand. “Please, just give me a moment alone with him.” Alex saw the thief nod and stand back. He closed the door behind him and rolled carefully over to Hierro’s bedside. The Togetic nervously flapped its wings and chittered at him, but it seemed to sense Alex’s single-minded focus on its roommate and soon settled back down.
Alex slid his hand under Hierro’s bed sheets and found the Hawlucha’s talons. He carefully interlaced his fingers around Hierro’s and bowed his head over his partner, tears welling in his eyes.
“Come back to me, Hierro. Please, I need you to come back.”
Hierro slept on, unresponsive, his chest rising and falling slowly. Alex tightened his grip on his partner’s hand as teardrops began to dot the sheet.
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Post by Firebrand on Sept 7, 2019 17:05:15 GMT
CHAPTER 35
Condensation beaded under Alex’s hands and dripped slowly down to the cardboard coaster, already liquefying on the old wooden table. Alex had never been one for drinking, but he figured he could nurse a beer or two at O’Flanagan’s to while away a few hours, and maybe watch a few pokemon battles on the courtyard patio. O’Flanagan’s Pangoro lounged in the shade, sprawled on its back with one paw outstretched. A few smaller pokemon squabbled in the center of the packed-earth patio while their trainers drank and chatted. The small pokemon weren’t really battling, just blowing off steam, but Alex carefully tracked their movements all the same. A few larger pokemon skulked around the fringes of the courtyard; Alex saw a regular’s Slowbro, along with a Heracross, an old scarred Charizard, a Poliwrath, and a Lurantis, a rare sight that definitely belonged to a tourist.
The sun was past its zenith, and the shadows in the courtyard were lengthening as the afternoon dragged on. Alex sank listlessly back in his chair, doing the mental arithmetic to see how long he could reasonably stay at O’Flanagan’s and still have money to pick up groceries on the way home. After leaving the hospital a week and a half ago, he had withdrawn from his classes at AIT, ostensibly to return home to Icirrus City in Unova. The registrar had been understanding, letting him know that his scholarships would still be available to him if he were to re-enroll in the future.
With the war in the underworld building to a fever pitch, many of those who could afford to leave Clarus were jumping ship, at least until the dust settled, and Clarus’s various universities and colleges were the hardest hit. Even so, plenty of people were willing to stick it out, and if one were to walk down the streets of any borough in the city, life would seem to be going on more or less as normal. Long-time residents had seen underworld shake ups and slugfests between criminals and the city’s defenders before.
In any event, Alex wasn’t about to turn tail and run home to Unova. He had only withdrawn from his classes because trying to juggle his academic responsibilities with his physical well-being as Hawlucha Man had become untenable, and his stint in the hospital only served to drive that point home. Jiro had never removed him from the Sasaki Industries payroll even after his internship ended, so even with the loss of his academic funding, the small stipend that dropped into his bank account every two weeks had been enough to keep a roof over his head and food on his plate. When it came down to it, if he had to pick between being Alex Alvarez, student, and Hawlucha Man, hero, he would pick Hawlucha Man every time.
If only he could actually be Hawlucha Man.
Hierro was still laid up in the hospital in a medically-induced coma to prevent any further damage to his body if he tried to move. According to Hierro’s doctors, it seemed that Pride had fed her Seviper a specially-designed diet that made the serpent’s venom incredibly potent and dangerous. That, coupled with the other wounds Hierro had suffered in the fighting, had nearly killed him, and the Hawlucha’s scrappy attitude meant that each time he woke he tried to get up and seek Alex out to get back in the game, even though his body wasn’t sufficiently healed.
But even if his partner had been in fighting trim and perfect health, Alex couldn’t be Hawlucha Man. The suit that Jiro had designed for him had been damaged beyond repair by Pride’s Pyroar. Alex worried that now that the underworld had entered into a virtual arms race, if he went back to the materials he used to design his original suit, the next time he wound up in dire straits, the suit would fail him, and he probably wouldn’t escape with his life. Until he could figure out a solution, Hawlucha Man was indefinitely benched.
Alex downed the last of his beer and was about to wave over a server to order another when a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a battered leather jacket pulled out the chair across from Alex with his foot. He plunked down two shot glasses and a bottle of O’Flanagan’s top-shelf whiskey. “This seat taken?” Before Alex could respond, the man sat down, grabbed the bottle poured a generous measure into both glasses. He slid one across the tabletop to Alex and raised the other to his lips. “Drink up, Hawlucha Man.”
Alex’s chair scraped against the ground as he started to rise, but the strange man raised his hand in a placating gesture. “Take it easy. I’m just here for a chat and some company. I get too maudlin when I drink alone. I’m in Clarus on a little personal business, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to say hello.”
“Who are you?” Alex hissed. “How do you know who I am?”
“Well, I’ve got two good eyes in my head, that’s how. I’ve seen you masked up in the papers, and it didn’t take much to match up your body type and face shape with your civilian identity after I catalogued the recorded sightings of Hawlucha Man around Avenbrooke and noted that he’s usually spotted in this neighborhood early in the evening and late at night. I figured your home base would be around here, and that narrowed my search quite a bit. I staked things out for a day or two, and voila! It wasn’t too hard to arrange to run into you.”
Alex was still braced against the table, ready to fight or run. “You still haven’t told me who you are.”
“The name’s Cole Culain. You’re probably too young to remember when I was in the papers, but maybe I was in your history books at school.”
Alex fell back into his chair. “The Cole Culain? From the Skirmishes? You’re the freaking Firebra—”
Cole cut Alex off. “I’ve been called a lot of things,” he said. “War hero, war criminal, traitor, coward. But I’d rather not be called that name again.”
“Right. Sorry. Uh, sir.” Alex glanced at the Charizard lounging some ways distant. “If you’re you, does that mean he’s…”
Cole snapped his fingers. The Charizard looked up and lumbered over, resting his head on Cole’s shoulder. The older man reached up and scratched the orange dragon’s jaw. “Say hello to Prometheus.” Prometheus huffed out a plume of smoke, and rumbled deep enough to shake the glasses on nearby tables in what seemed to Alex like a draconian purr.
Alex could tell his eyes were as wide as saucers. “Wow…” All throughout his childhood, he had heard stories of the semi-legendary Cole Culain, the war hero who had appeared about twenty years before Alex was born to defend Unova in the series of brief and brutal conflicts now known as the Skirmishes that tore across the region. The Kantonian had decisively turned the tide of many battles as he and his Charizard had streaked down from the sky like a pair of avenging angels. Unova’s Kantonian aggressors had done their best to slander his name as a traitor to his country of birth, but Unova had hailed him as their adopted hero.
But once the fighting had ended, the Firebrand had vanished just as quickly as he had appeared. The rumor was that he had retired to a quiet life in some small town in Sinnoh, or at least that was the cover he used while he continued to fly missions for some sort of global peacekeeping outfit. But he had vanished from Sinnoh too, and for years after that, everyone assumed that this time Cole Culain was gone for good, and possibly even dead.
“Are you here to help us fight Dominion?” Alex asked.
Cole shook his head and poured another shot of whiskey. “I gave all that up a long time ago.” He said it with such finality that Alex didn’t dare to press further. “It was time to pass on the torch. My hero days are behind me. I’m just another rootless now.”
The rootless movement had sprung up when Alex was young, mostly among veterans of the Skirmishes. After experiencing the horrors of war, many of the men and women on the front lines had found it impossible to settle back into civilian life, so they packed their bags and wandered around the world with their surviving pokemon partners, in what some said was a misguided attempt to recapture the innocence of their childhood pokemon journeys. By now, the term had come to apply to any adult pokemon trainer who gave into their wanderlust and decided to have a second adventure with pokemon in their middle age.
Alex periodically saw some rootless adults loitering around Clarus City while they restocked on supplies, and they generally were better groomed and less vacant-eyed than the usual transient population. But to think that Cole Culain himself had been hiding in plain sight among the rootless for all these years!
Alex raised his glass and tapped it to the older man’s. “Well, it’s an honor to meet you all the same, sir. And you too, Prometheus. I, uh, had a poster of you two in my room as a kid.”
Cole laughed and threw back another shot. “What kid in Unova doesn’t?” He sighed and set his glass down, making no move to pour himself any more. “I had hoped to catch you and your partner together, but I heard what happened. Is he…?”
“He’ll pull through,” Alex managed to say. “It’s taking a while, and there have been complications, but he’ll… he’ll make it. Hierro’s tough. He’s a fighter.”
“He’s your best friend, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Cole ran his hand along Prometheus’s neck. “I know what it’s like when your partner’s gotten hurt taking a hit for you, and the guilt that comes with feeling like you got off easy.” The Charizard pressed his bulk closer to his trainer, and Alex could feel the heat radiating off the dragon’s body even from across the table. If Cole was at all uncomfortable, he didn’t let it show, and Alex assumed that after all of the years of their partnership, Cole had grown accustomed to the heat the same way Alex could respond to the slightest twitch of Hierro’s muscles when they sparred. Their bond ran so deep as to be almost telepathic and symbiotic.
And that just made Hierro’s absence hurt all the more.
Prometheus rumbled something deep in his throat, and Cole nodded. “Yeah, I know we’re burning daylight.” He dropped the whiskey bottle into his backpack and stood, slinging the bag over his shoulder. Prometheus growled again and cast a significant glance at Alex. Cole shrugged and turned back to the younger man. “You know how I mentioned I’m in the city on some personal business? I’m trying to reconnect with someone I used to know. Prometheus says I ought to invite you along for, uh, moral support.” Prometheus growled and narrowed his eyes. “Well, okay, more like to make sure I don’t flake out. Truth be told, I was only staking you out because I was putting this meeting off. Now that we’ve had a chance to meet up, I guess I’m all out of excuses.”
Alex shrugged. “Sure, I’ll come along. Where are we headed?”
“Downtown.” Cole fished in his pocket and drew a few crumpled bills from a cracked leather wallet. He set the money down on the table and gestured for Alex to follow with a jerk of his chin. “I’ll have to put Prometheus in his ball while we’re on the subway, and I think he’s worried I’ll try to sneak off before I see this through.”
“Is he right?”
Cole considered this as they stepped out of O’Flanagan’s, pausing just long enough to tip his head at O’Flanagan behind the bar. The burly proprietor nodded back, and then they were out in the afternoon sun and walking towards the closest subway entrance. “I don’t know if I would,” Cole finally said. He palmed a pokeball, and Prometheus disappeared in a beam of red light. They descended into the oppressively hot subway tunnel and took their place among the press of people waiting on the platform. “I’ve been putting this off for a while, but I finally worked up the nerve to come to Clarus and settle accounts. I’d like to think that I’ve got the guts to face this, but I’ve been known to cut my losses and run before.”
The train arrived in a rush of hot wind and screeching brakes. They boarded and took hold of hanging straps as the subway shot off to the west. As they burst from the subterranean tunnel and began their ascent up the Concord Bridge, Alex turned his attention from the wine-dark smear of the Umber River below them to Cole, expecting the man to say more. But the man had lapsed into a pensive silence. The jovial mien he had affected at O’Flanagan’s had evaporated, and all that was left was the weary man behind the mask. Now Alex could see how deeply Cole’s face was carved with graven lines, and how old his eyes seemed. Cole leaned heavily on the subway strap, his shoulders slumped as though carrying a heavy burden.
The train rattled its way across the Concord Bridge on its lowest tier, while automobiles and foot traffic crossed above them, all under the shadow of the Concord’s sweeping suspension cables. Then they were underground again, hurtling through a tunnel lit only by the harsh fluorescents inside the train. After a few stops, Cole seemed to rouse himself, and the mask slid back on. “Come on, we’ll need to transfer here,” he said.
As they waited on a lower platform, Alex turned to his companion. “You seem to know your way around the city pretty well. Have you been to Clarus before?”
“Twice. Once was a long, long time ago; I was probably younger than you are now. And then again a few years back. I was trying to have this same meeting, but I lost my nerve and ran off.” He ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair and flashed a sheepish grin. “Prometheus was pretty pissed at me for dragging him all this way for nothing, which is why he’s being so insistent this time.”
The second train arrived, and after a shorter ride, Cole once again signaled for them to get off, leading Alex into one of the few residential neighborhoods left in the downtown sprawl. Once they were back out in the sun, Cole tossed out Prometheus’s ball, and the Charizard fell into step just behind them, taking care to keep his flaming tail clear of the flowerbeds that lined the street.
After walking a few blocks, Cole drew up short and stared up at the door of an apartment building that had once been rather grand and fashionable but, like so many things in Clarus City, had declined as the rest of the city had been built up. Alex saw a sign fixed underneath the street number and peered at the logo. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Aegis Security? You’re here to talk to the Iron Maiden?”
Cole swallowed and nodded. Prometheus huffed out a smoke ring.
“You really need this much backup for a meeting? You know she’s going to charge you an arm and a leg, right?”
“No, kid. This is the meeting.” Prometheus pushed Cole forward, and he slowly walked up the steps. He pressed the doorbell for Aegis Security and stepped back. After waiting a few seconds he turned around. “She must not be here. It’s probably for the best. Why don’t we just—”
The door to the building swung inward, revealing the scowling proprietor of Aegis Security.
Cole smiled and opened his arms. “Hi Gwen.”
“Dad?” Gwen gasped.
“Dad?!” Alex cried.
Gwen reared back and decked Cole across the face. “‘Hi Gwen’? I don’t see you for over ten goddamn years and you think you can just show up on my doorstep with a fucking ‘Hi Gwen’?”
“I see you’re still a little sore over how we left things,” Cole said.
“Still a little… you’re damn right I am!” Gwen roared. Prometheus rumbled, and Gwen glanced over her father’s shoulder and waved. “Prometheus, it’s nice to see you, but Dad and I have a few things to sort out before I come give you a hug, okay?” The Charizard seemed appeased by this, and sank back on his haunches.
Gwen seized the front of Cole’s shirt and hefted him up. “The last time I saw you, Mom had just fucking died, you tried to leave me the house so you could go off on some pilgrimage to Arceus knows where, I’d just washed out of the Sinnoh league because I got too caught up in your secret agent bullshit, and…” She pushed her father away and shook her head before dashing the tears from her eyes. “And I was just sixteen, Dad. I was sixteen and I didn’t know how any of this shit worked, and you just left me to fend for myself.”
Cole took her into his arms and patted her back. “I know. I should have been there for you, and all I could do was run away. I’m sorry, Gwen. I can’t go back go back in time and fix what went wrong, but—”
“Why not?” Gwen demanded. “Why the fuck not? I thought the fucking Firebrand could do anything!”
“Turns out there’s a lot I can’t do,” Cole replied. “But I can face the things I did wrong all those years ago and try to set them right.”
“How?” Gwen rasped.
“I thought we could start by talking?”
“I don’t want—”
“I brought a bottle of whiskey.”
“Okay, maybe we can talk.”
Cole let her go, and Gwen staggered down the stairs to throw her arms around Prometheus’s neck. The Charizard flared out his wings and wrapped them around her in a protective cocoon. From within the embrace, Alex heard Gwen mutter, “I’ve missed you, big guy.” Prometheus responded with a deep, rumbling purr that made Alex’s teeth rattle. When Gwen finally pulled away, she drew up short. “Hawlucha Man? What the—”
“I, uh, kind of ran into your dad earlier,” Alex said. “I mean, I didn’t know he was your dad. Or that we were coming here. I don’t want to intrude or anything, so I can just…”
“Oh Arceus, just come in and have a fucking drink,” Gwen said. “If he dragged you this far, you might as well.”
As they walked up the stairs, Cole raised an eyebrow. “You two know each other?”
“We’re professionally acquainted,” Gwen said. She led them through a dimly lit hallway and past a stairway. “My office is a little cramped, so why don’t we chat back here? The only reason I stay in this dump is because it’s the one place in the city that has a damn back yard.” They emerged in a small courtyard behind the tenement building, where a hulking Aggron slept in a carefully manicured rock garden.
Prometheus perked up immediately, and Cole spread his arms wide. “Maximus!” The Aggron roused himself and blinked in disbelief before letting forth a grating roar and charging forward. Alex winced and shrank back, but the gigantic steel type pulled up to a stop just short of Cole and the older man threw his arms around Maximus’s neck. Prometheus’s tail thumped against the ground as he and Maximus regarded each other. Cole circled the steel type, running his hands along Maximus’s armor. “Why, he’s looking incredible! His plating is as lustrous as ever, and his body,” he rapped a knuckle against Maximus’s stony flank. “So tough!” He smiled. “Thanks for looking after him, Gwen.”
The mercenary shrugged. “Yeah, well, he was Mom’s, after all. The last thing of hers I have left.”
“She’d be proud of you.”
Gwen scoffed. “Dad, have you seen how I live? I’d be lucky if she was only mildly disappointed.”
“Well, I’m proud of you.”
Gwen looked like she was ready to come back with a snarky comment to deflect the praise, but she drew up short and was, for once, speechless. “I… really?” She shook herself and gestured towards a slightly rusted wrought iron table and a few wobbly chairs. “Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get some glasses for us and, uh, we’ll talk, I guess.”
Cole and Alex sat down as Gwen disappeared inside. Prometheus and Maximus circled and playfully snapped at each other before settling down to compare old battle scars. “You could have told me we were coming to see your daughter,” Alex said. “Hell, you could have told me Gwen Culain was your daughter.”
“We do have the same last name. That’s never been a secret.”
“Well, yeah, but I always figured it was, like, some different Culain.”
Cole’s eyes twinkled, but he said nothing. When Gwen reappeared with three glasses, he reached into his bag and plunked the whiskey bottle from O’Flanagan’s down on the table. Gwen glanced at the label and whistled through her teeth. “That’s a bit fancier than my usual cheap swill, old man.”
“I figured I’d pick up something worth celebrating with, provided everything went well.”
“Yeah? And if it didn’t go so well?”
“Then I could console myself with the best booze I can afford.”
“I’m starting to remember why I didn’t bother talking to you for so long.” But Gwen smiled as she said it and poured out three glasses. She raised hers and tilted it towards Cole. “For… something, I guess.”
Cole nodded. “For something.”
The three of them clinked the glasses together and drank. For a time, they just watched Prometheus and Maximus as the shadows in the courtyard lengthened, and the silence changed from tense to companionable. Cole refilled their glasses, but Alex was already starting to feel a little lightheaded. After drinking a few sips to be polite, he quickly made his exit to allow Cole and Gwen some time to themselves as they made tentative small talk.
As he made his way back to the subway, he stopped to rest on a bench in a nearby park to gather his composure. A gaggle of school kids raced past, and Alex found himself smiling. Even the city teetering on the brink of an all-out gang war wasn’t enough to stop these kids playing. As Alex tried to stop the world from spinning, he let their voices filter over to him.
“Let’s play heroes!”
“Yeah!”
“I’ll be Echo!”
“I’m Blaziken Man!”
“I call Hawlucha Man!”
“No fair! You were Hawlucha Man last time!”
“Why don’t you be his partner?”
“Fine, but I get to be Hawlucha Man next time.”
Alex leaned forward and watched one of the kids hold his arms out at his sides and run around making whoosh noises while another girl ran behind him flapping her arms like wings. He found he had a lump in his throat, and had to try hard to swallow it down and take a deep breath.
He was tired of moping, he realized. He wasn’t going to let himself be like Cole, and run from his problems. The Firebrand might be retired, but Hawlucha Man sure as hell wasn’t. Hierro or no Hierro, it was time Hawlucha Man took to the rooftops again and got back to protecting the city.
He had been beaten down, but Hawlucha Man wasn’t done yet. As he thought about it, he realized that he could bring hope back not just to Avenbrooke, but to all of Clarus City too.
But to do that, he was going to need a new suit, some help, and all the favors he had left to cash in. It was time to make some phone calls.
A/N: Cole Culain was a quasi-self insert character from the first few serious Pokemon fics I wrote, back in circa 2010. Those fics still exist somewhere out on the internet, though I think you would be hard pressed to find them (and equally hard pressed to find any literary merit to them). I had at one point in the early 2010s planned to do a few more fics starring Cole and his myriad adventures detailing what he means when he talks about being a “war hero, war criminal, traitor and coward”, but I came to realize I wasn’t actually that interested in writing them after all. Then he was going to be Gwen’s father, back when Gwen was the protagonist of a Diamond Nuzlocke run I never quite felt like writing up.
The tl;dr here is that Cole is something of a legacy character for me, and while I doubt any reader of Hawlucha Man (are there even readers of Hawlucha Man? I suspect not many) would be familiar with him, he represents a certain point in my writing journey that I look back on fondly, and I wanted to give him a proper send-off in at least some fashion, and this seemed a good place to do it. This chapter was really just a bit of self-indulgence for me (perhaps more apt to say more self-indulgent than usual), so if this fic actually does have readers, I can only hope you allow me to indulge myself.
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Post by Firebrand on Oct 19, 2019 14:48:27 GMT
CHAPTER 36
Alex dozed in an uncomfortable molded plastic chair at Hierro’s bedside. He had been up half the night waiting outside the operating theater while Hierro had undergone an experimental surgery to remove the last of the Seviper venom in his system. The poison had remained in Hierro’s bloodstream despite the doctors’ best efforts, and so it had been determined that the lengthy surgery was Hierro’s best hope of recovery. Fortunately, the surgery had been successful, but the doctors wished to keep the Hawlucha in the hospital under observation to ensure that he recovered and that Hierro didn’t overtax himself upon release.
Alex roused himself and smoothed his sleeping partner’s feathers, doing his best to filter out the noise of the hospital in the background. Hierro twitched in his sleep, his eyes moving behind their lids. As the morning sun streamed through the window, Alex heard someone knock on the wall behind him. The Ronin leaned against the doorframe, a paper cup of the hospital’s awful coffee in his hand. “How’s he doing?” the vigilante asked.
“He pulled through,” Alex replied with a smile. “The worst is over, the doctors think. He just needs to rest now and his body will take care of the rest.”
The Ronin nodded. “Good to hear.” He held out the coffee to Alex. “You want to get going?”
Alex forced the coffee down and winced at the foul taste of charred grounds. He’d been drinking a lot of Metro General’s coffee lately and, contrary to what the nurses had told him, the taste had not grown on him. He ran his hands through Hierro’s feathers again as the Ronin swaggered over to the Hawlucha’s bed. How long ‘till he’s back on his feet?”
“Soon, the doctors hope. Maybe a little longer before he’s fighting fit again.”
“Told you he’d pull through, kid. That bird’s a fighter.”
“Yeah. But I’m wound tighter than a Spoink’s butt.”
“Good thing we’re going to go work off some of that stress, huh?”
Alex grinned and downed the last of his coffee. “Hell yeah. Let’s go.”
He and the Ronin strode out through the pokemon treatment wing and out through the lobby. The Ronin ambled through the parking lot and pulled the keys to his motorcycle out from his jacket pocket. The vigilante had parked the bike alongside an SUV that was dangerously close to double parking, and as such had left a margin of empty space in the parking spot.
“Anything to save a few bucks?”
The Ronin smirked. “You know how expensive it is to park around here? If this guy is going to park like an asshole, I might as well take advantage.” He opened a side compartment on the motorcycle and pulled out a helmet with a tinted visor. “I’ve only got the one, so you can wear this, since you’re the goody-goody law abiding type.”
Alex slid on the helmet. “Probably for the best. If I’m seen with you, it could really hurt my squeaky-clean image.”
The Ronin rolled his eyes and swung onto his bike. “Shut up and get on, kid.”
The motorcycle roared to life between Alex’s legs, and he wrapped his arms around the Ronin’s waist as the grizzled vigilante gunned out of the hospital parking lot and headed west. The streets of Avenbrooke flashed by in Alex’s peripheral vision, and before he knew it, they were hurtling across the Concord Bridge. The Ronin drove recklessly, weaving between cars and trucks, but he did so with a kind of careless grace, knowing exactly how much he needed to accelerate to cut in front of a car, or how much space to weave as he wove between two sixteen wheelers.
“Are you crazy?” Alex cried as they nosed in front of a moving truck.
“Just enough to be interesting!” the Ronin called back.
And then they were over the bridge, darting through traffic in midtown Clarus and swerving around taxis. As they forged a path deeper in to the city, the buildings around them rose higher and higher, the steel and glass canyons casting the streets into shadow. As they drew closer to the city’s core, the traffic dried up, aside from a few drivers making deliveries.
When they reached Sasaki Tower in the heart of midtown, the Ronin braked hard, spinning the bike in a wide drifting turn before coming to a stop at the curb. Alex staggered off the bike. “You drive like a maniac!”
The Ronin calmly fed a few coins into the meter. “That’s why I gave you the helmet, kid.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, how long do think this is going to take? I don’t have a lot of change.”
“If everything goes according to plan, you could probably leave in like half an hour?”
“The meter goes in twenty minute chunks. I’ll give it forty, I guess.” He undid the clasps that kept his broadsword’s scabbard attached to the side of his bike and slung it over his shoulder.
The glass doors of Sasaki Tower slid open as they approached, and Alex saw the receptionist at the front desk glance up at them. He gestured for the Ronin to follow him as he made his way to the glass turnstiles that barred the way to the elevators. After quick glance from the receptionist to a burly security guard, the man interposed himself between Alex and the Ronin, but the Ronin pushed past Alex and stuck out his chin, daring the man to challenge him.
“I don’t think you two belong here,” the security guard said, taking in the Ronin’s worn clothes.
“That so?” the Ronin drawled, settling his weight on the balls of his feet and reaching over his shoulder for his sword.
“Easy,” Alex admonished. “We’ve got an appointment.”
The guard smirked. “With who?”
“With me.”
The security guard whirled as Noriko Takeda stepped into the lobby, her heels clacking rhythmically against the tiled marble floor. She tapped something on her tablet, and the glass turnstile swung open. “This way, gentlemen.”
The security guard backed down in the face of Sasaki Industries’ COO, and Alex and the Ronin followed her to the bank of elevators. Noriko tapped a sequence of commands on her tablet and glanced at Alex. “You really think this will work?”
“Volcarona Mask thinks it will,” Alex replied. “And that’s good enough for me.”
“Then why isn’t she here?”
“Because we figure this is the one thing I can do better than her.”
The elevator arrived, and the three of them stepped inside. The doors closed with a barely audible hiss, and Alex felt his stomach drop as the elevator whisked them up to the top floors of the tower as fast as industrial safety standards would allow. They arrived at a small landing, where a reinforced steel door was the only thing to break up the monotony of the neutral tone walls. Noriko inclined her head to Alex. “The floor is yours, Hawlucha Man. My brother and I have been trying to get that door open for weeks.”
Alex stepped towards a small metal panel on the wall next to the door. “Identify yourself,” a robotic voice intoned from a hidden speaker.
“Hawlucha Man,” Alex said.
There was a pause, and a light on the panel flashed red. “Access denied.”
The Ronin stepped forward, as though he could force the door open with his bare hands. Alex held up a hand. “Override protocol: Puppeteer. Access code: ‘tangled strings’.”
Nothing happened for several heartbeats. Alex was beginning to think that Jiro had changed the contingency plans that Isabelle had discovered among the Hammer’s effects after his death, but then a light on the panel flashed green. “Lockdown override. Access granted.”
Alex let out a breath he hadn’t know he had been holding, and Noriko’s eyes widened. This had been their final bet to drag Jiro out of his self-imposed exile. Isabelle had learned that before the raid on the Sin compound, Jiro had installed a special system override for the Hammer to use if Jiro had been compromised by the esper. Alex had remembered Jiro mentioning something to that effect, and after Isabelle and Lakshmi admitted to not knowing anything about it, Isabelle had taken it upon herself to look through the Hammer’s workshop and computer. If it hadn’t been for a hastily scrawled post-it note on the Hammer’s desk, they never would have learned of the override code, but as it stood, Alex was grateful for their good luck.
The door slid open, revealing Jiro’s private apartment in disarray. Dirty plates and scattered papers covered every available surface, but Alex paid it no mind. A hunched shape hauled itself off a couch as Alex strode into the room, trailed by Noriko and the Ronin. “Hawlucha Man?” Jiro Sasaki said. “But how did—”
Before he could say anything else, Alex punched him.
Jiro fell to the floor, one hand holding the side of his face. Masakado hauled himself up from a nearby swivel chair, but Alex saw a flash of light in his peripheral vision as the Ronin summoned Muramasa. The hulking Samurott interposed himself between the Blaziken and Alex and growled low in his throat.
“You bastard,” Alex spat. “You selfish coward!”
“Alex, please understand, I—”
“You’ve been up here for weeks,” Alex said. “The city’s gone completely to hell, and Dominion’s running roughshod over all five boroughs. People are dying, Jiro!” Alex paused to catch his breath. “I… I was in the hospital. They could have… Hierro nearly died. And you didn’t… you weren’t…”
Jiro struggled to rise, but Alex kicked him in the chest, knocking the wind from his lungs and sending him back to the floor. “All of us have been fighting as hard as we can, risking our lives just to hold the line,” Alex snapped. “But it’s not enough. Even if we beat back everything the Sins throw at us, we’re still losing the war. The city needs a symbol of… of something. Something to believe in. It should have been you, but you weren’t there!” Alex watched as Jiro seemed to deflate even further, curling in on himself.
Masakado moved to help his trainer, but Muramasa moved into his path again, his low growl growing even deeper and more threatening. There was a ring of metal as the Ronin drew his sword and moved beside his pokemon.
“We needed you, Jiro. Isabelle, me, the other heroes, the whole city.”
Jiro shook his head. “After what happened to Johannes, I realized that I’m not cut out for this. I can’t be the leader I made myself out to be. I’m no hero. I’m just a pretender in a fancy metal suit.”
“No,” Alex growled. “You’re Jiro Sasaki. Blaziken Man. You made a promise to Clarus City, to protect it from the bad guys and to lead its heroes to victory, no matter what.”
“That’s not me anymore. I’m giving it up.”
“Like hell you are.”
Jiro slowly started to get to his feet. “I’m done, Alex. I’m putting the armor away.”
Alex waited until Jiro was halfway up before decking him hard enough to make his knuckles hurt. He stood over Jiro with his fists balled. “You don’t get to put the armor away,” Alex said. “Not until this is finished. You started this fight, and you have an obligation to see it through. You can’t set yourself up as the city’s protector and then bail once the going gets tough. That’s not what a hero does.”
Jiro tried to crawl away from Alex, but Alex drove a kick into his abdomen. “Either stand up as Blaziken Man, or don’t stand up at all!”
Jiro’s eyes hardened, and his jaw set. He heaved himself to his feet with a roar and punched Alex across the face. Alex reeled a few paces backward and grinned. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
“You don’t get to talk down to me like that,” Jiro hissed. He squared his shoulders and brought his fists up. “I may not be Blaziken Man anymore, but I don’t have to take this from you!” He lashed out with a punch, but Alex sidestepped and caught the older man’s fist. He tracked down Jiro’s arm and pivoted, using Jiro’s weight and momentum against him and sending him careening into the couch. Jiro stumbled over the back, and the Ronin scoffed as he struggled to his feet. Alex saw something flicker in Noriko’s eyes, almost cracking her stoic visage.
“You’re getting rusty, old man. Maybe you ought to get the suit out after all.” Alex smirked. “If you can’t even handle me, what are you going to do when Dominion shows up here?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you kidding? If an upjumped kid from Avenbrooke and a grungy vigilante can get through the security around your fortress of solitude, it’s going to fall apart like wet paper when Dominion decides to come for you.” Alex shrugged. “Whatever else happened at the compound that night, you bloodied her nose, and she’s going to want to settle the score. Once she checks off a few more things on her to-do list, she’ll be on your doorstep, whether you retire or not. So either you can sit up here moping until she comes around to tie up some loose ends, or you can finish what you started, put on the damn suit, and take the fight to her.”
“I…”
“For Arceus’s sake!” Alex cried. “The Jiro Sasaki I idolized wouldn’t have pulled this crap. What happened to that guy five years ago after the Crown Royale bombing, the one who said he’d take on all seven Sins himself if the police weren’t going to do anything about it? What happened to the only man that Marcus Braun feared? What happened to the guy who was willing to charge right into Dominion’s bunker with no backup because he was afraid the people following him might get hurt?
“What happened to Blaziken Man, huh? Because all I see is a pathetic coward, a selfish bastard who’s willing to let good people and pokemon die just because he lost once.”
Jiro’s expression darkened and he swung out at Alex again. This time, Alex didn’t dodge, and simply brought his hand up to catch Jiro’s fist, closing his fingers around the older man’s in an iron grip. Jiro winced in pain and glanced towards Masakado. The Blaziken vaulted over a chair, only to be tackled out of the air by Muramasa and pinned to the ground. Alex tightened his grip and pushed, forcing Jiro to his knees. He didn’t let go until he felt the small bones in Jiro’s hand start to shift and pop under his fingers.
When he disengaged, Jiro bowed his head. “If you want to quit, then quit,” Alex said. “The rest of us are going to keep fighting, even if you’ve given up. But if Dominion comes for you, you’re on your own.” He started to turn, but Jiro raised his left hand.
He flexed his fingers, and something whirred on the opposite side of the room. A red and gray gauntlet shot across the apartment and affixed itself to Jiro’s hand, the repulsor on the palm humming with latent power. Jiro swung out with a left hook, and Alex dropped his weight to duck under the punch. Alex heard a hum, and another gauntlet shot across the room, affixing itself to Jiro’s right wrist.
The powered gauntlets supplemented Jiro’s strength, and the other man had the advantage of height and reach. For most people, that would have been enough to end the fight then and there, but Alex had been the smaller, weaker guy in plenty of dust-ups, and he’d only gotten better at grappling since becoming Hawlucha Man. When you went up against a bigger opponent with a longer reach, you had to get in close, to rob him of the advantage and maybe even turn it into a handicap.
He slipped inside Jiro’s guard and tracked outside, seizing Jiro’s arm above where the gauntlet ended. The larger man couldn’t reach all the way across his body to fend Alex off with his other hand, so Alex took his opening and elbowed Jiro in the ribs. As Jiro staggered away, Alex pivoted into a roundhouse kick, but Jiro threw up his gauntleted forearm to block.
“Kid,” the Ronin growled. “Your stitches…”
“They took ‘em out last week,” Alex replied through clenched teeth.
“Oh. Well, carry on.”
The steel back plate of Jiro’s armor flipped across the room and anchored itself to Jiro’s back. When Alex came in again for another flying kick, Jiro spun and presented his armored back to Alex as his chest plate flew into place and engaged with a hiss. As Alex continued to rain blows on Jiro, more pieces of his armor flew up from around the room and attached themselves to Jiro’s body. Soon, the suit’s pauldrons, leg pieces and greaves had all attached themselves to the other components.
Alex retreated a pace as Jiro grabbed his beaked helmet from atop the apartment’s refrigerator and slammed it onto his head. The visor slid down, and the eye lenses flashed. Jiro settled into a ready boxing stance, but Alex spread his arms wide in surrender.
“Doesn’t look like you’re ready to hang up the suit.”
Jiro looked down at himself and flexed his fingers. The repulsors on his palms hummed as energy from the suit’s power cells coursed through them. “I suppose not.”
“Feels good, huh?”
Jiro’s visor lifted, and he smiled. “It does. Maybe… maybe I was wrong.”
“Sir,” Noriko said from the doorway. “Does this mean we have you back?”
Jiro nodded. “Yes. I’m back. I don’t think I’m suited for retirement anyways.”
Noriko raised an eyebrow, as close as she ever got to genuine expression. “Wonderful, sir. Shall I schedule a press conference to deliver the good news?”
“Too tame. If Blaziken Man is going to blast back onto the scene, I’ve got to do it in style.” He turned to Alex. “What do you say? Are you ready to suit up with me?”
“Uh, yeah,” Alex said. “About that… I’m going to need a favor.”
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Post by Firebrand on Jan 6, 2020 2:25:44 GMT
CHAPTER 37
Adrenaline pounded in Isabelle’s veins and she leapt and pirouetted through the press of clashing humans and pokemon. Aethon whipped by overhead, summoning a scathingly hot gale with his broad orange wings. The shouts of police officers and the roars of enraged pokemon were interspersed with pops of gunfire and the occasional concussive boom.
It rang in Isabelle’s ears like a symphony.
She spun her quarterstaff over her head before sweeping it low and taking out three Sin cutters at the knees before switching her grip and jabbing the blunt end into a Scyther’s thorax. Aethon’s fiery scales rained down around her, setting the pavement ablaze and buying Isabelle a second to catch her breath. She dragged the tip of her staff through the burning scales, igniting a chemical compound on the tip and lashing out with the blazing weapon, driving her foes back. Smoke stung her eyes, but Isabelle hardly noticed as the exhilaration of the fight consumed her.
The Sins had overplayed their hand, trying to attack city hall in broad daylight. The local police precincts had mobilized and were managing to hold the line, but they had been flagging before Isabelle and Aethon had showed up. The sight of Clarus City’s interim top hero had put the wind back in their sails, and the police had managed to hold out long enough for Echo and the Phantom to come back her up.
The Phantom appeared at her side, heralded by his Dusknoir’s spectral hum. “Fall back,” the tuxedoed hero said as Gregor launched shadowy orbs into the fleeing Sin cutters. “We can’t over-extend ourselves.”
Isabelle wanted to snap back at him, tell him to stop bossing her around, but she knew he was right. They were here to hold the line at city hall, not chase down every bastard that managed to slip away. The Phantom twirled his wooden cane, striking a Ratticate about the snout while a shadowy expanse spread behind Gregor. The ghost type reached out his hand to her, and Isabelle grabbed it.
She felt a tug in the pit of her stomach, and for a disconcerting instant her vision went black as a sulfurous wind blasted her face. And then the darkness receded as quickly as it had appeared, and they were back behind the police line. “Ugh,” Isabelle groaned. “I don’t know how you can do that all the time. It makes my skin crawl.”
“You get used to it.” The Phantom signaled to Echo. “We’re all clear! Time to go fortissimo!”
Echo stood atop the stairs of city hall, flanked by her Exploud and Loudred. “ALL RIIIIGHT!” she roared, her voice amplified by her pokemon. She raised her fist to the sky and brought it down to strum a chord on her red guitar. Her platinum blonde hair whipped around her face as she bared her teeth in a rictus grin. “Come on, b-boys! FOR-TIS-SI-MOOOOOOO!”
Her pokemon braced themselves on the steps and opened their mouths wide. Isabelle heard the hollow pipes within their bodies whistle as they sucked in a breath, only to expel it an instant later in a tremendous rush of air and sound. The concussive force blasted out over city hall plaza, halting the Sin advance in its tracks. The police in riot gear braced themselves behind their shields, even though the worst of the blast passed over their heads. “Shield w-wall!” Echo shouted. “Shield wall! F-Form up!”
A few officers turned to their sergeant, and the man nodded. “Do it!”
“On m-my mark!” Echo shouted. “Ready? CHARGE!”
“Go, go, go!” the sergeant barked. Isabelle and the Phantom raced just behind the armored officers, crouching behind the protective bulwark of the riot shields. A pack of baying Houndoom and Arcanine loped alongside them, flames pooling in their jaws. When the Sins opened fire, Echo and her pokemon ducked behind the columns that lined the municipal building’s façade. “Aethon!” Isabelle screamed, hoping her partner could hear her over the tumult.
A beam of light pierced the smoke, and her Volcarona descended through the clouds, wings ablaze. His arrival threw the Sin forces into chaos just as the police line crashed into their front ranks. As the police broke to the sides to allow their pokemon through, Isabelle jammed the tip of her staff into a crack in the pavement and heaved her weight up, vaulting over the backs of the officers just in front of her and crashing down behind the Sin lines. Edgar appeared at her side, stepping from the shadows as he drew the concealed blade from his cane. Riot squad officers set on the Sins with their clubs, closing in to make the Sins armed with firearms reluctant to shoot at the risk of hitting their pokemon or comrades in arms. Sin forces armed with machetes, metal pipes or other melee weapons were hammered hard by the police, battered with shields and clubs while the police pokemon set upon those commanded by the Sins, keeping them from aiding their human partners.
“Reinforcements incoming,” the Phantom said as he sidestepped a Sin cutter and slashed his blade along the man’s hamstrings. The Sin fell to the ground where one of the Phantom’s Haunter fell on him.
“How many?” Isabelle asked as she swung out with her quarterstaff, knocking the cutter’s Mightyena about the muzzle and sending the canine running with its tail between its legs.
“Enough to be a pain in the ass.”
Isabelle ground her teeth and spat out a curse. “Does Echo—”
“She knows. If things look bad, she’ll sound the order to retreat.”
“If you think I’m going to run away from a fight like this, you’re stupider than you look!”
The Phantom smirked. “I figured. The retreat is to get the police out of our way so we can take them down our way, without worrying about anyone else getting caught in our crossfire.”
Isabelle tossed her quarterstaff up, snatched two flash grenades from her utility belt, and hurled them into the crowd of Sin enforcers. The blast dazzled the criminals and gave the Phantom’s army of ghosts an opening to sweep in and hold them long enough for the police to intervene. “Damn right,” Isabelle growled, catching her staff as it fell. “We’ve got to show them that heroes like us aren’t going to back down. Especially now, Clarus City needs to know that it can still bet on the heroes it has left to fight to the very end!” She pivoted on the tip of her toes and spun around, taking out a quartet of Sin fighters in one move.
A series of pops echoed across the plaza, followed by a rush of air. Forte shot out over the crowd, propelled by his powerful legs and a blast of concentrated air from his pipes. As the Exploud descended towards where the fighting was thickest, Forte unleashed a sonic assault that drove the Sin forces to their knees. As he hit the pavement, he cushioned his fall with a second blast of air that impacted hard enough to splinter the pavement beneath him. As the Sin cutters and their pokemon reeled, Forte drove his right fist into the palm of his left hand and summoned an electric charge. The bristle-like hairs along his arms stood on end as static crackled in the air around him. With another concussive blast pushing him forward, Forte drove into the crowd of Sin fighters, blazing bright as electricity lit up his fists.
As the Exploud forced his way deeper into the crowd, the Sin ranks closed around him, hemming him in. Isabelle was about to signal to Aethon to go to his aid, but a high pitched hiss cut through the sounds of battle as a dark shape plummeted through the air. Crescita spread her wings to pull out of her dive and unleashed a deafening pulse of sound just over Forte’s head. The Noivern shrieked as she spiraled through the air, laying down cover for Forte while the Exploud drove the ground forces back.
“Reinforcements incoming!” one of the CCPD officers shouted. More Sin cutters poured in from the surrounding streets, pokemon baying and howling as they joined the fray. The police lines buckled under the renewed assault, and sergeants bellowed orders as the police scrambled to consolidate their lines. Isabelle saw several officers fall as they were mobbed by the Sin forces, and she jumped into the fight with renewed vigor, battering her foes with her staff. The Phantom shouted commands to his ghosts as they swooped and dove around him. Isabelle tried to call out to the tuxedoed hero as a Pignite charged him from behind, but a Haunter burst out from under his cape and grabbed the fire type in its claws, hauling it off while the Phantom didn’t even break stride.
As the police scrambled, a piercing guitar chord rang out. “LAAADIES AND GENTLEMENNNNN!” Echo shouted above the din, her words amplified by Mezzo. “WELCOME TO THE DOWNTOWN THROWWWWDOWNNNN!” She played another chord. “THE HEROES OF CLARUS CITY ARE COMING TO YOU LIVE! AND WE’RE NOT BACKING DOWN!”
Mezzo, Forte, and Crescita roared in unison, three thunderclaps that echoed across the plaza and froze the Sin forces where they stood.
“We got a license to rock!
Shake up the whole block!
Make a heavy shock!
BECAAAAAUUUUUUSE…”
Echo’s hair whipped around her face as she threw everything she had into playing her guitar, working with Mezzo to generate concussive sound waves that lifted the cutters from their feet and sent them flying through the air.
“WE ARE ROCK TRASH!
WE GOT A LUST FOR LIFE
THESE CRAZY FIGHTS MAKE US FEEL ALIVE!
WE ARE ROCK TRASH!
AND WE’RE GONNA BASH
WE’RE GONNA SMASH
UNTIL WE CRAAAAASH! YEEEEAAAAH!”
She flashed her teeth in a manic grin. “SO COME ONNN! GET FIRED UP AND KICK! SOME! ASS! LET ME HEAR YOU!”
Several police officers cheered, though they could barely be heard over the din. The Sin advance seemed to have lost some of its forward momentum, and the police had gotten their second wind. The Phantom raced by Isabelle, his sword flashing. “Get a move on, Izzy. Echo’s playing her heart out, so we’ve got to do our part.”
Isabelle scowled and sprinted after him. “Like I haven’t been carrying you the whole damn battle!” They fell in together, driving a wedge straight into the heart of where the Sin forces were thickest. Aethon, Gregor, and the rest of the Phantom’s ghosts buzzed around them, picking off cutters and pokemon that were out of the heroes’ reach. Isabelle felt the thrill of battle rise up in her, and adrenaline pounded in her ears in time with Echo’s music. Her heart sang as she let her body flow into the rhythm of combat, striking down foes left and right.
In battle, she was free from all of the uncertainty that had plagued her since Johannes’s death. Here and now, she could prove to herself that she was Clarus City’s greatest hero, its mightiest protector, the one who could vanquish all of its enemies.
Isabelle heard a rush of wind and felt the ground tremble as Forte crashed down behind them. The Exploud gave them a toothy grin as he generated more electricity around his fists, and Isabelle felt her hair stand on end as the air began to reek of ozone. Gregor appeared between Isabelle and the Phantom, and the atonal humming that always accompanied the Dusknoir grew in intensity. The ghost inclined his head to Forte, tacitly signaling that the humans were protected from his sonic blasts by the Dusknoir’s brown note.
“Phantom!” someone shouted from the press. “I’ve been looking for you!” A man with a Doublade wrapped around his arms shoved through the Sin cutters and fell on the Phantom with a roar. “This time, I’ll defeat you!”
The Phantom brought up his blade and pushed back against the swordsman’s attack. His sword and the Doublade clanged together as the Phantom and the swordsman engaged and disengaged, each one plying his opponent to try and find an opening. “This time? Have we fought before?”
“Have we…” the swordsman spluttered. “How do you not remember? You put me in Redstone!”
“I’ve put a lot of people in Redstone,” the Phantom glibly replied. “So I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more specific.”
“I’ll make sure you never forget the name of Gian Genovese again!” the swordsman roared. His Doublade buzzed as the tassels around his arm tightened. Isabelle saw the veins on Genovese’s hands turn black as he and his pokemon melded their minds, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it as a pair of vines shot out at her. She jumped back and batted them away with her quarterstaff as the swordsman’s backup approached. An Electivire barreled at Forte, and the Exploud grappled it to a standstill. The electric current around Forte’s hands crackled as he made contact with the Electivire, the sparks making the electric type’s fur glow.
“Yes, Tolya!” a hulking, tattooed man shouted. “Drink it all in!”
The Electivire smirked as he absorbed Forte’s power, pushing back harder on the Exploud. Forte dug in his heels and took a deep breath, making his pipes whistle. The Electivire had just long enough to realize its mistake before Forte unleashed a point-blank sonic boom that sent the Electivire flying back into its trainer, pinning the tattooed brute beneath its furred bulk.
A nearby police officer went down as a woman with multi-colored hair slammed the blade of a knife up through his armpit. She cackled as her Carnivine savaged one of the police Machoke and strangled a Kadabra with its vines. Isabelle growled and hurled a flashbang at the grass type, blinding it long enough for the Kadabra to free itself and hurl a weak psychic pulse at the Carnivine before teleporting away. The Carnivine released the Machoke, but Isabelle could see she had been too late for the fighting type.
With a flick of her staff, she sent the woman’s knife clattering away and whistled to Aethon. “Let ‘em have it!” The Volcarona descended and unleashed a column of blistering hot air on the cutter and her pokemon. The woman’s cheap formaldehyde jacket began to smolder as the Carnivine visibly wilted under the assault, but before Aethon could finish them off, a Skarmory dove down and tackled the Volcarona, battering him with rattling wings.
Isabelle snapped her fingers at one of the Phantom’s Haunter. “Hey you! Get me up there!” She extended her hand, and the ghost type seized her wrist, dragging her aloft. As they passed the Skarmory, she extricated herself from the Haunter’s grip and dropped onto the steel type’s back, making it lose significant altitude. “Don’t mess with my partner!” Isabelle snapped as she wrestled with the bird, trying to force it to the ground.
The Skarmory crashed, and Isabelle jumped away. A cutter ran to the Skarmory’s side and drew a gun from beneath his coat. “Vito, get up!” he ordered as he lined up his shot. Aethon swept down and unleashed a spray of blazing scales from his wings, distracting the man while Isabelle closed the distance and wrestled away his gun.
Two flashes of light materialized across the plaza and resolved themselves into a pair of towering Steelix. One of them lashed out with its tail and struck a nearby office building, crashing through the structure and making it list dangerously towards the street. With a shriek of rending steel and crumbling stone, the top half of the building slanted at a sharp angle before collapsing. CCPD and Sin alike vanished in the rubble as the crash reverberated throughout the plaza.
Even Echo and her pokemon were momentarily silenced as Steelix bellowed and began to thrash again.
“Oh hell no,” Isabelle growled. “Phantom, can you handle these clowns on your own? I’ve got to stop those two from rampaging.”
The Phantom disengaged from Genovese and kicked out his opponents kneecap. “Go for the one on the right. I’ll have Felix and Farrah contain the one on the left for now.” He signaled to a Chandelure and Lampent that were creating a fiery cordon around a group of cutters, and at his command, the two spectral pokemon whisked themselves away towards one of the Steelix.
Isabelle jumped onto Aethon’s back, and the Volcarona shot into the air, winging his way towards the Steelix on the right. Isabelle clenched her teeth as Aethon looped around the serpent’s head, its beady eyes lazily tracking their movements.
“Hey, big ugly!” Isabelle shouted. “Ready or not, here I come!”
She jumped from her pokemon’s back and hurled a pair of flashbangs into its eyes as Aethon summoned a cyclone of flame before dipping down to catch Isabelle as she fell. The Steelix roared, and the fires dissipated. Its tail lashed back and forth, sending the cutters behind it running for cover. “Again!” Isabelle said. “I’m gonna stop that thing in its tracks! They’re all counting on me!” She could do it. She could save everyone, stop the attack, be the hero the city needed. If she could just figure out how to take this thing down, she could—
Isabelle whipped her head around as she saw two shapes moving in her peripheral vision. They impacted with the Steelix’s head one after the other, making it reel from the hits. One of them, moving too quickly for Isabelle to get a bead on it, jumped from the Steelix to the ground in a series of agile leaps and made a beeline towards a particular cutter. The second figure stood atop the Steelix’s head and flexed the fingers on its right hand before slamming its palm down on the armored carapace.
A brilliant pulse of light and heat flashed once, twice, three times, each flash followed by a thunderous boom. The Steelix groaned as it collapsed, and the armored figure atop it jumped clear of the crashing behemoth. Two gouts of flame issued forth from the figure’s feet, providing a burst of speed and maneuverability as it careened towards the ground. As the figure passed by, Isabelle caught a glimpse of a red beaked helmet.
“Arceus,” she gasped. “He’s back.”
Isabelle heard a screech, and the Skarmory from before shot up from the melee below and slammed its bulk into Aethon. The Volcarona reeled through the air, furiously beating his wings to right himself. Isabelle clutched the leather flying harness as tightly as she could, not having had time to secure herself with a carabineer. “Aethon!” she shouted as the Skarmory executed a tight turn for another pass. “Get to the ground! I’m just going to get in your way if you have to fight with me on your back!”
Aethon promptly stooped into a dive, and Isabelle held her breath as the ground rushed up below them. When she judged they had come in close, she braced herself against her partner’s back and pushed away, releasing her hold on the harness. She landed lightly on her feet and glanced up at the Volcarona. “Lead that metal bastard away and try to do something about the other Steelix! I can take care of myself here!” Aethon buzzed and shot off into the sky, unleashing a fiery gale on the Skarmory as it closed in.
Isabelle tore her eyes from Aethon and drew her quarterstaff as the fighting surged around her. “There you are,” someone said behind her. Isabelle spun and saw the Skarmory’s trainer force his way through the crowd, followed by the knife-wielding woman and her Carnivine, with the hulking brute bringing up the rear.
“Damn it, Eddie,” Isabelle muttered. “You said you could handle them.”
The Skarmory’s trainer drew a small firearm from under his coat, and Isabelle grabbed a flash grenade, ready to stun him before he could fire off a shot. But much to her surprise, the man just pointed the gun skyward and fired off a flare round that arced over the plaza and rained down iridescent sparks.
The brute smirked. “We just split Petrovna’s reward three ways now, Sal? Gian wasn’t here to get the girl.”
“Don’t count your Torchic before they hatch, Viktor,” the leader admonished. “We have to keep her busy until she gets here. Can’t split the bounty if we never get it in the first place.”
“Keeping her here isn’t a problem!” the woman growled as she gestured to her Carnivine. The grass type’s lower half contorted as thick vines shot out from beneath it, weaving and snaking through the air in an attempt to tangle Isabelle’s limbs. Isabelle drew her staff and batted the questing vines away and hurled the flashbang into the Carnivine’s fanged maw, momentarily stunning the grass type.
“Is that the best you got?” Isabelle taunted as she raced towards the leader, the one the brute had called Sal. “You should really know better than to clue me into your plans, morons!” She pivoted on her heel and drove her fist into the side of Sal’s face, bowling him over. When the woman rushed her, knife at the ready, Isabelle thrust out with her staff and with a contemptuous flick of her wrist knocked the blade from the woman’s hand and followed up with a pair of spinning roundhouse kicks that caught her across the abdomen. She landed and used her momentum to pivot towards the brute. “Think you got what it takes, big guy?”
The brute shrugged. “Not me, no.” Too late, Isabelle realized that static electricity was crackling in her hair, and she had just enough time to think Oh crap, before three hundred pounds of muscle and yellow fur tackled her. “Well done, Tolya!” the brute roared as the Electivire stood over her, electricity crackling around its fists. Isabelle tried to rise, but the electric type placed a heavy foot on her ribcage and pressed down.
“You bastard,” Isabelle hissed. “I’m not going down like this!” She reached for her belt grabbed her last three flashbangs. With a roar, she pulled the pins and hurled them upwards before averting her eyes. As soon as she felt the Electivire’s foot move, she rolled out from underneath it and sprang forward on the balls of her feet, throwing all of her mass behind a punch to the middle of the electric type’s face. The flash grenades and the unexpected strike were enough to knock the Electivire on its rump, and Isabelle let a defiant roar force its way out of her chest.
“When are you bastards going to learn?”
“Not bad, little girl,” someone said from behind her. “But you will not beat us.”
Isabelle spun and scowled. “Greed.”
Anya Petrovna leered down from atop a pile of rubble, and her Ursaring crouched just below her. With a click of Petrovna’s tongue, the Ursaring jumped down to the ruined floor of the plaza and growled. “Tear her limb from limb, Stepa!” Petrovna roared. “Squash her like the insect she is!”
“Like hell you will!” Isabelle roared. As she raced forward, she grabbed her fallen quarterstaff and spun it around her head. “How many times do I have to tell you clowns? I’m Volcarona Mask, bitch! You can’t even touch me!” The Ursaring swung out, his claws glinting in the flat, dusty light. Isabelle dropped her weight and slid underneath the furry, muscle-bound arm and drove the butt of her staff into the center of the golden circle of fur on the Ursaring’s chest. The pokemon whimpered as the wind was driven from his lungs, but before he could retaliate, Isabelle had ducked under his arms again and had vaulted onto his back, and as the Ursaring reared up, she jumped to Greed’s perch, her fist raised and ready to strike.
Petrovna saw it coming, and was ready for it. As Isabelle drew level with her, she swung out with a steel-toed combat boot and caught Isabelle in the chest. Isabelle coughed out a breath as she lost her jump and plummeted to the ground, landing hard and with none of her usual grace. Petrovna drew her sidearm and took aim. “I’m going to enjoy this. I have been waiting for a very long time.”
“Then keep waiting!” A flash of crimson and white collided with Greed, knocking her from the rubble and sending her crashing down beside Isabelle. The new fighter spread their arms wide, and two sails of shimmering fabric beneath their sleeves snapped out to catch the wind, slowing their descent and allowing them to alight gracefully atop Greed’s old perch. When Petrovna stirred, the figure in red jumped again and delivered a kick to her ribs, sending her down. They drew a pair of batons from a belt around their waist and spun them experimentally while bouncing on the balls of their feet. “Who’s next?”
“No way,” Sal muttered as he got shakily to his feet. “They said you were out of the game. But you… you’re…”
“The amazing Hawlucha Man!” Alex said with a grin. “Did you miss me?”
“You!” the brute snarled. “Because of you, we all went to Redstone!” He pulled a knife from under his coat and charged, but Alex casually turned and hurled one of his batons overhand. The metal rod hummed as it spun end-over-end, and when it collided with the brute, he crumpled as he was shocked by an electric current. When Alex’s back was turned, the Carnivine trainer reclaimed her knife and ran in for a chance to strike, but Alex nimbly sidestepped and tapped his remaining baton against her side, and she fell with a shriek. Alex held out his hand to Isabelle and pulled her to her feet.
“About time you showed up, birdbrain,” she said. “Where’s your partner?”
“Still on medical leave.”
“Ugh. If I have to be saved by one of you, I’d rather it be the competent one.”
Greed’s Ursaring snarled as it lumbered to its feet and charged at the two heroes. “I think we may need to work together on this one,” Alex said. “I’ll set him up, you knock him down.”
“That’s what I do best!”
They ran in together, and Alex hurled his second baton at the Ursaring’s face. Unlike the first throw, which had tumbled through the air, this one flew straight and true like a javelin, striking the Ursaring on its snout and delivering a powerful jolt through its body. Isabelle switched her grip on her quarterstaff and drove it into the normal type’s stomach. It worked just as well the second time as it had the first, forcing all the wind from the Ursaring’s lungs as it reared back. Isabelle gritted her teeth as she bounced on the balls of her feet and sprang up, delivering an uppercut to the Ursaring’s chin and making its mouth snap shut. The normal type whimpered, but didn’t go down.
Isabelle cursed as Alex shook his head. “You sure this is what you do best?”
Greed heaved herself up. “Stepa won’t be beat by the likes of you!” She reclaimed her gun and ejected a jammed bullet. “Your return is short-lived, Hawlucha Man! You have thrown away your weapons, and you’re as good as defenseless!”
“Think so, huh?” Alex replied. He flexed the fingers of his left hand. “Don’t you know that any hero worth his salt always has a few tricks up his sleeve?”
There was a thunk as something collided with the back of Petrovna’s head, knocking the Sin commander off balance. The object hurtled past her, and Alex raised his hand to catch his humming baton. He stretched out his right hand, and the other baton sailed towards him as well. “I brought more than just a new suit! Check out my baton-arangs!”
“Nope,” Isabelle said. “No way. That’s got to be the dumbest name I’ve ever heard.”
Alex tossed his batons and caught them as the Sin forces marshaled themselves for another attack. “You’re just jealous.”
Isabelle split her quarterstaff in two. “Not even! Anyway, mine are still bigger.”
“My ex used to say it’s not the size that matters, it’s how you use it.”
“Keep telling yourself that, birdbrain.”
“Kill them!” Greed roared. “Fifty thousand to whoever brings me their heads!”
Alex and Isabelle sprang into action as the Sin forces raced in. “These bastards just don’t know when to quit,” Isabelle grumbled. “Knock down one, and ten more come back!”
A cutter swung out with a metal bat, only to be stopped by a solid wooden cane. “Looks like you might need an army of your own then,” the Phantom said as he disarmed the cutter and drew his hidden blade. He had discarded his tuxedo jacket, and with a deft flick of his fingers, he removed his cufflinks and rolled up the right sleeve of his dress shirt before tossing his sword to his left hand to repeat the motion. Using his left hand, he fenced a Scyther to a standstill, bypassed its guard and used the base of his sword to knock in on the head and stun it long enough for a Mismagius to materialize behind him and zap it with a psychokinetic pulse.
Gregor appeared behind the masked hero, accompanied by an atonal hum. The Dusknoir’s chest contorted and then bulged, and the spectral mouth on his abdomen split open as a Golurk burst out from inside on a plume of fire, launching itself at Greed’s Ursaring and grappling with the normal type. Once it had stopped the Ursaring’s charge, it extricated its right fist from the Ursaring’s claw and slammed a rocket-powered punch into the beast’s chest, lifting it off its feet and launching it into the air.
“Not bad,” Isabelle said. “But don’t think you can just show up and be all heroic when you couldn’t even handle the mooks from before!”
The Phantom locked blades with a Bisharp, and after a quick exchange of blows and parries, he threw off the steel type’s balance long enough to allow Gregor to appear knock it out with a swift punch. “The CCPD sergeant was killed by a Nidoking, and his unit was in disarray. I had to intervene and bring things under control. Speaking of which…” He flicked his sword out in a fencer’s salute. “Here they come!”
A squadron of CCPD officers in full riot gear charged out from behind the Sin ranks, driving a wedge in the cutters and disrupting the attack. They fell upon the Sin forces that were menacing Alex and Isabelle and drove them back with batons and metal shields, corralling pokemon and subduing trainers. A woman with a Staravia perched on her shoulder snapped off a salute, and the Golurk that had dispatched Greed’s Ursaring mimicked the motion. “Phantom! We’ve started to rout the Sin forces, and the remaining Steelix is contained for now. But before, when the first one went down, was it really—”
“Hold that thought, lieutenant,” the Phantom said. “You might want to cover your ears. Our heavy artillery has just arrived to help mop things up.”
A piercing whistle overhead heralded Forte’s arrival, and the Exploud crashed down with a roar that rattled Isabelle’s bones. Greed leveled her gun, but Forte’s right hand shot out and wrenched it from her grasp before blasting her with a sonic onslaught that made Petrovna’s eyes roll back in her head and her ears begin to bleed. Forte tossed the firearm contemptuously over his shoulder and sucked in a deep breath.
The Phantom glanced over his shoulder. “Gregor, if you would.” The Dusknoir inclined his head, and the humming that accompanied the ghost type grew in volume and intensity. Isabelle’s skin crawled when she heard the brown note, but knew that it was preferable to having her eardrums blown out by Forte.
The Exploud released his Boomburst, splintering the pavement around him and creating a small impact crater with the force of the air he expelled from his pipes. The riot squad cheered as the Sin cutters dropped to their knees, but the sound was oddly distorted by Gregor’s influence. When Forte ran out of steam, the Phantom turned to the unit. “I trust you can wrap things up here. Hawlucha Man, Volcarona Mask, it’s time we put a stop to that Steelix.”
A fiery explosion lit up the sky some ways distant. Isabelle and the Phantom whirled, but Alex merely shook his head. “I can’t believe he’s still showing off.” He tapped his ear, and Isabelle saw a small earpiece light up underneath his cowl. “Hey, quit goofing around! We’ve still got work to do!”
The voice coming through the earpiece was too faint for Isabelle to hear, but she saw Alex grin. “Yeah, get on it.” He turned to the Phantom. “Don’t worry about the Steelix. It’s under control.”
“Was that our armored friend?” Isabelle asked.
“Oh yeah. Just watch, this is going to be awesome.” He whooped and raised his fist. “Let’s go, Blaziken Man! Show ‘em how it’s done!”
Blaziken Man and Masakado shot into the sky on columns of fire, and as they bounded across the plaza with a series of impossibly long leaps, Aethon and Crescita soared to join them. The Steelix turned its massive head towards them, only to be stunned by a sonic blast from Echo’s Noivern. Aethon shot higher into the air, spiraling up above the Steelix and unleashing a blast of scorching air from above. Masakado and Jiro alighted atop the roof of a nearby building to prepare for one final leap that carried them high into the air. At the apex of their jump, the pair of them spun in the air and shot fire from their feet to descend at incredible speed. Flames cloaked their fists, and the smashed into the Steelix with twin explosions that echoed across all of downtown.
The Steelix groaned as it listed to the side, and when the smoke around its head cleared, Isabelle saw the armored plating had two deep impact craters. The armored figure and his Blaziken leapt off the collapsing behemoth, jumping off the sides of buildings to deliver more fiery strikes to direct the beast’s fall, ensuring that it collapsed in the middle of the street and didn’t bring any more infrastructure down with it.
When the Steelix finally fell to the concrete, the CCPD cheered. The Phantom tapped a communicator in his ear. “Hey Echo, let’s wrap this up.” From across the plaza, Isabelle heard Mezzo bellow, and the pavement beneath her feet rumbled. Forte threw back his head and roared, and his fists sparked with electrical power. The Phantom turned to his unit of police officers and nodded briskly. “You’ve had my back so far. You ready for one last push?”
“Yes sir!” the lieutenant barked.
“Count us in too,” Alex said.
“Good to have you back, birdbrain,” the Phantom replied. “What about you, hotshot?”
Isabelle cracked her knuckles. “Volcarona Mask doesn’t do anything halfway. Let’s end this.”
“Damn heroes,” Greed hissed as she struggled to her feet. “Retreat is nothing. We’ll live to fight another day.” She raised her hands to the sky, and Sal’s Skarmory swooped down from where it had perched above the plaza, seizing her hands in its talons and hoisting the Sin commander into the air.
“You slippery bitch.” Isabelle whistled for Aethon, but she had no idea if the Volcarona could hear her. She started to give pursuit, but froze in her tracks as a scream cut across the plaza, magnified by microphones rigged into a bodysuit.
“Ingrid!” the Phantom cried. Forte whirled and began to charge forward, the heroes hot on his heels.
“Stay still,” a new voice said, amplified by Echo’s suit. “If all of you remain calm, nothing will happen to the girl. Echo, please tell your Loudred to stand down.” The voice was coolly polite and devoid of any accent or inflection, and vaguely familiar to Isabelle. There was a grunt, the sound of a scuffle, and a crackle of feedback on the speakers.
“Don’t listen!” Echo shouted. “All he has is a knife! I can handle myself just—”
“Don’t be foolish.” Echo gasped in pain, and there was a thud of impact on flesh.
“We won’t make it in time to help,” Alex said. “But Jiro can.” He tapped his earpiece. “You have to help her! Time to overclock it!” He paused. “It doesn’t matter! Now’s as good a test as any! We can’t lose anyone else!”
Across the plaza, near the fallen Steelix, a gout of flame shot into the sky, and all of Isabelle’s hair stood on end as Blaziken Man shot out over the plaza at impossible speeds, rattling any windows that hadn’t already been shattered by Echo’s sonic attack. Electricity crackled around the powered suit, and fiery contrails issued forth from the soles of the armor’s feet, along with the palms of its hands and vents protruding from the armor’s back.
“Forte, boost me!” Alex shouted, and the Exploud cupped his hands together just in time for Alex to jump into the Exploud’s palms. The normal type launched the winged hero skyward, and the fabric of his wingsuit gleamed crimson in the fading afternoon light as he plunged towards the steps of city hall.
“Let’s go,” the Phantom said as he seized Isabelle’s arm. “The shadows are all wrong, but Gregor can at least get us close.” Isabelle’s stomach lurched as the Phantom’s Dusknoir loomed up in front of them and crammed the pair of them into the mouth on his chest.
After a blast of blistering hot sulfurous wind and an instant in crushing darkness, they emerged a short distance from the steps where Echo had stood. Blaziken Man crashed down on the steps, his armor venting fire and heated wind.
As soon as Isabelle found her balance, she and the Phantom were sprinting across the ravaged cobblestones as quickly as the destroyed terrain would allow. Blaziken Man ripped off his helmet and flung it to the side. “Look at me!” Jiro Sasaki roared. “I am Blaziken Man! I am Clarus City’s greatest defender!” Echo’s captor threw her aside and swiped at Jiro, only for his knife to shatter against his armor. Jiro drove a metal fist into the man’s abdomen hard enough to lift him off his feet. “I won’t let you take another hero down!”
The repulsor on his hand hummed as he charged up a shot, and lightning crackled along his armor, throwing his face into sharp relief. “Stop!” Echo screamed. “You c-can’t hurt him, he’s the m-m-mayor!” The supersonic hero threw herself between Jiro and her assailant. “He’s being c-controlled! If you hurt him, you’re p-playing right into Dominion’s hands!”
In Jiro’s split second of hesitation, Mayor Lynden recovered and charged again, only to be struck by Hawlucha Man descending from the sky. “Sorry Mr. Mayor,” Alex quipped as he shoved Lynden into one of the marble columns that lined city hall’s entry and pinned him there. “But I voted for the other guy, so I don’t feel too guilty.”
Isabelle and the Phantom managed to scramble up to where Jiro stood. The fire had ceased issuing from his armor, and all that remained of the electricity that had shrouded him was the reek of ozone. Jiro’s face looked pale and drawn, and his armor seemed to be short-circuiting, but he was otherwise unharmed. Echo was breathing heavily, and had a hand pressed to a cut on her shoulder.
The Phantom swept past Jiro and went to the sonic heroine’s side. “He hurt you?”
Echo moved her hand away. “It l-looks w-worse than it is. I’ll b-be okay.”
The Phantom’s face darkened, and he shoved Alex away from Lynden before clocking the mayor across the face. “Harcourt Industries will never contribute to your campaign again,” he spat. The mayor collapsed to the ground just as the lieutenant with the Golurk arrived with her unit.
“The mayor was apparently being controlled by Dominion,” Alex told the lieutenant. “He should be restrained until we can make sure he’s free from her influence.”
“It d-doesn’t m-make sense,” Echo said. “Why attack city ha-hall if the m-mayor is already her s-sleeper agent?”
“If I had to guess,” Isabelle replied, “the bitch was flexing. She just wanted to prove she could take out the biggest, best protected, and high profile target in Clarus City if she felt like it.” She grinned at her comrades in arms. “But that’s never gonna happen, not while the heroes of Clarus City are around. Especially now that we’ve got Blaziken Man back.” She almost slapped Jiro’s back, but the armor was still glowing red-hot as it vented heat.
“I’m sorry I left all of this for you to deal with,” Jiro said. His armor hissed and vented steam. “It won’t happen again. I’m back, and I’m not backing down. Dominion can’t be allowed to go any further with this.” He looked to each of the young heroes in turn. “And I’m going to be relying on all of you to help me. Together, we can put a stop to her, and all the Sins.”
“You kn-now it,” Echo replied.
“We’ll make them pay,” the Phantom added.
Hawlucha Man nodded. “Together, there’s no way we’ll lose!”
“Winning’s what we do best,” Volcarona Mask said with a grin.
“Clarus City doesn’t have a league,” Jiro said with a smile, “but so long as you’re holding the line, it’s got an amazing Elite Four.”
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