I'S SITING ON A FILTHY CHIMMEY. eighty stories above street level, watching from the shadows as one of my personal top five dumbest villains tries his best to wrap his mind around a hostage situation of his own creation. His name is Rogue Warrior, and he's six feet five inches of bad skin and steroid-fueled muscles. His hostage, an attractive woman (of course, she's attractive… it's hard to get money for an ugly hostage), is going with the traditional "scream my way to freedom" attempt. It's not going well for either of them.
"No fancy tricks!" Warrior yells to the cops at ground level. "You get me my money, or I swear to God I'll drop her!"
Upon hearing this, Rogue's hostage finds a whole other screaming gear, one that threatens to tear a hole in any eardrum within fifty miles. I quickly size her up: five feet seven inches, one hundred thirty pounds. Dropped from this height, she'd hit the ground in less than thirty seconds.
I check the clock on the top of the building a few feet to my left. 8:45. It's time.
"Do it or she's dead!" he yells. "You hear me!"
"Of course, they don't hear you," I say, dropping from my perch. "They're eighty stories down."
"Bright Boy!" he yells, and whirls to face me.
"She's screaming like a fire alarm, and I doubt they hear her," I say.
His face scrunches up, as if he doesn't want to believe what I'm saying, but is aware enough of his own shortcomings in the brains department to know that he should. "They can hear me," he says meekly.
"No, they can't. Listen, Rogue, I know you have a problem with the whole 'planning' aspect of planning a crime, but next time you decide to do this hostage thing, you might want to choose a location where the cops can actually hear your demands. Otherwise, you might do something stupid. Like this."
"Shut up, Bright Baby. Where's your daddy, Phantom Justice? Huh?" He smiles, proud of his "joke," then looks to his hostage for some supportive laughter. All he gets is a shock-induced stare.
"I guess it's true what they say," I respond, "steroids can make you strong, but they can't make you funny."
His smile disappears. "Go ahead," he snarls, "make another crack about steroids. You and your daddy will be scraping this lady off the sidewalk with a putty knife." That wakes her up… and she starts screaming again.
"All right, let's just drop the tough talk and calm down," I say over her screams. Rogue Warrior is a plus/plus speed and strength like I am, but all the steroids have given him a distinct size advantage. On the other hand, he's ridiculously bulky. He may still be faster than the average person, but I'm not the average person. To me, it looks like he's moving underwater. I could hit him fifteen times before he could lift an arm to defend himself. But he's holding a hostage… and I'm just the sidekick. My orders are to distract, not engage.
"Ugh," I say. "Her screaming is giving me a headache."
His face breaks into a big, dumb, evil smile. It's a bully's smile. "I like it."
I feel myself getting angry, but anger isn't going to help me in this situation… it's only going to get in the way… so I push it aside. "Right. Any way you could let her go, and you and I can settle this?"
"Ha! You're kidding, right? She's my bargaining piece!"
"OK… so what are you asking for?" I ask.
"Five hundred million."
"Seriously?"
"Do I look like I'm joking?" he asks, shaking the woman for emphasis.
"Is she all you've got?" I ask.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, she's just a civilian, right?"
"Yeah."
"So you're nuts if you think the city's going to pony up five hundred million for someone other than a political figure or a celebrity," I say. "I mean, no offense, lady, you're really pretty, and I'm sure you're nice, and all life is sacred, blah, blah, blah… but come on? Five hundred million? The city can buy a bridge for that price."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah."
The bully smile creeps back onto his face. "Well… maybe I should just drop her, then." He swings her back over the edge. "I mean, seeing as how she ain't no good for leverage no more. Maybe all she's good for is showing the world that you and your daddy don't always win, huh? How'd you like that?" He lets go of her, then quickly grabs her again before she can fall too far. She screams, starts sobbing, pleads for her life. Rogue Warrior starts laughing. "Yeah, baby, talk to me. Tell me what you'll do for me if I let you live."
He's toying with her. I suppress the urge to take him on. He's strong and stupid, and only one of those is a weakness. Play to his strength and he wins. Stay patient… stay patient…
"Whoopsy!" He drops her, then quickly grabs her again. "I'm just sooo clumsy!"
She's screaming and babbling.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see one of the shadows behind Rogue Warrior shift. That's the signal.
"Hey, idiot!" I shout. "Were you born stupid, or did all the steroids make you that way?"
His jaw tightens. "What'd I say? Huh? Make another steroid crack and see what happens!"
"So, show me, Steroid Warrior! Show me what happens when a juiced-up moron like you gets angry! Come on!"
"Oh, you're gonna die, Bright Baby! But first—say good-bye to the nice lady!" He tosses the woman over the side, like she was nothing more than an empty coffee cup. He rushes me. Even with his bulk, he's fast. Lucky for the falling woman, I'm faster. I leapfrog him, land on the building ledge, then propel myself off the side of the building. Phantom Justice's giant black cape flaps over my head, heading straight for Rogue Warrior.
"Hey! Come back here, you cowa—ooof!" Rogue Warrior's insult is cut off by Phantom's boot hitting him in the face.
"Your night of evil is over, scu—" is all I hear of Phantom's speech before I'm out of earshot. That's OK. I've heard it before, and I've got a little something else to focus on at the moment.
At this rate of descent, I only have twenty seconds left to catch up to the plummeting, screaming ex-hostage before she becomes an ex-screaming ex-woman. I straighten out my body like a diver to make myself as aerodynamic as possible, but there's still no way I'm going to be able to reach her in time. I flip open the secret compartment on my belt buckle and hit the third button from the left. Small propulsion units on the bottom of my boots click on, giving me a short burst of speed, allowing me to close the distance between us.
She's falling with her back toward the ground, eyes closed, waving her arms and legs in a futile attempt to swim back to the roof of the building. It's slowing her down a little, which is good. But now I have to do a little kung fu at 150 mph in order to avoid her flailing limbs and find a good grip on her. It's not working.
"Hey!" I yell. She opens her eyes, and just the fact that she finds herself looking at a human face in this situation startles her into stillness. I use that moment to grab her waist and pull her close. She wraps her arms around my neck and presses up against me. Her nails are digging into my back. She smells like lilacs. My heart starts pounding, and not because the street is closing in.
We pass flagpole FP-12. I reach up with my right arm as my instincts override my hormones. I feel the cold, smooth metal hit my hand; I clamp down tight enough to stop our descent, but loose enough for us to swing around. My tendons crack as our momentum carries us up and over once… twice. On the upswing of the second revolution, I push her off me and toss her in a high arc toward the roof of the neighboring building. She flies silently. Either she trusts me, or she's all screamed out.
I swing halfway around, then plant my feet on the flagpole and use it to push off, like it's a diving board. I zoom on a line drive, hit the roof, somersault once, then pop up sprinting. I look up over my left shoulder, just in time to see the woman heading my way. I check my footing… I'm running out of real estate. I look back, tracking her like a fly ball that, I hope, wasn't hit out of the park.
She hits my hands. I wrap my arms around her, then somersault twice to stop our momentum. When I pop up, she's cradled in my arms. I look down. We're two inches from the edge of the roof. I take a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Now's not the time to reveal to the panic-stricken woman how close I came to misjudging things.
I try to keep my composure, but my legs are shaking. The woman nuzzles her face into my neck. She's breathing heavily, and each breath sends a fresh set of shivers across my skin. Her blouse is torn and disheveled, and I can see the top of her bra: pink lace. Her chest is heaving up and down. Her breath is tickling the hairs on my neck.
The activity below my belt starts before I can even think to stop it. I realize what's going on and start thinking about baseball, about sharks, about world geography… anything to try to put the brakes on.
"That was amazing," she whispers, her lips pressed up against my ear. "You're amazing."
And there it is. Game, set, match. I'm standing at full attention. Puberty, one; self-control, zero.
All right… I can still get out of this with little to no damage. All I have to do is put her down and get the heck out of here. I start to lower her, but then she starts running her fingers through the back of my hair…
Oh God… What do I do now? Maybe she's really into me. But maybe she isn't? Maybe she's just being nice. Or what if she's in shock and has no idea where she is or what she's doing? But then what if she accidentally brushes against "it," and "it" totally like wakes her up? And she suddenly realizes she's gone from being thrown off a roof by a juiced-up freak to being held several stories off the ground by a teen-aged pervert wearing bright yellow tights? Oh God… Phantom Justice never trained me for this.
OK… calm down… deep breath… ignore the feeling of her fingers caressing your neck…
"Uhh… miss?" I manage to croak out.
She opens her eyes and looks up at me, dreamily. She licks her lips. "Mm-hm?"
Oh God…
Before I can say anything other than "Uhh," a loud WHUP-WHUP-WHUP fills the air, making talking impossible. A spotlight clicks on, blinding me.
"Bright Boy!" a guy on the official Channel 4 News helicopter yells. "Hey, Bright Boy!!"
Great. The news choppers never come looking for me. NEVER. They usually have all they can handle filming Phantom Justice's fights. And now, the ONE time they come looking for ME, I'm holding a beautiful, shock-addled woman and pitching a bright yellow tent. I just hope to God they've got their camera pointed above my waist.
"Hey! Bright Boy! Is that a banana in your tights, or are you just happy to be on TV?!" the cameraman yells.
Crap.
I can't hear them laughing because the helicopter is so loud, but every once in a while, one of their higher-pitched howls makes it through the noise. Plus, I can see them rolling around the floor of the chopper. For a second, the un-heroic part of me hopes they fall out. I want to see how funny they think my tights are when I'm their only hope of survival. But they don't… and I start to feel bad for wishing death upon them for laughing at me. Now I'm arguing with myself.
I have to get out of here.
"I have to get out of here," I say, and put the woman down.
"Mm-hm," she says in that same dreamlike way. Her knees are shaking, but they hold. Over my shoulder, I hear her say, "How do I get down?" I feel bad, but there's no way I'm picking her up again. The fire department will have to figure it out. I sprint away, leap off the building, do two rotations off FP-12, release, and soar into the air. There's a dark alley between two buildings, and I head for it.
I hit the alley, landing on a fire escape a few stories up. Thankfully, it's too dark for anyone to see me. I sit down, put my knees up, and cradle my head in my hands.
"You saved the innocent," comes an intense whisper from the fire escape above me. It's Phantom Justice. "Good job."
His costume makes him nearly impossible to see in the darkness, so I don't even bother trying. "Thanks. How'd things go with Warrior?"
"Another piece of filth off the street," he growls.
"Uhhh… yup." I never know what to say when he says things like that. "So, you took him down quickly, huh?"
"Yes. How did you deduce that?"
"The news copter paid me a visit. They never do that unless you're already done and, even then, they usually just fly away. Tonight, they…" I trail off. I really don't want to talk about what happened. Phantom isn't really listening to me, though, so it doesn't matter.
"Yes. The news. I would prefer to avoid the attention, but I realize it's necessary," he says, still using the intense whisper, even though I'm the only one around to hear him. I used to think that whisper was kind of dark and cool, but lately it's been getting on my nerves. "If we're going to be victorious in this war on the sick and depraved criminals of this city, we need to keep winning the hearts and minds of the public."
"Uh-huh."
"We need to be the face of justice."
"Yeah… not sure people will be focusing on my face," I mumble.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. Never mind. Are we done? Can we go home now?"
"Hm. The city is quiet. Take Sweep Route Sixteen and meet me back at the car in an hour."
I sigh. "OK."
"Remember our purpose: 'Through the darkness and the light—'" He pauses, waiting for me to recite it with him. I'm really not in the mood, but there's no way he's going to leave until I do.
"We'll defeat the wrongs and make them right," we finish together… just like we have almost every night for the past seven years. Tonight, it takes every ounce of willpower in my body to say it without rolling my eyes.
He reaches down and pats me on the shoulder. "Good soldier. One hour," he says, then takes off.
I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands and take a deep breath. After what just happened, the last thing I want to do is go back out there… into the city… where people might see me. I feel like people have seen more than enough of me already…
But, an order is an order.
I take another deep breath, let it out, then leap off the fire escape. The quicker I get this over with, the quicker I can get out of this stupid costume.
