"Oh no Hawkgirl's here! Run for it!"
Underneath her mask, Shayera smiled. "Don't you know?" she said as her mace crashed through the hood of the robbers' getaway car and demolishing the engine. "That's what they all say?"
Hawkgirl had managed to tied the men up when two of the Midway City Police patrol cars pulled up. "Thanks Hawkgirl! We can take it from here!"
"Anytime officers. The one in the jacket has three packages of narcotics and several false identification cards. Have fun with them."
And with that, Hawkgirl lifted her wings and flew off. It had been over a month since Hawkgirl had crashed onto Earth. The threat of Byth was gone, but there were other criminals to deal with. Of course, these criminals were normal humans. Even as Hawkgirl made arrest after arrest, she was bored of the same old routine. None of the crooks posed the challenge that Byth did. And even today, there was little to do but float on the thermals over the city to spot trouble. She had been airborne for hours. Hawkgirl looked down. "Not even an expired parking meter."
"Hawkgirl?" came the dispatch from the radio on her belt.
"Yes?"
"Emmett needs you to head downtown towards the bank building. There's a few thieves he thinks only you can intercept. I'm trying to patch you to him."
Hawkgirl grinned. "Finally!" She flicked her wings and flew towards the city's main bank, and old Roman-styled building in the heart of Midway. The place was crawling with dozens of pigeons splashing in the fountains and eating bits of crumbs. "Emmett? Can you hear me? I'm at the bank—but where are the thieves?"
"Up there somewhere with you, I think."
"What?"
The was the sound of static. "We got a call from the manager saying pigeons were making off with some jewelry from the deposit boxes."
"What?"
"We got a call from—"
Hawkgirl interrupted him. "I heard what you said—but I have no clue what you meant by it. Pigeon robbers?"
"The manager spotted eight birds, all with the bags the bank uses in their safety deposit boxes tied around their feet, fly out of the building."
Hawkgirl took off her mask for moment to rub her forehead. "Emmett…there's like a hundred pigeons out here." Back on went the mask. "You want me to find eight of them?"
"You be lucky to find any," said Emmett. "The stupid manager didn't call right away…apparently, he was kind of embarrassed to ask for police help."
"Really? So would I. But I do have an idea." Hawkgirl looked down at all the birds. "They've got to be weighted down…" She switched to Thanagarian and shouted as loud as she could. "Fly west."
Down below on the steps of the bank, Captain Jordan—newly promoted—was next to Emmett. He was sipping some coffee. "What do you think she's up to?"
He was answered by several dozen pigeons taking off. Feathers went everywhere. The entire police force was battered by the birds' wings as they flew off towards Midway Park in the middle of the city. Jordan tried to bat the birds away from his face, and the coffee splashed onto Emmett's jacket. "Does this answer your question?" Emmett tried to dust off the down feathers sticking to him. "She could have picked an easier way though…"
Up above Hawkgirl saw most of the pigeons headed to the park, a few blocks south of the bank. A small group headed northeast. "Bingo…those are the birds."
As Hawkgirl dove after the birds, Jordan noticed several birds slightly larger than the pigeons take off from the surrounding skyscrapers. "Those birds are heading towards Hawkgirl."
Emmett took the binoculars and looked up. "Maybe she called them for help?"
Hawkgirl was gaining on the slowest pigeon, which was still fly ing at a quick rate. She wanted to catch it without hurting it too much. Her fingers touched the tip of the tail feathers. "Almost there…"
A sharp pain from her calf caused Hawkgirl to fall back. The pigeon was getting away. "What the—"
Hawkgirl turned her head to find her attacker. A falcon had used its talon to tear into her costume. Instantly she was reminded of Byth. But Byth was dead—and this bird wasn't alone. Several peregrines were following her, aiming at her as she continued to stalk the pigeons. "Stop!" she said in Thanagarian. They didn't. Hawkgirl found herself mobbed by a pack of birds. "Get off me!" She couldn't move closer to the pigeons without being pecked at. "Er…Emmett, get ready. I'm going to send one of those pigeons your way."
Still being attacked, Hawkgirl managed to grab the crossbow on her waist. She loaded a special arrow on it and aimed it in the direction of the slowest pigeon. Batting the falcons away with her wings, she had a clear shot and fired. The arrow exploded into small net with weights at the edges. It cupped over the pigeon, sending him falling towards the police below. "Now get off me, you mangy crows!" Hawkgirl swung her mace at her nearest attacker, sending the falcon crashing towards the ground. With the pigeons too far for Hawkgirl to chase and one dead comrade, the falcons gave up and followed the other birds northeast, away from Midway.
Hawkgirl heard her radio buzz. "Hawkgirl, this is Emmett. You've done all you can up here. Let's get to work with what you caught us."
* * *
Emmett and Jordan were to meet Shayera Hol—the alien known to Midway as Hawkgirl—in the Aviary, her home in the attics of the Museum of History. Of course the Aviary was never designed for a human to enter in. So the two cops had to use the fire escapes to climb onto the roof and to enter the trapdoor. "Love what you've done with the place," said Jordan. He wasn't joking.
When Hawkgirl had first lived in the museum, she only had the basics. A bed and floor. Now, her Aviary was quite the sight. Shayera had installed several glass windows, allowing light to enter during the day. Vines and other plants were growing along the beams, where all the birds perched. And what a collection! Birds from all around the world were flying about, drinking and bathing in small baths or resting on the crossbeams. Emmett and Jordan had to shoo several birds off the sofa in order to sit down. "Where did you get all the high-tech equipment?"
A portion of the Aviary consisted of several alien computers and other electronic gadgets. "After Byth was gone, I managed to recover a lot of my people's technology from the prototype he was flying. I tore apart the computers and managed to reconstruct everything here."
Jordan nodded. "What about your ship?"
"Mavis let me keep it in the below-ground storage. I've been working on it, but everything's going slowly. I've got a lot of the electronics repaired, but I don't have a battery for the cockpit nor an engine."
"Well, its still doing better than my car then."
Shayera grinned. She motioned for Emmett and Jordan to come over by the computers. The dead falcon had been examined, and the pigeon, still alive, was sitting in a small cage. "I did some blood work on the falcon. It had traces of some sort of psycho-manipulative drug I can't identify. There are traces in the pigeon as well, but a smaller amount. It would explain why they didn't listen to my Thanagarian.
"Now," she said, pointing to a map of the eastern half of the US. "Here's Midway, towards the left. This line is the possible path that the carrier pigeons took; based on the navigation angle I saw them leave at. The line ends at the point where, judging by the birds' speeds, they couldn't have pasted in the allotted time."
"Nice detective work," said Emmett.
Shayera shrugged. "I did this on Thanagar all the time." She handed Emmett and fax she had received. "The jewelry was all part of a collection traveling to various museums. Mavis thought they would be safer in the bank than in the museum storage. Poor girl. Several of the pieces stolen belong to Wayne Enterprises and were being donated for the exhibit." Shayera pointed to the map again. "And guess what city falls into the carrier pigeons range?"
"Gotham?"
"Bingo."
Emmett looked at Jordan. He was grinning. "Whoa…Hawkgirl's going to Gotham. The feathers are going to fly."
"Gotham? What is in Gotham that I would find so fascinating?"
Jordan rolled his eyes. "Only Batman, Shayera. That'll be interesting. Your mace versus his utility belt. Emmett, I place fifteen toward The Bat."
Emmett looked at Shayera. "If she carries the cross-bow with the mace, I'll bet fifty in her favor."
"Will someone explain what's so scary about this big black bat to me?"