The setting sun glowed orange as it slowly descended toward the horizon, casting a foreboding light across Paragon City. People hurried toward their homes, leaving the streets nearly empty, save for the few stragglers and the shady characters lurking in the darkening alleys. In the distance, a police siren signaled the first of many crimes to be committed that night. But in Paragon, the city of heroes, crimes were a futile pastime for the villains.
A faint, steady tapping could be heard above the natural sounds of the city at dusk. The origin of the tapping was difficult to determine, unless one's eyes traveled up the dark wall of the apartment building where a pair of dark legs hung over the edge of the rooftop. But no one looked.
A coil of gray smoke rose from between Liam's lips, twisting toward the sky before fading into the breeze. The air began to cool slightly as the sun's heat faded in the distance, followed closely by the tempting decision to pull the neatly folded leather trench coat from beneath his head. But as alluring as the idea of warmth was, Liam decided that he was too tired to care. Instead he continued to stare up at the darkening sky.
His booted foot continued to keep track of the seconds that passed while he lay on the tarmac covering the roof. After a minute, his hand lifted from his chest, carrying the sweet and deadly addiction that had kept him sane since that afternoon. His calculated kicks continued as he returned his hand to his chest and watched the smoke he exhaled rise to the stars.
Across the roof, the unconscious bodies of members of the local Circle of Thorns lay still. The normally feared group of mystics seemed pathetically weak at that moment, sprawled out where they had been defeated. The scorched rooftop was a lament to the fight that had taken place hours before when their ritual had been disrupted. The poor businesswoman who had been chosen to be the sacrifice for the ritual had fled down the rusty fire escape to safety. She had apparently forgotten about her rescuer in her terror.
The unlucky Guard who had followed her – albeit reluctantly and unconsciously – had broken the rusted bolts that caused the fire escape to crumple against the abandoned business building next door. Fortunately the woman had reached the street by then and was well on her way to a therapist. Unfortunately, Liam had lost his last route to ground level.
The nearby air conditioner made a pathetic attempt at life. The already dilapidated air unit had been another victim of the Circle of Thorns. Liam silently sent another cloudy lament to the sky in honor of the air conditioner. The heap of scrap metal had saved him from a devastating blast sent toward him by a Mage. Liam had avenged the air conditioning unit by knocking that particular Mage into a coma.
Letting out a heavy sigh, the young man brushed his free hand through his pale hair. With the fire escape gone, his only other option was the door he had used to get to the rooftop. The only problem was, in his haste to dodge the blades and magic of the Circle of Thorns, he had been unable to prop open the heavy door with the fist sized stone he had used many times before. Without that stopper, the heavy door had closed and locked automatically. And without that door, Liam's options for getting off the roof were down to two: wait for one of the many heroes of the city to help or jump.
Liam had been there since a little past noon. He had thought that in a place where heroes flew around saving people, he would be helped to the ground in less than an hour. But after seven hours and a full pack of Djarums later, Liam was seriously starting to doubt the use of heroes.
And jumping down thirteen stories to concrete hadn't seemed very promising after the first few hours. Now it looked like his only option.
His hand lifted to his mouth again, pulling in another lungful of smoke and releasing it with a sigh. He really needed to get down. He was tired, hungry, in need of a visit to the bathroom, and the empty box of cigarettes was taunting him from where he had tossed it a few minutes earlier. Liam decided that when he was finished with the smoke, he would try climbing down the side of the apartment building.
The sun was half consumed by the horizon and falling further away. Liam sat up and stretched his stiff muscles, wincing at the series of pops that rippled down his spine. He felt better when it ended, though. A smile even graced his lips as he continued to kick the side of the building with his heel.
This was the last cigarette he had and he was going to enjoy it while he could.
One hour later…
Liam slumped against the metal table until his forehead rested against the cold steel. His hands were pulled back behind the steel chair bolted to the floor, held by thick cuffs usually reserved for the brutish villains who passed through the doors to the Paragon Police Station. It wasn't a comfortable position, but the pain in his shoulders eased the headache he had been trying to fight off for twenty minutes.
The door behind him slid open and a detective entered, passing the two Longbow guarding the only exit to the small room. The red and white clad soldiers of Paragon didn't have any visible weapons, but one of them, a short woman with yellow eyes, had proved to be content to blast Liam with a bolt of lightning if he tried anything funny. The larger man was someone Liam met often enough to know that his power was formidable, but he also knew it took a lot of provoking to get on the wrong end of a taste of that power.
The detective stood opposite Liam, watching the young man with narrowed green eyes. The golden badge hanging from his pocket displayed "J. Brogan" as his name. Unlike the Longbow, Detective Brogan still had his shoulder holster under his suit jacket which held his police Glock in its leather sheath.
"You've proven to be quite the troublemaker once again, Liam," the detective greeted as he casually tossed a manila folder on the table. The wind created by the papers ruffled Liam's snowy hair, but he didn't look up.
Detective Brogan opened the folder, displaying the long list of crimes Liam had committed in his days in the city. From disturbing the peace to assault, Liam's past seemed shady at a glance, but no one had cared to listen to the white haired troublemaker's truth. They only saw the evidence of his fists meeting any challenge that came his way, they never asked his motive. Justice at its finest, Liam had thought bitterly.
Liam didn't move. He was accused of breaking and entering and with only his word to battle the broken glass and silent alarm that had gone off, Liam felt he was once again on the losing end of this argument.
But unlike most other detectives and officers Liam dealt with, Detective Brogan listened to his side of the story. Even with a rap sheet long enough to wrap around City Hall and still have enough to spare for a nice, pretty bow, Brogan had never believed Liam was as bad as people portrayed him to be. It was just difficult to get a judge to believe it when Liam did nothing to help himself against the accusations. Oftentimes, Liam made it worse. All the times Liam had been by to visit the precinct, Brogan had been assigned to handle his cases. The detective didn't mind, in fact he liked the youth, but after three years in Paragon City, Liam had been arrested nearly four hundred times for minor crimes—mostly for beating Hellions or Skulls for trying to pick a fight with Liam. The police didn't mind the fact that Liam defended himself, but the young man seemed to take the fights a little overboard. Usually people ran away when their attackers were down; Liam stuck around to make sure they stayed down until the police showed up and deemed the true villains as the victims.
"So tell me what happened."
Liam leaned his ear against the table, his dark eyes rolling up to look at the detective through the shield of white hair. Detective Brogan met his gaze with a patient look. With a sigh, Liam sat up from his uncomfortable pose, rolling his shoulders to loosen the tension that had built from his position. He slumped against the back of the steel chair instead, stretching out until he finally lifted his legs on top of the table, crossing them at the ankle. The female Longbow tensed as if to strike him with a bolt of lightning, but a dismissive wave from Detective Brogan made her back down. She hesitated, but finally relaxed her stance with a glare at the back of Liam's head.
Liam didn't seem bothered by the movement behind him. He would have looked completely relaxed save for the fact that his arms were shackled behind his chair.
"Gotta keep that leash tight on those new Longbow recruits, J.B." Liam said with a heavy British drawl. His lips curled into an arrogant smirk as he stared across the table at Detective Brogan.
"Ignore him, Vex," said the male Longbow. His deep resonating voice held the tone of command that came with leading an entire unit of people into battle.
The woman, Vex, snapped her gaze straight forward, but sparks of angry lightning seemed to flash behind her eyes.
Liam let his head fall back so he could look at the two guards. His innocent smile was almost genuine, but his dark eyes still held the hint of arrogance that only someone who had spent time on the streets and survived could have.
"I didn't see you there, Nature Boy," Liam said. "Shouldn't you be out watering flowers or something?"
"Liam," Detective Brogan cut in. "Lieutenant Roan has done nothing to you. You should apologize."
Liam turned back to the detective. "I should," he stated.
Brogan sighed. "But you won't," he said.
A smile lit Liam's face. "You know me too well, J.B."
"Just explain why you were at Filters after hours," the detective said. "And why you broke the window."
"I was pissed," Liam said with a shrug. The move was hampered by the fact that he was shackled to his chair. "I guess the glass was weak. Really, I'd think in this city it would be bulletproof."
"It is bulletproof—was bulletproof," Detective Brogan said. He opened the folder, which was already full of paperwork from the beginning of the year, and looked over the statements from Liam, the shop owner, and the first officers on the scene. Liam hadn't been very pleasant—Detective Brogan had yet to see the young man display any attitude near gracious in the three years since his first arrival at the police station—and had told the officers to mind their own business. The police had responded accordingly and Liam had just been, well, Liam.
The detective had a small file cabinet in his office that held the young British man's entire record from his time in Paragon City. Brogan often wondered how big his record was from when he lived in London. Liam's record was long enough to rival some of the professional villains in the city, but his crimes were not as horrific as some and the young man had yet to spend more than a day behind bars.
"Tch, I bet," Liam scoffed, interrupting the detective's thoughts.
Detective Brogan cleared his throat to hide the fact that he hadn't been paying attention. "What I see is that your reason for being pissed was because you've had a rough day."
"Yeah, so what of it?" Liam muttered, his mood instantly dark.
"I think it's relevant that we know what would have caused you to break in to Filters," the detective said, pulling a pen from the pocket inside his suit jacket. "Care to enlighten me?"
"For the record, J.B. I didn't 'break into' anything," Liam said. "I was pissed and I let my temper get the better of me."
"You seem to let your temper control you quite often," Brogan said.
"If you wanna know why I'm pissed, you shouldn't interrupt," Liam said. The detective motioned for him to continue. Liam leaned his head back again and stared up at the ceiling.
"I ran out of smokes after getting trapped on the rooftop for the entire afternoon," he said.
"Why didn't you use the fire escape?"
"It was broken."
"It looked fine yesterday," Detective Brogan said, confusion edging his voice.
Liam sighed. It was the kind of sigh that a tired man uses when he just can't care. It expanded his chest to capacity before he let it out loudly. He closed his eyes and began to recount his tale of an afternoon spent on the roof and the fight with the Circle of Thorns.
"And when it started getting dark, I climbed down the side of the building. Not a fun trip, I might add," Liam finished. "I tried to get there before Filters closed. When I didn't I got pissed about everything and punched the window. I didn't mean to break it. Tell Smithy he needs to get a refund on that bulletproof glass."
Brogan nodded as he scribbled down the last note of Liam's story. He tucked the pen back into his pocket and closed the folder. Liam lifted his head as the detective spoke.
"I'll send a unit to check out the rooftop and see if the Circle of Thorns are still there. Lieutenant Roan and Vex will escort you to a cell for the night."
"Don't I get a smoke break?" Liam asked.
"I thought you ran out of cigarettes," Detective Brogan said.
Liam raised one silvery eyebrow at that. He dropped his legs to the floor with two loud thumps as the detective chuckled. Detective Brogan reached into the inside pocket once more and pulled out a pack of Djarums. He tossed the box onto the table and picked up his folder.
"One cigarette and you owe me," the detective said.
Liam jumped forward, forgetting his hands were bound. The sound of metal twisting and snapping quickly filled the room before all was silent. Liam snatched up the pack of cigarettes and began to tear into the thin plastic wrapping.
"Liam!"
The British youth looked up at Brogan's face. The look on the man's face was a mixture of shock and fear.
"What?" Liam demanded, angry that his greeting to the sweet cigarettes he craved had been interrupted.
"You broke the chair."
It was Lieutenant Roan's voice that made Liam turn to the larger, uniformed man. Then he glanced at the chair in question and didn't quite believe what he saw. Surely that wasn't the chair he had been sitting in before. He didn't remember the broken chains hanging on either side. It hadn't felt like the back was twisted forward over the seat.
It took a moment for his mind to realize that the chair had been bent recently, and with great force as well.
"Liam, you never mentioned your powers before," Brogan said. His voice was calmer than he looked. His look turned from surprise to straight-laced officer, but the bloodless skin tone was a dead giveaway to his apprehension.
"What the bloody hell are you talking about J.B?" Liam asked. "I don't have powers."
"Liam, you just bent a solid steel chair into a pretzel," Roan's voice reverberated through the room, like the first rumblings of thunder in a storm.
Liam nearly flinched at the sound of Roan's voice. It meant he was calling his power.
"I work out," Liam said defensively. It bothered him that they had jumped to the conclusion that he had special powers.
"When he is in a cell, call the precinct doctor and have him checked out," Detective Brogan ordered as he headed toward the door.
"What about my smoke break?!" Liam demanded.
"It can wait," Roan rumbled.
Liam felt his anger rise. He had been through a day of hell and now he was being denied one of the only pleasures in life he could have. Vex and Roan made a motion to grab him, but Liam ducked under them, dashing toward the detective frozen in the doorway with the door ajar. Liam shoved past Brogan, his boots slapping against the tile floor as he dodged and weaved through the desks and people filling the room.
"Liam!"
He ignored Brogan's shout and made his way toward the exit. He slammed into the solid door and rebounded, landing on his backside with a grunt as a flash of lightning struck the door over his head. Liam didn't glance back as he ripped the door from its hinges and fled into the midnight darkness.