A/N: Not a very long chapter, I know. But it does offer some more insight into Elisa's past.


Normally getting to the top of the Eyrie Building would be a cinch. The air currents around the world's largest skyscraper were always strong, and it would be easy to just use those currents to glide up to the top. But considering that she had heard advanced automatic weapons fire amongst the thunder-like noise she heard from the street, Elisa decided it would be safer to do an alternative route.

Climbing was not something she often did since she arrived in New York in 1960 at age twenty-two—a preteen in gargoyle standards—with her human father. But back in Arizona, Grandfather often took her to Humphreys Peak, the highest natural point in Arizona and a sacred and holy mountains sacred and holy mountain to the tribe. It was also the "birthplace" of the Gargoyle tribes that befriended the native tribes. Though Grandfather could not tell her much about her kind, he still wanted her to have some connection to them.

The Eyrie Building was no Humphreys Peak, but as Elisa climbed higher and higher up side of the building, she couldn't help but feel like the world's largest skyscraper might as well be a mountain. Not even four years ago, the lot that the skyscraper was built upon, housed a ten-story high office building. During the 80s, she had used its roof was a combination of a look-out point during the nights when she was patrolling the Central Park area, and roosting sanctuary when it was too close to sunrise to make it back to her loft in SoHo.

It had been a bad night when she had awoken from stone sleep to find her roosting site surrounded by demolition personal. She had been lucky that they had not made it to the roof yet during their final safety inspection; otherwise they would have found her hibernating self and would have proceed to load her into a haling ramp and transport truck.

Thankfully, the loss of that one look-out and sanctuary was not bad to Elisa. She had plenty of other sanctuaries within the city to roost in, and it was not like New York would be running out of buildings to preform look-out duty from.

Still it surprised her that the mile-high skyscraper took only a year to complete when it took the eight hundred seventy-one foot Bank of America Corporate Center, then the world's tallest building, two and half years. Upon its completion, Elisa finally asked Officer Morgan what the Eyrie Building was about.

The Eyrie Building, he told her, was the corporate headquarters of Xanatos Enterprise, a giant corporation created and run by David Xanatos, one of the richest men in the world. In the almost two years since the building's completion, Elisa never dared get near the massive sky scrapper until tonight. There was something about it and this human man, Zanatos, which whispered of danger and the need to exercise extreme caution.

More unexplainable Gargoyle instinct perhaps.

But now that feeling had subsided into a buzz in the back of her mind, distant but still there, as she climbed through the thinning cloud barrier that obscured the very top of the Eyrie Building.


On a side note: Not counting the 1,000 year sleep, Elisa is exactly the same age as Goliath since, according to GargWiki, he hatched in 938. This was done to make Elisa older then the Trio, who are the gargoyle equivalent of 18-year-old men. And I really didn't want to put Elisa through what Angela had to put up with those three, so I decided that Elisa should be their senior...less likely to treat her eagerly for courting.