CHAPTER 5

The diamond cufflinks were a silly indulgence, he knew. He would have been far better off with a more practical button-sleeve, but he had always believed that appearances counted for far more than people gave credit to. He reached up and fixed the white mask that obscured his eyes and nose before tapping his gilded cane against the ground twice. The humming noise behind him grew in intensity as the looming shape of his partner bled out of the shadows and took on solid form.

The villains in Greenpoint knew to flee to their wretched dens when the Phantom walked the streets.

The young man brushed a speck of nonexistent dust from his silk jacket and leaned casually on his cane as his partner analyzed various radio signals. With a deep bass hum, he alerted the Phantom that he had found something. "Well then, lead on." His partner's broad hands clamped down on the Phantom's shoulders, and he felt himself drawn into his partner's pliant body. It was followed by the lurching sensation and acute vertigo that always accompanied their travel in this manner, and fortunately it was over as abruptly as it began.

When his partner released him, the Phantom found himself in a dark, dead-end alley with an alarm ringing some ways distant. He stepped out onto the main street and found himself a block from the Clarus Geological Society. "Envy's stooges, I'll wager," he muttered. "How predictable." He gestured for his partner to hang back and strode up the baroque façade of the Geological Society and leaned against one of the Doric columns. He withdrew a watch from the pocket of his waistcoat and nodded. "If they're after what I think they're after, and the alarm started then…" A window above him exploded outward in a cascade of glass, and several forms rappelled down. The Phantom snapped his watch closed. "Right on schedule." He stepped out from the shadows of the pillar and inclined his head to the burglars. "Lovely night for a stroll, gentlemen."

The three would-be robbers whirled on him, and the leader's Sneasel and Sabeleye prepared to pounce. "Who the hell are you, fancypants?" the second bandit snapped. His Hypno raised its pendulum and the third robber's Ariados clicked its mandibles together.

"I am the man who is about to make things rather unpleasant for you if you don't return the Harcourt Diamond to me immediately."

"How did you know that we—?" the third robber asked before being cut off by the first one with an impatient wave of his hand.

"Doesn't matter how he knows. Just get rid of him!" He clicked his tongue, and his two dark types charged. The Phantom twirled his cane and swatted the Sneasel out of the air. With his free hand, he snapped his fingers, and a glowing purple orb struck the Sabeleye, knocking the unfortunate creature flat. His partner's humming filled the air as the Dusknoir loomed up behind the Phantom.

The second robber drew his pistol. "We still have numbers on this guy. C-Come on!"

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," the Phantom quipped. He tapped his cane against the ground, and ghostly flames appeared in the air around the burglars. The pinpricks of light quickly resolved themselves into a Chandelure and two Lampent, even as the shadows the three ghost types cast began to writhe. A cloud of Ghastly and Haunter surged out of the darkness, quickly surrounding the three terrified men. The Ariados attempted to scurry away only to be singed by a gout of flame from one of the Lampent.

"Y-You're crazy!" the third robber said.

"You'll find I'm quite stable. Methodical, even," the Phantom said as he strode through the cloud of ghosts. "Though you'll have to forgive me for indulging a bit in theatrics. It's just that the diamond I am reasonably certain you have stolen has a certain personal significance to me, and I would like to see it returned to its rightful place."

The second robber fished something out of his pocket and tossed it to the Phantom. "If you want it so bad, then have it. Arceus man, just let us go. We were only following the boss's orders. We never wanted to hurt anybody!"

The Phantom caught the bag out of the air and weighed it in his palm. "I wish I could believe you, but the fact remains that you are guilty of breaking and entering the Geological Society, and I cannot let you escape without punish—"

The Phantom was cut off by an explosion several streets away.

"Well gentlemen, it seems this is your lucky night. However, I can't allow ruffians like you to menace Greenpoint without consequences, so…" He clapped his hands and most of his ghosts dispersed, vanishing back into the shadows they had sprung from. "Cornelius, Erasmus, ensure these ruffians stay put, and Brahms, see to it that the gentlemen of the Eighth are informed of their new wards." A solitary Ghastly shot off into the night while two Haunter descended on the terrified robbers and quickly immobilized them. When they had been dealt with, the Phantom turned on his heel to face his Dusknoir. The opera cape he wore flared out around his legs in a way he thought was suitably impressive and dramatic. "Now then Gregor, shall we?"

The Dusknoir enveloped him again, and when the Phantom emerged from the disorienting darkness, he found himself several streets over. Someone crowed with raucous laughter and gunned a motorcycle engine. A group of young men on motor bikes tore around a corner, whooping and shouting. They carried bottles filled with oil and topped with burning rags. They hurled the fiery cocktails indiscriminately through windows, reveling in the chaos they created.

"Wrath," the Phantom spat. Of all of Clarus City's Sins, Wrath was the one he detested most. The anarchist and his gang sowed strife everywhere they went, and Sloth made no effort to rein them in until their antics threatened his own interests. As far as the Phantom was concerned, Wrath was nothing more than a rabid animal with a long leash, and rabid animals needed to be put down.

This time, Wrath's minions had targeted the old City Hall, blowing out the southwestern wing of the stately, centuries-old building. The Phantom had no idea what their aim was, if they even had one, but a desecration of an illustrious symbol of Greenpoint's past couldn't go unpunished. However, even with his army of ghosts, he didn't fancy his odds against a band of bloodthirsty anarchists. Still, someone had to slow them down until the police could catch up to them. The Phantom spread his arms wide and beckoned to the shadows. "Chase them down." Clouds of his ghost types poured from the darkness and took the air, shrieking and howling as they tore off after the motorcycles. "Titus," the Phantom said. "To me."

A truly massive Haunter swooped down and wrapped one of the Phantom's arms in each ghostly claw before rising back up into the air again. As he was buoyed aloft by Titus, the Phantom saw Gregor blur back into the shadows below. Titus soared above the wide boulevard, his breath icy on the back of the Phantom's neck. Gregor's shadow transportation was undoubtedly useful, but when giving pursuit, it was better to fly, especially when the quarry was driving as erratically as the anarchists.

When Titus caught up to his ghostly brethren, the Phantom allowed himself a brief smirk of satisfaction at the sheer panic his ghosts had instilled. The fleeing anarchists were firing madly at the ghost types, but their bullets mostly passed through their gaseous bodies. Those that had more solid corporeal forms knew well enough to hold back. Titus put on a burst of speed to get out ahead of the motorcycles and lightly deposited the Phantom on the street in front of them. Gregor was instantly at his side, broadcasting his spectral hum.

When the lead motorcyclist showed no signs of slowing down as he approached, Gregor fired a shadowy orb from the palm of his left hand. It struck the front wheel of the bike and launched the driver through the air. The rest of his ghosts descended on the cyclists in a screaming mass, knocking them from their bikes. When the ghost army rose back up into the air, the Phantom swept forward. "I see you're not laughing anymore. Good. I assume I have your attention?"

One of the anarchists stalked towards him, flicking open a switchblade. "I'm going to gut you, nice and slow. Punks like you ought to know better than to mess with Wrath!"

The Phantom sidestepped the first clearly telegraphed blow. "Am I speaking to the man himself?"

"The one and only!" He angrily hurled a pokeball at his feet, and a red and black form burst from the capsule. The Incineroar pounced at the Phantom, only to receive Gregor's fist in its gut. The Phantom quickly drew the concealed blade from his cane and spun to meet Wrath's next attack. The anarchist's hair was in wild disarray, and his faded jacket was more patches than leather. It was, in the Phantom's studied opinion, an entirely tacky and clichéd look.

His ghosts kept Wrath's minions pinned down even as they too summoned their pokemon allies. Gregor and the Incineroar battled back and forth, seemingly in a stalemate. Both Wrath and his pokemon shared an erratic, hard-to-predict fighting style that kept Gregor and the Phantom on the defensive, but it was rough, unschooled and lent itself to over-commitment, making it easy to take advantage of.

"I've been waiting a long time for this," the Phantom snarled as he and Wrath traded blows. "I'm going to put you down, once and for all."

Wrath scoffed as he parried the Phantom's strike and drove a knee into the young man's chest. "You know how many times I've heard that tune? Anyone who stands up to Wrath gets beaten down."

"I'm not just anyone." The Phantom feinted and managed to drive the point of his blade into Wrath's gut, drawing a gout of blood. He grinned and pressed his assault even as Wrath howled in pain and rage.

"I'll make you pay for that, you little punk! No one stands up to Wrath!"

The Phantom struck again, this time drawing a scratch along Wrath's cheek. "When you only pick on those weaker than you, it has a way of inflating your own self-importance. And now, all your debts are coming due." Though Wrath was unquestionably the stronger of the two, the Phantom's cane-sword had a far longer reach, and he was pressing his advantage. "I'm going to make you pay in blood for everything you've taken from Clarus City. For everything you've taken from me!"

"Bold talk," Wrath hissed. "But can you back it up, kid?" The Phantom drove his blade into the meat of Wrath's thigh, making the anarchist stagger.

"All that and more, you pathetic bottom feeder." He flicked the blood from his blade and engaged again. The Phantom caught Wrath's knife on the hilt of his blade and held him there, their faces mere inches from each other. "For five years, I've been waiting for a shot at you. Five years ago, you took my parents from me."

Wrath managed to contort his grimace of pain into a smirk. "I've killed a lot of parents. You're going to have to be a bit more specific."

The Phantom let his fury boil over, and he rained a series of blows on Wrath, driving the man back. Wrath stumbled over a loose paving stone, and the Phantom saw his opportunity to knock the knife from the anarchist's hand. It clattered away across the ground, and the Phantom forced Wrath to his knees. He raised his blade, knowing exactly what he had to do.

The Phantom, like almost every other hero in Clarus City, adhered to a strict, unspoken code that they were not to kill their adversaries, no matter how heinous the crime. They were always to bring them to justice, and allow the legal system to do its work. Occasionally, the Gunslinger or the Hammer or even Blaziken Man would go too far, but those deaths was always explicitly accidental. As far as the Phantom knew, only the Ronin openly flaunted the code, and the Ronin was hardly a hero anyway.

But now that he had Wrath before him, utterly within his power, he understood why the Ronin did what he did. Some men would only find justice in death, and if he was chosen by fate to become the instrument that delivered it, then so be it. After everything Wrath had done, the sentence was clear. The Phantom would be judge, jury, and executioner. No one would mourn Wrath anyway.

Just as he was about to bring the blade down on Wrath's throat, a triumphant howl split the air, shattering the Phantom's concentration. The Incineroar managed to land a solid hit on Gregor, making the Dusknoir's usual hum change into a protracted moan. At that moment, Wrath snarled a nearly unintelligible curse and drew a pistol from beneath his jacket. At this range, there would be no way for the Phantom to avoid a direct hit.

Before Wrath could pull the trigger, the Phantom heard a high-pitched shriek, and then Wrath was sprawled on the ground several feet away, seemingly hit by an invisible force. Another shriek, and the Incineroar was likewise sent tumbling away. The Phantom's eyes widened as he realized what had happened, and an instant later Gregor had blurred and reappeared at his trainer's side, his humming growing louder in preparation of what was about to happen next.

The Phantom's ghostly legion scattered as a loud reverberating chord shook every window up and down the street. The anarchists clapped their hands over their ears as the auditory assault continued. The chords were loud enough to almost have a physical force, keeping Wrath and his band of terrorists pinned down beneath a wall of pure sound. The Phantom wasn't sure entirely how, but the frequency Gregor broadcasted at seemed to give him some kind of immunity, which certainly made collaboration with the other Greenpoint hero a great deal easier.

He wasn't sure where Echo and her pokemon allies were exactly, but they had to be very close by to have this kind of effect. He owed her one. Another one.

The anarchists writhed as Echo continued to play from her concealed location, and soon the Phantom saw the flashing red and blue lights of police sirens. The overpowering sound died out when the officers arrived, and Gregor subsided to his usual quiet hum. The police quickly apprehended the prone anarchists and began dragging them to their feet and into the waiting transport.

Captain Ito of the Sixth Precinct nodded to the Phantom when she arrived. "I got the present you left my boys at the Geological Society," she grumbled. "You're like my wife's Glameow, you know. Always leaving little 'presents' on the doorstep."

"Just doing my part," the Phantom replied. Though he was still shaken from his bout with Wrath, he was doing his best not to show it. A hero was always composed, not a hair out of place. He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and drew out the small black bag he had taken from the robbers. He tipped the contents into his palm and held it up to the light. The fist-sized, multifaceted blue diamond glittered in the street lights. He held it out to Captain Ito. "They were after the Harcourt Diamond. In all the confusion, I didn't have a chance to put it back. Could you return it for me?"

Ito took it and held it up to the light. "Nice rock."

"A little too gaudy for my taste."

The captain glanced down at his tuxedo and quirked an eyebrow up. "Right. The last thing you'd want to be is gaudy, huh?" She put the diamond in an evidence bag and handed it off. "You seen Echo yet?"

"Afraid not, but I owe her my thanks. Had she not shown up when she did, things might have ended unpleasantly."

"Right," Ito said again.

Moments later, a young woman in a black bodysuit trudged through the crowd of police officers, a red electric guitar slung over her shoulders. An Exploud and a Loudred bounded along beside her, and when he looked up, the Phantom could just make out her Noivern swooping and diving against the night sky. When she saw Captain Ito and the Phantom, she straightened, tapped her heels together and gave a brisk salute.

The police captain smiled a bit at that, and inclined her head to Echo. "Damn fine work." She turned to the Phantom. "Both of you. But we'll take it from here."

Echo simply nodded, and after a hesitation he hoped was imperceptible, the Phantom did too. Better that the decision was out of his hands. He and Echo stood off to one side as the police loaded the anarchists into an armored transport. After standing in silence for just long enough for it to be uncomfortable, the Phantom turned to her. "Thank you. You saved me again."

Echo jumped, clearly startled out of some kind of reverie. "Oh," she replied. "Uh, n-no worries. I-It's wh-what we do. H-Heroes and wh-whatever."

"I suppose you're right. Still, I won't forget this. I'll find a way to make it up to you someday." No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't understand Echo. Any time they had found a brief moment to exchange words after a conflict, she had responded only in short, clipped sentences. Shyness was one thing, but it seemed entirely paradoxical that someone who's method of fighting relied entirely on sound, and occasionally her own voice, to be utterly taciturn.

Echo used the natural amplification abilities of her Loudred and Exploud to boost the resonance of her guitar and voice to make criminals yield, holding them in place until the police could arrive. It had proven effective, but there was no way to prevent collateral damage to bystanders. Still, she was good at what she did, and the Phantom had worked together with her on several previous occasions. They weren't formally partners, and didn't coordinate their efforts, they just happened to wind up at the same crime scenes. Greenpoint wasn't such a large borough, really.

Just as the police were about to load Wrath into the transport, there was a loud whoosh, and the Phantom found himself robbed of the ability to see. Judging from the high-pitched tone of alarm Gregor was broadcasting, he was not the only one. An impenetrable field of darkness had descended over the street, and the policemen were shouting to each other, trying to reorganize. The Phantom heard Echo unsling the guitar from her back and strum a few experimental chords, though without the amplification of her Exploud partner. The darkness was so absolute, the Phantom could not even see the faint spectral light of his ghostly legion not twenty feet away.

As quickly as it descended, the darkness disappeared, leaving everyone disoriented and blinking in the glare of the streetlights. A moment later, there was an alarmed shout, and the police all went for their radios. The Phantom swept over to Captain Ito. "What's going on? What just happened?"

The captain shook her head. "Wrath is gone. Someone sprung him."

"S-Sounds like Lust," Echo said. "He's s-s-slipped past me w-with Night Shade before."

"Him and that damned Xatu," Ito growled. "Well, safe to say that the Sins came to collect their own, but they left the rest of his thugs behind. We'll see if we can get some kind of confession out of them. You kids hit the showers, we'll take it from here."

"Are you sure?" the Phantom said. "He can't have gone far, even if he was teleported away. We could canvass the city and—"

"Kid, you do good work. But leave this to us. Head home for the night."

The Phantom wanted to protest, but he felt Gregor's hand on his shoulder, cold and heavy. This was a battle he wasn't going to win. As much as he hated that Wrath had gotten away, a small part of him felt a glow of satisfaction. It meant the bastard was still out there somewhere, and he would have a chance to take him down again. The Phantom gave Captain Ito and Echo each a curt nod. "Until next time, then."

After he dismissed his ghost types for their nightly prowl, Gregor drew him into his body, and the Phantom once again was overcome with acute vertigo as they traveled back through the shadows.

They emerged in a dark, tastefully decorated room, the curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows billowing from the slight breeze of their entrance. The Phantom shrugged off his cape and hung it on a carved mahogany coatrack before sinking into an antique leather armchair with a groan. Now that the adrenaline was seeping away, he was starting to become aware of just how sore he was. Wrath had done a number on him.

He felt something warm near his face, and he waved his hand in the air before his eyes. His Chandelure drifted up higher, suffusing his father's study (even after all these years, he still wasn't comfortable thinking of it as his own) with an ethereal glow. He reached over to side table and picked up a crystal decanter of brandy and a highball glass. He poured himself a generous drink and savored the liquor as it traveled down his throat.

Gregor's eye dimmed as the Dusknoir went into a dormant state that passed for sleep. Through the windows, the Phantom could see his ghost types starting to return to the manor grounds, small shadows flitting through the moonlight and passing between the trees. He placed his glass down on the table beside him and ran a fingertip through the layer of dust that had accumulated there. Perhaps it was time he hired back the servants. The mansion had been empty for years now, except for the ghosts.

He took off his mask and sighed. To bring back the servants would mean explaining his comings and goings, and that was something he was loath to do. He had enjoyed his free reign up to this point, but at least to the outside world, the end of his mourning period was long overdue. He was sure people were beginning to talk.

The Harcourt mansion had once been famous for its opulent galas, the place to be for anyone who was anyone in Clarus City to be seen. But since the night his parents died, the mansion had been dark and silent. Edgar Harcourt had not been able to face the public, simpering with concern for his lost parents. Instead, he had withdrawn from public life, and as far as anyone knew, he had not left the manor grounds for years.

Well, at the very least, he had not left the manor as Edgar Harcourt.

Edgar poured himself another brandy, drinking more slowly this time. Something about this latest attack didn't seem right to him. The Sins had been acting erratically lately, striking in broad daylight, hitting targets with no clear value to them. There was a pattern, he was sure, he just could not for the life of him figure out what. Arceus knew he had tried, going so far as to set up a corkboard with little bits of red string connecting things, like a conspiracy nut. But even that had not made the picture any clearer.

It did him no good to dwell on it now, especially since he wanted nothing more than to drink himself into a comfortable stupor. It was a problem for daylight hours, but nonetheless, it was a problem he was determined to solve. He needed to stay one step ahead of the Sins if he was going to bring them down and have his revenge.