CHAPTER 6
Though he would never admit it, Alex's side still ached from a blow he had taken the night before. His suit had managed to cushion the impact, but not enough to avoid leaving a nasty bruise. He knew that when you were a freelance superhero, bruises came with the territory, and as tempting as it was to take a night off to let the bruises fade, he couldn't let himself slack off after every fight where he got banged up, especially not after Wrath's anarchists had blown up the old City Hall in Greenpoint. The whole city was on edge, and crime was only on the rise. The major criminal factions were consolidating their forces for something or other, and the minor elements, the garden variety muggers and thieves, were sensing the tension in the air and capitalizing on the city's fear. The police force was doing everything it could to keep the rise in crime under control while still trying to get to the bottom of what the Sins were up to, but it was starting to strain their resources. The last time Alex had seen Captain Anderson, it looked like he hadn't slept in days.
And so Avenbrooke's friendly neighborhood Hawlucha Man was doing everything he could to help.
Two nights ago, he had helped Detective Reyes and Sergeant Hinako Matsuri chase down the chemists and distributors from a notorious smuggling ring pushing a dangerous new opiate. When Alex had tackled the last man, he had screamed that Gluttony would make them pay for this, that it wouldn't be long before the whole city was paying tribute to the Sins, and the police would wish they had turned tail and ran when they had the chance. Matsuri dismissed it as the usual crap, but something about the way the man said it made Alex uneasy. Normally when criminals talked about their connections to the Sins, it was all bluster and braggadocio to affirm their status in the underworld.
But this man had sounded terrified.
He and Hierro soared from rooftop to rooftop, listening for the sounds of breaking glass or sirens. Instead, they heard a scream. Alex slid to a stop, quickly calculated the best route to the direction of the sound, and took off at a sprint. When he reached the edge of the roof, he spread his arms wide, letting the wingsuit catch the night air and carry him along. It didn't take them long to reach where Alex determined the scream came from, and they saw a woman running out from an alley, nearly tripping in her haste to get away.
She had rounded the corner and vanished before Alex could land, but he heard a man in the darkness pleading. "No, please, Arceus no, you can't do this, please…"
"Stop right there," Alex called as he and Hierro stepped forward.
A snarling mass of fur jumped from the darkness and barred their path. The streetlights made the shells on its legs and head gleam, and a low growl reverberated deep in its chest. Hierro's feathers puffed up as he stared down the Samurott, slowly flexing his talons. "Just keep moving, Hawlucha Man," someone said from the darkness. "This doesn't concern you." There was a thud and the sound of scrapping metal. Then came the sound of a boot striking flesh, and a man fell out of the shadows, blood streaming from his nose. The assailant in the darkness drove a booted foot into his chest, and Alex saw the light catch for just an instant on the broadsword the man carried. He stepped out of the darkness and pointed the blade at the sniveling man.
"Ronin," Alex said. "I don't know what this man's done, but this isn't how we do things. There's a system. It will see justice is done."
The vigilante scoffed. "Bullshit." His silver-gray hair was tied back in a severe ponytail, and he idly swiped at a strand that had come loose. The Ronin pointed with his free hand at the man cowering at his feet. "Take a good look as this bastard. He was in the papers." Alex looked past the blood and grime and tears and realized he did vaguely recall the face, a well-heeled investment banker from midtown who had preyed upon desperate women as a kind of sick hobby, allegedly picking them up off the streets, having his way with them, and then maiming and killing his victims. The trial had been widely publicized, and there had been a public outcry when he had been released after a few key pieces of evidence vanished under mysterious circumstances. "Scum like him think they're above the law" the Ronin growled as he lifted his sword. "I'm showing him that he's not."
"You can't just make yourself the judge, jury and executioner!"
"Oh really?" the Ronin said. When Alex tried to stop him, the swordsman shook his head. "Muramasa, keep them out of my way." He picked the prone man up by the collar of his shirt. "Last chance to come clean." The man was too terrified to say anything. The Ronin shoved him against the wall. "Did you kill those women?"
Finally, the man found his voice. "Please, let me turn myself in. I'll confess to the police, I'll make a statement, I swear!"
The Samurott had tackled Alex and forced him against the far wall of the alley, trapping him with its bulk. Hierro screamed and lunged at the water type, only to be sent sprawling when the Samurott struck him with a torrent of water. Alex struggled to escape the press of fur and muscle. "We can take him to the Eleventh! Don't do this!
"He had his chance." The Ronin threw the man to the ground again. "I'll give you a moment to pray."
"Please, no," the man cried. "I'll give you anything! Name a price! Please, let me go!"
"Pathetic," the Ronin spat. He hauled the man up by his elbow and then forced him to his knees. And then, with no further ceremony, he raised his sword and cut the man's head from his shoulders.
"No!" Alex screamed as the Samurott released him. "He was ready to confess! We could have… it didn't have to go this way!"
"This is was better than he deserved." The Ronin pulled a rag from his belt and wiped the blood from his blade. "If I let him go, he'd just slip through the law again and be back to his old ways in a week." He prodded the corpse with his boot. "He can't hurt anyone anymore."
"You're a monster."
The Ronin shrugged. "You aren't wrong. But at least I'm on your side." He sighed and returned his blade to its scabbard. "I don't want you getting the wrong idea here, Hawlucha Man. I think you do good work, but you're hopelessly naïve." The Ronin's Samurott padded over to him, and the swordsman scratched it under its chin. "Stop me if I'm off the mark here. You started doing this because you saw people getting hurt. Criminals were getting away with things that the police were powerless to stop. They knew how to exploit the laws and get off, so the city needed people to operate outside the law to bring them to justice."
"Yes, but— "
"But nothing. The law can't touch the people you're fighting, just like it couldn't touch this man. For people like the Sins, the Baron, the Kuromori, the truly warped and disgusting, the only way to deal with them," the Ronin patted the sword at his hip, "is to put them down for good."
"I have to believe that there's another way," Alex said, his eyes still fixed on the dead man. "I have to have faith that the law knows better than I do. If I take that power into my own hands, how am I any better than the people I'm fighting?"
"You can't be that fucking stupid," the Ronin snapped. "So long as you're only using your power to hurt people who have hurt others, then you're just balancing the scales."
"That's a slippery slope."
The Ronin scoffed. "The hell it is. Someday soon, you're going to have to make the hard call, or innocent people going to get hurt." His face softened, and for just a moment, he looked like nothing more than a tired old man. "Listen, Hawlucha Man. You must have seen it too. The Sins are planning something. A heist at First Clarus in broad daylight, the old City Hall, Sloth himself at the Industrial Trust… that bastard is moving pieces around the board, and we can't see what he's planning. If you aren't ready to do what has to be done, then maybe it's best you keep your head down and stay out of the way."
"I'm not running from this. I made my choice. I swore an oath to protect this city."
"How noble," the Ronin drawled. "Fucking stupid, but noble. I used to be like you once. A long time ago."
Alex couldn't stop himself from asking. "What happened?"
"I went to war." The Ronin looked straight at him, but Alex got the sense that he was looking through him, at something far away. "I did things, overseas. Things a lot worse than this. It was decades ago, but I'm still trying to atone for it." His focus snapped back. "I may be a monster. But sometimes, a monster is just what this city needs." The Ronin palmed a pokeball, and his Samurott vanished in a flash of red light. "Call the police if you want. They'll find the body soon enough either way." He brushed past Hawlucha Man and straddled a motorcycle parked on the street. He gunned the engine once. "I'm sure we'll run into each other again." And with that, the bike roared to life, and the Ronin shot off up the street.
Alex slumped against the wall and tried to take a deep breath, but the scent o blood and death filled his nostrils. He gestured to Hierro and the two of them crossed the street. Alex dug his cell phone out of a small pouch on his belt and dialed the emergency dispatch. "I… I need to report a homicide." The dispatcher on the other end of the line took down Alex's location with a professionalism that bordered on outright coldness, and informed him that the police would be on their way.
Alex hung up and climbed a low-hanging fire escape to a nearby rooftop. He waited until he heard sirens in the distance before soaring over several streets to a rooftop he had found about a month earlier with a good view of the Concord Bridge and the Umber River. When he alighted on the gravel rooftop he pounded his fist against his leg in frustration. Hierro landed behind him and made an inquisitive chipping deep in his throat. Alex shook his head for a moment as he clenched and unclenched his fist.
Finally, he turned to face his partner. "What if he's right? What if I'm not cut out for this?"
Hierro blinked, turned his head to the side, and shrugged. The chirps turned into a more drawn out coo.
Alex sighed and kicked idly at the gravel. "I just… damn it." The heroes of Clarus City walked a thin line, operating outside the bounds of traditional law enforcement, doing the things that the police couldn't, but it didn't take much for a hero to feel like they were above the law, that just because they fought for the good guys they could hold themselves above the same rules everyone else played by. But Blaziken Man, the first hero, the greatest hero, had a code. He wouldn't overstep, and he wouldn't kill, because everyone deserved a second chance, an opportunity to repent, or at least to have a fair trial in the eyes of the law.
When Alex first donned the Hawlucha Man suit, he had taken a private oath to abide by Blaziken Man's code, to obey the same strictures that Blaziken Man placed on himself, even if doing so put him in danger. The laws existed for a reason, and if he started playing by his own rules, doing what he felt was right with no thought for others, then he was no better than the Baron. Just like Blaziken Man, he had promised himself that he would play by the book, even if the book wasn't always right.
Alex knew he was no Blaziken Man. He wasn't a great hero. When people saw the Ronin, all they felt was fear. But he had seen the effect that Hawlucha Man had on people, way their eyes lit up when he dropped out of the sky to defend them, to fight back the bad guys wherever they showed up. Hawlucha Man is here! He'll save the day! He'll protect us! For years, Avenbrooke had been ground under the Baron's boot, and the people had learned to live with it. But now, they had hope, and a symbol to rally behind, because Hawlucha Man was here and…
Bullshit.
Alex could delude himself into thinking that all he wanted, but he knew, deep down, the real reason he put the suit on night after night, risked serious injury or death was because it was a rush. He had become addicted to the adrenaline that pumped through his veins when he dropped out of the sky and into a fight, the way the wind burned his throat on sharp descents, and the satisfaction of winning a fight. He was just using Hawlucha Man as a pretext to get his fix, and how was that any better than the Ronin taking out his anger at the world on Avenbrooke's criminals in a misguided sense of atonement? They were both being selfish, gambling with their lives and the lives of their partners. Even if he saved people, the very act of saving them was corrupted by his selfish motives, by his desperate attempt to get his fix.
"Hierro, what are we even doing here?" His Hawlucha blinked up at him, clearly not understanding the question. Alex stared down at his hands. "Why are we out here night after night? What's it going to accomplish?"
Hierro seemed to consider this for a moment, and finally he extended his right claw towards Alex. He glanced up at his trainer and then down at the claw, obviously intending Alex to take it. When he did, Hierro led him to the edge of the rooftop and make a quick, all-encompassing gesture with his left claw before extracting his right claw from Alex's grasp and placing it over his heart. "You love the city? Is that it?" Hierro nodded and pointed at Alex again. If his partner hadn't had a beak, he could have sworn that Hierro was smirking. The question Hierro was posing was obvious. "Yeah, I love this city too. And you're saying that's a good enough reason to fight for it on our term?" Hierro nodded, and Alex knew in his heart that it was true, far moreso than a misguided and quixotic quest to be an agent of justice, or the pursuit of an adrenaline rush. He was Hawlucha Man because he loved his city, and he knew that it was worth saving.
Alex reached down and smoothed Hierro's feathers. "Thanks, buddy."
They stood watching the distant glow of taillights crossing the Concord Bridge, the lights on the suspension cable reflected in the dark water below.
Down on the street, a pane of glass shattered and someone screamed. Alex shook himself and Hierro's feathers puffed up. Hawlucha Man spread the arms of his wingsuit and took several steps back from the ledge to get a proper running start. "Break time's over, partner. We have a city to protect."