CHAPTER 12
In the weeks following Marcus Braun's death, life in Clarus City returned to normal. Or as close to normal as things could be in Clarus City, anyways. The heroes had gone their separate ways, and Alex had not heard from them since. The specific details behind Sloth's demise were a closely guarded secret that Alex had not been made privy to, but the ultimate result was that the Sins had gone silent, leaving a power vacuum in the underworld. The Baron had always kept the Sins more or less out of Avenbrooke, but he had begun expanding his enterprise out into Greenpoint, and thwarting that had kept Alex busy. Though he knew that Greenpoint was Echo and the Phantom's beat, they seemed to have other things they were dealing with, leaving Alex to fight on alone.
On the other side of the city, across the West River in Ridgewood, the mercenaries and thieves of the Kuromori clan were grabbing as much of the Sins' territory as they could. However, Alex had yet to see any of their black-clothed warriors lurking around Avenbrooke, so he was content to leave them to the Cavalier and the Gunslinger.
In the aftermath of the Sins' offensive, Jiro Sasaki had given Alex a cellphone and had instructed him to keep it close, and that he would use it to contact Alex once he, the Dryad and the Hammer had figured out what their next move should be. But three weeks after the incident at Nimbus Tower and the phone hadn't so much as lit up, and Alex was starting to wonder if it ever would.
He and Hierro glided over the rooftops of Avenbrooke, letting a wind coming down from the north lift their wings and carry them along. True to Jiro's word, the new suit flew like a dream. The material was lightweight and had very little drag, and the wings expanded to catch the breeze. It was durable, and Alex could fight more freely knowing he didn't have to worry about errant tears, which meant he was able to eat a little better without having to sock away money for suit repairs.
He and Hierro had picked up on a strange amount of activity by a nearly abandoned wharf over the last few days. The police had noted several cars with tinted windows pulling up, and occasionally men were seen lurking around the docks. The Eleventh's informants had heard rumblings that some sort of deal would be taking place here tonight, but as far as they knew it wasn't a gun runner or a particularly large shipment of drugs. As such, the Eleventh had placed it at a low priority and Captain Anderson had decided not to allocate resources that were better served cracking down on the Baron. But Alex's curiosity was piqued, and he had struck out with Hierro to keep an eye on things.
They reached the wharf and dropped down into a narrow alley between buildings, slipping into the shadows and keeping an eye on the gravel lot illuminated by a single flickering lamp. The scrape of a boot behind them made Alex whirl around, only to be shoved up against the wall of the warehouse. He instinctively reached for his stun batons, but his angle was wrong. Even if he freed them from his belt, he wouldn't be able to bring them to bear on his unseen assailant, and as of now, they were concealed by his wings. If he kept them holstered, he could still surprise his attacker once he squirmed free of their elbow. He heard Hierro shriek and the Hawlucha's claws skitter over the pavement, and his unseen foe grunted.
"Damn it, you two?" The pressure on Alex's back released and he spun around. A woman in a battered leather jacket swung her metal baseball bat over her shoulder. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?" Alex asked.
Gwen Culain rolled her eyes. "I'm working a contract."
"What kind of contract?"
"As far as I know, it's all legal, if that's what you're wondering." The security contractor scowled. "More than that, I'm not at liberty to say. All I know is my employer wants this kept off the books for what I assume are tax reasons. I'm just here to make sure he doesn't get cheated out of his payment."
"Who's the buyer?"
"None of your damn business." Gwen lowered her bat and looked out over the wharf. "Listen, this is legit, okay? You heroes may not buy it, but I do have morals. When the Sins started getting aggressive a few months ago, I turned down a lot of their contracts. There hasn't been a lot of solid protection work coming my way lately, and I need this." She sighed. "It's a simple drop off. I don't want to make it all complicated. I just want to take my money and go."
Alex glanced at Hierro and shrugged. "You want backup?"
"What?"
"I figure another pair of eyes won't hurt. My Hawlucha and I will hide out on a roof and keep watch. If something about the deal seems off, we'll tail them and take care of it once you're clear."
"What's in it for you?"
"I'm here, and I see a way to do something that will help. That's what being a hero is all about."
"You heroes are fuckin' weird, dude." She tensed and looked up at the rooftops above them. "Son of a—"
Alex grunted. "I saw it." Hierro bounded up the side of the building and took off after the interloper. Alex hauled himself up an access ladder and gave chase, sprinting over the rooftops. Gwen ran alongside on the ground, her teeth clenched. Hierro quickly caught up with the fleeing intruder and pinned her down. Alex quickly reached his partner's side and glanced down at the captive. "You? Really?"
The Shadow struggled against Hierro's grasp. "Are you kidding me? You?"
Gwen climbed up to the roof and glanced between the two of them. "What's going on? You know each other?" She groaned. "Why does everything have to always be so damn complicated in this town?"
The Shadow slithered out from under Hierro and jumped to her feet. Alex reached for his batons, but she threw her hands up. "Hey, easy buddy! No need for this to get ugly. I'm probably sort of on your side. Kind of."
"You want to explain that?" Gwen thumped her bat against the palm of her hand.
"I'm just here to swipe something from the Kuromori. You heroes don't like them, right?" The Shadow smirked at Alex. "And I figure the enemy of your enemy is basically your friend."
"The Kuromori are in Ridgewood."
"Not tonight they aren't." The Shadow jerked her head towards Gwen. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"
"What's she talking about?" Alex demanded.
Gwen sighed, and the Shadow turned back to Alex. "Ms. Bodyguard didn't tell you? Her employer is selling a priceless historical artifact to the Kuromori clan." She was unable to keep the glee from her voice. "And I've been hired to make sure they don't get their hands on it."
"Then I guess we're going to have a problem." Gwen stalked forward, and the Shadow skipped two paces back. "I signed a contract stipulating that I ensure my employer's transaction is completed and that he gets away safely. If you're standing in the way of that…"
"No, I don't care about that," the Shadow replied. "He can take his dirty money and go. My employer just wants to make sure that at the end of the day, the Kuromori don't have it." She waved her hand in a lazy gesture. "And while I'm pretty sure I can handle this solo, it won't hurt to have my ass covered. So what do you say, bird brain? Want to help me spite some ninjas and keep some ancient Johtonian voodoo out of their hands?"
Alex rolled his eyes. "I definitely can't see any possible way this could go horribly wrong. But if it keeps the Kuromori out of Avenbrooke…"
"That's the spirit! What about you, Ms. Bodyguard?"
"I have a contractual obligation to my employer to ensure he isn't harmed and that he gets his money. Insofar as I have a guarantee of that, I'm willing to hear you out."
"Awesome. All right, so here's the plan…"
Gwen stood underneath a fluorescent streetlight, her bat slung over her shoulder and her Aggron looming behind her. Somewhere on a nearby rooftop, Hawlucha Man and his partner crouched in the darkness. The new suit had thrown her off at first, but she had to admit it was effective for staying concealed. She had no idea where the so-called Shadow was lurking, but that was probably for the best. The entire plan had sounded like something the girl had pulled out of her ass. But Hawlucha Man had begrudgingly attested to the cat burglar's skills, and Gwen had decided to watch and see how it all played out. Her involvement in the plot was fairly minimal, and not much more than she would have been required to do under her contract. There was the slight chance that the Kuromori would retaliate against her employer later on if they suspected his involvement in the scheme, but that was beyond the scope of her contract. It might even make him consider employing her services again on a more long term basis.
If that worked out, she could negotiate for health insurance. So it was probably a win-win for her.
The Kuromori had stiffed her on a contract almost a year ago, but she was neither stupid nor suicidal, so she had decided to let the matter drop. But the slight to her reputation and professional pride still stung, and if this was a way to get back at the ninjas who thought they could cross Gwendolyn Culain and get away with it, then she was game to try. If nothing else, she and Maximus could bust a few heads.
Gwen liked busting heads.
A car pulled into the gravel lot behind her, and Gwen turned around. The driver's side door swing open, and a reedy man hurried out to open a back door. Klaus Overstreet was helped out his car by his assistant, a man Gwen hadn't bothered to learn the name of. Her employer was known to most of Clarus City as a well-heeled financier and the owner of a substantial family fortune. What fewer people knew was that Overstreet had made a series of abjectly terrible investments, and the recent upheaval with the Sins had left him in somewhat dire financial straits. He still made enough in a month to cover Gwen's expenses for a year, but rich assholes have the tendency to want to keep up the luxurious lifestyle to which they are accustomed, so instead of selling off one of his yachts, renting out one of his townhouses, and cutting gold Magikarp caviar from his diet, Klaus Overstreet had begun fencing a few of his family treasures to finance a new round of investments in an effort to save his fortune.
Gwen found the man insufferable, but she wasn't paid to like her clients.
Overstreet walked over to her, aided by a gilded cane. His assistant stood at his left arm, holding a box made of carved hardwood. A Kriketune hopped along on his right. Overstreet coughed into a handkerchief and looked up at Gwen from under eyebrows in sore need of a trim. "Ms. Culain, is everything arranged?"
"The lot's clear. Everything is ready for the handoff. The buyer will be here in," she checked the clock on her phone, "five minutes, I guess. Now, about my fee…"
"Yes, yes," Overstreet grumbled, pulling his own phone from a pocket of his suit. He tapped a few buttons and nodded. "Half of the agreed upon amount has been deposited in your account. You will receive the rest when the handoff is completed."
Gwen checked the notification from her bank and nodded. "All right. When the buyers arrive, your assistant and I will go and make the handoff. You'll wait here with Maximus. Then, once everything is finalized, your assistant will come back with your money, you'll get in the car and drive away. Understand?"
"Ms. Culain, I am perfectly capable of handling my own dealings."
The bodyguard fought the urge to roll her eyes. She was a professional, after all. "Mr. Overstreet, I'll be blunt. I've worked with the Kuromori before, and I have found it never hurts to be excessively wary when dealing with this type of buyer. It is better for all of us if you remain here. It minimizes the risk and liability, and my Aggron is perfectly capable of defending you until I can cross the distance from the handoff point. The price of the artifact has been agreed upon already, and so there is no reason why the handoff cannot be made by proxy.
"My responsibility here is to protect you, and the best way for me to do that is to keep you out of harm's way entirely." Gwen planted her metal bat on the ground in front of her. "I don't tell you how to do your job, so please stand back and let me do mine."
Overstreet's face went red. "You're an impudent one!"
"And I get results. You hired me for a reason, Mr. Overstreet."
The rattle of tires over gravel cut off her employer's response as four black cars with tinted windows pulled into the lot. Gwen pulled a cigarette from the pack in her jacket pocket, stuck it between her teeth, and lit it with the lighter she had taken from her father. She rolled the cigarette over to the side of her mouth, clenching it between her teeth like the detectives in movies she had watched with her mom when she was a kid. Some people thought she did it to look tough, but mostly it was to keep her hands free. She snapped her fingers at the assistant. "Come on, poindexter. Let's get this over with."
As she crossed the lot, she glanced up at the rooftop Hawlucha Man was on. She thought she could make out his shape in the darkness, but only because she was looking for it. But for all she knew, it was just an exhaust fan. The streetlights had killed her night vision, but Overstreet had insisted the handoff be carried out somewhere well-lit, despite her advice otherwise. The Kuromori delegation met them halfway across the lot.
The Kuromori were dressed in sleek black suits, none of the lightweight body armor and hoods they favored when engaged in their more usual business. She thought she could see the bulge of knives and perhaps a gun strapped underneath the jackets of the four bodyguards the Kuromori representative had brought, but that was just professional paranoia. She had never known a Kuromori to go anywhere unarmed. A Sabeleye, a Toxicroak and two Bisharp waited attentively at the bodyguards' side.
Sukiyama, the younger brother of clan patriarch Saito Kuromori, flashed a smile devoid of any genuine warmth. "Gwendolyn, how nice to see you again." Sukiyama Kuromori had aged with dignity; his hair was now more salt then pepper, but his beard was well-trimmed, and his eyes glinted with what could have been mirth or malice. His hands still seemed strong, and his name still instilled fear in the right (or wrong, Gwen supposed) circles. A Crobat perched on his shoulder, and Sukiyama reached up to scratch the flying type's ear.
Gwen didn't like bats.
She exhaled a plume of smoke, not quite in Sukiyama's face, but certainly close enough to annoy him. "Suki. You have the money?"
"It wouldn't hurt to practice some social graces, Gwendolyn."
"I'm not paid to 'practice social graces'. I'm paid to get results." She saw a movement off to the left. It could have been nothing, or it could have been the Shadow moving into position. She exhaled another cloud of smoke and scuffed her boot against the gravel to distract Sukiyama and his bodyguards before gesturing to Overstreet's assistant. "We upheld our end of the deal. Where's the money?"
Sukiyama sighed and snapped his fingers. The bodyguard on the left picked up a steel case and brought it over to Gwen and Overstreet's assistant. He popped the clasps and showed them the stacks of bills within. Gwen glanced over at the assistant. "You ought to count that."
"You don't take me as a man of my word?" Sukiyama asked, sounding almost genuinely hurt.
"Absolutely fuckin' not," Gwen muttered. She would have advised the reedy guy to do that anyway, even if she weren't trying to buy time for her co-conspirators.
The assistant counted the stacks and nodded. "It's all here."
"Well would you look at that," Gwen said. "All right, give them the package."
The assistant handed Sukiyama the carved box, and Sukiyama reverently lifted the cover. His eyes shone as he looked down at the artifact within. "Incredible," he gasped, running his finger along the edge of the glittering, multi-colored feather resting on a red velvet cushion. "To see a Rainbow Wing so far from Johto, and in this condition…" He snapped the lid of the box shut. "Thank you, Ms. Culain. As always, it is a pleasure doing business with you."
"Whatever, Suki." Gwen dropped her cigarette to the gravel and took her bat off her shoulder, pounding the cigarette twice with the circular tip, the signal to Hawlucha Man that the handoff had proceeded without any complications.
They hadn't decided on a signal for what would happen if there were complications. Gwen figured it would probably have been obvious enough.
She and the assistant walked back to Mr. Overstreet, and Gwen quickly bundled him into the backseat of his car, all but throwing his Kriketune into his lap. "Go," she hissed. She turned to the assistant. "Drive, and don't stop until you hit the expressway. If you need anything else, Overstreet has my card."
Overstreet shouted a protest from the backseat. Gwen leaned down to the window. "Shut up and do as I say. You have your money, and you're going to get out of here safely. Send me the rest of my fee from the car."
By this point, the Kuromori had reached their cars. Gwen heard muffled cursing as the drivers tried and failed to get their engines to start. Despite herself, Gwen couldn't help but be impressed. If the Shadow had the skills to silently slip in and cut four engine lines without being detected in the tiny window Gwen had given her, maybe she wasn't as much of an airhead as Gwen had thought.
Sukiyama stepped out of the backseat of his car and pointed at Gwen and Overstreet. The orders he was shouting were indistinct from this distance, but Gwen caught the meaning well enough. She pounded the trunk of Overstreet's car with her left hand. "Go!" She turned to her partner pokemon. "Maximus, it's time to earn your keep!"
Her Aggron lurched in front of her as the first volley of gunshots rang out across the lot. The bullets pinged against the steel type's armor, and Maximus dug his claws into the gravel. Indistinct shapes bounded across the rooftops as Kuromori ninjas sprang from their hiding places. Several of them leapt to the ground and began to sprint across the lot. Maximus roared and swung his tail around, flinging several of them back. Two managed to drop their weight and slide underneath her partner's tail, only for the first to be clubbed by the base of Gwen's bat in the center of his forehead. The second managed to regain his feet only for Gwen to swing across his ribs and knocking him right into Maximus's follow-up swipe.
On the rooftops, she saw Hawlucha Man's partner kick a pouncing Seviper in the face, while the masked vigilante himself clubbed two ninjas with his batons. The Hawlucha screamed and jumped forward, its taloned feet lashing out with a series of spinning kicks. The disruption prevented more of the Kuromori from descending on her and Maximus, and she supposed she owed Hawlucha Man one for that.
While Gwen had talked to the Kuromori representatives, Alex had activated the night vision Jiro Sasaki had implemented in his mask. However, the bright floodlights over the meeting had interfered with Alex's view, so he as he fumbled to deactivate it, he had accidentally turned on the heat-sensitive lenses. The world had changed to a large expanse of blue-black, dotted sporadically with blotches of yellow and red. He had silently alerted Hierro to the threat, and they had made ready to reveal themselves when things went to hell.
Alex had to admit that the Kuromori were far more skilled than the average thugs he and Hierro normally found themselves up against. Even among the organized crime factions, the Baron's enforcers tended to rely on brute strength and blunt force trauma to get their point across, and the few times he had tangled with the Sins' forces, it was their numbers that had made them a daunting challenge rather than their combat prowess. But the Kuromori were all obviously skilled martial artists trained for close combat. Alex had no time to catch his breath after dispatching one ninja before another one leapt at him. Hierro was similarly pressed, and Alex found himself glad that the Kuromori weren't usually his problem.
He jumped back as one of the ninjas swiped at him with a curved knife. Jiro had told him that the new suit was reinforced to protect him from knife attacks, but he wasn't going to tempt fate. Alex went low and swiped out his foe's legs from underneath him and then, when the ninja fell to the gravel rooftop, he jabbed his stun baton underneath the man's ribs. The ninja briefly convulsed before falling still. As his next opponent jumped at him, Alex quickly scanned the ground below. Gwen seemed to be holding her own, but he saw no sign of the Shadow.
Hierro jumped to Alex's side, his claws balled into fists. The two of them stood back-to-back as the Kuromori closed in. His partner caught his eye, and Alex could see what Hierro was thinking just from the tautness of his muscles and the way the Hawlucha had adjusted his pose. Alex nodded, and Hierro flew back out towards the group of Kuromori attackers. The first ninja and his Bisharp lunged in, but Hierro bounded over them and seized the head of a Zangoose in his claws. He hurled the normal type at its trainer while Alex clubbed the Bisharp and grabbed the first ninja in a lock. He then used the momentum of the man's forward motion to redirect him and hurled him back at his comrades, bowling two of them over.
"Hawlucha Man, look out!"
Alex dropped to a crouch when he heard Gwen cry out, and barely avoided Sukiyama's Crobat as it swooped down. The poison type banked sharply in the air and whirled on Hierro, but the bodyguard's shouted warning had given the Hawlucha enough time to react. As the Crobat stiffened its wings to strike, Hierro dropped his weight and rolled backwards. As the Crobat passed overhead, Hierro's legs shot up, the talons balled. He struck the Crobat in its abdomen, throwing it off balance. Hierro bounded back to his feet and seized the flying type's lower right wing. He spun it in an arc and threw it at the ground, where it slid across the gravel. A Darmanitan leapt at Hierro's exposed back, fire brimming in its grinning maw. Alex sprinted forward and jumped, throwing his body weight behind a hip check that caught the Darmanitan in mid-air, throwing it over the side of the roof.
On the ground, the Shadow watched Sukiyama send his pokemon away from her hiding place. She rolled out from under the Kuromori town car she had sheltered beneath and kicked out Sukiyama's legs. As the man fell, she seized the wooden box from his hands. Sukiyama snarled and reached for the knife in his suit jacket, but an indistinct purple shape sprang from his shadow and licked his face. Sukiyama went rigid as the toxins from the Haunter's tongue attacked his nervous system, locking him in place. "You!" he hissed through clenched teeth.
The Shadow tucked the box under her arm and smirked. "You're damn right it's me." Then she was sprinting away as Sukiyama's stunned bodyguards struggled to disengage from their fight with Gwen and Maximus to pursue. A group of Alex's opponents on the rooftops broke off and raced after the fleeing thief. Gwen clubbed another man down and signaled for Maximus to spin again. As the Aggron pivoted his considerable bulk, Gwen jumped up on Maximus's back leg and hauled herself onto the safety of his back. Sukiyama's men ran as the armored behemoth's tail bore down on them and their pokemon. She waved up at Alex. "Go after the Shadow! I'm clear!" Once Maximus completed his turn, she jumped off his back and returned him to his pokeball. She dashed across the parking lot to where she had parked her motorcycle, and swung up onto the seat. She gunned the engine, pulled a pair of cracked aviator sunglasses from her jacket and slid them on. The bike roared to life and tore out of the shipping yard and towards the expressway. A group of ninjas hurried after her, but even they couldn't keep pace with a motorcycle going full throttle.
Alex and Hierro ran to the edge of the rooftop and took off. By now, bounding across buildings was as natural to Alex as running, and the flat roofs of the warehouses in Avenbrooke's shipping district made this easier than usual. He followed the Kuromori pursuing the Shadow, no longer making any effort to disguise their presence. The Shadow came to the tall barbed wire fence that marked the edge of the shipping yard and slipped through a gap in the links. The barrier only slowed the ninjas for a moment, and soon they were after her again.
Alex and Hierro took a running start and soared out over the fence, clearing it with ease. The first of the ninjas reached the Shadow, but before he could reach out and grab her, a purple blur jumped at him. The man buckled as whatever it was hit him in the chest, and then fell back clutching his bleeding face. The Shadow's Purrloin jumped back to its trainer and bounded along at her heels as Alex cruised in low. He and Hierro dropped onto two more Kuromori, knocking them flat. Alex saw the Shadow turned a corner up ahead and sprinted after her. They turned onto a long, straight alley, a straight shot through rows of old brick clerical offices with small blind alleys every ten or twenty yards. The ninjas were gaining, and Alex ran as fast as he could, though his lungs had begun to burn. Just as he caught up with the Shadow and her pokemon, he heard a car peel out of a blind alley just behind them before coming to a screaming halt. Alex whirled and prepared to fight, but he felt the Shadow grab his shoulder and pull him back. "Take it easy, bird brain! That's our backup!"
A towering figure jumped from the car and leveled a machine gun. The staccato burst of fire echoed up and down the alley as he fired several times into the oncoming crowd of ninjas. Alex saw several drop, while others ran down alleys to the side. The man with the machine gun glanced over his shoulder. "Hawlucha Man? What are you doing here?"
Alex raised his batons again. "Giordano? What the hell?"
The Shadow stepped between them. "Take it easy, Bruce. He's cool."
"You didn't tell me your employer was the Baron!" Alex shouted.
"You didn't ask!" the Shadow snapped back.
"So we just stole some powerful ancient artifact from ninjas and gave it over to my arch nemesis?"
"You got a high opinion of yourself, kid," Giordano grumbled as he fired down the alley again.
"It's going to the museum!" the Shadow said. "And is this really the best place to have this conversation?"
Giordano lowered his gun. "We're clear." He grinned. "I sent those ninjas running with their tail between their legs. You have the package?"
The Shadow held out the box, and Giordano put it in the passenger seat of the car. He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped a few keys. He nodded to the Shadow. "Pleasure doing business with you." He slipped back into the car, reversed, and then drove away.
Alex and Hierro almost raced after him, but the Shadow stopped them. "It's not worth it, dude. Look, it's not a big deal, okay? You can still be one of the good guys."
"We just aided and abetted criminals!" Alex growled. "I thought the Rainbow Wing was too dangerous to be in the Kuromori's hands. How is it any better in the Baron's?"
"Because the Baron's not keeping it, duh. He's going to donate it to the Clarus Museum of Art and Culture."
"How do you know?"
"Well, the last six priceless historical artifacts I stole for him all ended up there, so I'd say it's safe odds."
"I… you… what?"
The Shadow shrugged. "The Baron and I have a deal. He hears about things that he'd rather his rivals not have, so he contacts me to get them out of their hands. Then he makes an 'anonymous' donation to the CMAC and gets that artifact the best protection the city can afford. The museum gets priceless treasures to study basically for free, so they don't ask too many questions." She pulled out her phone and checked a notification for a secure money transfer. "And the gigs pay pretty well too." She tilted her phone screen towards Alex.
"That's, uh, a comma, not a decimal point?"
"Damn right. You ever think you're in the wrong line of work, bird brain?"
Alex glanced at Hierro and sighed. "So what we did… it was technically the right thing?"
"Yeah dude, I guess." The Shadow shrugged. "Or at least the only people getting hurt are the ones who deserve it. Anyways," she turned and gave him a jaunty wave. "I'm calling it a night. See you around, Hawlucha Man. I like the new suit."
Before Alex could stop her, she had vanished into the darkness. Alex slumped against the wall and sighed. "Hierro, when did everything get so damn complicated?" He dug the phone Blaziken Man had given him from his belt and glanced down at the screen. Still no messages. Alex sighed and put the phone away while Hierro looked for a fire escape. It was still a few hours until dawn, and that meant a few hours for things to go bump in the night in Avenbrooke.