CHAPTER 25
Salvatore Genovese had been in the business long enough to know that you couldn't call a job done until it was done, but as he sat in the back of a van hurtling down the Greenpoint expressway, he allowed himself a small flush of pride. His crew had done their jobs well, and they had slipped in and out of the Moirai Institute's satellite Greenpoint campus as quietly as anyone could have hoped for. It felt good to be back doing the sort of work he was familiar with after all of the plotting and scheming and inter-faction warfare the Clarus underworld had endured for the past several months.
Sal had been tapped by no less than Pride herself to lead this operation, and had thrown all of the resources of the Sins' organization behind it. With that kind of support, Sal had his pick of any of the Sins' membership to bring along on the heist, so he had assembled a crack team from across the Sins' various disciplines. Three cat burglars from Envy's stable, a bioweapon specialist that worked for Wrath, two of Greed's top enforcers for a bit of extra muscle, and a young hacker who Gluttony kept on retainer to disable the security. And of course, he'd tapped the only man in the city he trusted, his cousin Gian, to drive their getaway van.
The operation had been simple enough on paper. The Moirai Institute, Clarus City's flagship in developing renewal and sustainable energy, had their main campus in a well-secured Lenox Hills office park. But they also maintained a small secret warehouse in Greenpoint to keep some of their projects on ice. The warehouse wasn't on any official records, and only a few of the top engineers at Moirai even knew it existed. The secrecy and the high-tech security system was supposed to keep anything the eggheads stored there safe, but it also meant that the actual living, breathing security was rather lacking. It had been an easy task for Sal's hacker to disable the system via a backdoor while Greed's enforcers took out the handful of security guards outside. Then, the cat burglars had slipped inside, deployed the aerosol weapon that Wrath's scientist provided to take out any security without tripping any alarms before they retrieved their objective, and met the rest of the crew at the rendezvous point.
It had been a clean job with a clean getaway. Sal didn't know why the new boss wanted the generator prototype he had been sent to recover any more than he understood why the crazy esper had sent Wrath and Envy to blow up half of Greenpoint to get some magic gemstone that apparently didn't even work, or why she had spent the first few weeks after consolidating her power gathering up radio transmission equipment. That kind of thing was above his pay grade, and he had been in the business long enough to not ask questions.
He and Gian had joined up with Marconi's crew years ago, almost before he'd started shaving. They'd been a smaller gang, jealously guarding the small bit of territory in Ridgewood they managed to claim for their own, flying under the radar of Eva Muller's import and extortion rackets. But then Julia Richelieu had shown up and started taking out competitors, and one thing led to another, and now Marconi had been dead for nearly ten years. Sal had always been able to tell which way the wind was blowing, so he fell in line behind Richelieu, kept his head down, and followed orders. Years of working for the boss had let him climb the ranks of her organization, and now he was a competent and respected capo. Sure, he'd never be one of the elite cutters that made up the boss's inner circle, but she knew he was a reliable guy who could do what he was instructed and deliver results.
When Marcus Braun had shaken up the Clarus underworld, Sal had done well for himself. With Richelieu throwing in her lot with Sloth early and becoming Pride, Sal was able to get in on the ground floor of the Sins' organization and maintain his comfortable position as a mid-level capo. Even when Dominion had taken out Braun and become the new boss of the bosses, things hadn't changed too much for Sal. Orders still came down, and he still followed them.
He had only met Dominion once, when she decided to inspect some of Pride's capos and enforcers for herself. In her four-inch stilettos and pencil skirt, Dominion hadn't seemed like much, and at first Sal had wondered how this petite woman had managed to take over from the titan of a man that had been Marcus Braun. But then he felt… something, like a hand rifling through his thoughts, running through his brain like a sieve, and he had just known that in that instant, he had no secrets from Dominion. If the new boss had said the word, he would have done anything she asked without hesitation, even if he'd wanted to resist. That kind of power couldn't be fought against, at least not by someone like Sal.
At the end of her inspection, Dominion had snapped her fingers, and about ten of Pride's capos had stepped forward. The looks on their faces told Sal that they weren't in control as they stood in a line in front of Dominion and dropped to their knees. The five blank-faced goons the esper had brought as an escort stepped up and put a bullet through all ten of their skulls. Dominion's lip had curled as she stared out at the remaining capos and gestured with a lazy flick of her wrist to the fresh corpses on the ground. "They didn't want to get with the program," she had said in her high, piping voice. "And now you all know the price of insubordination. If any of you so much as entertain the notion of crossing me, you'll realize that your departed friends got to take the easy way out. Is that clear?"
Sal had never been more terrified in his life.
So when word had come down from Pride herself that the boss had an assignment for him, Sal had known better than to refuse. If Dominion wanted a miniature prototype generator from the Moirai Institute, then Sal was going to get it for her, simple as that.
He stared down at the roughly square metal suitcase currently between his legs and sighed. Pretty soon, he'd be delivering this into Pride's hands, collecting the generous payout that he had been promised, and blowing a solid chunk of it on enough drinks to get the whole business off his mind.
Sal had just about let himself relax when the van suddenly jerked, making him and the rest of his crew strain against their seatbelts. He heard Gian swearing up front, and the wheels of the van screeching against the pavement. "What's going on?" Sal snapped.
"I don't know, Toto!" Gian shouted back. Only Gian still used that particular diminutive of Salvatore's name. It had been what Marconi had called him, back in the day, but Gian was the only one still alive to know that. "I'm flooring it, but we're not moving."
Sal wrenched off his seatbelt and pulled himself up to the driver's seat. As he did, he stumbled forward and realized that the floor of the van was at a slight incline; the back wheels had been lifted from the ground. "What the hell?" Sal muttered. And then the front windshield exploded inward and a flash of light momentarily disoriented him.
The back doors of the van flew open, revealing a woman in a pristine white body suit with a gold and crimson mask obscuring her face. Behind her, a young man with cherubic blonde curls dancing around his head hovered a foot off the ground, his hands outstretched. Sal cursed under his breath. Things had just gotten a lot more complicated.
"You've got one chance to come quietly," Volcarona Mask said, twirling a quarterstaff through the air.
One of Greed's guys, Sal was pretty sure his name was Viktor, drew his semiautomatic and let loose. The esper behind Volcarona Mask didn't even move, but Sal saw his eyes flash just for an instant. Viktor's bullets stopped just as they left the muzzle of the gun and hung suspended for an instant before dropping to the floor of the van with a clatter.
Sal seized the case with the generator. "Run!" Pokeballs flashed behind him as his crew hastily exited the van. Pokemon shrieked and roared as they raced for the edge of the expressway that Sal was now noticing was suspiciously free of other traffic. He heard one of Envy's thieves cry out as Volcarona Mask's staff whipped around. He knew that as the leader of this crew, he was responsible for all of his people, but the momentary distraction was enough for Gian to stumble out of the driver's seat and get clear. When the choice was between a stranger and family, he'd pick his cousin every time.
Sal palmed a pokeball and summoned his Skarmory as he neared the edge of the expressway. The flying type understood immediately what Sal intended, having pulled off this maneuver in similar pursuits over the years. As Sal vaulted over the guardrail, he raised his hands above his head and felt Vito's talons wrap around his upturned wrists. The big bird's wings snapped as he extended them, and with Vito's help, Sal descended safely to the street below before looping back to pick up Gian. He spared a glance over his shoulder and saw Greed's two enforcers rappelling down just far enough for them to jump to the street without injuring themselves, while one of Envy's remaining thieves clung to an Ariados that scuttled down a length of thick silk. The other thief jumped into empty air only to be caught by a telekinetic force produced by his Mismagius and lowered down. Gluttony's hacker joined hands with his Medicham, and the pair of them jumped after the thief, cushioning their landing with a psychic pulse. Wrath's bomber (Reina, he thought her name was) swung down aided by her Carnivine's tendrils.
With the remaining members of his crew assembled, Sal took stock of the situation. He handed off the heavy generator case to Viktor's buddy (Yakov? Yuri?) since the damn thing was heavy, and the brute had biceps the size of watermelons. The sensible thing to do would be for Sal and Vito to fly off with the case and deliver it back to the boss, but Sal could see Volcarona Mask's pokemon partner flitting in the air above the expressway, and Vito wasn't as fast as he used to be. Between the Volcarona and the esper, he wasn't sure his Skarmory would make it. As risky as it was, they'd have to escape on foot.
And if Sal was honest, he liked their odds. They had been stopped only two blocks outside the Warren, the most notorious slum in the city. Its winding streets had thwarted many a pursuit, and every criminal in the city worth his salt had a bolthole or two in the Warren. Perfect.
"Okay," Sal said. "So we've got two heroes on our tail, and probably the cops too. We're going to make a break for the Warren. Stay together if we can, but if things get hairy, bolt. If we get separated, we'll rendezvous at the old Spheal Shipping warehouse. Let's go."
The crew obeyed immediately. Sal appreciated that. He'd gone out of his way to pick old hands, people who knew their business and knew how to follow orders. The seven of them sprinted into the shadowy, labyrinthine streets of the Warren. The streets were too narrow for even streetlights, so illumination was sparse. Sal's crew startled Murkrow, Zubat, and assorted feral ghost types into the air, while Rattata, Venipede and Trubbish picking through the garbage that lined the streets skittered into the shadows. Windows slammed shut and the denizens of the Warren stood clear as Sal's crew hastened into the depths of the slum. When you lived in the Warren, you learned how to mind your own business.
The heroes caught them when they reached the first large confluence of streets.
Volcarona Mask descended from the sky, heralded by a pillar of blisteringly hot air and a gale that forced Vito to the ground with a rattle of iron feathers and made Sal cover his eyes to keep from being blinded by the dust. The young woman wasted no time, setting on them with her staff twirling over her head. She was beside the hacker's Medicham in a heartbeat, battering the fighting type with a flurry of acrobatic kicks. The young woman seemed to spiral around her staff, rather than the other way around. Sal barely had time to process the Medicham dropping to its knees before Volcarona Mask hurled a flashbang right into the midst of Greed's brutes, and the brilliant flash of light disoriented the bruisers as they tried to shoulder their guns and call out their pokemon. Viktor had managed to get his Electabuzz out, but Volcarona Mask was upon them with all the fury of some primordial volcanic god long before they had managed to gather their wits.
The Electabuzz and Ariados tried to pounce on her from behind, only to be confronted by Volcarona Mask's partner. The fiery insect beat its wings twice and hurled the other two pokemon back. Reina unslung a shotgun from her back, but before she could fire off a round, the twin barrels of the gun were seized by an invisible force and curved back on themselves with a shriek of rending metal, bending into a loop that rendered the gun useless. The shotgun was wrenched from the woman's hands by a second application of the invisible force, and the man with the cherubic curls drifted down from a nearby rooftop.
The esper smirked and spreads his hands. "This is usually the part where I say 'be not afraid', but given the circumstances…" He closed his hands into fists, and Sal's crew was lifted from their feet and hurled in every direction. The esper laughed to himself. "You're all screwed."
Reina's Carnivine recovered first, and launched itself at the esper with a snarl. There was a sharp crack as a Kadabra appeared in the air in front of the esper and thrust its spoon into the grass type's gaping maw. The Kadabra conjured a wall of solid light, stopping the Carnivine's attack cold. The psychic type raised its free hand and snapped its fingers, generating a small telekinetic pulse that sent the Carnivine flying into its trainer.
Viktor's partner had called out his Heracross, and the blue beetle had wrenched up a manhole cover from the street. It hurled the metal disk at the esper, hoping to catch the young man unawares, but the esper whirled and stopped the disc without so much as twitching his fingers. "Don't pick fights you can't win," he admonished, and an instant later every manhole cover and storm drain grate within a hundred feet had lifted in the air and began to spin around the crossroads.
Envy's thieves had snuck around Volcarona Mask's flanks, and only the glint of their daggers in the moonlight gave them away as they closed in on the masked hero. She jammed her staff into a crack in the pavement and used it to vault into the air, delivering two roundhouse kicks that knocked the thieves backwards. One slammed into a flying sewer grate and went down with a groan, but Gian caught the second and helped him keep his feet.
"Retreat!" Sal barked, grabbing the generator case and sprinting down an alleyway. He heard his crew scrambling behind him as they hastened away from the heroes. Vito rattled into the sky above Sal, using his bulk to shield his trainer from an aerial attack. Vito spared a quick glance over his shoulder to see who had managed to get away, and was gratified to see that everyone except the downed thief was falling in line.
Volcarona Mask started after them, but her esper friend stuck out an arm. "Hang on, give them a bit of a head start." The kid certainly looked like the posh uptown type, but Sal had never heard of a hero actually being sportsmanlike in the middle of a brawl. Still, he wasn't about to turn down a stroke of good luck when Arceus saw fit to hand one down to him.
It only took two and a half minutes for Sal to figure out why Volcarona Mask had let them get ahead. That was when the music started.
At first, it was just the sound of a single electric guitar ringing out over the rooftops of the Warren, but soon the noise grew, rising to decibel levels that hit Sal and his crew like a physical force. He saw the remaining thief and the hacker fall to their knees and clutch their ears even as he felt his own teeth rattling in his skull. A single sharp note rose up, and Sal heard panes of glass shatter, and then the noise of the guitar started to fade.
But Sal's reprieve was short-lived, because then he heard the singing.
"Better you pray, for the night is falling
Heed the call from the heavens
Follow the night, and the soldier's calling
Bring on the sacrament of the fallen!"
Each word hit like a punch to the gut, and Sal saw Vito crash down on the street. There was a reverberating bellow from somewhere on the rooftops, and a black shape briefly eclipsed the waning moon before shooting into the black night sky. A human figure appeared atop the building at the end of the street, platinum blonde hair streaming behind her as she played another chord on her guitar. Echo had come out to play.
"Come on to the other side
Out of the dark we climb
Gather for the rite, my warriors!
We are the force allied
Into the war we ride
For glory!"
Two hulking shapes dropped down from the rooftop beside her and unleashed another sonic blast in time with the last screaming note of the sonic hero's chorus. He saw Reina stagger backwards as though struck with a blow. The larger of the singer's pokemon, an Exploud, drove its right fist into its left palm, and a white nimbus of electricity crackled around its hand. Its companion, a Loudred, Sal saw, opened its mouth wide and blasted the Ariados and Mismagius with a burst of air that sent the two pokemon toppling head over backside.
Viktor ordered his Electabuzz forward, and the electric type bravely leaped into the fray against the Exploud. The two exchanged blows that lit up the street with brief flashes of dazzling light, but Sal could see that the Exploud had the Electabuzz beat. The behemoth brought its fist back for one final blow, and the Electabuzz bravely stood its ground to meet it. Their fists collided with a sound like a thunderclap, and the Electabuzz was thrown backwards into Viktor, and he barely managed to keep his feet as he stabilized his partner. The hacker's Medicham tried to attack the Exploud as it generated another static charge, but the Loudred blasted it backwards.
Reina and the thief rallied their pokemon and charged at the two sonic pokemon, only to be stopped in their tracks by another piercing chord from Echo.
"Stand by night and heed the call of the fight
Let your minds go wild before the light
Here we stand, the army of the night!
Sworn to Arceus Invictus!"
A Noivern descended from above and punctuated the final line of Echo's verse with sonic boom that sent Sal backpedaling. He tripped over a stoop and landed on his behind, and the rest of his remaining crew fared no better. He knew that Echo was tough, but she and her pokemon had pinned all of them without breaking a sweat. "I didn't sign up for this shit," Sal grumbled to himself. Then, louder, "Run!"
Echo and her pokemon sent them on their way with another piercing scream, and Sal could feel the blood leaking from his ears as he hustled back down the narrow street. His head was spinning from Echo's auditory assault, and he took corners at random, hoping to find something he recognized to get his bearings. With three heroes on his tail, he needed to find a bolthole, and fast.
He turned down a blind alley and heard his crew panting behind him. The alley stretched between a row of tall tenement buildings, and the moon was angled in such a way as to throw odd, jagged shadows across the cracked pavement. Halfway down the alley, a single man in a tuxedo stood with both hands on an elegantly carved wooden cane. Vito dropped out of the sky and landed in front of his trainer, his steel feathers bristling.
The man looked up and regarded Sal's crew with a cold stare from behind a white domino mask. He tilted his head to the side, and his face twisted into a mocking sneer. Sal had heard rumors about the Phantom, but he hadn't know the guy was such a prick.
Still, something about him sent a shiver down Sal's spine. And that was when he noticed that the Phantom's shadow was pointing in the wrong direction.
The Phantom glanced down and then met Sal's gaze. "Figured out my trick, huh?" The man's shadow grew and split around his body, growing as it did so. The shadows spread outward, covering the entire alley behind the Phantom with a darkness deeper than Sal had ever seen. A single glowing red eye appeared in the darkness, and a Dusknoir materialized behind the Phantom, emitting an eerie spectral hum.
"We gotta run, Toto," Gian whispered. "We've gotta get out of here."
Sal could only nod, but just as he took a step back, the Phantom made a low noise in his throat. "Leaving so soon?" He tapped his cane against the pavement twice, and the darkness behind him rippled. Fanged mouths and glowing eyes appeared from the gloom behind the Phantom. The man's mouth stretched into a savage grin not unlike that of the Haunter hovering over his left shoulder. "That's just rude." He thrust his cane out in front of him. "Get them!"
The Phantom's spectral legion surged forth, a tide of ghost types sweeping down the alley towards the criminals. Their ghostly babbling rose up in a chorus of shrieks and laughter as they bore down on Sal's crew. The darkness behind the Phantom continued to ripple as more and more ghosts poured out, filling the night sky with a screen of gnashing fangs, glowing eyes, and flicking ghostly fires.
"RUN!" Sal bellowed. Vito shot into the sky with a cacophony of rattling feathers as the ragged remains of his crew turned tail in the face of the Phantom's ghostly legion. The ghosts' eerie cries intensified as their prey fled before them, and the Phantom simply laughed as his pokemon surged forward.
Viktor's partner was seized by a Spiritomb, and a trio a Sableye fell on him with keening shrieks of glee. "Yevgeny!" Viktor roared, but Sal seized the big man's arm and dragged him along.
"We can't save him! He's as good as gone!"
Yevgeny's Heracross charged at the ghost types, but before he could get close, he was snatched up in the claws of the biggest Haunter Sal had ever seen and hurled back towards the dark veil. The Phantom's Dusknoir swept forward and caught the Heracross in a bear hug, dragging it back into the darkness, and the bug type vanished.
Sal dodged around a shrieking Banette and saw Gluttony's hacker and his Medicham dragged into the black void behind the Phantom. He kicked and struggled against the Haunter that grabbed him, but as soon as his head was pulled into the darkness, his struggling abruptly ceased. The Mismagius that accompanied the thieves was set upon by three members of its own species, trying fruitlessly to repel a three-pronged psychic attack.
A Lampent darted in front of Sal, only to be blown away by a gust of wind from Vito. Sal grabbed Gian's arm and pulled him out of the path of a cackling Gengar before sticking two fingers in his mouth and whistling. The sharp, piercing sound cut through the chaos and got the attention of the remnants of his crew. They formed up and managed to fight their way clear of the ghosts, and after a series of frantic turns, Sal started to get his bearings.
He spied a Volcarona flitting over the rooftops and pulled his ragged crew into a dark side street where they would be protected from Volcarona Mask's gaze. The Warren was eerily quiet, the dejected residents hiding out of sight and keeping their heads down, reluctant to get caught in the heroes' crossfire. A single hero in the Warren might have had a difficult time fighting against a crew of Sin operatives, and the people living there might have thrown in their lot with the Sins in the hope for a favorable kickback down the line. But when five of the city's rising stars converged on the little district, the average lowlife saw the way the wind was blowing and stayed well out of the way.
While he caught his breath, Sal did a quick headcount of who was left. Viktor, Reina and her Carnivine, one of Envy's thieves and his Ariados, Gian and Vito. Sal gritted his teeth and hefted the generator's case with a quiet curse. He figured he was pretty strong, but the generator was at least seventy-five, eighty pounds, and he had been lugging it around most of the night. He was tempted to hand it off to Viktor, but he knew that if it came down to another fight, Viktor was much more skilled in arms than he was.
He leaned against the wall of the alley and sucked at his teeth. There was a safe house that some of Pride's capos maintained nearby, with a passage that connected to the old smuggler tunnels in the basement. He figured if they could get there, they would be able to slip by the heroes, and he could get in contact with Pride's people to drop the generator before going to ground until the next crisis hit Clarus City and people forgot all about him.
He was just about to brief his crew when a clatter on the rooftops made all of them snap their heads up. Sal muttered a silent prayer that it was just a feral dark type, but he doubted he would be so lucky. A dark shape shot across the sky, and Sal's fight or flight instincts kicked in. Vito rattled his feathers as something made the fire escape above their heads clang. Envy's thief pulled a knife. "If it's another damn ghost, I swear I'll…" He trailed off, and Sal privately wondered what good a knife would do against one of the Phantom's ghosts.
Viktor raised his gun, and a black mass peeled off the shadows at the top of the fire escape and descended with a whoosh of broad wings. It dropped right in front of Viktor and brought up two metal batons, one on either side of the brute's forearm. Viktor's back stiffened as the air around the batons crackled, and the shadowy figure swiftly disarmed him and kicked the gun between Viktor's legs, where it spun off into the shadows.
Before Sal could fully process what was happening, the dark figure had whirled on the thief with the knife and knocked him down with a roundhouse kick that sent the knife tumbling from his grasp. Sal caught a brief glimpse of white teeth beneath the man's dark cowl as he settled into a fighting stance and put his back to the wall off the alley to keep from being outflanked. The disarmed thief snarled as he recovered his balance and charged in again. The shadowy figure's hand shot out, quick as a striking Seviper, and the thief stumbled backwards, clutching his broken nose.
The Ariados leapt at the man in black, but it was tackled out of the air by a red and green blur. The Hawlucha shrieked as it slammed the arachnid into the ground before turning in a midair backflip to alight beside his partner. "I thought I lost you a few blocks back," Hawlucha Man quipped. "Thanks for letting me catch up!"
Viktor had regained his wits and rushed at Hawlucha Man with a bellow. The hero was caught by surprise, and he hurriedly danced back from Viktor's enraged charge. Hawlucha Man reached the edge of the fire escape and jumped up, wrapping his fingers around the metal grate and dragging his body up and out of Viktor's path. Just as the man passed beneath him, Hawlucha Man dropped down and delivered a kick to the base of Viktor's tailbone, sending him staggering out into the wider street at the end of the alley. He landed awkwardly, and while he tried to recover his balance, Reina's Carnivine lashed out with a pair of vines, ensnaring Hawlucha Man's right arm and left leg. His Hawlucha shrieked in anger, but before he could free his partner, Vito battered him with a wing, knocking the fighting type back. The Hawlucha stumbled across the uneven pavement before finding his footing and lunging at Vito as the Skarmory shot into the sky.
While the two birds battled back in forth in a flurry of flashing talons, the Carnivine pounced just as Viktor came in for another charge. Sal saw Hawlucha Man's teeth flash again as the young man dropped his weight at the last possible moment. Reina's Carnivine sailed over his head and collided with Viktor, and both of them tumbled in a heap. Envy's thief charged in, but Hawlucha Man dispatched him with almost contemptuous ease, sending him crashing into the wall of the alley with graceful, flowing motions. He never even broke his stride.
Reina pulled a wickedly curved knife from her belt and swung wildly at Hawlucha Man, but the hero only stepped to the side as his partner swooped down behind the anarchist and struck her with a kick between the shoulder blades. The woman whirled on the Hawlucha with a growl, but the avian pokemon seized her arm in his talons and dug his claws into her wrist, hard enough to puncture the skin and draw blood. Reina dropped the knife with a scream.
Hawlucha Man continued forward and looked Sal in the eyes. "We can do this the easy way, where you give me the case because I asked nicely. Or we can do this the hard way, where I beat your ass and take it."
Sal shook his head. "I'm more afraid of my boss than I am of you, kid."
"Hard way it is, then."
"You want my cousin? You'll have to go through me first." Gian pushed past Sal and spread his hands. The pokeball at his waist burst open, and an instant later, a Doublade had appeared, wrapping its lavender tassels around Gian's wrists and forearms as the living blades settled into Gian's hands. The Doublade hummed as Gian gripped its twin hilts. "Let's go, Dantès."
Hawlucha Man was suddenly forced onto the defensive as Gian swept forward, his blades flashing with a spectral inner light. Hawlucha Man managed to bring up his steel batons and meet the Doublade blow for blow, but he was quickly losing ground as Gian forced him into a retreat. Sal's cousin had a longer reach than the young vigilante, and Dantès' blades added two feet to that. Hawlucha Man's attacks relied on him getting in close to his foes and dispatching them with a series of lightning-quick strikes, but Gian and Dantès wove a curtain of steel before them that not even Hawlucha Man could breach.
Still, Sal had to admit he was amazed Hawlucha Man was holding his own. His cousin was undoubtedly the best Honedge fencer in the city, and while that might be a narrow superlative, any street brawler worth his salt spoke the name Gian Genovese with the sort of quiet reverence usually reserved for Arcean shepherds talking about their parish's patron saint. He could hardly believe his eyes when Hawlucha Man managed to slip through Gian's guard and score a touch with his baton on Dantès' left tassel. Gian cried out as his arm suddenly went numb, buying Hawlucha Man precious seconds to breathe.
Claws skittered across pavement as Hawlucha Man's pokemon partner sprinted to the hero's side, just in time to drive an uppercut into Viktor's solar plexus as Greed's man tried to flank Hawlucha Man. The Carnivine lashed out with another tendril, but Hawlucha Man was too savvy to fall for the same trick twice. He twisted his wrist just as the vine began to ensnare his arm, dropping one baton into his Hawlucha's waiting talons while he seized the vine with his now-free hand and jerked the Carnivine off balance. With a grunt of effort, Hawlucha Man pivoted on his heel and spun to gather momentum before hurling the Carnivine into the Ariados and its human partner.
He used his remaining baton to fend off Gian while his Hawlucha vaulted over his shoulders, tossed the hero his baton back, and then struck his claws together to set his fists ablaze. The Hawlucha spread his wings and soared upwards to where Vito now circled, startling the Skarmory with an explosive punch.
Sal had heard rumors from some of Pride's other capos about the winged hero from Avenbrooke. They said that despite his unassuming stature, the kid hit like a truck and moved faster than the eye could track, that Hawlucha Man could take down any ten of Richelieu's best cutters at the same time without breaking a sweat, that he knew no fear, felt no pain, and that he was possibly even a literal superhuman. Sal had always assumed that those rumors were exaggerations, excuses made by a bunch of incompetents who had been taken by surprise and let their guards down who were trying to save face in front of their superiors.
But now he was a believer.
Hawlucha Man swept Viktor's legs out from underneath him, and the big man went down. In the second he danced back to catch his breath, Gian seized his opening and swung down with both blades, and Sal knew Hawlucha Man wouldn't have time to block. Gian knew it too, and his cousin's face split into a grin.
A grin that quickly faded as Dantès crashed down on an elegant rapier. The Phantom swung his blade around and sent Gian stumbling off-balance. He glanced over his shoulder at Hawlucha Man. "We have got to stop meeting like this."
Hawlucha Man flashed him a grin as the Phantom countered Gian's counterstrike with a riposte that darted through the whirling Doublade and sent Sal's cousin staggering back wrong-footed. The Phantom's rapier flashed under the streetlights as he and Gian battled back and forth. Dantès' edges glowed with spectral light, and the Doublade's spectral buzz grew in intensity. Gian barked out a laugh as he swept down with his right blade.
There was a rush of air as the Doublade's buzzing was drowned out by a deep basso hum. The Phantom's Dusknoir had appeared from the tuxedoed hero's shadow and stopped the descending sword between its broad palms. "How… How did you?" Gian spluttered.
A pulse of black energy burst from the Dusknoir's antenna, and Dantès jerked Gian backwards in an effort to avoid the Dark Pulse. With Gian wrong-footed, Hawlucha Man swept out from behind the Phantom and jabbed both of his batons into Gian's ribs and unleashed a powerful electrical current. Sal's cousin went rigid as the shock coursed through his body. Hawlucha Man disengaged and danced back a pace, but Gian's reprieve was short-lived. The Phantom appeared at Hawlucha Man's side, and the two heroes lashed out with punches at the same instant. The twin impacts snapped Gian's head back, and he fell to the pavement with a groan.
Sal was about to turn tail and run when the music began again.
"Stand by night and heed the call of the fight
Let your minds go wild before the light
Here we stand, the army of the night!"
The Phantom's ghostly legion bubbled up from the shadows in the nearby alleys as a sonic boom rattled every window in its frame for a two block radius. The ear-piercingly loud wail of a lone electric guitar made Sal clench his teeth, even as the sonic pulse froze him in place. Echo's Loudred and Exploud crashed down from the rooftops on opposite sides of the street, directing their sonic amplification towards the ragged remnants of Sal's crew. Sal saw the Exploud suck in a breath, the pipes along the behemoth's body whistling with the sudden intake of air.
"Lined up side by side and bound we stay
Sent to defy and fight 'til break of day,
We're the army of the night, so best you pray!"
Echo stood at the head of the street, her platinum blonde hair flying behind her like a banner as she called down another sonic assault. The Phantom's ghosts seemed unaffected by the pulsing sound waves generated by her pokemon as they darted in the air above the intersection, howling and screaming with the music. Viktor struggled to his feet and tried to stagger towards Echo, to what end, Sal didn't know.
Before the man had even gone a pace, a column of blisteringly hot air descended from the heavens, singeing Viktor's clothes and hair. A figure clothed in white dropped from the sky, metal quarterstaff whipping through the air. Volcarona Mask landed with a kick to Viktor's tailbone and clocked him upside the head with her staff. "You just don't know when to stay down, do you, big guy?" Reina's Carnivine lunged at her, only to driven back by a cascade of fiery scales from the Volcarona flitting through the air above them. Volcarona Mask flashed her partner a smile as she used her staff to hurl the Ariados into the Exploud's waiting fist.
Reina snarled some incomprehensible string of profanity as she fumbled two aerosol cans from her belt. She pulled the pins at the top and covered her mouth as she rolled them down the street towards the heroes. The cans hissed and began to release thick clouds of noxious green gas. "Archangel, you're on!" Volcarona Mask shouted.
The esper dropped out of the sky and stretched out his hands towards the aerosol cans. The gas they had emitted began to curl back in on itself as the bombs were wrapped in telekinetic bubbles. Archangel snapped his fingers, and the noxious green orbs rocketed skyward. When they had all but vanished from sight overhead, the esper closed his hand into a fist. The two cans clattered back harmlessly to earth, their poisonous contents spent and dissipated harmlessly into the upper air. Reina had drawn her knife and charged, only for the esper's eyes to flash with a subtle inner light. All of Sal's people and their remaining pokemon were seized by an invisible force and hurled backwards in random directions, crashing into masonry and light posts.
"Vito!" Sal shouted from where he fell. "Time for Plan B!" His Skarmory launched itself into the air and shot over his head as Sal hurled the generator's case skyward. The steel type caught it deftly in his claws before slashing its way through the screen of ghost types. The Volcarona tried to give chase, but Vito had too much of a head start. Sal sagged backwards against the wall he had collided with and sighed. He wouldn't be able to avoid a trip across the harbor to Redstone after this, but at least Vito would get the generator to the boss. Even if he was in prison, the Sins found ways to reward those who delivered.
A shriek cut through the din of the ghosts, and Sal saw the damned Hawlucha sprinting over the rooftops. The fighting type leapt and spread its wings wide, flapping madly to gain lift and catch up to Vito. "Aethon!" Volcarona Mask shouted. "Give him a boost!" The Volcarona beat its massive wings, sending a gale out to carry the Hawlucha higher and faster.
"No!" Sal cried. They had come too far to fail, and he silently urged Vito onward. For a second, it seemed like the Skarmory would outpace the Hawlucha, but the fighting type thrust its fists backwards and unleashed two explosive bursts of flame that hurled it forward, giving it just the speed boost it needed to overtake Vito.
The struggle, such as it was, was brief. The Hawlucha rocketed into Vito and drove one fiery fist up underneath the Skarmory's razor-edged wing. The blow knocked Vito off balance and sent him plummeting, and the Hawlucha hastened Vito's descent with a kick just between his wing joints.
The Hawlucha glided back to his human partner, his feathers puffed with pride. The Phantom's Dusknoir slipped briefly aware and returned a moment later carrying Vito's fainted form, depositing the Skarmory on the opposite side of the intersection from Sal. A police helicopter swooped overhead, aiming a brilliant spotlight down on the confluence of streets, and officers had begun appearing from the wider streets of the Warren to take Sal and his crew into custody. With a snap of the Phantom's fingers, Yevgeny and the other members of Sal's crew that had been consumed by his Dusknoir appeared from the shadows, bound and trussed up, and they too were escorted to the waiting police wagons.
Sal could only watch in mute despair as two officers claimed the generator case from the Dusknoir to take into custody. Despite his best efforts, he had failed his mission, and he had been in the business long enough to know what the price of failure was.
Little did Sal know that within the next twenty-four hours, the case would mysteriously disappear from the evidence lockup of the Sixth Precinct, spirited away to Dominion.
Alex watched as the criminals were led away, and couldn't help feeling a swell of satisfaction. Certainly, they weren't the hardest bunch of crooks he had brought down, but they had put up a good fight. Lust's information on the heist had been good, and it allowed him to coordinate with the other heroes to set an ambush. The coalition between the five heroes had been a resounding success, and Alex hoped that word would quickly spread through the underworld and serve as a warning that the heroes would now be working in concert.
The last time the five of them had all worked together was the Sins' assault on the city, although they had each teamed up a few times in the intervening months. But when all five of them were working together, Alex felt like they were unbeatable. He ran a hand through Hierro's feathers
Edgar was finishing up a debriefing with Captain Ito of the Sixth when Alex joined up with the other heroes. He exchanged a high five with Joshua (although considering the esper was using his telekinesis to levitate two feet off the ground, it was a low five for him) and bumped fists with Ingrid before doing a complicated handshake with Isabelle that she had developed for them on one of their patrols a few weeks back.
"Who kicks ass?" Isabelle asked as they tapped their fists together twice in the penultimate gesture in the handshake.
"We kick ass," Alex replied as they clasped hands, finishing out the maneuver with a quick fist bump.
"Hell yeah we do!" Isabelle turned to Ingrid. "So I was thinking that for our handshake we can…"
The soft tread of Edgar's patent leather shoes made Alex turn around. Alex grinned. "Thanks for the save back there. I owe you one."
"Another one," Edgar said, deadpan. Then his mouth quirked up in a wry half smile, and he extended his right hand. "You did well out there. I was almost impressed."
Alex returned the handshake. "Not too shabby yourself, Fancypants."
Joshua drifted down so that he was only hovering a few inches off the ground, more or less on eye level with the rest of the heroes, and slung an arm over Alex's shoulders. "We should do this more often. Those guys had no idea what hit them."
Isabelle rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on Archangel. You only say that because the birdbrain talked Jiro into letting you come along." It was no secret that Jiro, Lakshmi and Johannes had always been reluctant to let Joshua partake in the heroes' usual nightly patrols because of the potential destructiveness of his psychic powers, and that wariness had only increased when Dominion took over the city. But Alex had managed to convince Jiro that having Archangel make an appearance in their operation tonight would pay dividends in the underworld by giving the Sins' rank and file another class three esper to fear.
Joshua shrugged. "I always enjoy the chance to get some fresh air."
Edgar wrinkled his nose and glanced around the darkened streets of the Warren. "This is not what I would call 'fresh'."
"The H-Hammer th-thinks the f-five of us help Cl-Clarus City h-have hope," Ingrid said. "W-We should d-do this m-more often; it g-gives people s-something to believe in."
Alex grinned at her. "Exactly! The heroes of Clarus City have been fighting the Sins for years, but we've never had a team of heroes before. The five of us together can take on anything, and it's time that the city knew that!"
"A team of superheroes?" Edgar raised an eyebrow. "What do you think this is, some kind of kid's TV show?" Ingrid and Isabelle glared at him, and the tuxedoed hero demurred, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. "But I suppose a helping hand never hurts."
Alex looped his left arm around Joshua's shoulder and used his right hand to smooth down Hierro's feathered crest, drawing a pleased coo from his partner. Alex met each of the other heroes' eyes in turn. "The Hammer says to always bet on the heroes of Clarus City, right?" He grinned, and the feeling of fierce joy surging through him helped push aside the minor aches and pains in his muscles. "I think it's time the five of us start evening the odds."