Disclaimer: I own the idea of the Shark, but I don't own his real identity,
nor do I own the League.
Feedback: I'll still write this if I don't get any of it, but I would like it.
Resurrection
A few hours later that night, the League were all gathered outside the Nautilus, trying to decide what to do to track down the gang.
After a couple of hours sleep, Sawyer had woken up and decided it was time for them to be getting on with tracking down the gang that had been causing so much trouble. Having woken up the other League members, the four of them had sneaked out of the Sawyer household and headed back to the Nautilus, Mina using her bats to get inside and open the doors. They had then awakened the other three League members, while Jekyll picked up a phial of his serum from his room.
The only problem was, now that they were ready, they weren't entirely sure what to do.
"You forgot to ask for details about the crimes?!" Skinner asked, looking over at Sawyer. "You really need to keep better track of things!"
"Look," Sawyer groaned, getting slightly frustrated at this whole situation even before it had started, "Is it my fault that people haven't been keeping records of the crimes anywhere other than the police station, which is closed, and I didn't exactly feel like waiting another night to stop these... 'Piranhas', if that's what they call themselves, from terrorising my home before someone gets killed? Because if it is, I'm sorry for caring about the people and the place that shaped me into the man I am. OK?"
Skinner groaned. He hated it when his mouth acted ahead of his brain. "Good point," he sighed.
"Right then," Nemo said, glancing around at what could be seen of the town from the harbour. "We should be getting on with locating where the thieves are at present. Has anyone got any suggestions?"
"Well, I have one idea, but I'm not sure if it's all that successful," Jekyll said, raising one hand.
"Any idea would be good right now," Sawyer replied, looking over at the doctor. "Let's hear it, Jekyll."
"Well, it occurred to me that this town isn't exactly one of the larger cities we've ever been in," Jekyll explained. "What I'm saying is, maybe, if we got up to a high enough point in the city, those of us with good night-time vision- namely, Mr Nator, Mrs Harker, and Edward- could try and see if they could spot the criminals as they attack. Even if we can't stop them, we could at least try and find out what they were after."
The League looked around at each, each one starting to slowly nod their heads in agreement.
"That could work," Hartdegen said, nodding.
"Yes, it has an extremely large success margin," Terry put in. "I have run over all available data already, and of the seven other potential methods of dealing with this problem that have occurred to me, that one still has the best chance of success." He glanced over at Sawyer. "Would you agree, Tom?"
Sawyer briefly stood still in thought, and then he slowly nodded.
"It's got a good chance of success, as Terry said himself," he said, smiling a little as he spoke. "This place only has about three tall buildings that can give you that good a view of the city, so the three of you can take one each. I only have one condition to make. Jekyll; Nemo's coming with you."
"Any reason why, Mr Sawyer?" Nemo asked.
"If Jekyll's serum runs out while he's in the middle of a fight, you'd be the most help to him in close quarters," Sawyer replied. He looked over at Skinner and Hartdegen. "Alex, you stick with Terry just in case. Skinner, you're with me; there's one part of town that none of the others will be able to get a good look at, and you're the member who's got the most chance of spotting the gang without them spotting you." He looked around at the entire League, and nodded. "Let's go."
With that, the League all turned around and walked off in four directions. Sawyer offered up a silent prayer that, if anyone found these criminals, it would be him. Not because he thought he'd be the League member who'd be most capable of teaching them a lesson. If any member of the League was capable of really giving criminals a hard time, he'd have to say it was Hyde.
No, it was the simple fact that this case was personal.
And he wanted it settled personally.
*****
After almost an hour of solid walking, there was still no sign of any action. Skinner was complaining about him having sore legs, Sawyer was feeling slightly tired from lack of sleep, and there was still no sign of anyone who looked even remotely criminal. Skinner had once commented that he was surprised at the lack of any even minor criminals in the streets, but Sawyer had just gotten him to shut up by pointing out that there wasn't really anything in the town that was worth stealing.
Then again, maybe Skinner was just feeling cold. After all, Sawyer had practically forced him to get his hat, coat and face paint off, and they hadn't needed him to be invisible so far. Sawyer was starting to think it might be a good idea to give the thief his coat back, at least, when he suddenly saw something move in the street in front of them.
"Stop!" he hissed sharply, and something pulled to a halt beside him, at where he estimated Skinner to be.
Drawing his pistol, Sawyer walked slowly forward, Skinner's footsteps barely audible beside him. As they reached the corner of the street, Sawyer pressed his back against the wall.
"Skinner?" he whispered.
"Yeah?" the thief's familiar voice said from beside him.
"Check to see who's there and what they're doing," Sawyer whispered, as he quickly checked his guns for bullets. "Give me any relevant information on them that you can get just by looking, ESPECIALLY if they appear to heading for any buildings and look even remotely criminal."
"Then what?" Skinner whispered back. "We call the others for backup?"
Sawyer shook his head. "No way we could do that without alerting the crooks to the fact that we're here. We'll just have to tackle them ourselves. Shouldn't be too hard; after all, they can't see you, and I'm not exactly a bad shot. Plus, we have the advantage of surprise; we were looking for them. They weren't looking for us."
Skinner sighed. Sawyer then heard someone start to walk around him, and knew that the thief was taking his look now.
After a couple of minutes, Skinner was whispering to him again.
"It's the criminals," Skinner said, sounding extremely annoyed at that. "There's six of them, all wearing what almost looks like chain mail, or maybe that armour that Moriarty's lot wore, it's hard to tell from here, what with them having their shirts over them. They're attacking this house pretty near the other end of the street; they've got guns, but it's only pistols."
"Good," Sawyer said, as he clicked the hammers on his pistols and held them up beside his head. "No armour on their heads, right?"
"Nope," Skinner said.
"Right," Sawyer said, sticking one gun under his chin and reaching into his pocket, from which he pulled out a pocket-watch. He glanced at it, and then slipped it back.
"It's three-forty right now, Skinner," he said, looking at where he thought the thief was currently. "You've got five minutes to sneak around the back of those criminals, and grab their guns. If you aren't done by then, duck and get out of the way." He raised his pistols again. "I'll be aiming at around head height."
*****
Skinner nodded. Then, remembering that Sawyer couldn't see it, he patted the agent on the arm and dived out into the streets, running towards the criminals as silently as he dared.
He noticed with great relief that the thieves were having some trouble with the door. It was obvious they weren't very experienced at this work; none of them looked like they even knew how to begin to pick a lock. He was prepared to bet good money (Or he would have been, if he had any on him) that these guys were trying to avoid attracting attention in this area for some reason.
Then again, Skinner supposed there was a good reason for that. Looking around this area, Skinner got the impression that it held the rougher characters in this village; even with their guns, these guys could be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. However, since they didn't have the time to gather reinforcements, and neither Sawyer nor Skinner wanted to endanger innocent people, it was just them and the crooks, outnumbered by three to one and with all the crooks officially classified as armed and dangerous.
Time he started evening the odds then.
Sneaking forward, Skinner reached towards the holsters of the man at the back of the group. They were mostly clustered around the door like a bunch of eager children straining to get at a long-desired toy or book, oblivious to anything going on around them.
That made the whole business all too easy. Reaching forward, he grabbed the handles of the man's two pistols, and slowly took them out of their holsters. Then, he had them.
With nowhere else to put them, he was forced to creep off to a nearby abandoned building and drop the pistols in through a broken window. Then he was sneaking back to the gathering, where he tried to grab another couple of guns. Unfortunately, due to the fact that everyone in the group was so tightly clustered together, he was only able to take one pistol from the guy on the far left, and even that was a close call.
Sneaking over to the other side of the gathering, Skinner pulled out another gun, before sneaking back off to where he'd dumped the stolen weapons off the first time. Then he was back, trying to find an opening to let him grab another gun. One man disarmed and two with only half their expected firepower gave Sawyer better odds, but not by-
Sawyer.
Glancing back down the street, he say the spy begin to emerge from the shadows, and realised that his time had just run out.
Time to make some kind of a difference.
Grabbing a pistol from the crook that was nearest to him, Skinner raised the gun and fired six wild shots at the six men in front of him. Then he dropped the gun and ran, as the crooks reeled from the sudden attack.
As Sawyer started to fire his own bullets, Skinner glanced back to observe his handiwork. No men were dead, but three of them were bleeding, although unfortunately none of the wounds would be fatal.
Fortunately, Sawyer remedied that little fact very quickly. He didn't quite appear to be aiming as well as he normally did- on a good day he'd probably have downed at least three of these suckers before they could get their guns out. As it was, only one was dead right now, although a second one appeared to be close to joining him. Two of the others were still standing, although they were bleeding a little, and a fifth had a couple of bullets lodged in his leg in a manner which didn't appear to be helping him keep on living. The sixth, however, was still standing, mainly due to the fact that he was right next to the door and so had all the others in between him and the spy. Pulling out his pistols, he aimed at Sawyer.
"Good shots," he said to the American, as he clicked the hammers on his guns back. "You have a natural talent."
"Part natural, part training," Sawyer replied, as he stared back at the criminal. Skinner was briefly confused as to why Sawyer wasn't shooting, but then it came to him; pistols could only hold six bullets, and he wasn't sure if Sawyer had fired five times or six. Either he still had one bullet in each gun, or he had none, and he wasn't willing fire and find out which one of the two it was; the consequences if there weren't any bullets weren't worth thinking about.
Glancing around at the other criminals, Skinner noticed that at least none of the other ones standing could do anything; the guns that Skinner hadn't managed to steal had either been damaged by one of Sawyer's bullets or had fallen underneath one of the still-fresh corpses. Only one guy didn't fit into either of the previous categories, and he had bullets in both his arms.
Skinner ran over his options as what he could do now. He could just leave Sawyer to handle it, but if the spy had no bullets then he was as good as dead. He could try and take out the guy himself, but he still wasn't sure if he could hit a man hard enough to knock him out with only one blow by himself, and besides, what if Sawyer fired while Skinner was sneaking up on the criminal, and there were bullets in his guns, and one of them...
Skinner realised this wasn't getting him anywhere. Quickly, he raised one finger and waved it around in front of a wall opposite him, with a window nearby; if his hand tapped glass when he'd stopped spinning it, he'd help Sawyer, and if it hit stone, he wouldn't.
He hit glass.
Turning around, he prepared to charge forward and tackle the guy to his knees, when, without any warning, both of the men fired their guns.
As it turned out, Sawyer did still have two bullets left to him, both of them striking one of the criminals in front of him.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that the criminal he was facing had fired his guns first, it wasn't him who Sawyer killed. It was, instead, the one who'd been bleeding to death from a leg wound already.
Glancing over at Sawyer, Skinner was relieved to see that he was still breathing; the last thing he wanted was an angry Mina on his case, and who knew how Terry would react upon learning he'd failed in his mission. However, two bullets were lodged in Sawyer's chest, in a manner that didn't look very encouraging; Skinner doubted they'd kill him quickly, but he'd need to get Jekyll or Terry to have a look at them fairly soon.
Looking back, he noticed that the three remaining criminals were walking towards Sawyer's downed body. He quickly backed away from the unconscious spy; not so far away that he couldn't do anything to help if they tried to kill him, but far enough away so that nobody would run into him by mistake.
The crook that had fired the bullets crouched down beside Sawyer and checked his pulse before looking up at his wounded comrades.
"He's not in the best of shape, but he'll survive," he said to them both. Then a wicked grin spread across his face. "Of course, it all depends on what the Shark wants done with him."
The Shark? Skinner thought, looking around at the other criminals for any sign as to who that was, but they didn't look any different to him. Then a thought occurred to him. If these called themselves the Piranhas, then maybe their boss just tried to establish his superiority over them by naming himself after an even deadlier fish.
At least, Skinner thought that sharks were deadlier. Who could really say these days?
"You're sure this is the one he wanted, Fusco?" one of the others asked the crook who'd fired. "He doesn't seem up to much."
"The Shark gave me a very accurate description of the League, Holden," Fusco replied, as he hauled Sawyer up and hooked the comatose agent's left arm around his neck. "This is Agent Sawyer, you can be assured of that."
This isn't good, Skinner thought to himself, as the criminals started to walk away. If this 'Shark', whoever he was, wanted Sawyer, he was prepared to bet it wasn't for anything good. Right now, he had two options. Firstly, he could head back to the others and get their help, by which point it may be nearly impossible to find Sawyer, or he could follow the criminals to their hideout and then find the rest of the League, hopefully before the Shark did anything.
After only a few seconds, Skinner was running after the criminals as fast as he could, praying that he could get the League before anything happened to Sawyer if the need arose.
Feedback: I'll still write this if I don't get any of it, but I would like it.
Resurrection
A few hours later that night, the League were all gathered outside the Nautilus, trying to decide what to do to track down the gang.
After a couple of hours sleep, Sawyer had woken up and decided it was time for them to be getting on with tracking down the gang that had been causing so much trouble. Having woken up the other League members, the four of them had sneaked out of the Sawyer household and headed back to the Nautilus, Mina using her bats to get inside and open the doors. They had then awakened the other three League members, while Jekyll picked up a phial of his serum from his room.
The only problem was, now that they were ready, they weren't entirely sure what to do.
"You forgot to ask for details about the crimes?!" Skinner asked, looking over at Sawyer. "You really need to keep better track of things!"
"Look," Sawyer groaned, getting slightly frustrated at this whole situation even before it had started, "Is it my fault that people haven't been keeping records of the crimes anywhere other than the police station, which is closed, and I didn't exactly feel like waiting another night to stop these... 'Piranhas', if that's what they call themselves, from terrorising my home before someone gets killed? Because if it is, I'm sorry for caring about the people and the place that shaped me into the man I am. OK?"
Skinner groaned. He hated it when his mouth acted ahead of his brain. "Good point," he sighed.
"Right then," Nemo said, glancing around at what could be seen of the town from the harbour. "We should be getting on with locating where the thieves are at present. Has anyone got any suggestions?"
"Well, I have one idea, but I'm not sure if it's all that successful," Jekyll said, raising one hand.
"Any idea would be good right now," Sawyer replied, looking over at the doctor. "Let's hear it, Jekyll."
"Well, it occurred to me that this town isn't exactly one of the larger cities we've ever been in," Jekyll explained. "What I'm saying is, maybe, if we got up to a high enough point in the city, those of us with good night-time vision- namely, Mr Nator, Mrs Harker, and Edward- could try and see if they could spot the criminals as they attack. Even if we can't stop them, we could at least try and find out what they were after."
The League looked around at each, each one starting to slowly nod their heads in agreement.
"That could work," Hartdegen said, nodding.
"Yes, it has an extremely large success margin," Terry put in. "I have run over all available data already, and of the seven other potential methods of dealing with this problem that have occurred to me, that one still has the best chance of success." He glanced over at Sawyer. "Would you agree, Tom?"
Sawyer briefly stood still in thought, and then he slowly nodded.
"It's got a good chance of success, as Terry said himself," he said, smiling a little as he spoke. "This place only has about three tall buildings that can give you that good a view of the city, so the three of you can take one each. I only have one condition to make. Jekyll; Nemo's coming with you."
"Any reason why, Mr Sawyer?" Nemo asked.
"If Jekyll's serum runs out while he's in the middle of a fight, you'd be the most help to him in close quarters," Sawyer replied. He looked over at Skinner and Hartdegen. "Alex, you stick with Terry just in case. Skinner, you're with me; there's one part of town that none of the others will be able to get a good look at, and you're the member who's got the most chance of spotting the gang without them spotting you." He looked around at the entire League, and nodded. "Let's go."
With that, the League all turned around and walked off in four directions. Sawyer offered up a silent prayer that, if anyone found these criminals, it would be him. Not because he thought he'd be the League member who'd be most capable of teaching them a lesson. If any member of the League was capable of really giving criminals a hard time, he'd have to say it was Hyde.
No, it was the simple fact that this case was personal.
And he wanted it settled personally.
*****
After almost an hour of solid walking, there was still no sign of any action. Skinner was complaining about him having sore legs, Sawyer was feeling slightly tired from lack of sleep, and there was still no sign of anyone who looked even remotely criminal. Skinner had once commented that he was surprised at the lack of any even minor criminals in the streets, but Sawyer had just gotten him to shut up by pointing out that there wasn't really anything in the town that was worth stealing.
Then again, maybe Skinner was just feeling cold. After all, Sawyer had practically forced him to get his hat, coat and face paint off, and they hadn't needed him to be invisible so far. Sawyer was starting to think it might be a good idea to give the thief his coat back, at least, when he suddenly saw something move in the street in front of them.
"Stop!" he hissed sharply, and something pulled to a halt beside him, at where he estimated Skinner to be.
Drawing his pistol, Sawyer walked slowly forward, Skinner's footsteps barely audible beside him. As they reached the corner of the street, Sawyer pressed his back against the wall.
"Skinner?" he whispered.
"Yeah?" the thief's familiar voice said from beside him.
"Check to see who's there and what they're doing," Sawyer whispered, as he quickly checked his guns for bullets. "Give me any relevant information on them that you can get just by looking, ESPECIALLY if they appear to heading for any buildings and look even remotely criminal."
"Then what?" Skinner whispered back. "We call the others for backup?"
Sawyer shook his head. "No way we could do that without alerting the crooks to the fact that we're here. We'll just have to tackle them ourselves. Shouldn't be too hard; after all, they can't see you, and I'm not exactly a bad shot. Plus, we have the advantage of surprise; we were looking for them. They weren't looking for us."
Skinner sighed. Sawyer then heard someone start to walk around him, and knew that the thief was taking his look now.
After a couple of minutes, Skinner was whispering to him again.
"It's the criminals," Skinner said, sounding extremely annoyed at that. "There's six of them, all wearing what almost looks like chain mail, or maybe that armour that Moriarty's lot wore, it's hard to tell from here, what with them having their shirts over them. They're attacking this house pretty near the other end of the street; they've got guns, but it's only pistols."
"Good," Sawyer said, as he clicked the hammers on his pistols and held them up beside his head. "No armour on their heads, right?"
"Nope," Skinner said.
"Right," Sawyer said, sticking one gun under his chin and reaching into his pocket, from which he pulled out a pocket-watch. He glanced at it, and then slipped it back.
"It's three-forty right now, Skinner," he said, looking at where he thought the thief was currently. "You've got five minutes to sneak around the back of those criminals, and grab their guns. If you aren't done by then, duck and get out of the way." He raised his pistols again. "I'll be aiming at around head height."
*****
Skinner nodded. Then, remembering that Sawyer couldn't see it, he patted the agent on the arm and dived out into the streets, running towards the criminals as silently as he dared.
He noticed with great relief that the thieves were having some trouble with the door. It was obvious they weren't very experienced at this work; none of them looked like they even knew how to begin to pick a lock. He was prepared to bet good money (Or he would have been, if he had any on him) that these guys were trying to avoid attracting attention in this area for some reason.
Then again, Skinner supposed there was a good reason for that. Looking around this area, Skinner got the impression that it held the rougher characters in this village; even with their guns, these guys could be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. However, since they didn't have the time to gather reinforcements, and neither Sawyer nor Skinner wanted to endanger innocent people, it was just them and the crooks, outnumbered by three to one and with all the crooks officially classified as armed and dangerous.
Time he started evening the odds then.
Sneaking forward, Skinner reached towards the holsters of the man at the back of the group. They were mostly clustered around the door like a bunch of eager children straining to get at a long-desired toy or book, oblivious to anything going on around them.
That made the whole business all too easy. Reaching forward, he grabbed the handles of the man's two pistols, and slowly took them out of their holsters. Then, he had them.
With nowhere else to put them, he was forced to creep off to a nearby abandoned building and drop the pistols in through a broken window. Then he was sneaking back to the gathering, where he tried to grab another couple of guns. Unfortunately, due to the fact that everyone in the group was so tightly clustered together, he was only able to take one pistol from the guy on the far left, and even that was a close call.
Sneaking over to the other side of the gathering, Skinner pulled out another gun, before sneaking back off to where he'd dumped the stolen weapons off the first time. Then he was back, trying to find an opening to let him grab another gun. One man disarmed and two with only half their expected firepower gave Sawyer better odds, but not by-
Sawyer.
Glancing back down the street, he say the spy begin to emerge from the shadows, and realised that his time had just run out.
Time to make some kind of a difference.
Grabbing a pistol from the crook that was nearest to him, Skinner raised the gun and fired six wild shots at the six men in front of him. Then he dropped the gun and ran, as the crooks reeled from the sudden attack.
As Sawyer started to fire his own bullets, Skinner glanced back to observe his handiwork. No men were dead, but three of them were bleeding, although unfortunately none of the wounds would be fatal.
Fortunately, Sawyer remedied that little fact very quickly. He didn't quite appear to be aiming as well as he normally did- on a good day he'd probably have downed at least three of these suckers before they could get their guns out. As it was, only one was dead right now, although a second one appeared to be close to joining him. Two of the others were still standing, although they were bleeding a little, and a fifth had a couple of bullets lodged in his leg in a manner which didn't appear to be helping him keep on living. The sixth, however, was still standing, mainly due to the fact that he was right next to the door and so had all the others in between him and the spy. Pulling out his pistols, he aimed at Sawyer.
"Good shots," he said to the American, as he clicked the hammers on his guns back. "You have a natural talent."
"Part natural, part training," Sawyer replied, as he stared back at the criminal. Skinner was briefly confused as to why Sawyer wasn't shooting, but then it came to him; pistols could only hold six bullets, and he wasn't sure if Sawyer had fired five times or six. Either he still had one bullet in each gun, or he had none, and he wasn't willing fire and find out which one of the two it was; the consequences if there weren't any bullets weren't worth thinking about.
Glancing around at the other criminals, Skinner noticed that at least none of the other ones standing could do anything; the guns that Skinner hadn't managed to steal had either been damaged by one of Sawyer's bullets or had fallen underneath one of the still-fresh corpses. Only one guy didn't fit into either of the previous categories, and he had bullets in both his arms.
Skinner ran over his options as what he could do now. He could just leave Sawyer to handle it, but if the spy had no bullets then he was as good as dead. He could try and take out the guy himself, but he still wasn't sure if he could hit a man hard enough to knock him out with only one blow by himself, and besides, what if Sawyer fired while Skinner was sneaking up on the criminal, and there were bullets in his guns, and one of them...
Skinner realised this wasn't getting him anywhere. Quickly, he raised one finger and waved it around in front of a wall opposite him, with a window nearby; if his hand tapped glass when he'd stopped spinning it, he'd help Sawyer, and if it hit stone, he wouldn't.
He hit glass.
Turning around, he prepared to charge forward and tackle the guy to his knees, when, without any warning, both of the men fired their guns.
As it turned out, Sawyer did still have two bullets left to him, both of them striking one of the criminals in front of him.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that the criminal he was facing had fired his guns first, it wasn't him who Sawyer killed. It was, instead, the one who'd been bleeding to death from a leg wound already.
Glancing over at Sawyer, Skinner was relieved to see that he was still breathing; the last thing he wanted was an angry Mina on his case, and who knew how Terry would react upon learning he'd failed in his mission. However, two bullets were lodged in Sawyer's chest, in a manner that didn't look very encouraging; Skinner doubted they'd kill him quickly, but he'd need to get Jekyll or Terry to have a look at them fairly soon.
Looking back, he noticed that the three remaining criminals were walking towards Sawyer's downed body. He quickly backed away from the unconscious spy; not so far away that he couldn't do anything to help if they tried to kill him, but far enough away so that nobody would run into him by mistake.
The crook that had fired the bullets crouched down beside Sawyer and checked his pulse before looking up at his wounded comrades.
"He's not in the best of shape, but he'll survive," he said to them both. Then a wicked grin spread across his face. "Of course, it all depends on what the Shark wants done with him."
The Shark? Skinner thought, looking around at the other criminals for any sign as to who that was, but they didn't look any different to him. Then a thought occurred to him. If these called themselves the Piranhas, then maybe their boss just tried to establish his superiority over them by naming himself after an even deadlier fish.
At least, Skinner thought that sharks were deadlier. Who could really say these days?
"You're sure this is the one he wanted, Fusco?" one of the others asked the crook who'd fired. "He doesn't seem up to much."
"The Shark gave me a very accurate description of the League, Holden," Fusco replied, as he hauled Sawyer up and hooked the comatose agent's left arm around his neck. "This is Agent Sawyer, you can be assured of that."
This isn't good, Skinner thought to himself, as the criminals started to walk away. If this 'Shark', whoever he was, wanted Sawyer, he was prepared to bet it wasn't for anything good. Right now, he had two options. Firstly, he could head back to the others and get their help, by which point it may be nearly impossible to find Sawyer, or he could follow the criminals to their hideout and then find the rest of the League, hopefully before the Shark did anything.
After only a few seconds, Skinner was running after the criminals as fast as he could, praying that he could get the League before anything happened to Sawyer if the need arose.