Disclaimer:I do not own Sky High, its setting, premise, or characters -or related characters named and unnamed. All is the property of Walt Disney Pictures, Buena Vista Pictures, Andrew Gunn, and Mark McCorkie.
From Out of Town
Chapter Three: Partnering Up
"…Okay. But I'm telling you, the Broker isn't gonna be here." Flamebird was saying as she set Phoenix down on the sidewalk.
For a person whom was supposed to be 'retired' from superhero work, she sure did seem to be spending a lot of time in costume lately. (Usually just to give her son rides all over town and the surrounding area, since she could fly and he could not.) She landed on the sidewalk next to him and waved at the bouncer whom was just setting up outside the door. Apparently, she recognized him.
Phoenix just peered at her skeptically from behind his mask. "The owner of a night club is not going to be at the night club that they own on a Saturday, the biggest business day for night clubs."
"A. You know as well as I do, that Divide is just a front for the Broker's real business, because it's the real business that you're here for." His mother reminded him. "B. They have people to run their front business for them, they don't need to be here all the time. C. It's Saturday. It's God's day."
"I thought that was supposed to be Sunday." Phoenix rolled his eyes, assuming his mother was making a joke that he just didn't get.
"Well, for the Wechslers, it's Saturday." Flamebird walked up to the bouncer whom had been watching them from the door. "Gate, you old-so-and-so, you still workin' here!"
"Is that Flamebird!?" He smiled at her, looking her up and down. Noting just how tight the costume she wore really was. A full body suit in shades of yellow and orange. High collared, long sleeved, and long legged. The sleeves tucked into her gloves, the tights tucked into her boots. Every inch of her below the throat was covered. Yet, the thing was so tight and form fitting it might as well have been painted on. "Damn, Chula, you really holdin' it together. Lookin' fine!"
"Flirt." She teased him, all smiles. She beckoned to Phoenix to come join them. "This is my son, Phoenix."
The bouncer, Gate, was far less animated and enthusiastic when meeting Flamebird's son. He offered the younger man a nod and a half-hearted, "Hey, man." Then his eyes went right back to Flamebird. "So, what can I do for you?"
"I need to see the Broker." Phoenix announced.
"Then come back tomorrow." Gate replied without hesitation.
Next to him, Phoenix could practically feel his mother thinking 'I told you so', but she didn't say it out loud. Flamebird understood the importance of two superheroes working together appearing as one unified front. If Phoenix wanted to ignore her advice and waste everyone's time and delay his own case, that was his choice, and his own lesson to learn.
"I need to see the Broker today." Phoenix insisted. "I need information, and I've been told the Broker knows everything that goes on in this city."
"Well, the Broker ain't here." Gate informed him. "So, if it's info on the city you need, try the tourist welcome center they got in City Hall."
Again, Flamebird did not say 'I told you so'. But she did shift the weight on her feet and fold her arms behind her back. Assuming a more comfortable position to observe from. Phoenix was her only child and she loved him, but she also loved watching a male colleague who ignored her advice get put in his place.
"It's about the Triads!" Phoenix snapped, maybe a bit louder than was practical for an open city sidewalk in the early evening where people passing by could clearly overhear. He moderated his volume when he explained. "Maxville's own Song Triad and the Luen from Hong Kong."
Gate turned to look at Flamebird. "Damn, Chula, only in tights barely a year and already little ijo's getting mixed up in some hardcore shit!"
Flamebird only shrugged.
Truth be told, if she had things her way, Phoenix wouldn't be going up against the Chinese Mafia. If Flamebird had things her way, Phoenix wouldn't be in the city at all. If she had things her way, they would have all run away together a year ago when her husband –Phoenix's father- was escaped from prison. One year ago, they were reunited, and it was great! A wild night of unlikely team-ups, decisive battles, emotional rollercoasters, and new powers. When it was all said and done, Flamebird suggested they all run away. Don't turn Barron back in to the authorities, let's just go. All three of us. We can still be a family. We don't have to be heroes.
But Phoenix refused to go. Phoenix did not want to aid a fugitive from the law. Phoenix did not want to become a fugitive himself. He did not want to become… a supervillain.
And Barron Battle understood that. He knew that if he and his wife ran, neither of them would ever get to see their son again. If they ever did see each other, Phoenix would have to arrest them. Instead of putting him –and themselves- in that position, Battle turned himself in. Went back to jail quietly. Allowed himself to be taken away from his family a second time.
Because Phoenix chose not to run with them.
Flamebird loved her son, but she would also never forgive him that.
Barron respected his choice not to become a supervillain, so Flamebird would respect his choice to get himself tangled up in a turf war between two powerful criminal organizations.
Gate turned back to Phoenix and informed him, "The Broker really ain't here. She goes to temple on Saturdays. So if it's mob stuff ya want, and you ain't willin' to wait, then maybe you should ask the cops." A pause. "Ain't all you tights-wearin' goody-goodies tight with the cops anyway? Why you comin' here?"
Because the Broker wasn't a hero or police, the Broker played both sides of the field. They claimed to be neutral. Neither hero or villain. Instead, acting as 'middle man' between them. The Broker found jobs for supers and supers for jobs. They also employed a handful of supers called the Web that could communicate with each other telepathically over almost any distance. Each member of the Web was set up on some significant position in Maxville. In City Hall as the Mayor's Aid, in Maxville General, in the District Attorney's office, in Maxville Penitentiary… nothing went on in Maxville without the Broker knowing about it.
Also, when Barron Battle was temporarily out of Max Pen, he personally introduced Phoenix to the Broker and told him that if he needed anything at all, that he should go to the Broker.
But he was also under a time crunch. He wanted to know who the significant players were in both organization before one or the other decided to go after the Paper Lantern again.
Growling a wordless growl of frustration, Phoenix turned and stomped away.
Flamebird smiled at Gate, not exactly an apologetic smile. She was not sorry for her son's bad attitude. More of a shallow, flirty smile. Just the corners of her lips curling upwards. "Good seeing you again, Gate."
"Hey,Chula, when you gonna come my way?" He asked. "I need someone to keep me warm at night."
"Sorry. Still married." She laughed as she glided off her feet and caught up to her son. Hooking her hands under Phoenix's arms, she lifted them both into the air. "So, I think the Eight-Six is considered the 'Chinatown precinct'."
It was the precinct located in Chinatown.
"They don't know me there." Phoenix shook his head.
As Gate had so kindly reminded him, Phoenix hadn't been a superhero for very long. He was still relatively fresh out of school and basically unknown. He did not make big news like Persephone overseas, fighting famine in Africa, or combatting deforestation in South America. And he did not hang out with the Commander and gain media favor simply by associating with an established hero, like the Lieutenant did. Since superheroes operated outside of law enforcement, most law enforcement was hesitant to collaborate with heroes that did not have established reputations.
"Precinct One is right next to City Hall." Phoenix informed her. "They did security last year when the Commander debuted the Lieutenant and the rest of us after that thing with Faultline. They'll probably be willing to work with me."
"Ya know, I had a fairly good working relationship with a lot of the precincts in East Ridge." Flamebird informed him. "And that's closer to Chinatown than City Hall."
"You do realize that all police share the same database and so I can access their files from any precinct in the city, right?" Phoenix reminded her.
"Yes, but then you miss out on the human aspect." Flamebird reminded him. The uniforms and detectives of a precinct closer to a particular organization's operations would have a better general understanding of the situations beyond what the casefiles would say. Then she smiled, a teasing smile she reserved only for when something was going to make her son uncomfortable and she knew it. "You just don't wanna be the hero who hangs out at precinct sixty-nine!"
"Six-Nine!" Phoenix snarled, cheeks burning red under his mask. "It's the Six-Nine. Not sixty-nine!"
"Do you want to benefit from my years of experience as a superhero or not?" She asked him. "Trust me. I know my way around a sixty-nine."
Phoenix made a sound that he was not going to call a sob. No matter how much it sounded like a sob. "You mean the Sixty-Nine, right, Mom. 'The', not 'a'. Mom? Mom!?"
Flamebird did not answer. She just flew them over the city.
Back in the 80s, and maybe well into the 90s too, East Ridge was a nice middle-income neighborhood. In the early 2000s as the economy declined and the Middle Class began to disappear, East Ridge also fell into decline. Now it was just one step above Max Adj. A 'lower income' area.
Flambird landed on the roof of precinct Six-Nine. Crossing the roof, she tried the roof access door. It was unlocked.
"It's nice that they still leave this open for me." She commented.
"Or they leave it unlocked so officers can come out here to take smoke breaks." Phoenix suggested an alternative. He found it hard to believe that a police precinct would leave access to their base unlocked and unguarded just on the off chance than an over-the-hill superhero that used to be semi-attractive back in her prime would waltz into their building.
"I wonder if O'Rynn is still Captain." Flamebird mused aloud. "He used to have the biggest crush on me, ya know. Your father always hated him."
"Because he would cat-call you in costume, or because he was a police Captain and Dad is a supervillain?" Phoenix asked as he followed his mother down the stairs. Admittedly, Phoenix only had a child's memory of his father, but he could not recall Barron Battle being the jealous type. He could, however, very easily imagine Barron Battle, the professional supervillain and international mercenary, disliking a ranking officer of the law.
Flamebird only shrugged. "Two things can be true." Apparently, she liked the idea of men fighting over her. "Your father tried not to let it show around you when he was angry. He had bad experiences with his own father's temper and wanted to shield you from having any of your own."
"Temper? Or bad experiences?"
"Bad experiences." Flamebird clarified. "You inherited my temper. The standard issue fire-wielder temper."
They got to the bull pen floor. Everyone looked up when two costumes walked in from the stairwell. Most of them recognized Flamebird. She hadn't been active in a while, but back when she was active, East Ridge was her main territory within the city. It was hard to be an East Ridge cop and not know who Flamebird was. The black-clad one that followed her, however, none of them recognized. Was he a supervillain she was bringing in? He was dressed almost all in black. But why wasn't he cuffed?
"Hey!" Flamebird smiled and gave a little wave to the room at large.
The supervillain looking one behind her placed his face in his palm. Apparently, he was embarrassed by her.
"Is the Captain in?" She asked.
A couple of confused and mildly dazed detectives pointed vaguely to the Captain's office.
"Thanks." Flamebird smile. "C'mon, Phoenix."
She led her tall, dark, and broody companion across the bull pen to the office. Opening the door without knocking, she went in and dragged him after her.
There was an old man wearing a Captain's uniform sitting at the desk. White haired and balding. A little overweight from a lifestyle combination of stress-eating and a lack of exercise. He looked up when Flamebird barged in, and his expression of annoyance at being disturbed melted into one of pleasant surprise upon recognizing the intruder as her.
He smiled, showing coffee and cigar stained teeth. "I was wondering when you'd come back my way." Then his eyes drifted to Phoenix. "Who's this? New supervillain? You make an arrest? That's our Flamebird, still keeping up with all these kid-heroes!"
Phoenix grumbled something incoherent under his breath.
Flamebird gave a shallow laugh. A clear chime that sounded happy, like a real laugh, but the smile did not reach her eyes. (Her real laugh was much more nasal and always included at least one –usually more- thick snorts.) "No. This is my son, Phoenix." She told the Captain. "Phoenix, this is Captain O'Rynn. Say 'hi', boys."
"Hi, boys." Both men deadpanned at the same time.
"Hey, look at that, you both have the exact same sense of humor!" Flamebird smiled, a real smile this time. She was amused. "Anyway, Phoenix is working a case and was wondering if he could borrow some of your officers' knowledge and experience."
"For you, Flamebird, of course!" Captain O'Rynn was all smiles for her. "We should get a drink some time, you and I. Have a night out."
She laughed again. That same fake chime, this one with a scathing undertone that only Phoenix was able to catch because he knew what to listen for. "I'm still married."
"So am I." O'Rynn shot back, not deterred.
"You're so bad, O'Rynn." Flamebird teased, giggling like a teenager.
Phoenix pinched the nose-bridge of his mask. He knew his mother was a very capable superhero. He inherited his pyrokinetic power from her, and she was the one who taught him how to control and use it. School sure as hell didn't teach him that. But her impressive superpowers, and her competence as a hero were not the hooks that allowed her to gain favor as a semi-popular and well-known superhero. She had been a female hero trying to make a name for herself in the 80s, and the only ways for a woman to break into the 'boys club' that was superhero'ing back then was to either partner up with an already popular male hero (like Jetstream did with the Commander), or market her sexuality to appeal to her audience. Flamebird went with the latter method.
When she was still in her mid-twenties and early thirties, it was fine. But Flamebird was forty-seven now, almost fifty. Not only had she had a child, but said child was grown up and old enough to be breaking into the superhero industry on his own. She was too old to be teasing and flirting like a ditzy pin-up model.
That, and watching his mother flirt with overtly sexual overtones made Phoenix extremely uncomfortable.
O'Rynn cleared his throat, turning his attention to Phoenix. "What can I do for you, son?" Phoenix hated being called 'son'. Even his real Dad didn't call him 'son'. "Shop-lifter got away from ya?"
Developing an immediate dislike for this O'Rynn guy, and suppressing the impulse to growl like he used to growl at the Lieutenant and the other in the early days, Phoenix crossed the office and leaned his fists on the Captain's desk. "I need information on the Song Triad." He deadpanned. "And the Luen Triad from Hong Kong that's trying to move in."
Blinking, O'Rynn leaned back in his seat. That was not the kind of request he was expecting from the son of Flamebird.
Flamebird used to pose for pinup magazines and calendars. She flirted, and smiled, and flew around flashing her ass at the city. (He utterly and completely forgot that Flamebird also waded through six miles of the city's sewers to apprehend Alligator Man, lead rescue and relief teams when the city was snowed in during the Ice Villain Alliance of '86, and saved countless people from building fires ever. Damn. Summer.) O'Rynn did not imagine the son of Flamebird doing any real –serious- casework.
"Oh." The old man's mouth might have been hanging open. "Oh, uh, you're working a mob case."
"I am." Phoenix nodded. "Can you help me, and we can maintain the same working relationship you cultivated with my mother," it pained him to phrase it like that, Phoenix did not want creepy old people flirting with him, "or should I take my inquiries to the Eight-Six and make them my partner-precinct."
Every police precinct in Maxville wanted a superhero to partner with them. It was a documented fact, that precincts that were partnered with a superhero had consistently higher numbers of closed cases, with lower rates of wrongful arrests than precincts that did not partner with a resident superhero. Since Flamebird was –officially- retired, the Six-Nine now no longer had a resident hero. Within the last six month alone, their crime statistics had already taken a very noticeable dip. Captain O'Rynn wanted a new hero to set up camp in his precinct.
O'Rynn blinked at Phoenix again, but he reached a hand to the intercom on his desk. "Dena, send Kavanagh in here."
There was a pause.
Then the door to the Captain's office opened again.
Another old man entered. "You wanted to see me, Cap?" Then, noticing Flamebird. "Hey, Toots, good seeing you again. Like to see more of you like in the old days." (Flamebird's original costume showed a lot of leg and a lot of ass.)
Academically, Phoenix knew his mother could handler her own obnoxious admirers. She had, in fact, been handling them since before he was born. But something about this guy just rubbed Phoenix the wrong way. They hadn't even been in the same room for a full minute yet, and yet, some base instinct in the back of his mind told Phoenix that this guy was not the kind of animal he wanted around his herd. (Maybe he'd been spending too much time in the woods looking for Paladin, for his brain to think of people in terms like 'animal' and 'herd'.)
Flamebird said that Battle didn't like O'Rynn, but Phoenix didn't like this guy.
He didn't realize he was growling until all eyes were staring at him.
"Who's this? New villain? Why's he not cuffed?" Asked the newcomer.
"Detective Kavanagh, meet Phoenix, Flamebird's son." O'Rynn introduced them. "Phoenix, this is Chet Kavanagh, my best detective."
"You're shitting me!" Kavanagh looked to Flamebird, then to Phoenix, then back to Flamebird. "And all this time I thought you were too hot to touch. Damn! Who's the lucky mother-fucker who got to brave those fires!? Was it Wraith? It was Wraith, wasn't it. That's why Junior here's wearing all black. That guy also always dresses like a villain."
"Wraith, ew, no!" Flamebird exclaimed. "He doesn't talk! It's impossible to have a conversation with him!"
"I mean, you don't really need to talk to get pregnant." Kavanagh reminded her. "There are so many other things to do with your mouth, anyway…"
Phoenix didn't realize just how embarrassed and downright uncomfortable he was until his ears burst into –literal- flames. "Okay! Everybody not talking about my mom having sex gets to stay in this office! Everybody else has to go outside!" He shouted, louder than he needed to.
"Damn, Toots, Junior over here's a little high strung." Kavanagh snickered. Not intimidated by Phoenix's display of fire-wielder temper at all. Apparently, the detectives of the Six-Nine were used to fire-super tempers.
"He's just really focused on his case." Flamebird soothed. Though, it was unclear just who in the room she was supposed to be soothing. "He hasn't learned the art of harmless banter yet."
Kavanagh turned back to Phoenix. "Aw, Junior's working a case? That's so cute! Did ya lose a purse-snatcher, kiddo?"
Phoenix suppressed another growl. "I just need info on the Chinese Triads."
And he did not want to be talked down to like he was still some naïve child, or be confronted with how much people wanted to fuck his mom. It was not funny 'harmless banter', it was just gross and creepy.
Kavanagh's mouth fell open and the room fell silent. "Oh." He said. "That's why you called me in."
Behind his desk, Captain O'Rynn rested his elbows and steepled his fingers. "Detective Kavanagh used to work the Eight-Six." He explained. "He's very familiar with the Song."
"Look, kid," Kavanagh began again, speaking to Phoenix and sounding like he might actually be taking him seriously, "I get it. You're young, and you feel like you can do anything. You got all these superpowers us mundanes don't have and that gives you an inflated sense of confidence. But you don't wanna get mixed up with the Songs, trust me. They are bad news."
There were shadows behind his eyes when he spoke. Not unlike the shadows Phoenix saw in his father's eyes whenever Phoenix tried to get him to discuss his trauma. And, just like Barron Battle, Kavanagh's warning was too vague to be helpful and only succeeded in making Phoenix frustrated. What was it with all these old men who came of age in the seventies being unable to just say what they meant? Was it a generational thing?
"You think the Luen would be any better?" Phoenix asked.
For half a moment, Kavanagh looked startled. Phoenix actually surprised him. He wasn't expecting this new, young, and utterly green kid to actually know something of the situation. Kavanagh gave a half-hearted and utterly humorless laugh. "Huh. Well, I guess you're not dumb."
"No. I'm not." Phoenix nodded. "And I'm more capable than you think."
…