Nighthawk: A Superhero Story (closed for Siobhancan99)

[Halcyon638]

The address was in Westbridge, one of the city’s obscenely expensive neighborhoods. From a distance, Monica could see that it was a row of townhouses. She could barely discern some figures on the sidewalk below. Bringing the ship any lower would potentially attract their attention, but there were nearby rooftops on which she could potentially land the vehicle.

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica let the sliver hover over the roof and dropped down onto it, then down into the space behind the row of townhouses, between it and the ones on the street behind. She never understood the tiny pseudo-yards in these kinds of developments. City people were strange. She moved quietly to the back door of the house, then listened to see if anyone was awake or moving inside.

 

[Halcyon638]

As Monica stepped toward the door and caught a glimpse of a well-lit room through a curtain, she heard a creak. A moment later, she spotted a man in a dark coat and a dark knit hat opening the backyard fence, one black-gloved hand wrapped around a cup. For a second, she didn’t recognize him, but then caught a glimpse of the blue-gray eyes.

As she contemplated the odds of seeing the young cop for the third time in less than a month, Officer Koloshenko brought the steaming cup up to his lips, not seeming to notice her presence.

 

[siobhancan99]

Deciding she might as well let him know she was here, she whispered "bit above your paygrade, isn't it Koloshenko?" She had seen him in uniform before. Maybe he was there for overtime but she didn't think he was a detective. She'd been wrong before and she would no doubt be wrong again. Still, she thought she was funny and so she said it. "Be quiet you're gonna blow my cover."

 

[Halcyon638]

Koloshenko started momentarily. “Dude. You almost made me spill my coffee,” he observed, glancing around the darkened backyard. “Not a ton of people signing up to protect the girls getting attacked by killer drones,” he added with a shrug, before adding quietly, “You think she’s next?”

 

[siobhancan99]

"To be honest. No. I think Miss successful and popular Violet Zhang is next. High visibility, charismatic. Probably the ringleader in whatever caused this. No. I'm here because I think she" She gestured at the house "is the one who feels guilty about whatever caused this, and is likely to give me the answers I need to confirm my suspicion about who is behind it." She turned and tried the door. If it was unlocked, she'd use her gun. "You didn't see this, just like I didn't see you out of uniform being all you know. Hot and heroic. Stay behind me, I'm bulletproof. you're not."

She was painfully aware that he wasn't "Look, Kolashenko... cops near me have a habit of getting hurt by bad people. So keep a low profile ok?"

 

[Halcyon638]

Koloshenko listened as Monica explained her reasoning. She saw the tension in his face begin to ease a bit at her compliments. “Eh, not so heroic. They’ve got me assigned to the back and another one of us on the front, then a couple guys on rooftops.”

She saw him glance upward. “I can probably buy you a few minutes distracting the guy watching the front. No chatter on the radio so far so no one’s seen you but me.”

The young cop nodded. “I’ll play it safe, okay? You just worry about getting in and out as ninja-y as possible. Door code is 8-4-3-7.”

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica punched in the code. She hoped she didn't freak the woman out, as screaming would bring the cops. She slipped in through the back door and looked around, being quiet for now. If someone was on the ground floor she'd clear her throat, if not she'd quietly make her way upstairs.

 

[Halcyon638]

“Hello?” Monica heard a young woman call from the room adjoining the kitchen. A few seconds later, Liza George stepped into the room, dressed in a pink hoodie and pajama bottoms. There were circles around her blue eyes and she held her phone in her hand.

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened wide as if she was about to scream, but instead, she was silent for a moment. “Wait…what?”

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica leaned against the wall and couldn't resist a classic film reference. "Do you know who I am? I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal" She smirked under the mask and cleared her throat. "Yes, I'm the Nighthawk. Yes, I'm here to help make sure you're safe." she put her hands up "but for me to ensure your safety in the long term it means catching the person who did this. That means having an uncomfortable conversation with you about why it's happening. Maybe something you told the cops but... if i had to guess... probably something you didn't. Now, if you like I can fuck off and head out and see if your realtor friend would rather have that conversation, but. " She shrugged "something tells me you maybe have wanted to talk about this for a long time."

 

[Halcyon638]

Liza George bit her lip. She glanced down at her phone, and even from across the room, Monica could see the tension in her body language. “Aren’t you…all about stopping the bad guys?” She let out a brief, exhausted laugh. “Whoever’s…doing this is doing your job for you. Stopping the bad guys. Or bad girls. You should…kick back. Let them do their thing.”

She glanced down at her phone again, then scratched the skin of her inner elbow.

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica grabbed a kitchen chair and sat "Well I'd like to say its because I don't kill anyone." She shrugged and leaned forward "your friend, the first one. She was with a guy that died pretty fucking horribly for the crime of sticking his dick in her. If the drones come here." she gestured "your walls aren't bulletproof. you have neighbors? kids around? what about the cops outside? you wanna poison yourself over your guilt over what happened that's on you. You want some avenging angel in the form of indiscriminate machine gun fire to take you out because you don't have what it takes to deal with what you did? fuck you. You don't get to pose a danger to everyone around you. Maybe I will agree with you that you all deserve this. maybe I won't even hurt the person responsible. But I do need to convince them that gunning you down when you're not a thousand miles away from potential innocent casualties is the right play." She leaned forward a little bit. "So if you don't want to carry even more guilt, pretend i'm your priest and unburden yourself. I'm gonna guess your friend Zhang sleeps the sleep of the just. You actually give a fuck about doing the right thing so... you know. do the right fucking thing huh?"

 

[Halcyon638]

George was fighting back tears. As Monica finished, they began to stream down the older woman’s face. She buried her face in her hand, leaning over, but then, a moment later, stood up, seemingly having regained her composure.

“This…this is all about Coda Kirkman. C-O-D-A. Kirkman. She was…she was this girl we went to Hamon Academy with. Some of us were in, like, middle school with her, too. She was always kinda…awkward and try-hard and she had, like, this embarrassing dance mom.” George continued to pick at the skin of her arm. “I never…I never like, picked on her or anything back then. And even at Hamon, it was…So, she kinda got pretty one year. And popular, a little, and so she started hanging around with us—Violet and Cameron and all of us. You’ve probably seen the news.”

George folded her arms tightly across her chest now. “At the beginning, everybody liked her. She was nice enough and fun and all of that. Sometimes…I don’t even know why we turned on her. I mean, officially? Like, if you’d asked us straight up? So, officially, she’d copied one of Rachel’s dance videos and tried to pass it off as her own. It was the dumbest fucking shit, you know? And then when Cameron and Matt broke up, Coda was crushing on him hard. It was a little, like, embarrassing to watch. So those were, like, the ‘official’ reasons we turned on her.”

The young woman sighed. “But, like, that felt like, excuses. Like, we were looking for reasons to turn on her and go after her. Like, it could have been anything or any one of us. It was like we just…we needed a common—”

The backdoor opened. Officer Zoloshenko stood, face pale. “We’ve got to get you down in the basement.” Glancing at Monica, he said, “Two incoming.”

They heard the crack of gunfire outside, sounding as though it was coming from far above.

 

[siobhancan99]

"I'm on it" Monica shoved the woman towards the basement "stay down there with her." She headed upstairs, looking for a window on the second floor where she might either see the drones, or get up onto the roof to get a better vantage point. Well, at least her suspicions were confirmed. She wasn't sure it was sophie, but the dead people basically drove that girl to kill herself. or maybe actually killed her. she should probably try to find out. Still. If sophie wasn't the drone operator, she would maybe know who was. All of that had to wait though. For now, she tried to find a way to get at the drones.

 

[Halcyon638]

“Come on,” Koloshenko said, putting a hand around Liza George’s upper arm and guiding her out of the room. “Watch yourself,” he told Monica.

Monica found a second-story bedroom window. Through it, she saw what appeared to be the flash of a muzzle coming from a building behind and across the street from the townhouse, but couldn’t see one of the incoming to which the cop had referred.

Climbing up on the rooftop, Monica didn’t see a sign of the drones at first. It was the angry whirr of their rotors that gave them away. More gunfire sounded from nearby rooftops, including the one that she had been eyeing a bit earlier.

Looking down, she saw the two drones lining up in the air right near the window she’d peered through before. They began blasting at the glass with their machine guns, but a moment later, there was a burst of sparks, as one of them seemed to have been hit by gunfire.

Both drones were about a ten foot drop from Monica’s current position.

 

[siobhancan99]

Rather than put herself in the line of fire, she thought about grabbing her chain and throwing it, hoping to foul the rotors of the drone and drag it to the ground. In hindsight she probably should have done that with the last drone, but it just occurred to her at the moment. She gave it a good swing a few times over her head to build up some momentum, then tossed it at the drone.

 

[Halcyon638]

Monica let the chain fly. The attack landed close, but the airborne vehicle managed to swerve enough so that the metal ended up striking its nose rather than entangling its means of flight. One of the drones went into the house, its rotors just barely clearing the frame of the now-shattered window. The other zipped up near Monica as she reeled her chain back in.

Another shot rang out with a nearby rooftop as a source, seemingly aimed at the one Monica was now engaged with, but the bullet hit the roof just below the drone.

The machine turned its attentions on Monica. Seeing it gear up to release its built-in taser, she was able to easily duck the attack.

 

[siobhancan99]

After avoiding the taser, Monica came up under the drone. She reached for the landing apparatus, then tried to swing the drone against the roof of the house to smash it. Her goal was to stay out of the arc of fire while using her strength to end the threat of the drone. She figured that the other would be too unwieldy to easily navigate its way through the house and down two sets of stairs before she could catch up, assuming that this attack was sufficient to disable the drone.

 

[Halcyon638]

The drone attempted to maneuver as Monica swiftly positioned herself underneath it. She managed to get a hand on its landing apparatus just as the machine was angling its position for another attack.

The drone tried to shift so that its rotors would strike her arm or face, but a swift pull threw off the automaton’s entire equilibrium. She slammed it down against the roof, damaging it significantly. Its armor plating initially protected it, but she followed it up with two more slamming attacks before the drone could even attempt to recover.

It lay in pieces at her feet. She heard sirens a few blocks away.

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica trusted the rank and file cops not to have a beef with her, and elected to drop into the house. She had to get to Kolashenko and the girl before the drone ended them. She grabbed the edge of the roof and swung into the window, landing in the front bedroom. She made her way into the hall, moving more swiftly than carefully. If she drew the attention of the drone operator so much the better. Her goal was to get to the drone, bringing the drone to her by making noise would be a nice bonus.

 

[Halcyon638]

Monica heard automatic weapon fire coming from the front floor. She broke into a full sprint, vaulted down the staircase and cut through the dining room where she had been speaking to George just a few minutes ago.

The drone was hovering near a door, blasting away at the wood. The vehicle began to tilt its nose toward her, preparing to attack, but she got the jump on the drone’s operator.

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica threw a punch for the drone, she needed to take it out as she wasn't so sure she was bullet proof enough to be shot by a fucking machine gun. Whether she hit or not, she'd follow up with her left, trying to grab the drone so she could turn the gun away from her and up into the air if at all possible. The nice thing about fighting a drone was she could break it without guilt, but the bad part was she was nowhere near the operator.

 

[Halcyon638]

Just as the drone was engaging its taser again, Monica closed the distance toward it and hauled off a fierce jab. She felt the drone’s armored plating resist for a second and then give as her hand penetrated its interior circuitry.

There was a sizzling sound inside and the drone’s rotors began to slow somewhat, finally collapsing into a heap, sparks flying, on the living room floor. She heard footsteps coming from an adjoining room as a 30-something brunette dressed in an outfit much the same as Koloshenko burst in, gun pointed Monica’s way.

The woman lowered the weapon. “Where’s Koloshenko?” she asked.

 

[siobhancan99]

"He was taking the owner down into the basement. I assume he's down there with her. I was about to go check." She gestured "I'm going to move that way now unless you have any objections." edging towards the door, glad the woman wasn't pointing a gun at her but aware that vigilanti antics weren't beloved by the cops. At least movies told her that and that's all she had to go on. "They should be ok. Drone came in from above and made its way down the steps."

 

[Halcyon638]

The female officer hesitated. “Better make it fast. SWAT team is inbound and they’re a territorial bunch of bastards,” she observed.

Making it down the steps, Monica found herself with another gun pointed at her. This time, it was Officer Koloshenko, who quickly lowered it. George was huddled in the corner beside the hot water heater. “We’re clear?” the young cop asked.