Back to GatefoldIssue #39 by D. Golightly
Featuring the Darkhawk! |
"Child's Play"
“I know, Clint, and I swear that I won’t be long.”
Chris Powell tapped the screen of his smartphone, hanging up on Clint Barton, his de facto boss concerning heroics. While the Avengers’ team on the West Coast was actually on hiatus, and Chris wasn’t technically on duty with the team these days, he still felt prideful that Clint was keeping track of him. It was an honor just to be in the same room with those guys, let alone being asked to apprise them of his whereabouts.
He slipped his phone back into his pants pocket and tightened the pull straps on his hoodie. The cool breeze that New York City seemed to keep going all year long swept over him, which he thought of as refreshing. San Francisco and Los Angeles didn’t have a breeze like that.
He had come into town to see someone. Well, if he was being honest with himself, not just someone. Her. He had made the trip across the entire country, after all. Did he really need to keep second-guessing himself and pretend like this trip was anything other than what it really was?
A booty call.
Chris sighed. He had traded blows with alien wooden gods and crazed Kree warriors. He had rescued the most powerful heroes single-handedly. He had been invited into the ranks of legends. And yet…he was still just as confused as anyone else about the ladies.
He checked his phone, pulling up the text he had received the night before. ‘Cum c me, k?’ it had read, followed by several raunchy emojis. He didn’t even know they made emojis like those, especially not animated ones that were vaguely pornographic.
Still, she was hot. Really hot. Chris was only human, a male human at that. So, after another round of sexting she actually gave him the address where he could find her just in case he ever found himself wandering the cold streets of New York City. He looked up from his phone – yep, the streets were cold all right.
He took in a deep breath. Was this creepy? His sense of what was over the line these days was seriously skewed, thanks in part to people like Eros being in his contact list. One conversation with that guy and you’d think that stalking was just part of a mating ritual.
Although, hadn’t technology and the commonality of casual sex in today’s modern world really come to that point? Was there anything inherently wrong, by a true Millennium’s standards, with just looking up with a hot girl who had already extended an invitation? Besides, it wasn’t as if he actually--
-BA-DOOM!-
The explosion jarred Chris enough that he nearly dropped his phone. Nearly. Thoughts of what the information in that phone could lead to for him kept it ensnared in his palm, regardless of the fact that the entire city block had just tilted from the force of the blast.
He watched three tiny figures jet off into the night sky, propelled by short wings stretching off of their arms. Exhaust trails from what he assumed were jetpacks led back to the building that he was standing in front of at that very moment. The building itself had lost some of the plaster covering its face, apparently knocked loose by the mystery explosion.
Lights inside the building were flicking on one by one, and the car alarms from the vehicles on the street were blaring. That was when he noticed the building number; it was her’s. He hadn’t realized that he had walked there so quickly from the coffee shop where he had worked up his courage.
He watched a window slide up and a cute blonde wearing a pink t-shirt stuck her head out to see for herself what was going on. She glanced up and down the street, watched the three figures fly away, and then frowned. Raising her eyebrows, as if to say that it was just another night in the Big Apple, she slipped back into the apartment and slammed the window shut.
It was her. She looked exactly like the pics that she had sent Chris, although it appeared that she didn’t wear nothing but a baseball cap all the time. A second later, Chris’ phone buzzed.
‘Sup? R u here yet ;-)’
He couldn’t help but smile, but then he looked back up at the quickly dissipating trails bleeding off into the clouds. His smile quickly evaporated as a sense of obligation took hold of him. He was going to kick himself, but he couldn’t just ignore what looked like three bad guys making a getaway.
He texted back, ‘Be there in 15.’
The reply was a selfie, sans the pink t-shirt.
“Stupid supervillains…” Chris muttered as he pocketed his phone and ducked into the alley.
Feeling the warm black jewel against his chest from beneath his clothing, Chris concentrated on his otherworldly counterpart. Within second his own human body had been swapped for an artificially created soldier, wearing black armor. The visor across his helmet immediately starting streaming information about his surroundings. He looked skyward and locked onto the jet trails, and then leapt up as his own jets ignited.
He stretched out the silver wings beneath his arms and rocketed into the evening, leaving Chris Powell and his frustrations behind. In this form he was a hero, focused and determined to get the job done in less than fifteen minutes. He was Darkhawk.
He could no longer feel the chilled wind against his body. The alien armor encapsulating him was air tight, and even though it looked rigid it was actually aerodynamic. With a burst of power he was catching up to the three runaways quickly.
When he was around three hundred feet away he could finally take better stock of his prey. They were all shorter than he expected, each one maybe no taller than four feet in height. Midget criminals, perhaps. A new gang. This could be part of an entire network or ring of criminal activity. Or…it could just be some circus performers gallivanting around town. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Whoever they were, it sure seemed like they were joyriding. There was no sense of formation in their flight pattern. The three suspects swirled in and out of each other’s path, seemingly just trying to gain control of their flight suits. The suits themselves looked like nothing more than solid metal wings strapped to each arm with a jetpack in the middle.
Their dress was a little alarming. Each wore a green giant helmet with sunken eyes and open mouth. Tiny twin horns poked out of the foreheads. Beneath the wings he saw dark purple bodysuits. They looked like gremlins shooting through the air.
Darkhawk poured on the speed and rocketed right through the center of their collective flight path. Undoubtedly catching their attention, he whipped his feet under and in front of him to quickly slow down, and then pivoted in midair to face them. Crossing his arms over his armored chest and hovering in place made him look quite intimidating.
“Land on the nearest—” he began, but they whirled around him like bats circling a potential kill.
Something struck his back and his visor registered the impact of a foreign object. He reached around and extracted a razor sharp boomerang from his lower back, glad that it hadn’t fully punctured his armor. He was impressed, though. Not many average weapons could cut through his armor like that. He would have to be a little more careful.
Swarming around him like flies, the three gremlins each took their turn launching more of the projectiles at him. Flicking out his wrist-mounted claw, Darkhawk began deflecting the incoming aggression. Quick slices back and forth, combined with expert midair maneuvering, made short work of their assault. A resounding ‘pling!’ rang out with every swipe of his claw as he batted down half a dozen razors within seconds.
The gremlins pulled back a bit, hovering and trading glances. They had apparently never encountered any real opposition before, as they seemed confused as to what their next step should be. It was likely they were relatively new at this sort of thing.
“Haven’t come across Spidey yet, huh?” Darkhawk asked. “Lucky you ran into me instead. The webhead likes to shoot webbing first and ask questions later. Let’s start with what caused the explosion back there.” He stuck his thumb toward uptown.
“That was an accident,” one of the gremlins replied after a pause.
“Shut up, Kevin!” another chimed in.
“No names!” the third added. “God, you guys are so dumb. Rascal is going to kill you!”
“Look, I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Kevin said. “I think I made a mistake.”
“You got that right!” shouted the gremlin that had scolded Kevin initially.
One of the little fiends dove at Kevin, tackling him around the waist and driving him down back toward the rooftops. The two traded punches as they descending, recklessly falling without control. Darkhawk traded glances with the remaining gremlin, who just shrugged and then dove down to intercept his comrades.
“You guys are killing me,” Darkhawk muttered as he joined the chase.
The pair of gremlins became so entwined that their wings were caught on one another. While it had only been one of the two screaming for help during the fight, now both were shouting pleas of surrender. With their wings disabled and their tangled bodies tumbling end over end, they had no hope of righting themselves before they went splat.
Darkhawk launched his claw, unwinding the tow cable from his arm, converting it to a grappling hook. The claw snatched the pair of gremlins by their crossed forearms, and Darkhawk yanked upward. The force of their fall was strong enough that he couldn’t just instantly bring them to a halt in midair; he would have to deposit them on the closest rooftop.
Angling their drop, Darkhawk swung them in low and released the claw inches above the surface of a vacant skyscraper turret. The gremlins rolled to a stop while Darkhawk descended in a controlled landing a few feet from the now split pair. The remaining gremlin chose to hover nearby at a safe distance, obviously concerned for his compatriots.
“Let’s lose these so we can have a civil conversation,” Darkhawk said as he ripped off the closest gremlin’s helmet. He immediately wished he that the universe would stop picking on him.
“I’m sorry,” was all the seven year-old boy could think of to say to the armored hero.
“You’re kids?” Darkhawk shouted. “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how dangerous flying around the city is? What if the Punisher had found you instead of me? Or Moon Knight? Or…you don’t know who any of these people are, do you?”
The unmasked gremlin shook his head. The other youth, Kevin, pulled his helmet off and walked over to them. “Moon Knight is the guy that breaks people’s spines, right?” he asked.
“What? No, that’s Shadowha…you know what? Moon Knight is just as crazy, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you kids are insane if you think this is a good idea. Start talking. What’s going on here?”
The third gremlin dropped down to the roof and removed his helmet, revealing yet another child that couldn’t have been any older than the others. “We’re just trying to survive,” he said.
“Rascal is going to kill us,” Kevin muttered.
“Who is Rascal?”
“He’s the guy that hooked us up with this gear,” Kevin replied, motioning to his discarded helmet. “He found some stash of supervillain gadgets and sent us out to test it. We’re supposed to make sure the bombs all work right and then come back.”
“Bombs,” Darkhawk repeated. “The explosion back there. You were testing your stuff to see if it worked?”
They hesitated, glanced at each other, and then nodded affirmation.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? What if you had killed someone?”
“No, they aren’t that strong!” Kevin quickly responded. His eyes went wide and a little moist in the corners. “I swear! We just tossed a couple ba-bombs down a ventilation shaft to see what would happen.”
“Ba-bombs?” Darkhawk inquired with his head cocked to the side.
“You know…like in Mario.”
“Oh, that is it! Where are your parents?”
The three gremlins fell silent, each suddenly immensely interested in the tops of their own feet. It was like someone had slammed a six inch thick steel door shut between the three kids and the Avenger. Darkhawk looked between each boy, realizing that things were worse than they had seemed at first glance.
“You guys living on the street?” he finally asked.
Kevin shrugged. “Maybe,” he said.
“And this Rascal?”
“He looks after us.”
“Not looking after you right now, is he?” Another shrug from Kevin. “Right. Look, you probably won’t believe me, but I know where you guys are coming from. I know the streets. I know that it can seem like the only people you can trust are the ones down in the trenches beside you. But you guys are way too young to be living such a hard life. Come with me.”
“What are you going to do?” Kevin asked, finally looking up.
“First, I’m going to get you guys to someone that can help you,” Darkhawk replied. “Then I’m going to go chat with Rascal.”
* * *
Darkhawk spread his silver wings to catch an updraft as he rocketed away from the Yancy Street Youth Club. Below him the three kids, now without their dangerous accessories, were wavering at him as they ate their ice cream cones. It looked like a cliché scene straight out of an off-Broadway Annie homage, but Ben Grimm had put a lot of careful thought and consideration into his social services program. The boys would be in good hands going forward.
Once he was high enough, Darkhawk let lose another burst of power from his jets, propelling him at high velocity toward another section of the city. His visor locked onto the coordinates he had supplied it with, converted from the address given by the boys. Not surprisingly, he was led to a warehouse in a rundown neighborhood, a community that looked to be down on their luck economically.
It wasn’t hard for him to imagine how Rascal had roped the boys into testing out the equipment. Maybe he had offered them shelter, food, money, or all of the above. Kids living desperately on the street would likely take anything offered with a smile as long as it meant survival.
Several blocks over he could see the building where this had all become less than an hour ago. With a sigh, Darkhawk maintained course and set down on top of the warehouse.
An initial scan revealed absolutely nothing special about the place. No heat signatures, radiation, cosmic energy, or residual magic emanated from within the confines of the darkened unit. For all accounts and purposes the place looked abandoned.
“Why doesn’t the city just level all of the abandoned warehouses anyway?” Darkhawk muttered. “Limit the places these whack-jobs can set up shop, right? A place like this is practically an invitation to move in and start doing evil.”
No sooner had he retracted his wings then a sharp whistling sound came from behind him. He felt a heavy push as the now familiar razor boomerang sunk into the back of his leg. Two more of the razors sang out and stabbed into his back. He fell to one knee and half turned to see who had thrown them.
A grizzled-looking man wearing a mishmash of green and purple armor had slipped out of the shadows. Half of his face was covered with a garish, putrid-green mask with jutting teeth and a single tiny horn coming from the forehead. It looked like an alternate, exaggerated version of what the gremlins had been wearing.
In his right hand he playfully tossed around a small orange object that Darkhawk thought looked a little like a pumpkin. That’s when he realized who the original owner of the weapons stash had been.
“Wasn’t expecting one of your kind here tonight,” the man said. “You take down my boys?”
“Your boys, as you say, aren’t coming back,” Darkhawk said through the aggravation of standing up on a bum leg. “Rascal, I presume.”
The villain half bowed in a mock gesture. “In the flesh. Who are you?”
“The guy that’s going to kick your ass.”
Rascal laughed. “That’s funny, coming from a broke-ass robot scrub. You look like Iron Man trying to be hip and young. Very 90s. Nice shoulder pads.”
Darkhawk spun and whipped out his claw, allowing the cable to uncoil and extend. The first slash missed, but he whipped the cable back and managed to slap the pumpkin bomb, or ba-bomb as the kids were calling them these days, out of Rascal’s hand.
The hodgepodge villain swore and then dove into his belt, extracting two more of the razors. Darkhawk’s claw retracted just in time for him to slap the razors down. The augmented strength granted to him by the alien armor allowed for him to leap over Rascal’s head easily. At the apex of his arch, Darkhawk unleashed a double blast of dark energy from the jewel embedded in his chest plate. The energy consumed Rascal, but didn’t put him down.
Darkhawk swung his leg out, catching Rascal at the ankles and dropping him. The armored hero leapt on top of Rascal, pinning him at the shoulders. He raised his claw just over Rascal’s face, mere inches from cutting into him as a veiled threat.
“You’re a sick freak to be putting these kids in danger,” Darkhawk said.
Rascal just laughed, half of his face covered by the macabre mask. “Those kids were tossed onto the street by society,” Rascal shot back. “I rescued them! Gave them food. Power.”
“You put them in danger.”
“You’re the only one in danger here!”
Rascal flipped a switch on his gauntlet, causing a puff of green gas to jettison out. The gas engulfed Darkhawk’s head, and even though the android body that Chris Powell has control over had no need to breath, the fast motion and unexpected attack made him shift his weight back. The movement was enough for Rascal to gain leverage and pull his knee up between them, pushing them apart. With a well-placed kick from Rascal, Darkhawk was forced off and away from the pseudo-villain.
Rascal bounded to his feet, a pair of pumpkin bombs in his hands. “Ha! After I kill you and take your armor for myself I’ll…I’ll-cough-”
Rascal fell to his knees, coughing incessantly. Darkhawk waved a hand through the settling green cloud to disperse it, and took a few cautious steps toward Rascal. Between the hacking coughs Rascal was having trouble pulling in air. He had been exposed to the strange green chemical weapon, too. The heavy dose looked to be too much for his lungs to handle.
“No!” Rascal shouted in a final attempt to stand up again. “I –cough- I can’t –cough-”
Rascal fell over on his side and stopped moving. Darkhawk debated on whether or not he should call emergency services. With a growl, he decided that just like earlier that evening, if he wanted to be the hero that he was quickly shaping up to be, he had to do the right thing.
A minute later he could hear the sirens in the distance.
* * *
‘where u been? :-(’
Chris walked back down the darkened city block, tightly clutching his phone. He sighed as he tried to dream up some excuse to tell her. Did Wolverine have to deal with modern dating like this?
He tried to text that he was sorry, that he had been caught on the subway and that was the reason his promised fifteen minutes had spun into an hour and a half. After a solid minute of no reply he pocketed the phone. He had missed his chance with her apparently.
He heard a dog bark from across the street, but couldn’t see where it was. His normal human eyes had limits like that; Darkhawk’s augmented vision would be able to pick out the location, breed, and number of fleas that the dog had on him. But he couldn’t spend all of his time inside the armor. He was worried that it would overtake his life completely, disrupting it even more than it already had.
His phone buzzed and he nearly ripped the jeans pocket stitching off while retrieving it. Instead of a text, though, it was another selfie. Even though it was a single image, it somehow conveyed a sense of urgency, willingness, understanding, and eagerness all at once. Maybe it was her pouty face. Maybe it was her thong.
Chris texted back that he would be there in less than fifteen minutes this time, and that not even an earthquake would keep him away.
END
Chris Powell tapped the screen of his smartphone, hanging up on Clint Barton, his de facto boss concerning heroics. While the Avengers’ team on the West Coast was actually on hiatus, and Chris wasn’t technically on duty with the team these days, he still felt prideful that Clint was keeping track of him. It was an honor just to be in the same room with those guys, let alone being asked to apprise them of his whereabouts.
He slipped his phone back into his pants pocket and tightened the pull straps on his hoodie. The cool breeze that New York City seemed to keep going all year long swept over him, which he thought of as refreshing. San Francisco and Los Angeles didn’t have a breeze like that.
He had come into town to see someone. Well, if he was being honest with himself, not just someone. Her. He had made the trip across the entire country, after all. Did he really need to keep second-guessing himself and pretend like this trip was anything other than what it really was?
A booty call.
Chris sighed. He had traded blows with alien wooden gods and crazed Kree warriors. He had rescued the most powerful heroes single-handedly. He had been invited into the ranks of legends. And yet…he was still just as confused as anyone else about the ladies.
He checked his phone, pulling up the text he had received the night before. ‘Cum c me, k?’ it had read, followed by several raunchy emojis. He didn’t even know they made emojis like those, especially not animated ones that were vaguely pornographic.
Still, she was hot. Really hot. Chris was only human, a male human at that. So, after another round of sexting she actually gave him the address where he could find her just in case he ever found himself wandering the cold streets of New York City. He looked up from his phone – yep, the streets were cold all right.
He took in a deep breath. Was this creepy? His sense of what was over the line these days was seriously skewed, thanks in part to people like Eros being in his contact list. One conversation with that guy and you’d think that stalking was just part of a mating ritual.
Although, hadn’t technology and the commonality of casual sex in today’s modern world really come to that point? Was there anything inherently wrong, by a true Millennium’s standards, with just looking up with a hot girl who had already extended an invitation? Besides, it wasn’t as if he actually--
-BA-DOOM!-
The explosion jarred Chris enough that he nearly dropped his phone. Nearly. Thoughts of what the information in that phone could lead to for him kept it ensnared in his palm, regardless of the fact that the entire city block had just tilted from the force of the blast.
He watched three tiny figures jet off into the night sky, propelled by short wings stretching off of their arms. Exhaust trails from what he assumed were jetpacks led back to the building that he was standing in front of at that very moment. The building itself had lost some of the plaster covering its face, apparently knocked loose by the mystery explosion.
Lights inside the building were flicking on one by one, and the car alarms from the vehicles on the street were blaring. That was when he noticed the building number; it was her’s. He hadn’t realized that he had walked there so quickly from the coffee shop where he had worked up his courage.
He watched a window slide up and a cute blonde wearing a pink t-shirt stuck her head out to see for herself what was going on. She glanced up and down the street, watched the three figures fly away, and then frowned. Raising her eyebrows, as if to say that it was just another night in the Big Apple, she slipped back into the apartment and slammed the window shut.
It was her. She looked exactly like the pics that she had sent Chris, although it appeared that she didn’t wear nothing but a baseball cap all the time. A second later, Chris’ phone buzzed.
‘Sup? R u here yet ;-)’
He couldn’t help but smile, but then he looked back up at the quickly dissipating trails bleeding off into the clouds. His smile quickly evaporated as a sense of obligation took hold of him. He was going to kick himself, but he couldn’t just ignore what looked like three bad guys making a getaway.
He texted back, ‘Be there in 15.’
The reply was a selfie, sans the pink t-shirt.
“Stupid supervillains…” Chris muttered as he pocketed his phone and ducked into the alley.
Feeling the warm black jewel against his chest from beneath his clothing, Chris concentrated on his otherworldly counterpart. Within second his own human body had been swapped for an artificially created soldier, wearing black armor. The visor across his helmet immediately starting streaming information about his surroundings. He looked skyward and locked onto the jet trails, and then leapt up as his own jets ignited.
He stretched out the silver wings beneath his arms and rocketed into the evening, leaving Chris Powell and his frustrations behind. In this form he was a hero, focused and determined to get the job done in less than fifteen minutes. He was Darkhawk.
He could no longer feel the chilled wind against his body. The alien armor encapsulating him was air tight, and even though it looked rigid it was actually aerodynamic. With a burst of power he was catching up to the three runaways quickly.
When he was around three hundred feet away he could finally take better stock of his prey. They were all shorter than he expected, each one maybe no taller than four feet in height. Midget criminals, perhaps. A new gang. This could be part of an entire network or ring of criminal activity. Or…it could just be some circus performers gallivanting around town. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Whoever they were, it sure seemed like they were joyriding. There was no sense of formation in their flight pattern. The three suspects swirled in and out of each other’s path, seemingly just trying to gain control of their flight suits. The suits themselves looked like nothing more than solid metal wings strapped to each arm with a jetpack in the middle.
Their dress was a little alarming. Each wore a green giant helmet with sunken eyes and open mouth. Tiny twin horns poked out of the foreheads. Beneath the wings he saw dark purple bodysuits. They looked like gremlins shooting through the air.
Darkhawk poured on the speed and rocketed right through the center of their collective flight path. Undoubtedly catching their attention, he whipped his feet under and in front of him to quickly slow down, and then pivoted in midair to face them. Crossing his arms over his armored chest and hovering in place made him look quite intimidating.
“Land on the nearest—” he began, but they whirled around him like bats circling a potential kill.
Something struck his back and his visor registered the impact of a foreign object. He reached around and extracted a razor sharp boomerang from his lower back, glad that it hadn’t fully punctured his armor. He was impressed, though. Not many average weapons could cut through his armor like that. He would have to be a little more careful.
Swarming around him like flies, the three gremlins each took their turn launching more of the projectiles at him. Flicking out his wrist-mounted claw, Darkhawk began deflecting the incoming aggression. Quick slices back and forth, combined with expert midair maneuvering, made short work of their assault. A resounding ‘pling!’ rang out with every swipe of his claw as he batted down half a dozen razors within seconds.
The gremlins pulled back a bit, hovering and trading glances. They had apparently never encountered any real opposition before, as they seemed confused as to what their next step should be. It was likely they were relatively new at this sort of thing.
“Haven’t come across Spidey yet, huh?” Darkhawk asked. “Lucky you ran into me instead. The webhead likes to shoot webbing first and ask questions later. Let’s start with what caused the explosion back there.” He stuck his thumb toward uptown.
“That was an accident,” one of the gremlins replied after a pause.
“Shut up, Kevin!” another chimed in.
“No names!” the third added. “God, you guys are so dumb. Rascal is going to kill you!”
“Look, I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Kevin said. “I think I made a mistake.”
“You got that right!” shouted the gremlin that had scolded Kevin initially.
One of the little fiends dove at Kevin, tackling him around the waist and driving him down back toward the rooftops. The two traded punches as they descending, recklessly falling without control. Darkhawk traded glances with the remaining gremlin, who just shrugged and then dove down to intercept his comrades.
“You guys are killing me,” Darkhawk muttered as he joined the chase.
The pair of gremlins became so entwined that their wings were caught on one another. While it had only been one of the two screaming for help during the fight, now both were shouting pleas of surrender. With their wings disabled and their tangled bodies tumbling end over end, they had no hope of righting themselves before they went splat.
Darkhawk launched his claw, unwinding the tow cable from his arm, converting it to a grappling hook. The claw snatched the pair of gremlins by their crossed forearms, and Darkhawk yanked upward. The force of their fall was strong enough that he couldn’t just instantly bring them to a halt in midair; he would have to deposit them on the closest rooftop.
Angling their drop, Darkhawk swung them in low and released the claw inches above the surface of a vacant skyscraper turret. The gremlins rolled to a stop while Darkhawk descended in a controlled landing a few feet from the now split pair. The remaining gremlin chose to hover nearby at a safe distance, obviously concerned for his compatriots.
“Let’s lose these so we can have a civil conversation,” Darkhawk said as he ripped off the closest gremlin’s helmet. He immediately wished he that the universe would stop picking on him.
“I’m sorry,” was all the seven year-old boy could think of to say to the armored hero.
“You’re kids?” Darkhawk shouted. “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how dangerous flying around the city is? What if the Punisher had found you instead of me? Or Moon Knight? Or…you don’t know who any of these people are, do you?”
The unmasked gremlin shook his head. The other youth, Kevin, pulled his helmet off and walked over to them. “Moon Knight is the guy that breaks people’s spines, right?” he asked.
“What? No, that’s Shadowha…you know what? Moon Knight is just as crazy, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you kids are insane if you think this is a good idea. Start talking. What’s going on here?”
The third gremlin dropped down to the roof and removed his helmet, revealing yet another child that couldn’t have been any older than the others. “We’re just trying to survive,” he said.
“Rascal is going to kill us,” Kevin muttered.
“Who is Rascal?”
“He’s the guy that hooked us up with this gear,” Kevin replied, motioning to his discarded helmet. “He found some stash of supervillain gadgets and sent us out to test it. We’re supposed to make sure the bombs all work right and then come back.”
“Bombs,” Darkhawk repeated. “The explosion back there. You were testing your stuff to see if it worked?”
They hesitated, glanced at each other, and then nodded affirmation.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? What if you had killed someone?”
“No, they aren’t that strong!” Kevin quickly responded. His eyes went wide and a little moist in the corners. “I swear! We just tossed a couple ba-bombs down a ventilation shaft to see what would happen.”
“Ba-bombs?” Darkhawk inquired with his head cocked to the side.
“You know…like in Mario.”
“Oh, that is it! Where are your parents?”
The three gremlins fell silent, each suddenly immensely interested in the tops of their own feet. It was like someone had slammed a six inch thick steel door shut between the three kids and the Avenger. Darkhawk looked between each boy, realizing that things were worse than they had seemed at first glance.
“You guys living on the street?” he finally asked.
Kevin shrugged. “Maybe,” he said.
“And this Rascal?”
“He looks after us.”
“Not looking after you right now, is he?” Another shrug from Kevin. “Right. Look, you probably won’t believe me, but I know where you guys are coming from. I know the streets. I know that it can seem like the only people you can trust are the ones down in the trenches beside you. But you guys are way too young to be living such a hard life. Come with me.”
“What are you going to do?” Kevin asked, finally looking up.
“First, I’m going to get you guys to someone that can help you,” Darkhawk replied. “Then I’m going to go chat with Rascal.”
* * *
Darkhawk spread his silver wings to catch an updraft as he rocketed away from the Yancy Street Youth Club. Below him the three kids, now without their dangerous accessories, were wavering at him as they ate their ice cream cones. It looked like a cliché scene straight out of an off-Broadway Annie homage, but Ben Grimm had put a lot of careful thought and consideration into his social services program. The boys would be in good hands going forward.
Once he was high enough, Darkhawk let lose another burst of power from his jets, propelling him at high velocity toward another section of the city. His visor locked onto the coordinates he had supplied it with, converted from the address given by the boys. Not surprisingly, he was led to a warehouse in a rundown neighborhood, a community that looked to be down on their luck economically.
It wasn’t hard for him to imagine how Rascal had roped the boys into testing out the equipment. Maybe he had offered them shelter, food, money, or all of the above. Kids living desperately on the street would likely take anything offered with a smile as long as it meant survival.
Several blocks over he could see the building where this had all become less than an hour ago. With a sigh, Darkhawk maintained course and set down on top of the warehouse.
An initial scan revealed absolutely nothing special about the place. No heat signatures, radiation, cosmic energy, or residual magic emanated from within the confines of the darkened unit. For all accounts and purposes the place looked abandoned.
“Why doesn’t the city just level all of the abandoned warehouses anyway?” Darkhawk muttered. “Limit the places these whack-jobs can set up shop, right? A place like this is practically an invitation to move in and start doing evil.”
No sooner had he retracted his wings then a sharp whistling sound came from behind him. He felt a heavy push as the now familiar razor boomerang sunk into the back of his leg. Two more of the razors sang out and stabbed into his back. He fell to one knee and half turned to see who had thrown them.
A grizzled-looking man wearing a mishmash of green and purple armor had slipped out of the shadows. Half of his face was covered with a garish, putrid-green mask with jutting teeth and a single tiny horn coming from the forehead. It looked like an alternate, exaggerated version of what the gremlins had been wearing.
In his right hand he playfully tossed around a small orange object that Darkhawk thought looked a little like a pumpkin. That’s when he realized who the original owner of the weapons stash had been.
“Wasn’t expecting one of your kind here tonight,” the man said. “You take down my boys?”
“Your boys, as you say, aren’t coming back,” Darkhawk said through the aggravation of standing up on a bum leg. “Rascal, I presume.”
The villain half bowed in a mock gesture. “In the flesh. Who are you?”
“The guy that’s going to kick your ass.”
Rascal laughed. “That’s funny, coming from a broke-ass robot scrub. You look like Iron Man trying to be hip and young. Very 90s. Nice shoulder pads.”
Darkhawk spun and whipped out his claw, allowing the cable to uncoil and extend. The first slash missed, but he whipped the cable back and managed to slap the pumpkin bomb, or ba-bomb as the kids were calling them these days, out of Rascal’s hand.
The hodgepodge villain swore and then dove into his belt, extracting two more of the razors. Darkhawk’s claw retracted just in time for him to slap the razors down. The augmented strength granted to him by the alien armor allowed for him to leap over Rascal’s head easily. At the apex of his arch, Darkhawk unleashed a double blast of dark energy from the jewel embedded in his chest plate. The energy consumed Rascal, but didn’t put him down.
Darkhawk swung his leg out, catching Rascal at the ankles and dropping him. The armored hero leapt on top of Rascal, pinning him at the shoulders. He raised his claw just over Rascal’s face, mere inches from cutting into him as a veiled threat.
“You’re a sick freak to be putting these kids in danger,” Darkhawk said.
Rascal just laughed, half of his face covered by the macabre mask. “Those kids were tossed onto the street by society,” Rascal shot back. “I rescued them! Gave them food. Power.”
“You put them in danger.”
“You’re the only one in danger here!”
Rascal flipped a switch on his gauntlet, causing a puff of green gas to jettison out. The gas engulfed Darkhawk’s head, and even though the android body that Chris Powell has control over had no need to breath, the fast motion and unexpected attack made him shift his weight back. The movement was enough for Rascal to gain leverage and pull his knee up between them, pushing them apart. With a well-placed kick from Rascal, Darkhawk was forced off and away from the pseudo-villain.
Rascal bounded to his feet, a pair of pumpkin bombs in his hands. “Ha! After I kill you and take your armor for myself I’ll…I’ll-cough-”
Rascal fell to his knees, coughing incessantly. Darkhawk waved a hand through the settling green cloud to disperse it, and took a few cautious steps toward Rascal. Between the hacking coughs Rascal was having trouble pulling in air. He had been exposed to the strange green chemical weapon, too. The heavy dose looked to be too much for his lungs to handle.
“No!” Rascal shouted in a final attempt to stand up again. “I –cough- I can’t –cough-”
Rascal fell over on his side and stopped moving. Darkhawk debated on whether or not he should call emergency services. With a growl, he decided that just like earlier that evening, if he wanted to be the hero that he was quickly shaping up to be, he had to do the right thing.
A minute later he could hear the sirens in the distance.
* * *
‘where u been? :-(’
Chris walked back down the darkened city block, tightly clutching his phone. He sighed as he tried to dream up some excuse to tell her. Did Wolverine have to deal with modern dating like this?
He tried to text that he was sorry, that he had been caught on the subway and that was the reason his promised fifteen minutes had spun into an hour and a half. After a solid minute of no reply he pocketed the phone. He had missed his chance with her apparently.
He heard a dog bark from across the street, but couldn’t see where it was. His normal human eyes had limits like that; Darkhawk’s augmented vision would be able to pick out the location, breed, and number of fleas that the dog had on him. But he couldn’t spend all of his time inside the armor. He was worried that it would overtake his life completely, disrupting it even more than it already had.
His phone buzzed and he nearly ripped the jeans pocket stitching off while retrieving it. Instead of a text, though, it was another selfie. Even though it was a single image, it somehow conveyed a sense of urgency, willingness, understanding, and eagerness all at once. Maybe it was her pouty face. Maybe it was her thong.
Chris texted back that he would be there in less than fifteen minutes this time, and that not even an earthquake would keep him away.
END