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Author's Note: The two stories of this chapter are not running parallel—I have divided up the timeline so that the segments with Arsenal and Jade happen the day after Flamebird and Bumblebee infiltrate the Tower. Therefore, there is no continuity error, just intentional discontinuity.
Arsenal arrived at the scene of the crime fifteen minutes after receiving the call, running on little more than Red Bull and willpower. Detective Wertham had showed him the crime scene, and Roy had nearly wretched. It was eerily similar to the Great Wall killings, down to the complete lack of evidence—minus the corpses and blood—that a killer had even been there. No footprints, fingerprints, or broken furniture.
It was as if death itself had descended on the building and done the killings; there were only two or three assassins in the world THIS good. One of them was the legendary Deathstroke the Terminator, recently revealed to have been the self-same Slade the Titans West had been fighting for years.
And Slade preferred guns to blades in such jobs. No, this was someone else.
But what bothered Roy was the positioning. The Great Wall murders had been committed against fleeing victims, victims of an army clad in black, as Jade had told him. Here, it was different. The bodies here were all arranged in a circle around a central point, save for a few—as if the mafia goons had been attacking a single foe, and were cut down one by one.
Detective Wertham approached Roy as he exited the crime scene. "Well, what's your analysis, great one?" asked the officer, his voice laced with cynicism.
Roy handed him the slip of paper on which Jade Nixon's address had been written down. "These murders seem to have been carried out by a single perpetrator, hard to believe as that is. My witness said that the murders in China Town were committed by a group of men in black assassin uniforms. As morbid as this sounds, the pattern of the bodies seems to confirm everything."
"You think it was done by different perpetrators?"
"Positive," Roy said. "It makes sense, right?" he indicated the building. "The Mafia probably hired some League of Shadows members to take out Great Wall restaurant. The leaders of the great wall hired a different, independent assassin to take out the Mafia in retaliation."
"That seems sort of… simplistic. Almost gang-land," the Detective's scorn wasn't thick—it was actually more perplexed wondering. "This isn't the west coast, you know."
"No, in my experience criminals can be extremely petty." Roy thought of some of the capers he and Green Arrow had busted back in the day. "I assume you'd like to question Jade Nixon."
"Definitely, but not tonight. I want you to be there tomorrow for the questioning to listen for inconsistencies, clues, anything that you might have missed the night of the murders."
Arsenal nodded. "Did forensics find anything at the Great Wall?"
"Not a whole lot," he said. "Other than the fountains of blood. There was some unknown fabric melted onto one of the stovetops, but otherwise, nothing."
"Fine. Tomorrow, then. What time?"
"I'll call you when we're ready," Detective Wertham tipped his hat like an old-fashioned detective and headed back to his vehicle, even as Arsenal prepared to return to the tower and figure out how to explain this to Jade.
Karen inched her way through the narrow air vent, hovering slowly to prevent her wings' trademark buzzing noise from reaching the ears of any possible onlookers. Granted it wasn't likely they'd assume that that annoying little bug they heard was a shrinking super heroine from Steel City flittering through the vent… but she wasn't going to take any chances.
Reaching a very cold vertical shaft, Karen realized she'd found the main air-conditioning pipeline for the whole building. And from her previously collected data, the top floor was where Anderson Taylor's office was. It was a long way up, but it was also safe to buzz here, so Bumblebee took off, hoping that Flamebird was making similarly unimpeded progress.
Flamebird pulled a birdarang from her belt, one of the specialized units designed for stealth missions, and used its concealed laser to slice a hole on the window big enough for her to crawl through. She came up by habit in a defensive stance and scanned the thoroughly, letting her eyes full adjust to the darkness before proceeding. Now that she was inside, she'd have to be especially careful. She figured she was on the fiftieth floor, or so, so she'd need to find an stairwell to reach the top and avoid night patrols or the overworked, underpaid employees pulling an all-nighter for the sake of keeping their job.
She slinked down a hall way, avoiding any bright areas or any places she heard human voices until she came to a stairwell…
Where a guard greeted her with a pair of wide eyes and two hands simultaneously reaching for his gun and his walkie-talkie. Flamebird sprung into action, using a birdarang to take out his gun-hand and then delivering a powerful kick to his head. He'd squeezed the walkie-talkie button, but not been able to say anything before she used a martial arts movie Nightwing had taught her to pull the guard into a joint lock and cause him to drop the device.
"Metahuman punk," the guard muttered, then swung at Bette. His fist caught her in the stomach, causing her to lose a bit of wind and fall back. Flamebird backed into the wall as the guard charged and then dug into the wall with the blades on her gauntlets, then lifted herself up and smashed both feet into the guard's face as he charged at her…
The guard staggered back, and she followed up by axe kicking the poor guy's head as he tried to get back on his feet.
"Sorry, no powers here," she spat, as he fell unconscious.
Bette took the batteries from his walkie-talkie and the clip from his gun before proceeding on up the stairs.
A quick scan of the room told her that she wasn't in the boss's office. The room she had fallen into was a very large room that might have been a meeting room, though there were no tables or desks. It was utterly empty devoid a few boxes in the corner. Yet it was carpeted, unlike your average storage room. Maybe it was in transition.
Karen slinked out into the hall outside, being careful not to make any noise. Finding nothing in the immediate vicinity resembling bureaucracy, Karen turned on several scanning systems in her helmet. A few scans of the area told her there was nothing using significant power or making noise on this floor, so she started to return to the vent she entered from…
When her visor picked up something odd. A section of the wall was a lot warmer than the wall around it, implying the presence of an air duct. But there was no vent, and there was no heat on this floor…
Bee carefully cut a small hole in the wall with her stingers and shrunk down to fit into it, making her way up the vent, small and unnoticed by anyone in the building so far. It seemed just like a man of Taylor's status to have a private climate control system devoted specifically to his own office, she thought.
She just hoped Bette was doing okay—otherwise this could get dangerous very quickly.
The room she'd found now gave her total access to the video monitor grid and intercom system of the entire building. And she was now seeing Bumblebee emerge from a small vent in the sealed-off section of the building—where Taylor's office was. Bette briefly wondered why, if Taylor was really a legitimate businessman, he'd need such absurd security in his building.
Then she realized the likelihood of him being legitimate was mind-numbingly low, given all they knew about him. Nightwing had dug up allegations of corruption from ages ago, made by a former employee. But before an investigation could be started, the man making the allegations had been killed in a traffic 'accident'…
Right.
Flamebird reached down and pressed a button below the monitor that showed Bumblebee. "Bird to Bee, Bird to Bee. Come in Bee," she said into the desk microphone.
Karen obviously heard the noise, because she hovered over to the intercom and, as a cockroach-sized figure, pressed the button. "Bee to Bird, I hear you. How did you get access to the building's intercom system? Are you sure nobody can hear us?"
"Yes on the second count. I'm in the guard's station—I knocked him out with some Florochlorm and locked the door. I can see every room on this floor, floor seventy one."
"You're on the same level?" On the screen, Flamebird saw Bumblebee's head cock to the side, but it seemed to be for a different reason than their proximity.
"Yeah, but I had to go back outside and climb the building. There's only one elevator to the seventy-first floor, and it's guarded by four guys with Uzis in a well-lit corridor. They're all wearing sunglasses those fake-tuxedos that criminals constantly give their guards. It's like three or four floors down from here."
Karen shook her head on the screen, and then cocked it to the side again, this time with more alarm. "Someone's coming, kill the transmission!" Bee shrunk even further and flew up to the ceiling…
Sure enough, a man in a guard's uniform that had been waiting in another room walked in and looked around. He mouthed something into a walkie-talkie, and then turned and left. "Sorry," Flamebird whispered at nearly having got Karen caught.
Suddenly, Bumblebee was right in front of the security camera that viewed her room, talking into her Titan communicator, which was now built into her headgear. "Okay, Flamebird., no more intercom. Com-silence is off as long as you're sure you're alone. Guide me to Taylor's office via the monitors."
Flamebird pulled the Titan Com from her belt. Arsenal had explained to her previously that there was a new setting that literally read the vibrations straight from her throat and translated them to normal sound digitally. Karen could be speaking in a voice that was all but inaudible and still be understood on Flamebird's side of things. Better still, if she suddenly raised her voice, it would detect the change and turn the amplification down.
"Right…" She began punching in some keys on the control panel in front of her, and suddenly, every room on floor seventy-one was displayed, rather than the key locations in the building. Unfortunately, the image was a patchwork of locations, not arranged in the layout of the actual floor. "I'll do my best," she said. "This isn't as good as having floor plans would be, but at least it's only one floor to work on. Even if it is larger than a football field. This is a secure frequency, right?"
Bumblebee's voice grunted an affirmative. "We're transmitting scrambled on an out-of-use slice of AM bandwidth."
"Good. Now turn left when you leave that room and I'll take you from there."
Jade had taken the whole thing better than Arsenal had been expecting, but it was clear even know that she was frazzled as she left the police station that afternoon. She'd repeated the story she'd told the Titans the night of the Great Wall murders exactly as Roy had heard it before. Good memory of the events, at least. It was a sign she wasn't repressing them, and that eased Roy's fears about her reaction to the bloody night.
"So, Jade," he said. "It's 4PM, and I'm free this afternoon—not to mention starving. Care if I buy you some lunch? Least I can do after putting you through this again."
The young half-Asian woman looked up at him with a sweet smile. "That would be very kind of you, Mr. Arsenal."
"Heh," Roy laughed. "No, just call me Ro… I mean…" He sweatdropped. Had he almost just given her his name? "Call me Arsenal," he said, regaining his composure.
Jade nodded. "Alright, Arsenal. Where do you wish to eat? I refuse any place more expensive than you can afford."
Arsenal shrugged. "Well that rules out… Nowhere."
"What about that new restaurant… the one they call The Planet Krypton?" Jade asked, referring to the new restaurant chain named after Superman's destroyed home planet. All the waiters and waitresses dressed up as famous superheroes, giving the place a reputation for someone Herculean physical standards for their non-cooking employees. Not very unlike Hooters with superheroes. "I think the two of us would blend right in there."
Arsenal gave the young woman a grin. "Planet Krypton it is, then."
Bumblebee entered the picture at the bottom right of the screen on the top left, as Flamebird directed her into a room that showed her appear on the far right middle monitor, on the bottom of the screen. "Okay, seriously, Bee. This is getting tedious."
"At least you haven't ordered me around in circles more than twice," she muttered.
"Like I can help it," Flamebird snapped. "Look, I think you're almost—"
"There." Karen said, cutting her off.
Sure enough, Bee flew off the screen on the middle right and onto the screen two down and one left of dead center—where the company president Anderson Taylor was located. Be shrank herself even smaller, and flew right past the guard between the cracks in the door.
Flamebird switched the computer's display of the office itself—all twenty-seven monitors. You had to admire the tenacity of a man who installed twenty-seven security cameras in his office alone.
At any rate, Bee was barely a speck as she found a perch above the desk, where Taylor sat, reading over a report. It was definitely after-hours, but it wasn't beyond the timeline in which Flamebird had first heard the name Taylor while eavesdropping on Vasquez.
Bumblebee waited on the shelf a good ten minutes before the phone in Taylor's office finally rang, and she immediately aimed her sound-recording equipment at the man. "I'm piping you the audio too," she said. "Set your Titan Com to record it."
Flamebird did so, though a bit belatedly.
"…is the transfer progressing?" came Taylor's voice. The response on the other end wasn't distinguishable as anything other than gibberish, but it was clearly the voice of Carmen Vasquez.
"Very good, Mr. Vasquez," said the man with the shiny golden tooth. "I want you in the Garrison facility by sunrise tomorrow, overseeing the initial stages of chemical production."
More murmuring.
"I'm aware of the Titans involvement. That's why my new employee is getting involved. Attrition has it's benefits. Attrition lost the States the war in Vietnam."
"Attrition?" Flamebird whispered. "What's he talking about?"
"Ssh!" Bee warned her.
Suddenly, on the monitor, Anderson Taylor glanced at his screen. "Vasquez, I believe this conversation is over. I have another matter to attend to."
Taylor replaced the phone on its receiver and reached over to a button near the phone, where a video monitor was located.
Flamebird switched to the security camera behind Taylor's desk, but couldn't make out the face on the screen..
But the voice…
"Mr. Taylor!" shouted the guard that Flamebird had knocked out in the stairwell. "Problems! There's a meta-freak in the building! Knocked me out in the stairwell and took my walkie-talkie batteries…" And he went on to describe what Flamebird looked like.
"WHAT!" Taylor blurted, smashing a small lit-up button on the console with his fist.
"Flamebird!" Karen hissed through the Titan Com. "What were you thinking!"
Immediately an alarm system began to blare throughout the building, and Bette watched as all the windows were suddenly closed behind thick metal shutters. The building was going onto some kind of lockdown.
"All guards be on alert!" shouted Taylor into his communicator, his voice a thunderous explosion of pent-up anger. "There is at least one costumed trespasser in this building. She is wearing red and gold and may have wings of some kind, and has already assaulted at least one guard. She and any others you encounter are not to leave this building. Use whatever force is necessary to subdue them!"
Karen muttered a curse into the com-link. "Flamebird, building's on lockdown. The windows are closed. Head for the main exit—it's the only way out."
Bette nodded, and then glanced at the sleeping guard in the corner. Before she left the station, she propped him up against the console, his hand resting on the button that would purge the archives of footage and an incriminatingly empty bottle of Nyquil in his other.
Karen thought she would punch a wall—or maybe Flamebird's face—when they got back to the tower. How could she be so ignorant as to let a guard see her? Karen cursed as she blasted back under the door… and then one of the guards shouted at her…
"There, is that bug…?" one of them said, pointing.
"Shoot it!" The other interrupted.
Karen took up towards the ceiling, a spray of bullets whizzing by her tiny form, throwing off her flight path. Only two guards outside Taylor's office, but they were armed with the same Uzis as the ones that guarded the special elevator. Bee shot past the sprinkler, amazed to still be alive… A bullet whizzed right in front of her, even as water doused the two guards. She took off, more bullets zinging by.
Bee quickly turned, now flying upside down. She spun, even as she restored her normal size, and blasted two long-range stinger shots at full power into the guard on her right. At close range this would kill him, and even at this distance it blasted him back against the wall and zapped him unconscious—but it gave her some time. She landed while spinning her back toward the guard as she ran for the corner. Two bullets slammed into her back, knocking her forward and spurring her to run faster.
Now she was glad she'd upgraded her suit, more than ever.
She followed that up with a crushing elbow to the ribs, then a chop to the neck. The guard was out—and just in time, as another one came from around the corner, blasting at the teen with his Glock. Flamebird ducked behind the copy machine and drew a birdarang, which she then threw into the man's upper thigh as she emerged and ran down the hall.
A third guard entered the room, this one wielding only a nightstick, and Flamebird fell to the ground and slid between the man's wide gait. A bullet from the guard she'd hit with the birdarang slammed into the man's chest, and Flamebird punched him in the groin for good measure as she slid, then got up and ran. Another gunshot and the sickening feeling of blood spatter on the back of her cape and hair indicated that the she couldn't have put a birdarang in the rectus femoris of a nicer guy—not if he was going to shoot his fellow employees in a vain attempt to get her.
Flamebird round the corner, where a bullet whizzed by her and anther slammed into her chest, knocking her backwards and down, but not penetrating the armor. Still hurt like hell.
But Bumblebee was also their, exchanging shots with the man, stinger versus gun. Stinger won in the end, and the man went down. Bee turned to Flamebird "Are you okay?"
"My sternum hurts like sin, but I can still run," she said.
Just then, the man with the birdarang in his leg limped around the corner, only to be blasted with a low-powered stinger-shot. He fell backwards now clutching his shoulder as well as his leg, and knocked himself unconscious against the wall.
"Let's go!" Flamebird said, reaching up to Bumblebee. Karen helped the younger Titan off the ground and both darted down the hall. Three more guards awaited them at the entrance to the elevator down… two of them shot at the girls with six-shooters and the other had a broken-off mop-handle. Apparently nightsticks weren't cutting it these days and guards felt the need to use sharp pointy objects on unsuspecting teenagers.
Bee got small on sight of the guards and flew an erratic pattern straight towards them—Flamebird dived out of the way of the bullets and hid behind a fichus long enough to draw a birdarang and use it against one of the guards.
While Bee turned her attention to the other gun-wielding guard, Flamebird charged the one with the mop handle. Unfortunately, she misjudged her attack and the guard managed to hit her across the forehead with the dull end. He jabbed at her with the sharp end, but missed. Then he stepped into her, using his greater mass to knock the young heroine down. Flamebird rolled as he poked at her again, feeling a sudden but tolerable pain as he cut into her exposed upper thigh with his weapon. Angered, Flamebird rolled back over, grabbing the mop handle with her legs and turning over and doing a pushup up on to her knees. This managed to tear the weapon loose from the guard's hand—it was now wedged between Flamebird's legs like a witch's broom, though now she was facing away from her opponent—not very smart…
Fortunately, neither was he: Bette heard him grunt as he swung at her with his fist. She rolled forward, coming up with her hands on the sharp end of the mop-stick and spinning around with the weapon in a baseball bat motion. The stick snapped in half across the guard's left temple, and she followed the strike up with a kick to the solar plexus that put the guard down for the count.
Both Titans quickly darted over to the elevator, but found that the call button had been destroyed, probably deliberately.
Bee pulled out her stinger and cut through the door of the elevator, and pulled Flamebird in with her. "It's key-operated," she observed…
Flamebird nodded, pulling a device from her belt. "Nightwing has his moments… Many of them."
The machine was a state-of-the-art lock-pick device that consisted of millions of tiny metallic rods that would extend until they met significant resistance, at which point they'd become rigid. When placed over a keyhole, they took the shape of the key inside it, and allowed the lock to be manipulated.
Even as the elevator came to life, Bee gasped when she saw Anderson Taylor heading down the corridor at the two girls, wielding a massive pistol….
And then an idea occurred to him. As soon as the elevator had passed, Taylor smirked, his golden tooth shining in the darkened hall. He aimed his gun at the steel chords that operated the elevator.
BLAM!
…
BLAM!
Seconds later the elevator hit rock bottom on the Sixty-Fifth floor, a loud metallic crash echoing up the shaft
"What was that!" Flamebird blurted…
"Oh no…" Karen muttered. "Bette, grab on to me!"
"What!"
"Just do it!"
Flamebird complied, wrapping herself around Bumble Bee's body; Karen jumped, just as second shot rang out… and the elevator descended into free fall. Her lower wings constrained by Flamebird's arms, it was all Bumblebee could do to slam through the service panel on top of the elevator with Bette in tow…
"There's no goddamn spoon!" Bumblebee cried, her teeth clinched under straiin and effort. The duo slammed into the wall of the elevator, Flamebird falling out of Karen's grasp and sliding against the wall, even as the falling elevator cord, severed by a bullet, smashed Bumblebee's left top wing in two.
"BUMBLEBEE!" Flamebird cried, her cape causing her to descend ever so-slightly slower. Nightwing's apprentice turned in the air, using the prongs on her gauntlets to catch onto the uneven sides of the elevator wall…
And then the ear-rending crash, followed by the sound of Karen's body slamming into the wreckage of the elevator.
"NO!" spat Flamebird. "I'm going to kill you, Taylor!"
Then… impossibly, she heard a light moan from below…. And words.
"Not if I tear his head off first," came Bumblebee's voice.
"Huh? Bee! You're alive?" Flamebird goggled, realizing how her voice was full of relief.
"But not well," she said.
Flamebird needed to hear no more. She found her footing below and let herself fall a bit at a time, her arm muscles straining under the effort of keeping her from falling into the potentially sharp wreckage below, until she made it to where the wreckage was visible. It was bad, to be sure, and even seeing where she was going, Flamebird still ended up cutting her leg and scraping her arm making her way to the corner where Bumblebee was lying.
"What hurts?" she asked.
"What doesn't hurt?" Bee shot back.
Flamebird knelt by Bee and examined her left arm. Instantly she could tell it was dislocated, and informed the owner as much. It was also possibly broken, but Bette didn't mention that.
Bette helped Karen sit up. "At least we're not dead."
Bee just nodded and pressed a button on her belt, causing her wings to vanish back inside her costume. "Those are no good now, and neither is my arm." Bee pressed a few more buttons on her belt control panel and then her face became a mask of pain as the armor on the left arm pulled itself into a very specific position across her chest and locked up.
"Best if it moves as little as possible."
Flamebird turned and looked up. "We're not out of this yet. I hear someone coming…" Sure enough, footsteps were echoing outside the elevator. "We still have sixty-something more floors to escape,"
"No, we don't," said Bumblebee. "Listen. No more alarm. The building is off lockdown because Taylor thinks he killed us."
Bee stuck her stinger in her holster and picked up the one that had been in her now-useless left hand. "We just have to find a window. I can shrink us both enough that your capes will break our fall."
Suddenly, the doors above them lurched open, an uncomfortable amount of light flooding into the room…
One of the four Tuxedo Guards looked in… Only to get blasted in the chest by a stinger beam. Flamebird jumped up diving in the direction the guard had flown, even as Bumblebee jumped off her shoulder and blasted a second guard with her stinger. Flamebird sliced into the hand of the third guard with a birdarang as he went for his Uzi, and then punched the guy, turning and grabbing him in a painful elbow lock from behind—the smart fighter's equivalent of a full nelson…
And guard four swatted Bumblebee out of the way and unloaded his clip on Flamebird—through the torso of his companion. Blood and viscera in addition to the bullets splattered all over Bette's costume, even as the bullets (though slowed down by their trip through the guard's body) drove her back into a water tank. Her torso felt like it was on fire, and she couldn't really tell if anything had penetrated or not thanks to all the blood that was now on her costume…
"You sick son of a..!" Karen shouted, zapping him in the back of the neck with her stinger as a tiny self…and then growing so fast the beam consumed the man's head and caused it to explode.
"Holy cuss!" Flamebird blinked through her pain… "You killed him!"
"Moment of weakness," Karen spat, "let's get out of here before I have to do it again."
Flamebird just gaped at her leader, not sure if the blood on her costume or the blood they'd had to shed that night grossed her out more. She followed her leader down the hall, where Bee blasted open a window with one arm, then told Flamebird to get ready for a very weird feeling…
Both teens shrank down, and rode Bette's hang glider-like cape to the relative safety of the streets.
Anderson Taylor found himself staring at the wreckage of the elevator to his floor from the bottom this time, having gone through the service lift on the roof down to the ground floor and back up to floor sixty-five. He was used to long nights, but this… this was ridiculous.
He turned and looked at the remaining guards. "None of the survivors upstairs know who the two that attacked us were. I was not wearing my glasses when saw them escape this floor. And the security camera recordings were all conveniently deleted." His tone was terse, as if expecting a solution. Right now.
"I know who it was, boss," said one of the surviving Tuxedo Guards. His name was Johnson, if Taylor could be bothered to remember it correctly. "One was the leader of the Titans East, Bumble Bee… or Honey Bee, one or the other. The other was Nightwing's brat out in Bludhaven, Flamebird, I think."
Taylor nodded. "This is helpful. I want you to testify that they brutally slaughtered these men when questioned by the police, and made no effort to use non-lethal force."
"Boss… they'll never believe that."
Taylor just gave the guard his sickening gold-toothed smile. "Nobody has to truly believe you two. I merely have to plant the suggestion in people's heads. Fear will do the rest."
And with that, Taylor left.
Roy exhaled a deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding until he noticed how visible it was in the cold night air, and looked down at Jade. She still looked gorgeous, he thought. But that's not what he began talking about.
"It's sad really. This place was once beautiful… and then all this mining, all this industrialization turned it into this." After a beat, he shook his head. "Listen to me, I sound just like… Green Arrow. Yeah, it sucks that the environment got destroyed here, but this is isn't the only place in the nation. And you can bet the planet will outlast any cities we puny humans can construct."
Jade simply smiled and inched a bit closer to him. "There is nothing wrong with caring about the environment, my friend." Now she was leaning on him; the warmth of her body against his caused Roy's face to flush with blood. He wasn't cold anymore.
"I know. It's not that I don't care. I just don't want to fall into the trap of caring so much I can't see the forest for the trees." He let a beat pass. "Or lack thereof in this case."
Jade let out a few chuckles. "That was funny."
Her smile was radiant enough that it forced Arsenal to return it. "If you say so."
"I've… enjoyed this evening," Jade said after a bit… "You think maybe we could… do this again one day?" her light accent only made the awkwardness of the question even more endearing, somehow.
"I guess…" Arsenal looked down and saw something in her deep green eyes… a longing to do something. And it wasn't rocket science, what she wanted. And suddenly, against his better judgment, Roy found he wanted it to. He leaned down and allowed her to press her lips to his. A jolt wracked his body, as he was assaulted by feelings he hadn't experienced in far too long… The smell of jasmine in her hair, the taste of her tangerine lip gloss—it was… energizing.
The kiss only lasted seconds, but they continued to embrace for warmth—and maybe something more—even after it had ended.
Roy thought of muttering something about how they shouldn't have done that… but he didn't. He was no longer cold at all. He felt like he was burning up, and instead just nodded at her, then diverted his gaze to the ground. As if it were more interesting.
"Will you walk me home?" Jade said after a moment of awkward silence.
"I'd be glad to," Roy said.
Sort of.
The recording showed the young man leaving the station, and suddenly stopping as a dark blur blasted by him. It was only there for a second…
And then the man's body fell apart into a mess of gore and organs, blood covering the ground where he had once been. If it had been a color recording, it probably would have made Bumblebee hurl.
"Jut a blur…" she said, staring at the recording. "Cut to pieces in super-speed. What a way to go." Her arm was still in a sling after what had happened in Taylor's elevator.
Flamebird, nursing her own cuts and bruises—including thirteen separate pelts on her torso from the hale of gunfire she'd taken—took a seat at the computer. "Please, oh please, Dick," she whispered, "let what you taught me pay off."
The tape played back again, this time a bit more slowly. This time it became evident that there was at least one frame in which a shiny object appeared over the man at same time as the blur.
Flamebird manipulated the controls, and the computer zoomed in on that video. She applied a filter to delete light-bloom… and found that the object seemed to be the hovering blade of a knife.
A bowie knife, to be exact. Held in a hand that seemed to be clad in a glove patterned after the nighttime sky.
Mas and Menos gasped, and all attention was suddenly turned to them. "What, do you guys know who this is?" Roy asked.
" Sí…" said Menos…
Mas finished. "Él es M…Medianoche!"
