CHAPTER 1

Someone screamed as the horde of vacant-eyed civilians advanced down Milton Boulevard. Several carried baseball bats or broken pipes, and they smashed the windows of any storefront they came across, grabbing anything shiny that they could carry. Those that were empty-handed simply pounded on the glass with their fists until the tide of bodies pressed them onward. Many had bloody hands from reaching through the shattered glass, though they seemed oblivious to the pain.

Bringing up the rear of the column was a woman in a hooded sweatshirt with a group of Exeggutor, their leafy fronds glowing faintly in the flickering streetlights. She snapped her fingers at one man whose hands were laden with an assortment of diamond necklaces. The man fell back a few paces, and the woman took his spoils and put them in a large nylon bag she carried over her shoulder.

A man stood on a rooftop some distance down the street, carefully keeping to the shadows. He turned to the pokemon crouching next to him. "Almost there. Just one more block." He peered out and fiddled with a clasp near his armpit. "Okay, we got this. Yeah." The Hawlucha next to him rolled its shoulders and stretched. The man held up his gloved hand and counted down from three. "Ready, go!"

He and his Hawlucha sprinted from the shadows and leapt from the rooftop. The Hawlucha spread his wings to catch an updraft before diving over the mob of stumbling people and angling for the Exeggutor in the back. The man pulled a ripcord on his red and white nylon suit, making the green cloth sails between his arms and torso unfurl and catch the wind. His descent slowed sharply as he caught the same updraft as his partner, and together they shot towards the ground.

Hawlucha struck first, crashing into two of the woman's four Exeggutor before flapping back up into the air and angling his body to come around for a second pass. The man took advantage of the momentary chaos to drop out of the sky. He landed lightly on the balls of his feet and somersaulted to lessen the shock of impact on his joints. When he sprang up, he readjusted his lopsided mask and smirked at the stunned woman. "Whatever you're doing to these people, you need to stop. I don't want this to get ugly."

"Well, because you asked so nicely…" The woman unslung a coiled whip from her shoulder. "Honestly, has that ever worked?"

"No, but I figure it's always worth a shot." The masked man unclipped two stainless steel rods from his belt and twirled them in his hands. "People like you always want to do things the hard way."

She snapped her whip at him, and the masked man dodged to the side. He stayed low to the ground as he ran at her, raising one of his batons to strike her wrist. The woman feinted out of the way and barked an order at one of her stunned Exeggutor. "Give me a hand here!" The grass type ambled forward and its fronds began to glow again, only for Hawlucha to drop out of the sky and attack it with a flurry of kicks and clawing talons. The Exeggutor stumbled back against a wall and toppled over as Hawlucha jumped back up to attack one of its fellows that was approaching the man from behind.

"Thanks buddy," the man said as he and the woman circled. "So what's your gimmick, anyway? This seems a little too heavy handed for the average jewel heist."

"You trying to get me to drop my guard, buddy?"

"Let's call it professional curiosity. You have an alias?"

The woman lashed out with her whip and managed to catch the man's arm. With a yank, she dragged him closer and pulled him to his knees. "You can call me the Soothsayer, if you've got to call me anything." She kicked him in the stomach, making him drop his batons. "And you're going to regret sticking your nose in my business." She kicked one of the rods away and used her free hand to pick up the other one.

"You ought to be honored," the masked man said. "You can tell all of your new friends in the cellblock that your plot was thwarted by none other than the amazing Hawlucha Man!"

"Never heard of you, kid."

"You will. Now, buddy!"

The Hawlucha shrieked and dove straight at the last standing Exeggutor, its body becoming cloaked in a brilliant white light. The flying type crashed into the squat body of the Exeggutor and lifted it off its feet, knocking it through the air and sending it flying towards the Soothsayer. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Hawlucha Man jerked his arm down and pulled the Soothsayer off balance. As she stumbled, the Exeggutor sailed by over her head and crashed down behind the mob some ways distant. Hawlucha Man jumped to his feet and delivered a punch to the side of the woman's face, making her gasp and drop the whip.

"You son of a bitch!" she screamed, rushing in with his baton. Hawlucha Man grabbed his remaining rod and brought it up just in time to block her telegraphed overhead strike. He delivered another punch to the Soothsayer's abdomen, knocking the wind from her lungs. As she sucked in another breath, she cringed. "You want to call yourself a hero like Blaziken Man, but you'd beat up a girl?"

"In my defense, you do kind of have it coming."

When the Soothsayer came at him again, he grabbed her wrist and contorted his body in such a way as to use the force of her own attack against her. He stopped just short of making the Soothsayer faceplant into the pavement, instead putting her in a headlock and applying pressure to her carotid artery. "Nice and easy now," he muttered in her ear. "Just go to sleep." The Soothsayer passed out, and Hawlucha Man set her down next to a lamp post before handcuffing her to it. Hawlucha landed next to him and cocked his head. Hawlucha Man reached down and scratched the feathers on his partner's head. "All according to plan, more or less."

Hawlucha huffed in what passed as laughter, and they waited for the police to arrive.

It didn't take long, though preventing the mob from continuing down Milton was taking most of the Eleventh Precinct's resources and manpower. Simply taking out the Exeggutor behind the mind control had not been enough to dispel the mind control like Hawlucha Man had hoped. But that wasn't really his department, and the police were better equipped to deal with it than him. Nothing to do now but wait.

Hawlucha Man sat down on a stoop and began massaging a cramp from his leg, and had just about worked through it when a police cruiser turned off one of the narrower side streets and onto the main boulevard. He squinted his eyes against the flashing blue lights as the cruiser pulled up to the curb in front of him. The driver and passenger side doors opened, and Hawlucha Man pulled himself to his feet. "Nice to see you again, Captain. Detective."

Captain Anderson rolled his eyes as he opened the rear door of the cruiser to let his Houndoom out. Detective Reyes inclined his head towards Hawlucha Man. "Nice work. You cleaned this one up faster than I thought."

The Houndoom ambled over to Hawlucha Man, and he knelt down to scratch the police dog's neck. "Hey Oscar. How're you today? Are you being a good boy? Yes you are." Oscar's mouth lolled in a canine grin, and Hawlucha Man patted his head before turning to the detective. "Speedy service with a smile, that's my motto. What's got the captain's feathers ruffled?"

"He lost the betting pool."

"Betting pool?

"He thought it would take you half an hour from contact to bring this one in. I bet fifteen minutes." Reyes smiled wider. "So coffee and donuts are on the captain next week."

Hawlucha Man clapped the detective on his shoulder. "At least I know one person in the Eleventh has some faith in my awesome skills."

Anderson knelt down next to the Soothsayer and pulled back her hood. "Meg Kingsley, like we thought," he muttered.

"She in the system?"

"Dropped out of a biochemistry program a few years ago," Anderson replied. "We've brought her in for a few petty thefts and she made a plea bargain to get off easy. She informed on some of Wrath's boys about some aerosol weapon they wanted her to make." He went to remove her handcuff and chuckled. He undid the cuffs and held them up for Reyes to see. The detective laughed as Hawlucha Man turned a Tamato berry red beneath his hood.

The captain jangled the fuzzy Liepard print cuffs and fought hard to keep a stoic façade. "You going to be wanting these back, Hawlucha Man?"

"Hey, guys, listen, they're not mine, I swear…"

"No, of course they're not," Reyes said.

"Look, there was a girl… and she was kind of into… all of that that. I had to make do with the resources at hand, alright?"

Anderson put the still catatonic Soothsayer in the back of his cruiser and unhooked his own handcuffs from his belt. "Listen, kid, take these. You do good work for us. I'll, uh, keep this one quiet for you." He shook the fuzzy handcuffs. "Unless you really want to hang on to this pair?"

Hawlucha snatched the police handcuffs. "Oh Arceus, no."

Anderson tossed them into a nearby garbage can. "Well, that never happened, as far as I'm concerned. Reyes, on the other hand, might have noticed a thing or two…"

Hawlucha Man turned to the detective. "If you say anything you're dead to me."

Before Reyes could reply, his phone went off. The detective answered and asked a few brusque questions before hanging up. "Sir, we better let the CSU guys handle the rest of clean up here." He showed Anderson a picture on his phone. "The Ronin dropped off a body for us."

Anderson scowled. "Who is it this time?"

"Hard to say, he didn't leave the head or the hands, so no dental and no fingerprints. But the body type matches that rapist with a good lawyer from a couple months back. First responders found a good amount of blood, so we might be able to run some tests at the lab."

"The bastard may have gotten past the judge and the jury, but the executioner caught up with him," Anderson muttered. "All right Reyes, see if you can get anything else while I finish up here." Reyes nodded and walked a little ways down the street, talking into his phone. Anderson looked at the four fainted Exeggutor and ran a hand through his thinning hair. "I'll get some guys from the PPS down here for the Exeggutor, I guess. We've got it from here, kid. Why don't you take off?"

"What about the people under mind control?"

"Seems like Miss Kingsley here used some kind of spores to get people riled up and then hijacked them with her pokemon. With the psychic control gone, my boys are getting the people to calm down. We can handle it." Anderson glanced at Hawlucha Man. "You know the Eleventh exists for a reason, right? You can leave some of our job for us to do. Blaziken Man didn't get where he did overnight."

Hawlucha Man shrugged. "I gotta stay on my toes. Avenbrooke isn't like midtown, captain. We've only got two heroes for all the things that go bump in the night."

"Calling the Ronin a hero may be a bit of a stretch, kid."

"At least he only goes after the bad guys."

"The Ronin went down a bad path. You've still got time to go another way." Anderson put a paternal hand on Hawlucha Man's shoulder. "And I'm really hoping you do, kid. I'm not telling you to get out of the game, because I know you wouldn't listen. Just be careful, all right?"

"It takes a lot to bring Hawlucha Man down."

"I'm sure." Anderson sighed. "I have to go deal with this. You get on home, kid."

Hawlucha Man tapped two fingers to his forehead and gave a lazy salute. "See you the next time things start to bump in the night, cap'n."

"I can count on it, can't I?"

"Damn right."

Anderson held the door to the backseat open for Oscar as Reyes came back up the street. He turned to the captain. "We're pretty sure it's our guy. When we brought him in, he had a tattoo on his left bicep. There's a pretty bad acid burn right where the tattoo ought to be. We're collecting some blood from the site for a DNA test, but it'll probably match up. Still, we better put in an appearance. This one's pretty ugly."

When the cruiser drove off, Hawlucha Man turned to his partner and clicked his tongue. Hawlucha, perched atop a stone Pyroar, looked up from his preening and cocked his head to the side. Hawlucha Man sighed. "You've been smoothing your feathers for ten minutes. I think you're done. Let's get out of here."

Hawlucha jumped down and followed Hawlucha Man down a dark side alley between two old brick apartment buildings. When they were sufficiently out of sight from the street, Hawlucha jumped up and grabbed a fire escape ladder, dragging it down with his body weight. The two of them quickly ran up to the tenement rooftop, sprinted to the edge of the building and jumped out across the gap between buildings. They traversed a block's worth of rooftops this way until they reached a building sufficiently tall enough to glide from.

As they prepared to take flight, Hawlucha Man held up a gloved hand and pointed out across the rooftops to the west where across the river, the skyscrapers of midtown Clarus City rose up against the night sky, their bright lights blotting out the stars. The sweeping towers and illuminated suspension cables of the Concord Bridge and, further down the dark scar of the Umber River, the brutalist bulwark of the Forbes Bridge connected the boroughs of Avenbrooke and Greenpoint respectively to the sprawling metropolis. Far on the other side of the city, the Crown Bridge spanned the West River to Ridgewood and Lenox Hills.

Hawlucha Man rocked back on his heels and sighed. Laid out below his feet, was Avenbrooke, his stomping grounds, his protectorate. His home. "I never get tired of looking at this, buddy. This is what we're fighting for." Hawlucha rolled his eyes. He had heard this speech enough times. "We're doing this to keep all those lights burning. There are a lot of people who want to put them out and do Arceus knows what in the shadows. But we're not going to let them." Hawlucha Man balanced on the edge of the roof, his arms spread wide.

"You just watch!" he shouted towards the shining city. "Avenbrooke is under my protection, and I won't stop until every last son of a bitch knows that if they want to make trouble in my town, they're going to have to deal with the amazing Hawlucha Man!" He jumped out into the open air and pulled the cord on his wingsuit. Hawlucha sprang off the roof just behind him, and together they angled towards another building several streets away. After a series of short, looping flights, they came to rest on the roof of a small apartment building on a narrow street.

Hawlucha Man removed his mask and hood and stuffed them in a small duffel bag near the rooftop access door. He shrugged on a battered leather jacket and stuck a pen behind his ear while he fished out a textbook and two notebooks. He turned to his partner and held out his fist. Hawlucha bumped it with his closed talons. "We did good tonight, Hierro," Hawlucha Man said. "Our first supervillain. To many more!"

His Hawlucha raised his fist in agreement. Hawlucha Man fumbled around in the duffel bag for his key and unlocked the rooftop door. He and Hierro quietly made their way down the stairs, and Hawlucha Man opened the door to a small apartment. Hierro sprang across the room and perched on the back of the only chair and immediately began to preen.

"Alex, is that you?" someone asked from down the hall. "What are you doing out so late?" A woman on the far side of middle age poked her head out her door.

Alex turned to her and grinned sheepishly, showing her the textbook in his hand. "Sorry to disturb you, Ms. Eliot. I was out on the roof finishing up some homework. The fresh air, you know?"

"Just don't go catching a cold," Ms. Eliot chided. "And be careful! The TV was saying that there was a commotion over on Milton."

Alex raised his eyebrow. "Really? Nothing serious, I hope?"

"Well, the police got it under control," she said. "But honestly, the state the city is in nowadays. All those criminals, and the vigilantes are little better."

"I know, it crazy. I should be getting to bed, Ms. Eliot."

"Oh, yes, don't let me keep you."

When she closed her door, Alex let out a breath, grateful she hadn't picked up on his white spandex pants. His landlady generally had his best intentions at heart, but she was terribly nosy. He locked his door, dropped his duffel bag and books and collapsed on the couch. He had meant to wash out the dishes in the sink before falling asleep, but far be it from him to try to move Dimi once the cat had made up his mind to stay somewhere. Besides, he was too exhausted to get up again.

Alex checked that the alarm on his phone was set before relaxing against the couch cushions and closing his eyes. If he didn't get to sleep now, he would probably wind up dozing in one of his lectures tomorrow. Sometimes he envied the other people in his program who only had to worry about finishing their assignments on time and taking good notes in lectures. The double life of a masked vigilante wasn't an easy one, but the Ronin couldn't clean up the streets of Avenbrooke on his own. Or at least, he couldn't without leaving a rather grisly mess.

And so, by day, Alex Alvarez was just another beleaguered engineering grad student, but by night he and Hierro became Hawlucha Man and his daring partner, sworn to keep the streets of Avenbrooke safe.

"Good night, buddy," Alex said. Hierro chirped back, and Alex sank into unconsciousness.