Content Advisory: This story is rated PG-13 for minor language and some suggestive content. While all efforts have been made to be appropriate for forum posting, those who are uncomfortable with such content may wish to skip this one.
Unmasked
A gibbous moon shown wanly over the King's Garment Works, the only light to be found in a district noted primarily for the lack of any useful industry operating in it's decades-old warehouses. An alert citizen walking past the abandoned factory might have noticed the faint motion of a man's head appearing momentarily over the rooftop and then withdrawing as silently as it appeared. Ordinary citizens, though, avoided the alleys of the Garment Works even during the daytime. Those who tread the alleys in the dark had their eyes focused strictly downward upon the transactions they were making with the merchants who came out only after midnight.
The man in question sat back up on the rooftop and made an exasperated noise.
"How many nights does this make?" he asked.
He wore a blue and grey bodysuit that covered him from head to toe, and a cowl that hid most of his face from view. The cape around his shoulders added a flourish that he'd kept over the years primarily because it identified him immediately as a Hero of the City and encouraged people to get out of his way quickly when he was in a hurry. The wolf's head sillouhetted on his chest would easily identify him as Skywolf to any of the city's residents who followed the exploits of Paragon City's numerous Hero community.
Low-pitched laughter emerged from behind a long-dead air-conditioning unit. It was mid-summer and the heat of the air conditioner exhaust would have made it downright uncomfortable if it had been operational. Skywolf rolled his eyes and settled back on his haunches. Even though he sat only three feet from the woman sitting comfortably behind the metal box, he found her black uniform blending so well into the darkness that he had to strain to make out her trim form against the dim glow from the city lights below.
"Ten days," said SunKat. "Ten days of waiting and watching for nothing at all to happen."
She waved vaguely in the direction of the street.
"Bronwyn is positive that Frost will make his move soon."
"He'd fragging well better," said Skywolf. "I didn't join up with The Galvinators so that I could sit around doing nothing every night."
SunKat laughed again, and Skywolf sat back and attempted to relax for another night of staking out the Frost family's superadine factory. SunKat smiled in the near-dark.
"What shall we talk about tonight?" she asked. "Politics? Movies? I hear that new disaster flick has a lot of good special effects in it."
Skywolf leaned back against a nearby concrete block and then looked at his stakeout partner speculatively.
"What do you do when you're not lurking on rooftops?" he asked her. "What's a day in the life of SunKat like?"
She shook her head and tsked.
"You know that's off-limits, Wolfie. Bronwyn is very clear about members protecting their identities, even from each other. If you don't know it, then it can't be used against you or against the group."
"Bronwyn can kiss my hairy butt," he said and SunKat shook her head in mock dismay.
"You'll never get promoted with an attitude like that, Wolfie!"
He made a gesture that indicated what he thought of getting promoted just then and the moonlight sparkled off of SunKat's teeth as she grinned in return.
She leaned forward then, her eyes glowing mischievously.
"Tell me about this new girl you're dating."
Skywolf shrugged.
"Near-dating is more like it," he answered. "It's frustrating, because I feel a real connection with her. The day we met, it was like meeting a friend that I'd already known for a long time. We skipped right past all of the typical getting-to-know-you junk. We just kind of understood each other."
Sunkat nodded sympathetically.
"We work opposite shifts," he continued, "and of course there's this extra-curricular stuff like this stakeout we've been doing for TEN days." He snorted in disgust and SunKat smiled with amusement.
"It's hard to get together, and when we do make plans, half the time something comes up to interfere."
"I know what you mean," she said. "This double-life takes its toll on your social life at times. I met a guy I liked recently, but I just can't see how it's going to work out given the way my life is structured. Still, we do what we can."
She crossed her arms on the top of the air-conditioner and rested her chin on her wrist.
"What's she like, your not-quite-lady-friend?" The moonlight sparkled in her eyes but otherwise the darkness and a domino mask made her expression inscrutable.
"She's medium height. Dark-haired. She has a smile that makes me giddy when it breaks out unexpectedly." He chuckled briefly. "She likes banana pancakes."
"Banana pancakes are good," agreed SunKat. "I like her, already."
Skywolf spread his hands and bent forward in a mock bow. "Thanks for your seal of approval." She waved dismissively, in a parody of royalty, and they both laughed.
SunKat looked skyward and Skywolf turned to see. In the distance, a pair of dots soon resolved themselves into another man and woman dressed just as unconventionally as Skywolf and SunKat.
The seven-foot-tall woman alighted near them and nodded at Skywolf. A pair of wings mounted to a tiara sitting on her brow gave her the look of a Valkyrie out of a Wagnerian opera.
"Hello, Bronwyn. It's about time."
"You two are relieved," said the newcomer.
"Right!" said Skywolf. He waved at SunKat, who inclined her head and smiled her enigmatic smile. "See you night after next."
With only the barest effort, he lifted into the night sky and a half-hour later he was sleeping soundly in his own bed like any ordinary citizen of Paragon City.
The first thing he did upon awakening was run through his voice mail. On the third message, he stopped and grinned like a kid on Christmas.
"Hi, Tommy! It's Angela. Dinner at Riley's sounds great. I've got a business appointment beforehand, so I'll meet you there at 8:30."
Tommy spent the rest of the day working around the video store and watching the clock tick excruciatingly towards his date with Angela.
At 7:30 he was putting on his jacket to leave for Riley's. No such thing as too early, he thought. He had one sleeve on when his special Galvinators cell phone buzzed. A sense of dread filled him as it continued to ring and he waffled on whether to answer or not. His sense of responsibility won out. He finished putting on his jacket and flipped the phone open.
"Skywolf here. What do you need, Bronwyn?"
"I need you, Skywolf. Things are going down fast. We got a lead on a superadine lab in Atlas Park. We're going after it now and we need backup."
Tommy spluttered.
"Dammit, it's my night off! Where's SunKat? She's supposed to be on tonight."
Bronwyn spoke matter-of-factly. "She's offline. I've tried raising her and she's turned off her cell. I'll have some words for her, believe me, but right now I need you!"
Tommy swore a blue streak. Bronwyn waited for him to finish, and told him, "We'll meet you in fifteen. I've got the beacon set already." The click of the terminated call left no room for argument.
Half-an-hour later, four members of the Galvinators, including Skywolf, were breaking down the doors of a warehouse in Atlas Park. When there was no immediate reaction to the forced entry, they looked at each other in puzzlement.
"I thought you said this was a 'dyne lab?" Skywolf gestured impatiently at the empty lobby.
Bronwyn frowned but she stepped inside and motioned the others behind her.
"Looks can be deceiving," she said. "We'll make a thorough search."
Skywolf looked at his watch, then followed behind the others, fuming silently.
An hour later, all that they had found was a few beatup crates and some bottles that might have held the chemicals for a drug lab.
All of the Heroes were angry but none moreso than Skywolf.
"This is messed up!" he shouted at Bronwyn. She stood her ground stoically, seemingly the unperturbed Valkyrie. "I had plans tonight. It wasn't even my duty night!"
"I'm sorry, Skywolf," she replied evenly. "You know as well as anyone that leads don't always pan out."
He didn't reply. Instead, he extracted his watch and swore. It read 9:15pm. Without another word, he launched into the sky and flew full speed to Talos Island. Landing in the alley behind Riley's, he changed clothes as quickly as possible. When he entered the restaurant, the clock above the bar read 9:40.
"Excuse me," he said to the hostess. "My name is Wilson, and I had a 8:30 reservation..."
The pity on her face told him everything he was dreading to hear.
"Yes sir. Your lady friend stayed until 9:20. She left this note for you."
He took the folded paper from the young woman at the reservation podium and stepped away before unfolding it. His heart sank as he read the note:
Tommy;
I guess you had somewhere else to be. You should know that I canceled some important commitments to be here tonight. This isn't working out. Let's just accept it and call it quits. It shouldn't be this hard to schedule something as simple as dinner.
Angela.
He looked up at the hostess, and flushed when she averted her eyes and took a sudden interest in her reservation book. Tommy crushed the note and threw it at a nearby waste basket without looking to see if it landed inside. He stalked out of the restaurant and flew home to his apartment where the rooms were as dark and empty as his heart.
The following night's stakeout was promising to be no more exciting than the previous stakeout. Skywolf and SunKat found themselves atop the same vantage points, watching the same mobsters guard the same warehouses in which absolutely nothing interesting was happening.
After an hour of pointedly not speaking to each other, SunKat finally broke the silence.
"Do anything interesting on your day off?"
Skywolf glanced sideways, and then looked back towards the goons guarding the warehouse.
"Yes," he said. "I covered for you and I screwed up my love life one time too many."
"Aw, crap! I'm sorry, Wolf. Really."
Skywolf turned and gave her a long look, before sitting back and sighing.
"Eh," he said. "If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. Seems like it just wasn't meant to be."
"What about you?" he asked.
"Don't ask," she replied. After a pause in which Skywolf actually did not ask, she finally said, "Things didn't work out for me either."
He stood and looked over the edge of the roof again, then shrugged. "I guess you were right. It's tough to juggle two lives."
He glanced briefly at SunKat, who also stood and stepped over beside him.
"You don't seem too broken up, " he said. SunKat shrugged in turn and showed a ghost of a smile.
"It turned out that there was someone else I was more interested in, anyway." She placed a hand on his arm, and he stiffened. SunKat drew back, confused until she realized that Skywolf was pointing at a long sedan that had driven into the alley. Six men stepped out, and six more appeared from further down the alley, each of them carrying handguns.
"Holy Frag!" said Skywolf quietly. "This isn't some back-alley drug lab. It's a summit of the whole damn Frost and Marcone families!"
More armed men were arriving and a group of twelve older men, each with his own set of bodyguards, made their way to the warehouse doors and entered, each according to his station and his desires. Ten men remained stationed in the alley and at least double that many had gone inside.
Low murmering behind Skywolf told him that SunKat was hurriedly contacting the Galvinators for support. She looked up at him and shook her head.
"It's going to be at least an hour before we get backup. There's a riot not far from the Green Line in Steel Canyon. Fifty or more Hellions, setting fire to everything in the area. The ERT's can't even get in to fight them before their cars are melted into slag."
Skywolf shook his head. "We can't wait that long. We need to move on this now."
He looked her in the eyes, or what he could see of them behind the stylized feline mask covering the upper part of her face. For answer, she grinned and held up her right palm. It glowed bright yellow as her pulsar beam sprang to life and extinguished. He nodded and said, "Let's do this."
Together they leaped from the rooftop into the darkness below. The gunsels never knew what hit them. Within a few seconds the combination of meta-strength and flashing pulsar beams had laid the entire guard detail out cold.
A glance from Skywolf to SunKat confirmed that she was uninjured. His own natural toughness was sufficient protection against most ordinary weaponry. Together they waited in the shadows. When a full minute had passed without any gangsters arriving, he signaled her to join him at the warehouse door.
"No video surveillance?" she asked. "That seems trusting of them."
Skywolf shrugged. "Maybe this was some kind of impromptu meeting. It sure as Hell isn't what Bronwyn said we were waiting for."
He stepped next to the door and looked at Kat. She nodded affirmatively and he rammed his shoulder into it, knocking it clear off of its hinges.
The two gunsels playing poker in the lobby were sent flying as well. "Capes! Crap, we got capes!" shouted one who ran out of sight as his partner pulled a .45 and began firing. A pulsar blast put him out of commission as the sounds of running men resounded down the corridor towards them.
Skywolf stepped into the hallway, casually ignoring the hail of bullets being fired by the ten men in front of him. He grabbed a nearby desk and threw it, knocking down three of the men and sending the others diving for cover as SunKat zeroed in with sniper-like efficiency on individual goons with her pulsar beams. One of the goons jumped Skywolf, who sent him flying down the hallway with a single blow. There was a commotion at the the end of the hallway and Skywolf heard police sirens approaching in the distance.
He nodded to SunKat as if they were on a Sunday stroll. "I guess Bronwyn sent help, after all."
Commotion at the end of the hall suggested that the leaders were scattering to the four winds.
"We need to move. These guys aren't trying defeat us. They're trying to delay us while their bosses get away."
For answer, SunKat fired a spread of pulsar beams that took out another five guards. Skywolf whistled in appreciation.
"Nice!" he said. He hovered into the air and fired himself down the hallway, scattering the remaining guards like bowling pins.
He turned back to make a sarcastic comment to SunKat, when a man's voice said, "Enough!".
Instantly, Skywolf found his arms clamped to his sides and his body immobolized as surely as if he had been wrapped in bands of impervium.
"What the..." he began, as a pulsar beam dropped another guard pointing a shotgun at him. A man stepped into view, holding a fist in the air as if he was grasping an imaginary man by the shirt. An air of command enveloped him as naturally as the expensive Italian suit he was wearing. SunKat ran into view and found herself subdued as easily as Skywolf.
Sebastian Frost, leader of the Frost criminal empire, looked at them in disgust and said, "If you meddling masks had any idea what you've done..."
Frost gestured and Skywolf was flung headlong into a brick wall. His invulnerabilty held, however, and the blow was more visually exciting than it was effective.
Frost tsked and psychically grabbed Skywolf again, levitating both of the Heroes to within two feet of himself.
"When I think of all of the work and money I poured into making this meeting happen..." he began, and then he paused as the sirens were obviously entering the alley.
A man appeared around the corner, seemingly unperturbed by any of the violence that had just been inflicted on his fellows. "Mr. Frost, we need to leave. Now."
Frost nodded. "Very well, Jerald." He bent down to the fallen guard at his feet and picked up the shotgun in the man's unconcious hands.
He stepped up to Skywolf, hanging motionless in front of him. "This isn't over," he said as he examined as much of his face as could be seen behind the cowl. He glanced at the wolf head on Skywolf's chest and nodded. "You'll be hearing from me again."
He released SunKat, who fell to the floor and immediately sprang up and fired her pulsar beam. Nothing happened. "I can't hurt you, yet" he told Skywolf. "But I can't have you following me either."
With that, he turned the shotgun on SunKat and fired point blank at her chest. The concussion sent her body flying across the room to land in a heap on the floor. Skywolf's eyes bulged and Frost laughed as he released him.
"Your choice, Hero. Her or me."
With a snarl of rage, Skywolf leapt across the room, scooped up SunKat and blasted through the roof of the warehouse into the sky, police sirens screaming behind him and Frost's mocking laughter ringing in his ears.
Skywolf fled through the moonless night, blood pounding in his head. "Don't die!" he muttered as he sped towards Crowne Memorial Medical Center. "Please, don't die." The hospital towers became visible in the distance when a voice said in his ear, "I'm alright."
He nearly dropped SunKat in surprise.
"What did you say?" he asked as he regained his composure. SunKat stirred in his arms.
"I'm alright," she said. "I'm not hurt. Not seriously, anyway."
He looked down, then, and in the dim glow of the city lights he realized that he was not seeing the mass of blood and raw flesh that he had expected as a result of the shotgun blast.
"What the Hell?" he asked. She smiled and said "Body armor, dummy. Some of us who can't walk through a hail of bullets actually take steps to protect ourselves."
Skywolf circled aimlessly through the sky as he dizzily realized that his partner was not mortally injured.
"Wait, that was a point blank shot. You could have internal injuries."
She shook her head and looked amused.
"I'd have been mediported to the hospital, instead of lying here in your arms, Wolfie. Did you forget that little detail?"
Skywolf pulled up short, dumbstruck.
"Criminitly!" He looked down at SunKat, who grinned smugly. "I'll never get used to that."
"So, you let Frost get away, to save me?" She smiled sardonically and snuggled her head against his shoulder. "My hero!" she said, kissing him on the cheek, and then laughing again. Skywolf flushed and immediately began flying in whatever direction they happened to be pointed, in an effort to hide his discomfiture.
A moment later he realized that he had automatically flown to his own apartment building. No better ideas suggested themselves, so he finally landed on his balcony and set SunKat on her feet.
"This your place?" she asked, looking around appraisingly. She leaned over the rail, to see the tram glowing nearby and the lights of the garment works shining faintly in the distance.
"It's not the Ritz", she said, "But there are worse neighborhoods around."
"Uh, right," replied Skywolf. "It suits me, anyway. It's cheap and I don't need all that much."
"Sure, sure, " she said. "Typical bachelor."
After a moment he realized she was waiting expectantly,
"Oh, right. Um, welcome to my humble abode."
He unlatched the slider and stepped aside to allow SunKat to precede him.
"I want to have a look at your chest, anyway."
She favored him with a quizzical look and a half-smile that was less shocked than it was speculative.
Skywolf turned red and stuttered.
"What I m-meant was, that I wanted to double-check for myself that you're really okay. The hospital is just over the hill there." He waved vaguely towards a far corner of the room.
SunKat snorted and looked around at the apartment. It was as spartan as a college dorm. There was an old couch, a dining table and chairs of uncertain ancestry, a board placed across two cinder blocks to serve as a coffee table, and a couple of non-matching recliners that probably came from a garage sale or sales.
She laughed when she saw that the television was a big-screen state of the art model.
"This place could use a woman's touch, Wolfie."
Skywolf looked around and shrugged.
"It works for me," he said. He turned on a light and stepped near to SunKat.
"Let's have a look at you."
She grinned, and obligingly pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the couch.
"Woah, wait a minute...", he said, flustered, until he realized that she was wearing an undershirt of some sort of thick material. It rose up with the shirt, exposing trim, flat abs and an hourglass waist before dropping back down again.
Sunkat was standing very close and looking up at him with a satisfied smile.
"What do you think, Wolf? It's the lastest in superhero fashion."
Skywolf reached a hand tentatively.
"Is it alright if I touch it?"
In answer, she took his hands and placed them on her waist, where the edges of the undergarment were hanging down. Skywolf cleared his throat and squeezed the fabric between his fingers. It felt like a thick wool sweater woven over the top of a layer of memory foam.
"This stops bullets?" he asked, dubiously
"Most kinds, yes," she replied. "Hand weapons also. It's not armor so much as a shock absorber. It draws out most of the kinetic energy from whatever strikes it and channels it into power for my pulsar batteries."
Skywolf frowned.
"I've known police officers who had broken ribs after a direct hit to a kevlar vest. You're not bruised or anything?"
Sunkat tilted her head to look up into his eyes, as she slid her hands up his forearms to his biceps.
"Why don't you see for yourself?" she suggested, moving so that her body was practically touching his.
When he hesitated, she took his left hand and slid it under the edge of her "armor" shirt.
The adrenalin of the day's action was still pumping through him and without conciously deciding, he was running his hand up her back. His other hand touched her waist and he slid it up just a little. She closed her eyes and made a "Sssss." sound.
"It hurts?", he asked, concerned.
She opened her eyes and smiled, tilting her head back, lips parted slightly.
"No", she said. "Quite the opposite, Wolfie."
He moved his hands again and she arched her back and purred like her namesake, causing Skywolf to laugh out loud.
She put her hands on either side of his chin and pulled his face down, pressing her lips to his. The fire that she kindled made him pull back in surprise.
SunKat shook her head.
"Wolf, is this girl of yours even 'yours' at the moment?"
Skywolf sighed. "No", he said.
She nodded.
"You're not doing anything wrong. Trust me. I'm a Hero."
She winked, and he shook his head in his own turn and laughed. He pulled her close and kissed her thoroughly and his misgivings evaporated with his resistance. All of his pent up frustration of the past couple of weeks came pouring out and for the next little while there was a great deal of communication but very little in the way of speech.
At some point he had picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, her arms around his neck as she giggled at the gesture. Between the drawn shades and the dying moon, the room was as dark as a cave. A few minutes later, they were bereft of all but their face and head coverings.
Skywolf chuckled and said, "I don't think that Bronwyn would approve."
Sunkat laughed.
"Yes, well, we can't identify each other. We haven't actually broken the rule."
"It seems like observing the letter of it rather than the spirit." He looked down and moved his hands. "I think there are some parts of you that I could identify if I saw them again."
"AH! Well," she said, wriggling,"First, Mmmm, you'd have to AH see them waaugh again!"
He grinned in the dark and then made an exclamation of his own as they moved together.
She made a small sound, then she reached down and touched his hands with hers.
"Don't stop", she said, as she lightly took his hands in each of her own, and then she pulled them up to her cheeks, resting his fingertips lightly on either side of her face.
"Mmm..." she said, and he lost himself for an instant.
She touched his hands again, pressing his fingers against the tapered edges of the cat mask that covered the upper portion of her face and her hair.
He slowed momentarily, and looked at her as well as he could in the warm dark of the the summer evening, and he realized what she wanted of him.
"Are you sure?", he whispered. She kissed each of his palms in reply and then rubbed her cheeks against his fingertips.
Gently, he lifted the edge of the mask and then pressed it upwards, towards the top of her head. There was some slight resistance at first, as if a bobby pin was giving way, then it slid freely forward. His fingertips moved lightly over her closed eyes as the mask slid away, and the flutter of her lashes on his fingers sent an electric jolt through his hands like nothing that he had experienced before. He pushed the mask completely off with one hand while wrapping the other arm around her and pressing her close against him.
He was caught off-guard for a second when her hair fell away with the mask, then he chuckled as he felt rather than saw her grinning.
"A wig! I ought to have guessed. It's the old Barbara Gordon gambit."
She giggled as he ran his fingers through her hair, feeling it's length and it's softness. She pressed her lips against his and the fire erupted again as he ran his fingers across her bare cheeks and the touch was almost excruciating. Sunkat felt it also, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him more deeply and passionately he had been kissed in a good long time.
The fire continued to build and he realized that she was touching the edges of his own cowl, questing, questioning.
He didn't even hesitate.
"Yes", he said. "Yes, please, yes."
She put one hand on the top of his head and then with a single motion, she pulled his cowl back, exposing his face. The air struck his bare face and warm as it was in the room, the difference compared to the cowl was like a slap of cold water against his skin.
She kissed him, then. She kissed him and then pressed her cheek against his and the touch of her bare cheek against his own fanned the fire blazing between them as they moved together, dancing the steps of a dance as old as Mankind.
If their simultaneous cry in the night did not result in wall banging by the neighbors, it at least gave some of them cause for jealousy.
Without a word, they lay together in the afterglow, enjoying the feeling of being held instead of being alone. Sunkat nestled her head into his shoulder and before Skywolf knew it, she was asleep. He smiled in the darkness, ran his fingers over her hair, and then lay back and soon he was also sleeping the dreamless sleep of the Just and the Satisfied.
Skywolf awoke at 6:30 AM, as he did every morning. He was turned toward the window, and he felt the soft warmth of SunKat spooned against his back. He smiled in the early morning light that was filtering around the edges of the window shade.
He stood and stretched. He chuckled to himself at the sound of SunKat making disappointed noises and then snuggling up to his pillow in his absence. Skywolf opened the shade enough to let some sunlight into the room. An oath from the bed, followed by "OMG, you're a morning person!" and the sound of SunKat rolling away from the sunlight made him laugh out loud.
He turned to say something, and then stopped dead. He stood stunned for a full five seconds, before a smile spread across his face, turning into a grin that would have done credit to the Cheshire Cat. He pulled on some jeans and a tee-shirt that he had draped across the dresser a couple of days earlier and then he bent over the form now snuggled down under the covers, attempting to hide from the encroaching morning.
"I need to run out to the market for some groceries."
"Mmmm...", she frowned.
He kissed her on the forehead and said, "I'll be back in twenty minutes or so with breakfast fixings. Maybe even coffee."
"Mmmm....", she said again, this time with a smile. She puckered her lips, still without opening her eyes, and he laughed and kissed her on the lips, then headed out to the grocery store.
When he returned twenty-five minutes later, the shower was running and he nodded to himself with satisfaction. He busied himself in the kitchen while the shower ran, mixing ingredients and ladeling them periodically onto the electric griddle. He was finishing the setting of the table when the sound of running water ceased, and a minute later he heard movement in the bedroom.
"I'm borrowing one of your tee-shirts!" she shouted.
"Not the Eagles reunion tour shirt!" he shouted back.
"Too late!"
He laughed and shook his head in mock dismay and turned around in time to see her step out of the bedroom . She was wearing his "Red Monster. Just grab one!" tee-shirt and looking down approvingly at how the tee-shirt came down past her knees.
"This is a perfect night shirt", she said. She sniffed and her eyes lit up as she raised her head and turned this way and that, searching for the source of the aroma filling the apartment.
"Do I smell banana pancakes? That's my fav..."
She turned towards the dining table, then stopped dead; her eyes widened like saucers and her hand flew to her mouth.
"OH MY GOD!" said Angela.
"Good morning", said Tommy, grinning wider than Liberty Bridge. "Sit down for breakfast. I made your favorite."
She stared at him disbelievingly, then her face split into a huge grin of her own and she leapt gleefully across the room, knocking Tommy down and sending utensils flying.
An hour later, they both agreed that banana pancakes tasted even better reheated.
---fini---
Posted
I apologize for the wall of text. The story should have been broken up into about four chapters, but I wanted to make life easy on the moderators if they decided that it required moderation.
A gibbous moon shown wanly over the King's Garment Works, the only light to be found in a district noted primarily for the lack of any useful industry operating in it's decades-old warehouses. An alert citizen walking past the abandoned factory might have noticed the faint motion of a man's head appearing momentarily over the rooftop and then withdrawing as silently as it appeared. Ordinary citizens, though, avoided the alleys of the Garment Works even during the daytime. Those who tread the alleys in the dark had their eyes focused strictly downward upon the transactions they were making with the merchants who came out only after midnight.
The man in question sat back up on the rooftop and made an exasperated noise.
"How many nights does this make?" he asked.
He wore a blue and grey bodysuit that covered him from head to toe, and a cowl that hid most of his face from view. The cape around his shoulders added a flourish that he'd kept over the years primarily because it identified him immediately as a Hero of the City and encouraged people to get out of his way quickly when he was in a hurry. The wolf's head sillouhetted on his chest would easily identify him as Skywolf to any of the city's residents who followed the exploits of Paragon City's numerous Hero community.
Low-pitched laughter emerged from behind a long-dead air-conditioning unit. It was mid-summer and the heat of the air conditioner exhaust would have made it downright uncomfortable if it had been operational. Skywolf rolled his eyes and settled back on his haunches. Even though he sat only three feet from the woman sitting comfortably behind the metal box, he found her black uniform blending so well into the darkness that he had to strain to make out her trim form against the dim glow from the city lights below.
"Ten days," said SunKat. "Ten days of waiting and watching for nothing at all to happen."
She waved vaguely in the direction of the street.
"Bronwyn is positive that Frost will make his move soon."
"He'd fragging well better," said Skywolf. "I didn't join up with The Galvinators so that I could sit around doing nothing every night."
SunKat laughed again, and Skywolf sat back and attempted to relax for another night of staking out the Frost family's superadine factory. SunKat smiled in the near-dark.
"What shall we talk about tonight?" she asked. "Politics? Movies? I hear that new disaster flick has a lot of good special effects in it."
Skywolf leaned back against a nearby concrete block and then looked at his stakeout partner speculatively.
"What do you do when you're not lurking on rooftops?" he asked her. "What's a day in the life of SunKat like?"
She shook her head and tsked.
"You know that's off-limits, Wolfie. Bronwyn is very clear about members protecting their identities, even from each other. If you don't know it, then it can't be used against you or against the group."
"Bronwyn can kiss my hairy butt," he said and SunKat shook her head in mock dismay.
"You'll never get promoted with an attitude like that, Wolfie!"
He made a gesture that indicated what he thought of getting promoted just then and the moonlight sparkled off of SunKat's teeth as she grinned in return.
She leaned forward then, her eyes glowing mischievously.
"Tell me about this new girl you're dating."
Skywolf shrugged.
"Near-dating is more like it," he answered. "It's frustrating, because I feel a real connection with her. The day we met, it was like meeting a friend that I'd already known for a long time. We skipped right past all of the typical getting-to-know-you junk. We just kind of understood each other."
Sunkat nodded sympathetically.
"We work opposite shifts," he continued, "and of course there's this extra-curricular stuff like this stakeout we've been doing for TEN days." He snorted in disgust and SunKat smiled with amusement.
"It's hard to get together, and when we do make plans, half the time something comes up to interfere."
"I know what you mean," she said. "This double-life takes its toll on your social life at times. I met a guy I liked recently, but I just can't see how it's going to work out given the way my life is structured. Still, we do what we can."
She crossed her arms on the top of the air-conditioner and rested her chin on her wrist.
"What's she like, your not-quite-lady-friend?" The moonlight sparkled in her eyes but otherwise the darkness and a domino mask made her expression inscrutable.
"She's medium height. Dark-haired. She has a smile that makes me giddy when it breaks out unexpectedly." He chuckled briefly. "She likes banana pancakes."
"Banana pancakes are good," agreed SunKat. "I like her, already."
Skywolf spread his hands and bent forward in a mock bow. "Thanks for your seal of approval." She waved dismissively, in a parody of royalty, and they both laughed.
SunKat looked skyward and Skywolf turned to see. In the distance, a pair of dots soon resolved themselves into another man and woman dressed just as unconventionally as Skywolf and SunKat.
The seven-foot-tall woman alighted near them and nodded at Skywolf. A pair of wings mounted to a tiara sitting on her brow gave her the look of a Valkyrie out of a Wagnerian opera.
"Hello, Bronwyn. It's about time."
"You two are relieved," said the newcomer.
"Right!" said Skywolf. He waved at SunKat, who inclined her head and smiled her enigmatic smile. "See you night after next."
With only the barest effort, he lifted into the night sky and a half-hour later he was sleeping soundly in his own bed like any ordinary citizen of Paragon City.
The first thing he did upon awakening was run through his voice mail. On the third message, he stopped and grinned like a kid on Christmas.
"Hi, Tommy! It's Angela. Dinner at Riley's sounds great. I've got a business appointment beforehand, so I'll meet you there at 8:30."
Tommy spent the rest of the day working around the video store and watching the clock tick excruciatingly towards his date with Angela.
At 7:30 he was putting on his jacket to leave for Riley's. No such thing as too early, he thought. He had one sleeve on when his special Galvinators cell phone buzzed. A sense of dread filled him as it continued to ring and he waffled on whether to answer or not. His sense of responsibility won out. He finished putting on his jacket and flipped the phone open.
"Skywolf here. What do you need, Bronwyn?"
"I need you, Skywolf. Things are going down fast. We got a lead on a superadine lab in Atlas Park. We're going after it now and we need backup."
Tommy spluttered.
"Dammit, it's my night off! Where's SunKat? She's supposed to be on tonight."
Bronwyn spoke matter-of-factly. "She's offline. I've tried raising her and she's turned off her cell. I'll have some words for her, believe me, but right now I need you!"
Tommy swore a blue streak. Bronwyn waited for him to finish, and told him, "We'll meet you in fifteen. I've got the beacon set already." The click of the terminated call left no room for argument.
Half-an-hour later, four members of the Galvinators, including Skywolf, were breaking down the doors of a warehouse in Atlas Park. When there was no immediate reaction to the forced entry, they looked at each other in puzzlement.
"I thought you said this was a 'dyne lab?" Skywolf gestured impatiently at the empty lobby.
Bronwyn frowned but she stepped inside and motioned the others behind her.
"Looks can be deceiving," she said. "We'll make a thorough search."
Skywolf looked at his watch, then followed behind the others, fuming silently.
An hour later, all that they had found was a few beatup crates and some bottles that might have held the chemicals for a drug lab.
All of the Heroes were angry but none moreso than Skywolf.
"This is messed up!" he shouted at Bronwyn. She stood her ground stoically, seemingly the unperturbed Valkyrie. "I had plans tonight. It wasn't even my duty night!"
"I'm sorry, Skywolf," she replied evenly. "You know as well as anyone that leads don't always pan out."
He didn't reply. Instead, he extracted his watch and swore. It read 9:15pm. Without another word, he launched into the sky and flew full speed to Talos Island. Landing in the alley behind Riley's, he changed clothes as quickly as possible. When he entered the restaurant, the clock above the bar read 9:40.
"Excuse me," he said to the hostess. "My name is Wilson, and I had a 8:30 reservation..."
The pity on her face told him everything he was dreading to hear.
"Yes sir. Your lady friend stayed until 9:20. She left this note for you."
He took the folded paper from the young woman at the reservation podium and stepped away before unfolding it. His heart sank as he read the note:
Tommy;
I guess you had somewhere else to be. You should know that I canceled some important commitments to be here tonight. This isn't working out. Let's just accept it and call it quits. It shouldn't be this hard to schedule something as simple as dinner.
Angela.
He looked up at the hostess, and flushed when she averted her eyes and took a sudden interest in her reservation book. Tommy crushed the note and threw it at a nearby waste basket without looking to see if it landed inside. He stalked out of the restaurant and flew home to his apartment where the rooms were as dark and empty as his heart.
The following night's stakeout was promising to be no more exciting than the previous stakeout. Skywolf and SunKat found themselves atop the same vantage points, watching the same mobsters guard the same warehouses in which absolutely nothing interesting was happening.
After an hour of pointedly not speaking to each other, SunKat finally broke the silence.
"Do anything interesting on your day off?"
Skywolf glanced sideways, and then looked back towards the goons guarding the warehouse.
"Yes," he said. "I covered for you and I screwed up my love life one time too many."
"Aw, crap! I'm sorry, Wolf. Really."
Skywolf turned and gave her a long look, before sitting back and sighing.
"Eh," he said. "If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. Seems like it just wasn't meant to be."
"What about you?" he asked.
"Don't ask," she replied. After a pause in which Skywolf actually did not ask, she finally said, "Things didn't work out for me either."
He stood and looked over the edge of the roof again, then shrugged. "I guess you were right. It's tough to juggle two lives."
He glanced briefly at SunKat, who also stood and stepped over beside him.
"You don't seem too broken up, " he said. SunKat shrugged in turn and showed a ghost of a smile.
"It turned out that there was someone else I was more interested in, anyway." She placed a hand on his arm, and he stiffened. SunKat drew back, confused until she realized that Skywolf was pointing at a long sedan that had driven into the alley. Six men stepped out, and six more appeared from further down the alley, each of them carrying handguns.
"Holy Frag!" said Skywolf quietly. "This isn't some back-alley drug lab. It's a summit of the whole damn Frost and Marcone families!"
More armed men were arriving and a group of twelve older men, each with his own set of bodyguards, made their way to the warehouse doors and entered, each according to his station and his desires. Ten men remained stationed in the alley and at least double that many had gone inside.
Low murmering behind Skywolf told him that SunKat was hurriedly contacting the Galvinators for support. She looked up at him and shook her head.
"It's going to be at least an hour before we get backup. There's a riot not far from the Green Line in Steel Canyon. Fifty or more Hellions, setting fire to everything in the area. The ERT's can't even get in to fight them before their cars are melted into slag."
Skywolf shook his head. "We can't wait that long. We need to move on this now."
He looked her in the eyes, or what he could see of them behind the stylized feline mask covering the upper part of her face. For answer, she grinned and held up her right palm. It glowed bright yellow as her pulsar beam sprang to life and extinguished. He nodded and said, "Let's do this."
Together they leaped from the rooftop into the darkness below. The gunsels never knew what hit them. Within a few seconds the combination of meta-strength and flashing pulsar beams had laid the entire guard detail out cold.
A glance from Skywolf to SunKat confirmed that she was uninjured. His own natural toughness was sufficient protection against most ordinary weaponry. Together they waited in the shadows. When a full minute had passed without any gangsters arriving, he signaled her to join him at the warehouse door.
"No video surveillance?" she asked. "That seems trusting of them."
Skywolf shrugged. "Maybe this was some kind of impromptu meeting. It sure as Hell isn't what Bronwyn said we were waiting for."
He stepped next to the door and looked at Kat. She nodded affirmatively and he rammed his shoulder into it, knocking it clear off of its hinges.
The two gunsels playing poker in the lobby were sent flying as well. "Capes! Crap, we got capes!" shouted one who ran out of sight as his partner pulled a .45 and began firing. A pulsar blast put him out of commission as the sounds of running men resounded down the corridor towards them.
Skywolf stepped into the hallway, casually ignoring the hail of bullets being fired by the ten men in front of him. He grabbed a nearby desk and threw it, knocking down three of the men and sending the others diving for cover as SunKat zeroed in with sniper-like efficiency on individual goons with her pulsar beams. One of the goons jumped Skywolf, who sent him flying down the hallway with a single blow. There was a commotion at the the end of the hallway and Skywolf heard police sirens approaching in the distance.
He nodded to SunKat as if they were on a Sunday stroll. "I guess Bronwyn sent help, after all."
Commotion at the end of the hall suggested that the leaders were scattering to the four winds.
"We need to move. These guys aren't trying defeat us. They're trying to delay us while their bosses get away."
For answer, SunKat fired a spread of pulsar beams that took out another five guards. Skywolf whistled in appreciation.
"Nice!" he said. He hovered into the air and fired himself down the hallway, scattering the remaining guards like bowling pins.
He turned back to make a sarcastic comment to SunKat, when a man's voice said, "Enough!".
Instantly, Skywolf found his arms clamped to his sides and his body immobolized as surely as if he had been wrapped in bands of impervium.
"What the..." he began, as a pulsar beam dropped another guard pointing a shotgun at him. A man stepped into view, holding a fist in the air as if he was grasping an imaginary man by the shirt. An air of command enveloped him as naturally as the expensive Italian suit he was wearing. SunKat ran into view and found herself subdued as easily as Skywolf.
Sebastian Frost, leader of the Frost criminal empire, looked at them in disgust and said, "If you meddling masks had any idea what you've done..."
Frost gestured and Skywolf was flung headlong into a brick wall. His invulnerabilty held, however, and the blow was more visually exciting than it was effective.
Frost tsked and psychically grabbed Skywolf again, levitating both of the Heroes to within two feet of himself.
"When I think of all of the work and money I poured into making this meeting happen..." he began, and then he paused as the sirens were obviously entering the alley.
A man appeared around the corner, seemingly unperturbed by any of the violence that had just been inflicted on his fellows. "Mr. Frost, we need to leave. Now."
Frost nodded. "Very well, Jerald." He bent down to the fallen guard at his feet and picked up the shotgun in the man's unconcious hands.
He stepped up to Skywolf, hanging motionless in front of him. "This isn't over," he said as he examined as much of his face as could be seen behind the cowl. He glanced at the wolf head on Skywolf's chest and nodded. "You'll be hearing from me again."
He released SunKat, who fell to the floor and immediately sprang up and fired her pulsar beam. Nothing happened. "I can't hurt you, yet" he told Skywolf. "But I can't have you following me either."
With that, he turned the shotgun on SunKat and fired point blank at her chest. The concussion sent her body flying across the room to land in a heap on the floor. Skywolf's eyes bulged and Frost laughed as he released him.
"Your choice, Hero. Her or me."
With a snarl of rage, Skywolf leapt across the room, scooped up SunKat and blasted through the roof of the warehouse into the sky, police sirens screaming behind him and Frost's mocking laughter ringing in his ears.
Skywolf fled through the moonless night, blood pounding in his head. "Don't die!" he muttered as he sped towards Crowne Memorial Medical Center. "Please, don't die." The hospital towers became visible in the distance when a voice said in his ear, "I'm alright."
He nearly dropped SunKat in surprise.
"What did you say?" he asked as he regained his composure. SunKat stirred in his arms.
"I'm alright," she said. "I'm not hurt. Not seriously, anyway."
He looked down, then, and in the dim glow of the city lights he realized that he was not seeing the mass of blood and raw flesh that he had expected as a result of the shotgun blast.
"What the Hell?" he asked. She smiled and said "Body armor, dummy. Some of us who can't walk through a hail of bullets actually take steps to protect ourselves."
Skywolf circled aimlessly through the sky as he dizzily realized that his partner was not mortally injured.
"Wait, that was a point blank shot. You could have internal injuries."
She shook her head and looked amused.
"I'd have been mediported to the hospital, instead of lying here in your arms, Wolfie. Did you forget that little detail?"
Skywolf pulled up short, dumbstruck.
"Criminitly!" He looked down at SunKat, who grinned smugly. "I'll never get used to that."
"So, you let Frost get away, to save me?" She smiled sardonically and snuggled her head against his shoulder. "My hero!" she said, kissing him on the cheek, and then laughing again. Skywolf flushed and immediately began flying in whatever direction they happened to be pointed, in an effort to hide his discomfiture.
A moment later he realized that he had automatically flown to his own apartment building. No better ideas suggested themselves, so he finally landed on his balcony and set SunKat on her feet.
"This your place?" she asked, looking around appraisingly. She leaned over the rail, to see the tram glowing nearby and the lights of the garment works shining faintly in the distance.
"It's not the Ritz", she said, "But there are worse neighborhoods around."
"Uh, right," replied Skywolf. "It suits me, anyway. It's cheap and I don't need all that much."
"Sure, sure, " she said. "Typical bachelor."
After a moment he realized she was waiting expectantly,
"Oh, right. Um, welcome to my humble abode."
He unlatched the slider and stepped aside to allow SunKat to precede him.
"I want to have a look at your chest, anyway."
She favored him with a quizzical look and a half-smile that was less shocked than it was speculative.
Skywolf turned red and stuttered.
"What I m-meant was, that I wanted to double-check for myself that you're really okay. The hospital is just over the hill there." He waved vaguely towards a far corner of the room.
SunKat snorted and looked around at the apartment. It was as spartan as a college dorm. There was an old couch, a dining table and chairs of uncertain ancestry, a board placed across two cinder blocks to serve as a coffee table, and a couple of non-matching recliners that probably came from a garage sale or sales.
She laughed when she saw that the television was a big-screen state of the art model.
"This place could use a woman's touch, Wolfie."
Skywolf looked around and shrugged.
"It works for me," he said. He turned on a light and stepped near to SunKat.
"Let's have a look at you."
She grinned, and obligingly pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the couch.
"Woah, wait a minute...", he said, flustered, until he realized that she was wearing an undershirt of some sort of thick material. It rose up with the shirt, exposing trim, flat abs and an hourglass waist before dropping back down again.
Sunkat was standing very close and looking up at him with a satisfied smile.
"What do you think, Wolf? It's the lastest in superhero fashion."
Skywolf reached a hand tentatively.
"Is it alright if I touch it?"
In answer, she took his hands and placed them on her waist, where the edges of the undergarment were hanging down. Skywolf cleared his throat and squeezed the fabric between his fingers. It felt like a thick wool sweater woven over the top of a layer of memory foam.
"This stops bullets?" he asked, dubiously
"Most kinds, yes," she replied. "Hand weapons also. It's not armor so much as a shock absorber. It draws out most of the kinetic energy from whatever strikes it and channels it into power for my pulsar batteries."
Skywolf frowned.
"I've known police officers who had broken ribs after a direct hit to a kevlar vest. You're not bruised or anything?"
Sunkat tilted her head to look up into his eyes, as she slid her hands up his forearms to his biceps.
"Why don't you see for yourself?" she suggested, moving so that her body was practically touching his.
When he hesitated, she took his left hand and slid it under the edge of her "armor" shirt.
The adrenalin of the day's action was still pumping through him and without conciously deciding, he was running his hand up her back. His other hand touched her waist and he slid it up just a little. She closed her eyes and made a "Sssss." sound.
"It hurts?", he asked, concerned.
She opened her eyes and smiled, tilting her head back, lips parted slightly.
"No", she said. "Quite the opposite, Wolfie."
He moved his hands again and she arched her back and purred like her namesake, causing Skywolf to laugh out loud.
She put her hands on either side of his chin and pulled his face down, pressing her lips to his. The fire that she kindled made him pull back in surprise.
SunKat shook her head.
"Wolf, is this girl of yours even 'yours' at the moment?"
Skywolf sighed. "No", he said.
She nodded.
"You're not doing anything wrong. Trust me. I'm a Hero."
She winked, and he shook his head in his own turn and laughed. He pulled her close and kissed her thoroughly and his misgivings evaporated with his resistance. All of his pent up frustration of the past couple of weeks came pouring out and for the next little while there was a great deal of communication but very little in the way of speech.
At some point he had picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, her arms around his neck as she giggled at the gesture. Between the drawn shades and the dying moon, the room was as dark as a cave. A few minutes later, they were bereft of all but their face and head coverings.
Skywolf chuckled and said, "I don't think that Bronwyn would approve."
Sunkat laughed.
"Yes, well, we can't identify each other. We haven't actually broken the rule."
"It seems like observing the letter of it rather than the spirit." He looked down and moved his hands. "I think there are some parts of you that I could identify if I saw them again."
"AH! Well," she said, wriggling,"First, Mmmm, you'd have to AH see them waaugh again!"
He grinned in the dark and then made an exclamation of his own as they moved together.
She made a small sound, then she reached down and touched his hands with hers.
"Don't stop", she said, as she lightly took his hands in each of her own, and then she pulled them up to her cheeks, resting his fingertips lightly on either side of her face.
"Mmm..." she said, and he lost himself for an instant.
She touched his hands again, pressing his fingers against the tapered edges of the cat mask that covered the upper portion of her face and her hair.
He slowed momentarily, and looked at her as well as he could in the warm dark of the the summer evening, and he realized what she wanted of him.
"Are you sure?", he whispered. She kissed each of his palms in reply and then rubbed her cheeks against his fingertips.
Gently, he lifted the edge of the mask and then pressed it upwards, towards the top of her head. There was some slight resistance at first, as if a bobby pin was giving way, then it slid freely forward. His fingertips moved lightly over her closed eyes as the mask slid away, and the flutter of her lashes on his fingers sent an electric jolt through his hands like nothing that he had experienced before. He pushed the mask completely off with one hand while wrapping the other arm around her and pressing her close against him.
He was caught off-guard for a second when her hair fell away with the mask, then he chuckled as he felt rather than saw her grinning.
"A wig! I ought to have guessed. It's the old Barbara Gordon gambit."
She giggled as he ran his fingers through her hair, feeling it's length and it's softness. She pressed her lips against his and the fire erupted again as he ran his fingers across her bare cheeks and the touch was almost excruciating. Sunkat felt it also, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him more deeply and passionately he had been kissed in a good long time.
The fire continued to build and he realized that she was touching the edges of his own cowl, questing, questioning.
He didn't even hesitate.
"Yes", he said. "Yes, please, yes."
She put one hand on the top of his head and then with a single motion, she pulled his cowl back, exposing his face. The air struck his bare face and warm as it was in the room, the difference compared to the cowl was like a slap of cold water against his skin.
She kissed him, then. She kissed him and then pressed her cheek against his and the touch of her bare cheek against his own fanned the fire blazing between them as they moved together, dancing the steps of a dance as old as Mankind.
If their simultaneous cry in the night did not result in wall banging by the neighbors, it at least gave some of them cause for jealousy.
Without a word, they lay together in the afterglow, enjoying the feeling of being held instead of being alone. Sunkat nestled her head into his shoulder and before Skywolf knew it, she was asleep. He smiled in the darkness, ran his fingers over her hair, and then lay back and soon he was also sleeping the dreamless sleep of the Just and the Satisfied.
Skywolf awoke at 6:30 AM, as he did every morning. He was turned toward the window, and he felt the soft warmth of SunKat spooned against his back. He smiled in the early morning light that was filtering around the edges of the window shade.
He stood and stretched. He chuckled to himself at the sound of SunKat making disappointed noises and then snuggling up to his pillow in his absence. Skywolf opened the shade enough to let some sunlight into the room. An oath from the bed, followed by "OMG, you're a morning person!" and the sound of SunKat rolling away from the sunlight made him laugh out loud.
He turned to say something, and then stopped dead. He stood stunned for a full five seconds, before a smile spread across his face, turning into a grin that would have done credit to the Cheshire Cat. He pulled on some jeans and a tee-shirt that he had draped across the dresser a couple of days earlier and then he bent over the form now snuggled down under the covers, attempting to hide from the encroaching morning.
"I need to run out to the market for some groceries."
"Mmmm...", she frowned.
He kissed her on the forehead and said, "I'll be back in twenty minutes or so with breakfast fixings. Maybe even coffee."
"Mmmm....", she said again, this time with a smile. She puckered her lips, still without opening her eyes, and he laughed and kissed her on the lips, then headed out to the grocery store.
When he returned twenty-five minutes later, the shower was running and he nodded to himself with satisfaction. He busied himself in the kitchen while the shower ran, mixing ingredients and ladeling them periodically onto the electric griddle. He was finishing the setting of the table when the sound of running water ceased, and a minute later he heard movement in the bedroom.
"I'm borrowing one of your tee-shirts!" she shouted.
"Not the Eagles reunion tour shirt!" he shouted back.
"Too late!"
He laughed and shook his head in mock dismay and turned around in time to see her step out of the bedroom . She was wearing his "Red Monster. Just grab one!" tee-shirt and looking down approvingly at how the tee-shirt came down past her knees.
"This is a perfect night shirt", she said. She sniffed and her eyes lit up as she raised her head and turned this way and that, searching for the source of the aroma filling the apartment.
"Do I smell banana pancakes? That's my fav..."
She turned towards the dining table, then stopped dead; her eyes widened like saucers and her hand flew to her mouth.
"OH MY GOD!" said Angela.
"Good morning", said Tommy, grinning wider than Liberty Bridge. "Sit down for breakfast. I made your favorite."
She stared at him disbelievingly, then her face split into a huge grin of her own and she leapt gleefully across the room, knocking Tommy down and sending utensils flying.
An hour later, they both agreed that banana pancakes tasted even better reheated.