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Posts: 1002
Join Date: Jan 2008
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This is the first in a series of "What if?" style stories that I wanted to do. It is a bit darker and more violent than my normal issues.
The silence was shattered by a gunshot in the darkness. Chief John Dark instinctively went for his police issue snub-nosed revolver. The rain impeded his vision as he searched frantically for the shooter. But it was already too late. Chief Dark would never catch the man now. He could already feel the burning sensation in his chest as his breathing became labored. Looking down he discovered a blood-soaked shirt sticking to his skin. Footsteps could be heard retreating down a side alley as he fell forward, face down in the mud.
The murder was clean, no witnesses. The Greek smiled to himself as he ran down the alley heading for the sewer grate he’d left open for an easy escape route. He holstered his gold plated desert eagle as he dropped down the shaft to land knee deep in sewage. Rats fled before him as he splashed through the feces littered liquid following the twists and turns that he had mapped in his head earlier that afternoon.
The news reports of Chief Dark’s death contained very little information. However the SKPD’s 3rd Precinct sent out a request for any witnesses to come forward. Detective’s Tony Stonecipher and Jackie Lawrence would be leading the investigation. John Dark was survived by his two children, twenty-seven year old John Jr. and seventeen year old Jessica. The two of them took his death extremely hard.
Three days later at the funeral John and Jessica were teary eyed and red nosed from their grieving. It appeared the pain would last for the rest of their lives. John became furious towards the police department. It seemed they still had no leads. How hard was it to track down the man who shot the police chief? Surely there were terrified witnesses out there somewhere.
The investigation dragged on and weeks stretched into months, still no leads. John Jr. turned to drugs and alcohol to ease his pain. Then exactly one year later he found himself broke and still needing another hit of cocaine. He tried to beg and plead with his dealer for a freebie. But it was no use. So he snatched the baggie from the dealer’s hand and made a run for it.
The drug dealer, a man known on the street as Tommy Two-toes, pulled out a pistol and shot John in the back as he ran away. His death however would not make the news. He was after all no one important. Jessica felt as though she’d been stabbed in the heart when the police informed her of her brother’s death.
A friend of hers had told her about a secret society in Japan that trained shadow warriors. Jess pawned off all of her belongings to pay for her plane ticket the next day. Arriving in a small coastal village she met a man known as Oroko Shadou who offered to take her under his wing. Turns out this man was the Shadow Master, leader of the secret society she was told about. Over the next several months she trained with him until she had learned all she could. Then she returned to Saint Katherine’s Bay.
Donning a dark costume that she had sewn together herself and equipping a pair of taloned gauntlets she bought off the internet Jessica Dark became the vigilant protector Shadow Hawk! Stalking the streets she further honed her skills by taking on the city’s criminal underbelly. Swearing to herself the whole time that she would catch both her father’s and her brother’s killer.
Eventually she caught up to the small time drug dealer Tommy Two-toes. He tried to make a run for it by climbing up the fire escape attached to a nightclub called ‘The X-Factor’. Little did he know that Jessica Dark’s training from the Shadow Master taught her how to scale vertical surfaces with ease. She made it up the brick wall before Tommy made it to the top of the stairs.
“Give it up” she shouts at him as he climbs onto the roof!
“But I didn’t do anything to you! Leave me alone please” Tommy begs dropping to his knees.
“Oh but you did Tommy. You killed my brother.”
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean too it was an accident. I swear” he pleads with her not knowing whether his attempts were futile and his time better spent trying to run.
Extending the blades from her Talon gauntlets she gives the worm a grim smile. The look on his face is that of pure terror as he throws his arms up as if to shield himself from harm. She slices out with the blades severing his arms from his body. The blood squirts everywhere painting the roof red. Tommy Two-toes screams in agony as Shadow Hawk kicks his arms off the edge of the roof with her boot.
“That’s for lying to me” she says to him in a dark voice “killing my brother was no accident. Now I shall leave you here to bleed to death. There is no way the paramedics will get to you in time to save your pathetic life.”
With that Jessica Dark sprints to the other end of the roof and leaps over the edge soaring through the air to land on the building across the alleyway. She continues her run jumping from rooftop to rooftop making her way across town to the 3rd Precinct where she climbs through and upper level window to confront Detective Stonecipher.
“John Dark junior’s murder has been avenged no thanks to your department.”
“What the hell did you do? You can’t just take the law into your own hands” the detective says walking around the end of his desk “I’m going to have to place you under arrest.”
“Not going to happen” Shadow Hawk warns “just know this, I will find Chief Dark’s killer as well and when I do he will pay!”
And as quickly as she had entered the building she was gone back through the window and out into the night. Tony Stonecipher peers out the window after her but she has already fled into the darkness. Shaking his head in frustration he goes over to the intercom on his desk and pages his partner, Detective Lawrence, so that they can go over a plan of action to stop the vigilante before she can kill again. Jackie Lawrence came into the office and sat down in the chair opposite Stonecipher’s desk.
“I just had a visit from the mysterious Shadow Hawk” Tony said to her.
“And you didn’t arrest her?” Jackie asked “what was the problem, she too gorgeous to rot in prison?”
Tony smiled at her attempted humor. While it was true that he had occasionally been fooled by a pretty face during an investigation this didn’t happen to be one of those times. He simply hadn’t moved fast enough to apprehend her.
“Not the way it happened” he said to Jackie “but she admitted to ‘avenging’ John junior’s death so we need to canvas the city to find the body. She also swore she would find John senior’s killer as well. I’m not sure what ties she has to the Dark family but we need to find out what her next move is going to be so we can stop her.”
“Is it really so bad? I mean if she manages to find this SOB we could turn our backs and let her do the dirty work. If he goes to trial there’s no guarantee he’ll see jail time.”
“But we’re cops not a lynch mob” Tony replies.
“You’re right let’s just hope we can catch her before sunset.”
“Why? Afraid she’ll turn into a werewolf or something?”
“No but I don’t want to get caught outside when $#!% hits the fan.”
“I think I’ll start calling you Sunset then sister, because from now on we’ll do our best to get the job done before dark.”
Meanwhile…
Shadow Hawk has managed to wreck the Kings Street Bar in an effort to force information out of the mobsters that hang out there. As she’s about to punch the last remaining conscious thug in the face sirens are heard outside the building. Jess pauses in her pounding of faces and looks towards the door. In that instant the thug pulls a knife and stabs her in the side. As the pain registers and she clutches her wound the thug escapes out the back door.
Jessica Dark barely manages to slip out herself before the cops’ barge in. She climbs the fire escape up to the roof and searches the skyline looking for where the thug has gotten off too. Then she spots him on the roof of the First International Bank of the Bay. He’s too far away for her to catch up to so she reaches into her belt and pulls out the gun she had stashed there, for just such emergencies. Then she squeezes the trigger and watches as the bullet rockets out of the barrel and catches the thug in the leg, tearing away flesh.
The thug slows down and falls onto his side screaming in pain. Shadow Hawk makes her move leaping across the distance between the buildings as if it were mere inches instead of several feet. Running as fast as she can, Jess closes the distance between them and yanks the man back to his feet with one hand.
“Who killed Chief Dark? I want a name and I want it now!”
The thug shakes his head as though he doesn’t know anything but she punches him in the nose with her Talon gauntleted fist. This stops his denial and he whimpers as he wets himself. She smiles at this and tosses him roughly back to the ground then kicks him in the side with her boot.
“I’m not asking again” she says as her wrist blades extend “you’re about to start losing body parts.”
“Okay, okay just please don’t hurt me! The killer was a gunman called the Greek. I don’t know his real name, no one does. He works for the mafia. That’s all I know, I swear!”
“See was that so hard?” She asks as she stabs him in the chest with her blades extinguishing his life.
Detective’s Stonecipher and Lawrence watch in horror as the climb onto the roof. Each draw their weapon and point it at Shadow Hawk. Tony Stonecipher couldn’t fathom why she had killed the thug in cold blood. He wasn’t even one of the big dogs. Just a minor pickpocket and drug dealer.
“Don’t move” Jackie ‘Sunset’ Lawrence says as Shadow Hawk turns to run “I’m an excellent shot, I’ll drop you like a bad habit girlie.”
“Not likely” Jessica says back with more bravado than she feels at that moment “I’m going after the Greek and you can’t stop me.”
“You’re under arrest” Tony tells her “if you resist you will be shot. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in…”
Shadow Hawk leaps at him with her wrist blades out ready to end his life for interfering. But what she didn’t realize was that he wasn’t the one she should have been focused on. Sunset made good on her promise at that moment and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out like a detonation of some atomic bomb. The bullet ripped into Jessica’s side spraying her blood everywhere. She dropped instantly and felt her eyelids grow heavy. Wanting nothing more than to go to sleep as she drifted off into eternity.
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