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“Well, this sucks,” Grian muttered, ducking behind a shelf of canned soup. Near the front of the store, he could hear the screams and cries of civilians. Mixed within, in gruff voices, armed men were yelling out orders.
This was Grian’s first time out of uniform being caught by criminals. Usually, he only ever ran into them during patrol. He wasn’t…..really sure what to do here. He didn’t want to jump out and risk an identity reveal, but there was no way he could stand by and do nothing.
Not that they knew he – Horus – was there in the first place. Right now, he was just Grian – the intern at a small archival museum in the Bronx. That didn’t change the fact that he was stuck in the middle of an active crime, with no back up and no weapon. And no way to protect himself, because that would surely give him away. “Desperate times,” he whispered to himself, wincing. Grian never liked to do this in gear, never mind as a civilian, but he didn’t really have a choice.
He was glad he carried the watch with him everywhere, otherwise this could’ve been way worse.
Activating the beacon was the easy part. The rest of it fell on hope. If Watchdog wasn’t in his lab, then Grian was screwed, but if he thought about it he would falter. And he didn’t have time to falter, because someone was screaming.
Carefully, Grian picked his way around the side of the shelf so he could get a better view. Three men were standing around the only door into and out of the shop, rifles slung across their chests. A fourth man was holding a young woman by the hair. The red strands looked like fire in his fist. Grian was surprised to realize that she wasn’t the one screaming – in fact, she looked downright murderous. Green eyes bored holes into the man holding her, and Grian was sure that if looks could kill that man would be six feet under.
No, the screaming was coming from an older woman. She was reaching out, trying to grab the younger woman’s arm. The man whipped her across the face with the butt of his pistol and she collapsed to the floor. “Enough,” he snapped. “She’s the one who put herself in this situation, she can get herself out.” The man shook the girl’s head, glaring at her. “Where is it?”
The girl curled her lip at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Grian raised an eyebrow. Okay, so someone has a death wish.
“Horns wants his staff back, Antlers.”
Horns? Antlers? Was Grian in the middle of a gang fight?
“Well,” the girl shrugged. “Horns shouldn’t’ve given it to me.”
The man snarled, throwing the girl – Antlers, Grian guessed – to the floor. Antlers didn’t bother getting up. She turned onto her back and grinned up at the barrel in her face. “Go ahead. Pull the trigger, Claws. The secret will die with me.”
The man – Claws apparently, and Grian was so confused by these names – didn’t move right away. He glared down at Antlers, kept the barrel right in her face. But her grin never wavered, and eventually he pulled away. “You’re not worth the effort Horns is going through,” he snapped, his knuckles white on the grip of his pistol.
Antlers shrugged. “But the staff is.”
Grian really, really wanted to know what was so special about this staff. It was special enough that this Horns guy would interrupt daily civilian life to try and find it. If Grian’s confusion was anything to go by, this gang worked in the dark. If Grian had never heard of them, the chances of Watchdog or any of the other Hero Association techies hearing of them was low, too. So, an underworld gang interrupted daily life to track down a....deserter? Thief?
Yeah, something about this staff was special.
Grian blinked and the figure of Claws sharpened into better detail. He was still getting used to this ability – it was like he’d turned on high definition, but for Claws only. Pretty useful power, if a little disconcerting if he did it by accident. But now he could see the patch on Claws’s shoulder. It was a skull. It was crowned by a pair of antlers, and a pair of ram horns curled around where the ears would’ve been. A pair of claws came up on either side of the chin and wrapped around the lower jaw.
A pretty gnarly symbol, all things considered. It didn’t help Grian’s confusion at all. There wasn’t any name, either.
The older woman, the one Claws had pistol whipped, tapped at Antlers's knee. Antlers reached out without looking away from Claws and carefully tugged the older woman to be behind her. “You better hope I don’t find you after this,” Antlers said quietly. She rose steadily to her feet, pulling the older woman up with her. “I’ll kill you if I do.”
She didn’t say it like a threat. She said it like it was an absolute truth, set in stone the moment Claws came in this store. Or maybe, the moment he’d pistol whipped that woman.
“You think I’m letting you leave?” Claws lifted his pistol again. “I have orders, Antler. If you won’t give up the staff, Horns wants you dead.”
Antlers face rippled. For a moment, Grian saw stark fear dance across her face. She’d been banking on Horns not wanting her dead, and now she was lost. Grian knew what was going to happen – Antlers was going to take the bullet. Antlers was going to do something stupid, and she was going to take the bullet while she did it.
So Grian did what he did best. He jumped in.
The bullet hit him in the side, right below the ribs. He never even heard the gun fire, but he didn’t focus on that. He barreled into Claws, grappling for the gun. It was admittedly easy snatching it from him – he never saw Grian coming.
“What the fuck,” Claws gasped, scrambling away as Grian rose with the pistol pointed at him. “Who the fuck are you?”
Grian sneered. “Doesn’t matter. You’ve got about two minutes before the entire might of the Hero Association drops on this shop.”
One of the men by the door stiffened. “Claws,” he muttered, glancing nervously out the door. “We don’t play with Heroes. Horns–” Claws sliced a hand in the guy’s direction and his jaw clicked shut.
Grian’s head was spinning. He locked his knees to keep himself up, stiffened his arm to keep his hand from shaking. His side was warm. “You want to see the inside of the Vault?" Grian asked quietly. “Or maybe Pandora’s Box?” Claws shivered, his face twisting. The Vault and Pandora’s Box were ghost stories in the criminal underworld, Grian knew. He was hoping, as obscure as this gang was, that they would still know about them. “There’s a special place there for people like you. Who do things like that.” Grian gestured to the woman Claws had pistol whipped. Her cheek was growing a reddish-purple hue. She’d have a bruise for sure. “So, what are we doing here?”
Claws lifted his lip, looking over Grian’s shoulder to Antlers. “We aren’t done, Antlers,” he said, backing towards the door.
Antlers shrugged. “Seems like we are.”
“Watch your back,” Claws snapped. The three men at the door scrambled out. He wasn’t far behind them.
The moment the danger was out of the store, Grian collapsed onto his knees. “Fuck,” he muttered, lifting up his shirt. “Fuck!”
So maybe it wasn’t his side that the bullet hit. Maybe it was closer to center mass. It didn’t really matter in the end. Grian could hear the sirens in the distance. When the Heroes got here, they’d take care of it.
The pistol dropped from his hand. He didn’t have the strength to hold it. HIs head was fuzzy. His stomach was burning. It felt like he’d swallowed molten lava that was eating away at the lining of his stomach. Grian groaned quietly as his world tilted sideways.
“Oh, shit!”
Hands grabbed his shoulders, keeping him sitting upright. “Fuck, I didn’t think that bullet hit you.”
Who was talking to him? Grian couldn’t see anything. His vision had gone worryingly dark. Something pressed against his stomach and he screamed through his teeth as sparks lit. “Yeah, I know buddy. But if I let you bleed out, you’re going to die.”
That would be better than this. Grian tried to lift a hand and push the pressure away, but his limbs weren’t listening. His head felt floaty. He gagged on the blood in the back of his throat. He couldn’t feel anything except for the pressure on his stomach and the sparks lit up in his nerves.
The pressure hardened. Grian screamed and then everything was gone.