Phoenix leaped across the darkened rooftops of Boston, ninja-silent and invisible. Phoenix Talon is back, boys, he thought with a grin. There, down below. A mugging. No sign of police.
    He dropped down without a whisper of sound and planted a solid fist in the man's face, sending him unconscious to the ground. The two victims saw only a blur of motion and the gun skittering away into the shadows.
    "Have a good night, citizens, stay safe," he wished them, and was gone again. As he climbed the building, it occurred to him that the woman had been reaching into her purse for a small cylinder. She'd been about to mace him!
    This sucks.
    And then a familiar roaring sound met his ears. The sweet song of jet-powered skateboards. Looks like I got back just in time, he reflected as he approached.
    A small cluster of tourists had been in the wrong place at the wrong timeùnamely, the middle of a multi-lane intersection in a dark part of town. Five punks with baseball bats circled them, jeering.
    He swung his grapple; it lashed around a lamppost on the other side of the street and clotheslined the punk; his board kept going in a perpetual circle.
    "It's Phoenix Talon!"
    "BANZAI!" Bokken up and swinging, he launched himself at the nearest Board. He pulled the blow somewhat, but it was a solid strike to the chest. The punk fell off his board, which flew through some poor couple's bedroom window and embedded itself in the wall. The awakened couple quickly called for police. A sweeping kick knocked a third to the ground, almost doing a complete backflip. Another board went flying through the night. The remaining two spun around him.
    "We're not afraid of you! We can take him!"
    "Where you been you stupid punk! You shoulda seen what we done to Quincy! We kicked your friend's ass, yeah!" They circled in and swung the baseball bats.
    Phoenix dropped to one knee and blocked a bat with his arm; that stung. The clotheslined one recovered his board and roared toward him, going for a jump that would land on his head. Phoenix brought the bokken up into a guard position; the Board jumped rather farther than he intended and hit the ground hard, again. Then Talon reached out to stop one of the circling punks with a simple straight arm. The board went out from under him. The other one slammed into him from behind, staggered but stayed on his feet, spun around and accelerated, bat ready to swing. Phoenix was so far away he barely even felt the breeze.
    Phoenix jumped onto the skateboard behind him, then jumped off, rattling the youth even more, if that was possible. The Board spun around and tried to hit him again, only to be cannoned into by his own fellow punk, leaving Phoenix in the center of a circle of badly winded and/or unconscious Blood Boards and petrified civilians.
    Sirens were approaching, cars spinning into the intersection.
    "All right, freeze!" someone shouted, crouching behind a car door as he leveled his pistol, then a moment later: "He's—he's gone!"
    Talon's voice floated out of the shadows, "You know, you could arrest THE PUNKS!"

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