Scott neared Downtown Crossing as the city center was approaching maximum chaos. He found the van, set the bike to hover and jumped, going to his seldom-used solid form on the way down.
    He left a big hole in the pavement as well as the vehicle. Went to gas form and reformed as the van slid down the street. Alley Cats leaped free just in time before it exploded.
    "Gentlemen, I am not tolerating this sort of behavior," he informed them sternly.
    One tried to rally his fellows. Nine of them ran in nine different directions. Scott swatted the lone stalwart and went to the patient work of chasing them down.

    The carnage was just as bad in Cambridge as it was to the south; Phoenix Talon gained altitude and picked out the two strike teams by the columns of smoke they left behind. The farther one was surrounded by figures flitting around in the air, a phalanx of Blood Boards attacking the getaway van and eluding machine-gun fire. He hoped they were okay, and turned his attention to the nearer group. It looked like their van might be making for McGrath highway, firing madly to clear a path.
    Near the onramp it came to a screeching halt and the doors opened up. Phoenix Talon swooped down and tossed a grenade in through the open door.
    Someone with incredible reflexes tossed it back out.
    "Son of a bitch," he muttered as it exploded harmlessly in midair.
    Tybalt snaked out through the passenger side window and stood smiling on the van's roof. Phoenix Talon drew his bokken, switched it on and dove the bike straight for him, aiming to clothesline him with three feet of electrified steel.
    Tybalt's pistols barked harshly; he was aiming for the bike as he threw himself out of the way. Phoenix Talon lost control of the hoverbike, tagged Tybalt with the end of the blade. The gang leader was momentarily off balance but landed smoothly; so did Phoenix Talon, leaping off the bike before it smashed itself.
    They faced one another for an instant. The other Alley Cats seemed to be moving in slow motion.
    "You didn't show up," Talon remarked.
    "I had places to be," Tybalt retorted with a toss of his head.
    "Yeah, anyplace I wasn't."
    "You're here now," he pointed out. "Let's play follow the leader. And since I rule...." Those pistols were three-shot semi-autos, bullets raining as Tybalt made a run for the Lechmeme T station. Phoenix Talon needed every bit of his skill to remain reasonably unscathed.
    There was a train pulling into the station; seeing Tybalt coming, the driver panicked and went into reverse, heading back over the bridge toward Boston as the Cat leaped atop the moving car. Phoenix Talon ran after him, tried a flash but the man's reflexes were too good. Tybalt flipped backward, avoiding the burst of light but giving Talon time to get onto the train as well, before running along the top of the car.
    At the place where the cars joined Tybalt leaped, firing as he turned in midair, landed and kept moving. There were people screaming inside the train. Phoenix Talon charged him and felt the sweetly solid impact ring all the way up his weapon. Tybalt bounced backward, almost slid off, but pulled himself back up.
    "Damn. The boss said he was gonna kill him," an Alley Cat remarked, watching the fight moving away from them.
    "We'd better get back to base and—"
    "You're not going anywhere."
    Twelve Blood Boards swooped down and began wreaking controlled havoc amid their mortal foes. Phoenix Talon caught a glimpse of Rick flying close to an Alley Cat's head—he didn't actually touch the guy, but the Cat folded up and fell over.
    He'd asked Dawn if she'd put any weapons on the boards. She had not, he realized, said "no."
    Then he had no more attention to spare for them. He had to try to stay close, keep Tybalt from dodging. And from using those damn guns. He managed to grab hold of Tybalt's vest, slammed the bokken into him once again. The guns tumbled into the water.
    Tybalt tore free, leaped up with his legs wrapped around Talon, and sent both of them tumbling off the side of the train. On their way down, Tybalt grabbed hold of the rail around the top of the car, his back to the window, and let go of Phoenix Talon.
    They were passing one of the light posts along the bridge; Talon grabbed hold and swung himself back to safety as Tybalt broke the window and got inside the car. Phoenix Talon clambered up to the top of the train as it pulled into the Science Park station.
    Talon waited for the train to stop, moving up to where he knew Tybalt had to be. The only exit from the train was onto the platform. He heard a gunshot. The doors opened. Tybalt ran backwards, his gun pointed at the people inside the train. He saw Phoenix Talon's shadow in the instant before the ninja leaped, so the bokken barely touched him as Talon hurled himself from the train like an avenging angel, screaming, "I don't die!"

    "If you sit down and wait for the police to handcuff you, I won't have to hit you very, very hard," Scott was explaining to an Alley Cat when his radio crackled to life.
    "Hello? Hello, have we gotten this working again? Is anyone reading this?"
    "Yes, who's this?"
    "Scott, this is Rick. We've taken care of the problem on the other side of the river, we've got a whole bunch of unconscious Alley Cats over here. Um, we're all fine here." Pause. "How're you? Have you heard from Phoenix yet?"
    "Not in a bit. I've been kind of busy."
    "He was fighting Tybalt on top of the Green Line T."
    "Cool!"
    "Do you have any idea where he is? They probably ended up at Science Park."
    "I haven't heard from him," Scott repeated.
    "All right. We're gonna go check things out if everything's okay over there."
    "Fine." Judging from recent reports, the city seemed to be coming back under control.
    "Oh, Dawn's at the hospital, just so you know, 'cause she's not at base anymore, and Albert's on Rowes Wharf we think."
    "Okay."

    Phoenix Talon dragged Tybalt outside; a series of familiar blurs of motion turned out to be ten of the Blood Boards.
    "Hey, there is! And he's got him!"
    Whoops filled the air, while Phoenix Talon reflected that whenever he heard a Blood Board yell, "there he is," his instinct was still to brace for combat.
    They started doing victory laps.
    "Where are the other guys?" he barked.
    "They're off watching the unconscious Alley Cats until the cops show up," Rick told him.
    "So everybody's okay?"
    "We got a couple of flesh wounds, nothing major. And one guy fell off his board when the concussion from the machine gun got too close."
    "But he's not dead?"
    "Broken arm. He's one of the guys watching 'em."
    "You done good."
    Rick jumped down and saluted. "Yes, sensei! Have you heard from Dawn?"
    "No, where is she?"
    "She's at the hospital, when everything started breaking out she thought she might go make sure nothing happened down there."
    "You and Bill, go check on her."
    "Yessir." They zipped off.
    "You four, go back, guard the prisoners." He called Reilly. "It's Phoenix Talon."
    "Please tell me you got the sonuvabitch."
    "Yup."
    A faint, relieved sigh. "Thank God."
    "Send around a ride."
    "It's all over, everyone else has called in. Looks like it's finished. Ecch," he added in a heartfelt fashion. "All I can say, is ecch. We'll send someone over to pick up your charge."

    Rick and Bill showed up at the hospital, which was sheer chaos. No one wanted to stop long enough for him to ask until he physically grabbed hold of an orderly.
    "We have some people here," he cut off the man's protests. "Up on the ninth floor?"
    "The ninth floor?" The orderly's expression actually grew more haggard. "You don't want to go up on the ninth floor."
    "What the hell are you talking about?" Rick asked coldly. No answer. He dropped the guy, grabbed his board and went back out, up the side of the building—much faster than the elevator. He went in through a window and stopped short when he saw the blood.
    "Dawn? Dawn!"
    "I'm over here," she said quietly.
    He ran around the corner and saw her sitting on the floor, cradling Stu in her lap; his breathing was harsh and labored. Stan lay nearby. Not breathing.
    Twenty Alley Cats lay in various states of injury and unconsciousness around the room.
    "Dawn? Honey? Honey, what happened?" Rick asked softly.
    She stared into space. "We were—I got here to make sure that everything was still okay."
    "Uh-huh," he prodded when she stopped. "And?"
    "I had been here for about a second, five seconds, when the stairway door opened up and guys just came roaring out."
    "And?"
    Stu coughed bloodily. "We kicked their asses. It was tragic."
    "They were trying to get in there, to get to Kibo and..." Dawn explained. "They just... they wouldn't fall over, they kept getting shot and they wouldn't fall over."
    "Has a doctor seen these guys yet?" Rick asked.
    "Nobody's even made it up here yet," she replied. "You have to do something."
    "It's okay, it's all right," he lied. "I'm gonna go downstairs and get somebody, you just stay there."
    "It's shouldn't come out like this," she whispered.
    "Just say there." He backed away, found a working phone in the next room. "I'm up on level nine—get somebody over here! Yeah, I'm leaving the phone off the hook so you know where the hell it is." He ran to the elevator bank; it took forever to get down to the next floor.
    When he returned with a couple of doctors, Dawn was still sitting there.
    "Dawn? Honey, you okay?" Rick asked.
    "Yeah." She looked up and seemed to focus on him for the first time. "Yeah, everything's fine."
    "How 'bout you, young man, how you doing?" one of the doctors asked Stan.
    He sat up. "I'm all right, think I just got grazed or something."
    Rick's jaw dropped. "Dawn, what did you just do?" he demanded quietly.
    "Nothing," she replied guilelessly. "I guess he wasn't as badly hurt as we thought."
    But I saw.... But he seemed to be all right, although injured, and Stu seemed to have moved away from death's door as well.
    Obviously, he'd seen wrong.

    Holly Shapiro was working on her third double bourbon of the evening, watching the television reports as order was slowly restored in Boston.
    "Gimme another one. I know what's gonna happen," she muttered. "They're gonna come out of this, and everyone's gonna say, 'look how they saved the city.' Look how they saved the—? Like this would be going on if they weren't here! Why doesn't anybody get this?!" She took a drink. "All I'm really looking for, is—"
    "A chance to show them all?" asked the man on the next stool.
    "Exactly!"
    "Maybe we can help."
    "I doubt that," she muttered, tossing down the rest of the drink.
    "You'd be surprised at what we're capable of."
    She turned and squinted at him. "Who's this 'we'? And why does your face looked all scrunched like that?"**

  **Editor's Note: For those who don't recall, this mean's Felix Javelin's mucking about.

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