Lieutenant Jordan spun his car sharply to the
left. Hawkgirl was up ahead, skimming
over the cars on the street. Less than
seventy-two hours on Earth and Shayera had already mapped out a large portion
of the Midway roads. At least it was
easy to spot her. Between the crash and
the chase from the other night, Shayera’s flight uniform had taken a
beating. The dark navy blue had faded
from the dirt and there were several spots where the fabric had torn. So she was quite glad to hear that Alice Emmett,
the commissioner’s wife, would be proud to design a new uniform for the winged
avenger. Jordan thought that Mrs.
Emmett had been reading too much about Gotham, because the uniform had the same
colors as Robin. Or a traffic
light. Yellow strapless top, dark green
pants, and red boots with a yellow stripe down the middle.
Shayera had received the gift quite graciously. It was lighter in weight than her old
uniform—which in turn made it easier to fly in. She took her old belt—it had a hawk-emblem in the center—and her
mask and flew off to patrol the skies.
Emmett had fixed a radio in the belt so she could hear the dispatch
below. A few hours in the air, she
could hear Jordan shouting to his men.
“Seven Hells, what is with this town and thieves? Oh well.”
Shayera listened to the radio.
The robber had been cornered in an old warehouse, but it could be hours
before the police could search everywhere.
“With my eyes, I might be able to see something different.” She adjusted her wings and flew towards the
warehouse, mace gripped in her hand.
* * *
Hawkgirl had an advantage the police didn’t. Jordan and his men could only see from the
ground up. Oh, they had a police
helicopter, but it was controlled by a human that didn’t think the way a bird
could. Humans tend to spot moving
objects or bright colors when looking down.
Hawkgirl’s eyes were trained to detect more subtle hints—an open door, a
light in a window, even the faint waves of heat coming from a car’s engine.
So it was no surprise when Hawkgirl spotted these
things that she was able to pin down the thief’s location. Jordan and his men were in the wrong wing of
the building! They’d never find him. “I could fly down and tell Jordan…”
Shayera dismissed the idea. Why share credit with Jordan? He didn’t even like her.
Hawkgirl lifted a window in the skylight and quietly
flew down to land on some crates. She
could hear the thief and smell the thief, but she could not see
the thief. Where was he?
BANG!
“Whose there?”
The man was shooting randomly. He must have seen the open skylight and was
paranoid. “The angle of those
bullets…he’s to my left, but there’s no way I can get to him without getting
shot at.” She looked back at the
skylight. A crowd of pigeons and
sparrows had settled on the edge of window.
They were looking in her direction…
BANG!
“I know you’re here!”
“Seven Hells!” spat Hawkgirl. She had reverted to speaking in
Thanagarian. “I need some sort of
distraction—”
Her voice was drowned by the cries of two-dozen birds
diving at the robber. He raised his
arms upward to shield his face—which meant his gun was pointed away from
Hawkgirl! She didn’t waste a
moment. The mace hit the robber,
sending him falling onto the crates on a lower level of the warehouse.
Hawkgirl turned to a sparrow perched on a
handlebar. “You can understand me?” she
said in Thanagarian.
The bird said nothing. Hawkgirl tried again. She
held out her hand. “Perch on my
finger.” The sparrow did so
immediately. “Ah. You don’t have a language but you can
understand my commands. This could be
useful.” She looked at the motley
flock. They were perched on the pipes
above her, waiting for a new command.
“Follow me.”
Hawkgirl jumped over the handlebar and landed on the
crates. She stepped on the gun—its
cartridge was empty and was no use to its owner anymore. He was running up a head, carrying a black
bag and rushing towards the exit. “Stop
him!” she shouted.
Her flock—it was her flock—surrounded the
thief and taunted them. They rushed at
him and grazed his body. They flapped
their wings in his face. They picked at
his clothes and hair. “Ah! Get off me!” He dropped the bag and began waving his arms, trying to hit the
birds as they flew by.
Hawkgirl rushed at him. She slammed her mace into his shoulder. That may have been a mistake.
The thief grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her to the ground. She was so surprised that her mace fell out
of her hands and rolled away from her.
Behind her mask, Shayera was alarmed.
With no updrafts or anything to fly off of, she couldn’t get any
lift. She would have to fight this on
foot.
WHAM!
Hawkgirl wobbled back a few steps. This human outweighed her twofold and was in
a rage. He punched her two more times,
once in the gut and then upward at the chin.
She found herself bleeding from the mouth. The birds, without any new commands, were sitting up in the
rafters, watching. In less than thirty
seconds, Hawkgirl found herself on the ground, bruised and bleeding. Down below, she could hear Jordan and him
men racing up towards them. “Hang on
Hawkgirl! We’re coming!”
The robber turned his head at the direction of the
shouting. Hawkgirl jumped on that
opportunity. One solid punch into his
jaw, another into the lower back. She
kicked at his chest, knocking the wind of the burglar. Another kick hit his temple. She kicked and she punch and she
screamed. The scream didn’t sound human. But the birds in the rafters understood it
and shuddered. It was the sound they
all heard right before some great raptor wrapped talons over their necks.
It was a hawk’s kill-cry.
Jordan and his team heard it. All of them but Jordan stopped dead in their
tracks. He rushed forward and opened
the door separating himself from Hawkgirl and her prey. He was shocked to find what he saw.
Hawkgirl had gone berserk. Both she and the robber were bleeding. But Hawkgirl had gone too far.
Jordan saw why the thief was on the ground, whimpering. He was crutched in a fetal position, but his
arms were held out at awkward angles.
Jordan lowered his gun, to disgusted to do anything else.
Hawkgirl had broken his two arms.
* * *
“What did you do to him?” shouted Jordan as
the robber was carried into an ambulance.
“Thanagarian justice,” was her only reply.
