Star Harbor Nights

Perfect shrieked. The Huntsman whirled around, his eyes immediately locking on her.

Three things happened at almost exactly the same time: he loosed a crossbow bolt, she went down on one knee, and fired her ball launcher at him. It took Perfect's mind a few cycles to decompress the sequence of events enough to realize that she hadn't been hit and her metal sphere had smashed his crossbow to pieces.

With an almost bestial roar, the Dock Shadow threw off several of his attackers. That turned the Huntsman's attention away from Perfect for the moment. She dived for the switches, flipping them all at once. There was a loud click and a hum, and then light flooded the warehouse. It was painful enough for her own eyes, adjusted to the darkness as a normal human's will. As she'd hoped, the effect was far more pronounced on Huntsman's animal-like enhanced senses. He reeled, clutching his face and screaming.

The Bone Lords, while far from being blinded, were caught unprepared and Shadow was able to break free of their mass. He threw himself at the Huntsman, the more deadly foe, before he could recover. A series of vicious jabs to the villain's upper body and a brutal uppercut put him on the floor. He immediately started to rise again, but Shadow slammed him back down with a boot to the solar plexus before rounding on the Bone Lords.

They had other things on their minds, though... as one, they began moaning horribly, falling to the floor and clawing at their skin as if it burned them.

"It's happening again!" Perfect yelled as acrid yellow smoke began curling away from the flesh of the stricken cultists.

"Anyway to stop it?" the Dock Shadow asked, though the thrashing bodies were clearly past the point of help. They seemed to be alive, for the moment... but had wasted away to the point where they clearly shouldn't have been.

"You got a magic wand stashed away somewhere?" she replied, covering her mouth and nose. On the open street, with only a handful of victims, she hadn't even noticed an odor. In the poorly ventilated warehouse with more than three dozen victims' worth of rapidly decomposing bodies, she was choking on it. She was only on the outskirts of the battle field... Shadow was in the thick of it.

He slapped some kind of breathing apparatus over his mouth and immediately went to work securing the one unaffected antagonist with steel cuffs on his hands and wrists. He patted the Huntsman down for further weapons, removing another two knives and a collapsible pistol-style crossbow, as well as a selection of throwing darts.

By the time he was finished, the spell afflicting the Bone Lords had finished its grisly work, leaving nothing but skeletons and a lingering odor. Perfect approached cautiously, though the noxious fumes seemed to have largely dissipated.

"Is it okay if I call this in?" she asked him. "I've got something I want to try."

Shadow responded with a half-nod, half-shrug. He pulled the bound villain up roughly into a sitting position. Perfect reached up behind her mask and pressed a small stud. An almost inaudible hiss came on in her ear. "Call police," she said, then listened to the sound of dialing.

"Hi! I'm... a vigilante with the Dock Shadow," she said. "We've got the Huntsman tied up in a warehouse. I think you can nail him on use of a costume in commission of a crime, unlawful entry..."

The Huntsman, meanwhile, had begun chuckling.

"What's so funny?" Shadow asked him.

"...assault with a deadly weapon..." Perfect continued.

"I came here to kill the Bone Lords," he said. "They're all dead. I can still collect on the contract."

"...and... thirty-nine counts of murder by exotic means," Perfect said. "Yeah. The remains are all right here. We didn't see him do them, but he's taking credit for it. And I know it's technically the D.A.'s job, but you could probably get lying in wait as a special circumstance, too. What? I'm with the Dock Shadow. I'm... uh... Black... Rabbit? Yes, the Black Rabbit. Well, I don't sound black because I'm not. It's just a name. Well, how the hell does that make me racist?"

"Okay, because first of all, Shadow Rabbit is just a stupid name, and second of all, this is more like a one time team-up thing so it doesn't matter if our names match or not. Look, I've had a really long day... do you want this damn mercenary or not?"

"Can we wrap this up?" Shadow asked her.

"You got the address?" Perfect asked the dispatcher. "Fine. He's not going anywhere."

She flicked off her mask phone.

"Black Rabbit?" Shadow asked her.

"It just kind of came to me," she said. "I mean, my costume's black, and I do have a..." she glanced back at the spot where her stuffed rabbit should have been peeking over her shoulder. "Oh my God, where's Mr. Buttons?"

"I think you've taken casualties," the elder vigilante said mirthlessly, pointing back towards the spot where Perfect had stood when the Huntsman first spotted her. The stuffed rabbit hung from a cork announcement board, impaled on the crossbow bolt that had been meant for her.

Perfect went white as a sheet. The warehouse suddenly seemed to have grown very large around her. She was dimly aware that the Dock Shadow was striding very purposefully in the direction of the cork board... the direction of Mr. Buttons. He was actually reaching out, reaching towards...

"No!" Perfect yelled. The space around her returned to normal size immediately. Almost apologetically, but still a little shrilly, she added, "I... don't like people touching my bunnies."

"Understood," he said.

She walked over to the skewered toy, eyeing the shaft with trepidation.

"Now, if I take the bolt out, he'll lose beans for sure," she said. "But if I leave it in, it might make the hole larger."

"Do you want to be here when the police arrive?" Shadow asked her. "We've got nothing in particular to fear, of course, but things like rooms full of skeletal remains tend to make cops... twitchy, and black masks and uniforms aren't the most reassuring things you can wear."

"No, I... I've just had Mr. Buttons since I was nine," she said. "He's kind of important to me."

"Maybe next time you should leave him at home."

"Maybe," Perfect said. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Okay. Battlefield triage time... brace yourself, Mr. Bu... um, I mean... you know, never mind what I mean." She grabbed hold of the bolt where it protruded from the rabbit's chest, snapped it and then pulled him clean off as fast as she could, closing her hand around the openings. With her other hand, she fumbled a small roll of medical tape out of the pouch on her hip, then managed to wrap a bandage around the stuffed rabbit's midsection without losing any of the filler.

"There," she said. "I guess that will do." She looked up at the expressionless cowl of the Dock Shadow. Even his mouth was still hidden beneath the breathing mask, but she had the sense that he was smirking. She sighed. "Go ahead... say whatever it is that you're thinking."

"Are you going to kiss it better?"

"Not in front of you, I'm not," she said, putting Mr. Buttons back in his carrier.

He lead her in silence back to the black van. Once they were moving, and she'd recovered a bit from her shock, she said, "So... you're going to ask me about the skeletonized cult members?"

 "That's not my beat," he said. "You're looking into it." He didn't make it a question.

 "Yeah," she said. "I... we've got a few leads. Ray and I do," she added, thinking he might imagine she was referring to Mr. Buttons and her.

 "There is something else I want to talk to you about, though," Shadow said.

"Is it about Ray? Or the bunny? Because I don't think I can handle a lecture right now..."

"No, it's not," he said. "We've got a special responsibility, you and I, and the others like us. We that don't fly or bounce bullets. So much more rides on us than it does on the gods and the mutants, the wizards and the aliens."

"Isn't that kind of backwards?" Perfect asked. "They're the ones with the power... if things go really bad, they're the ones that can save the day."

"You mean, if another one of them makes a mess, they can clean it up. That's part of the problem, Perfect. So many of humanity's self-proclaimed protectors spend all their time protecting us from each other... and most of us can't see any other way things could be. We're told they have these great gifts that they're obligated to use, but so many of them are so destructive that the people wielding them can't find anything to do with them but get into fights. Somewhere along the line we lost sight of the fact that we all have gifts. Some of us can do certain things much better than others. Some of us can do things that others can't at all. Is there really more difference between somebody who can throw lightning bolts and somebody with a regular talent... like say, perfect pitch... than there is between any two superhumans, or any two gifted thinkers?"

"Of course there is," Perfect asserted. "There's a big difference between being a piano prodigy and being a superhuman."

"I think that's the problem," Shadow said. "The label 'superhuman.' Who first decided that when you start throwing lightning bolts around, you stop being human? Who decided that?"

"I think it's mostly a matter of impact," Perfect said. "Groups like the Pantheon of Heroes, or the Champion League... they've saved millions of lives. Depending on who you believe, they might have even saved the whole world a few times. It takes a different kind of gift to have that kind of impact... that's what makes them more than human."

"Fine... but think about how many of those 'superhumans' would be alive today... would even have been born... if not for things like antiseptic surgical techniques, safe and widespread vaccinations, antibiotics, organ transplants... how many lives have those things saved? Odds are that if not for pioneers like Lister and Pasteur, there's not a single person walking around today who would still have been born."

"Surely the human race would have survived without those advances," Perfect said. "Granted, a lot of people would have died, but that would have lowered the population density and slowed the spread of disease."

"I didn't suggest otherwise," Shadow said. "But do you imagine that in a world that drastically altered, any two people would exist, reproduce, and have the same offspring as they would have otherwise? I'll say it again: nobody who's walking around today would be here if it weren't for the gifts of the 'mere humans' who gave us modern medicine."

"There's still a difference," Perfect said stubbornly.

"Only in your head... and in the public eye," he said. "And what about ordinary people? All those heroes had parents. They had teachers that gave them the basic skills of living. They had mundane police officers and fire fighters keeping their neighborhoods safe. They had friends and relatives that shaped their values and their worldviews, same as anybody else's."

"But all those people... they're interchangeable. If one person wasn't there to teach fifth grade, somebody else would do the job."

"The exact same way?"

"No, but..."

"Didn't you have a teacher that really influenced you? At least one? Do you really think that he or she was interchangeable?"

"No, but..."

"And are the people who run around in tights any less replaceable? When all the current heroes retire or fall, is that the end... no more heroes in the world, never to be another?"

"You don't like losing arguments, do you?" Perfect asked.

"No one that I know likes losing anything," Shadow returned. "But this isn't about winning. This is about a simple, fundamental truth that has the power to save your life. You know... I was invited to join the Champion League."

"What did you tell them?"

"I turned them down," he said. "Told them there was nothing for me to do in their organization, and all it would do is take me off the streets where I can do some good."

"What happened?"

"They wouldn't take no for an answer. Starshard grabbed me off the street and shifted me into their fortress. I decided to humor them... just long enough for them to see that I was right. There was nothing for me to do in their underground laboratories or energy containment zones. There was nothing for me to do on their space missions or their disaster relief efforts. I pulled my weight... don't think I'm saying I can't stand shoulder to shoulder with them... but at the end of the day, any experienced hero could have done the same. I brought nothing that wasn't already being brought... and things on the streets and in the harbor were deteriorating in my absence. Any hero could do what I was doing with the League... but only I could do what I do on the streets."

"The worst of it was," he continued, "I had worked for years to get to that point. There were others in the Champion League at that point who'd only just been handed their powers a year ago."

"So you feel what... bitter?"

"No, not bitter," he corrected dispassionately. "I don't begrudge them their good fortune any more than I do the person who wins the lottery. If they choose to use their gifts for some version of good, that's great. The thing is... lottery winners tend to blow through their cash quickly. They spend frivolously and conspicuously. They might have spent their whole life dreaming of having such wealth, but once they get it, they don't tend to think things through."

"So what are you saying? You're like old money and they're new money?"

"Not quite... 'old money' people might be taught about the value of a dollar and told they have a responsibility, but these are often just words to them. It's only the people who earn their own fortune that really understand what it means."

"And metaphorically speaking, that's us?"

"That's us. That's what I meant when I said we have a special responsibility. We don't get a costume handed to us. We earn it. If a criminal quakes with fear when you enter a room, it's not because he sees your eyes glowing or your fists crackling. It's because of what you made for yourself," he said. "The fact that we have to struggle to be able to fight by the sides of the living gods doesn't make us less than them, it makes us more. It makes us the role models, the leaders, the teachers."

"But no amount of trying or striving is going to change the fact that if I fall off a building, I'm going to break my neck."

"Solution: don't fall off a building. You could have killed yourself tonight, trying to measure up to a standard that doesn't exist," he said. "Is a teacher any less inspiring if she can't put out a burning building? Is a firefighter any less of a lifesaver for never putting out blazing oil fields overseas? Do you think that what you do won't matter if you can't leap tall buildings in a single bound? The people who can and do play tag on the rooftops, jumping from building to building... do you think they're going to make street pizza of themselves trying to fly or teleport?"

"This seems like a cop-out... you just told me we can be their equals, but now you're saying not being their equal doesn't make me any less."

"When you get right down to it, nobody is anybody's equal," he said. "Not in ability. Not even in potential. I'm talking about worth... and in that regard you're more than the equal of anybody with a set of powers in their tights. The fact that you've spent your life bringing yourself to this point... purposefully, consciously... that makes you worth any ten of them... whether you can run rooftops or not. That's why you have a responsibility... to keep yourself alive. Unlike those who were handed their powers and a costumed identity, you're an investment. You owe it to yourself and the world to make sure you're around long enough to pay off."

"Do you give this speech to all the new vigilantes?" Perfect asked him.

"No," he told her. "Only the ones who are worth it."