Star Harbor Nights

Her ensemble would have stood out on a crowded daylit street or in a restaurant, but at night, to a casual glance or at a distance, she was just another person dressed in black. The lightweight outfit worked to her advantage when slipping through a dark alley or hiding in a shadowed doorway. It didn't offer much physical protection, but it was an outfit she could move in.

Away from the brightly lit party atmosphere of The Boulevard, the streets were quiet. She wondered, as she often had, if she had picked the wrong city in which to start her career. She had figured Star Harbor's large supply of masked crimefighters indicated an equally large demand, but what if it was too crowded? What if the market, as it were, was saturated?

Maybe it had just been her bad luck to pick a beat that was already over-patrolled. On an impulse, she pulled a pen-like device from its holster in the seam of her tights. Clicking a button on the end, she spoke into it. "Note to self: find out how established heroes plan their patrol routes. Do they get together and compare notes, to make sure they're not stepping on each other's capes, or something?"

Once she established some contacts, she would have to look into that. If they didn't already have some kind of formal program, she would have to get one started... and even if they did have one, she was sure she could improve upon it.

Her organizational skills were, in her mind, a superpower in their own right... a thing of legend and beauty.

She had just decided to give up trolling for crime and begin trolling for veteran heroes when she noticed the church door. It was a small Catholic church in the old style, complete with leering gargoyles and big stained glass windows. She'd passed by it every night for the past two weeks and never given it a second glance... or more than a second glance, anyway. The architecture was impressive.

From the street, it might have seemed like only a shadow, but from her vantage point it was clear that one of the huge double doors was pushed slightly inward... just enough for a person to slip through. It seemed odd to her that an intruder would have used the front entrance when there had to be other doors, smaller and not as exposed... but it seemed even less likely that anyone with a legitimate reason to be in a church so late would have come in through the front door.

She took the stone stairs quickly but cautiously, trying to keep her body out of the line of sight of the crack in the door. The only reason she could think of for intruders to leave it ajar like that was if they were posting a lookout. It wasn't a great reason, of course... it would have been better to simply not attract attention in the first place.

The doorway was unguarded. She slipped between the thick bronze-sheathed oak doors without touching them... and gasped.

The lights were off, except for the obligatory emergency lights around the edges and the glowing EXIT signs they lead to. This only made the interior of the church more eerie, though, for inscribed all over the walls--and even trailing across the crucifix with its gruesome corpus--were rune-like symbols that glowed orange and red, bathing the room in a soft glow like firelight.

She walked down the center aisle through the nave towards the altar, looking all around. The symbols were formed in broad, crude strokes that reminded her of the writing on a cuneiform tablet. There only seemed to be five distinct signs, but they didn't simply repeat one after another. She realized she still had her pen recorder in her hand. She held the thicker end up to her eye, hit the video button, and began tracing the path of symbols around the room with it, speaking her thoughts aloud to be recorded alongside the images.

"It appears to be a word or word, written in luminous letters in some kind of ancient script, language unknown... possibly Phoenician in origin," she said, then added, "Uh, that is to say, more immediately Phoenician in origin than every non-pictographic alphabet in current use."

"Possibly some form of proto-Hebraic," she added, feeling the need to add a slightly more insightful insight to the record.

"The characters appear to repeat themselves endlessly," she said, swinging her gaze around to follow the ribbon-like script that wound around the walls, over carved wooden icons and across stained glass windows, sometimes dipping down and sometimes climbing up, but never overlapping any other itertaion. "I don't see a beginning or an end... just the patter of the same few letters flowing into each other. It's possible the whole pattern is one big... naked man."

The camera pen fell from her hands when she found the viewfinder filled with the chest and the lower half of the face of a large, lithely muscled man. He wasn't quite naked, but dressed in baggy trousers. His skin was dark, though the weird red half-light may have exaggerated that. There was no hair on his head, or anywhere else that she could see. What struck her the most about his appearance, though, were the glowing symbols that decorated his skin... glowing red lines that seemed at once to be sunk into and floating above his skin.

"What are you doing here?" he asked fiercely. His voice was not quite a growl. It was low and undeniably tinged with menace... though that impression could have had more to do with his appearance.

"Uh, I'm here for the Dowd-Kelley wedding," she said, giggling a little nervously. "Am I late, or early?"

Then she stomped on his foot and sprang away, rolling to the side into a defensive crouch.

The mystery man gave no more reaction than a grunt to the foot stomp. She cursed her decision to stick with soft soles and resolved to find a compromise between stealth and combat utility.

"You shouldn't be here," the man said, reaching out with one hand as he stalked towards her. There was a natural swaying grace in his movements, unusually so for a man of his size. She guessed he was a highly skilled fighter... and the red glow in his eyes that matched the runes on his skin held the uncomfortable suggestion of more than human abilities.

"Why, am I ruining your evil plot?" she said. She put her hands up, ready to grab or block anything he threw at her... assuming it was a martial arts move and not some kind of exotic energy. She had weapons, but she wasn't ready to escalate things to the next level without knowing what that would entail from her opponent. "What are the symbols for?"

"If you mean the ones on me, that's a long story," he said, advancing on her. "The ones on the walls... I don't know about those."

"Right, and they just happened to come in your favorite color," she said. She retreated from him until she felt her calf back into the side of a pew. She hopped up onto the bare bench seat.

"Okay, so I've got some idea what they might do, but if that's the case, I really don't think you want to be here to find out."

"You're not getting rid of me that easily," she said. "Don't come any closer."

"Look, I'm not going to hurt you," he said, continuing to press forward. She stepped up onto the railing-like seat back to give herself more room to maneuver. Her perch may have seemed precarious, but she was confident of her balance, and this gave her more height, which she could use as much as she could more space.

As he came on, she aimed a kick at his head. Lightning-fast, his arm shot out and caught her by the ankle. In the instant his eyes were focused on her foot, she snapped her other leg up and around to connect with his jaw. He went down sideways, releasing his grip on her leg. She managed a soft landing on her legs and one hand, facing her opponent.

He sprang lightly to his feet. If he was hurt, it didn't show.

"Good move," he said, chuckling. He went into a fighting stance now. The two of them circled each other... her, warily. He looked like he was enjoying himself. He said, "You realize this is a misunderstanding... do you know what a Code 181 is?"

"Police dispatch for hero-fighting-hero," she said. She threw a jab at his stomach. It was more of a feint than anything else... she'd seen his reflexes when he intercepted her kick... but he accepted the hit without any notice. "I've read the files on every publically registered hero in the state... I don't recall seeing one for you."

"Not all heroes are in the registry," he countered.

He swung at her, a broad, powerful punch with a lot of weight behind it. She was sure he was holding back, though. She sidestepped it easily. She knew he could move that body much quicker than he was.

"Why wouldn't you be, if you're a 'good guy'?" she asked.

She caught his next swing with both her hands around his wrist. She had no thought of stopping that freight train as he had stopped her kick. Instead, she flung all her own weight into a backwards roll, catapulting the large man into the front of the foremost pew. The wood cracked and splintered with the impact, and he grunted again.

"Well, are you registered?" he asked, getting back to his feet still with no sign of lasting pain.

"You've got clear parahuman traits," she said. She didn't volunteer the fact that she didn't have any herself, which was why she was not registered. "If you're not in the registry, you're breaking the law... if the best story you can come up with is that you're a heroic scofflaw, you might as well not try."

"There's more of us 'scofflaws' than you might think," he said. "But look... let's save this conversation for some other time. You can't hurt me, and with your skill level I probably couldn't fight you effectively without really cutting loose, which would hurt you. So just take my word for it, for now, and..."

She let out a small gasp as she spotted her camera pen lying on the floor near his feet. Its monetary value was unimportant, but it would give her a record of the runes if they faded out... and it contained notes and files that could be used to identify her, which would be potentially embarrassing. She needed to recover it.

Focusing her mind on its position, the position of her attacker, and herself, she flung herself into a forward somersault that ended with her hand around the pen and her foot in the man's crotch. She bounced back to her feet with a feeling of triumph as he doubled over, pain wracking his smooth features.

"Found a place I can hurt you," she said.

"No, not really," the man said, releasing his protective grip on his midsection. "I just don't like the implications of being able to shrug off a shot there. I mean, it hurts like the, uh, dickens for all of a second..."

"Let's try this again," she said. She circled him, projecting a confidence in her stance that seemed far from jujstified in her mind. "What are the symbols for?"

"Let's try this again... I don't know, but probably nothing good."

"So you're not the mastermind here," she said. "Who sent you?"

"Nobody sent me! Well, somebody... look, I'm a hero. They call me the Fire-Eater," he said. "My real name's Ray. Ask around. Most of the local maskers know me."

"Well, there'd be an easy way to check your credentials... if you'd bothered to have any," she said. "Why should I trust you you?"

"Lady, in the time we've been sparring, I could have killed you at any moment if I wanted to," he said.

"That's real heroic-sounding," she said.

"It is when you consider that that you hit me in the crotch!" Ray said.

"For all the good it did," she said.

"If you were a man, you'd understand that's beside the point," he said. "Look, I told you I don't know what those rune things are for... but I'm sure you've noticed a certain, uh, superficial resemblance to my own personal body art, and if that means what I think it means, then I really don't think it's a good idea for you to be here when and if they go off. I'm sure you can take care of yourself in a fight and all, but it would really be better if I handle this one."

"Why, because you're a big strong man and I'm a little girl, or because you have superpowers and I don't?" she said indignantly, forgetting for the moment not to admit she was powerless. Her rising anger at his patronizing attitude seemed strangely to be matched by a rising intinsity in the red glow all around her. She had just registed that the symbols she could see seemed to be contracting in on themselves, shrinking to about half their original size, before they exploded outward in a blaze of white light and the whole world seemed to catch fire at once.

"Actually," Ray said with an impressive measure of kindness, "it's because I'm fireproof and you're not."

He grabbed her by the hand... she let him... and they ran down aisle towards the door. His long legs gave him a better stride than her, and he fairly pulled her along, her feet barely touching the ground. Although the fire was rapidly spreading, the strange letters had only been on the walls, not the floor or ceiling, so though the heat was unbearable they made it out untouched.

"If you're the Fire-Eater," she asked, rubbing the hand he'd clutched, "can't you do anything?"

"I can absorb small fires without a problem, or big ones if they're not spreading faster than I can take them in," he said. Now that they were out on the street, she could see that her initial impression of dark skin had not been far off. He was an olive tone, and deeply tanned. His loose-fitting pants were a dark reddish-orange. "This is more than anybody can handle, I think. The fire department is going to have their hands full just keeping it from spreading."

"We should call them, then," she said, pulling out a slimline phone. It was a completely different model from the one she'd left with her civilian clothes, with a completely different account. She didn't want anything to connect her public and private identities.

She felt his eyes upon her as she dialed emergency services. She gave the address and the important details as rapidly as she could while still being intelligible.

"So, what's your nick?" Ray asked her after she wrapped up the call.

"My what?"

"Your handle... code name," he said. "Like, Fire-Eater... or Champion, you know?"

"Oh," she said. "Um... I don't have one yet. But my name is Perfect."

"Ha," he said. "Cute. That's a good line, I'm going to have to remember it."

"What? That's not a line," she said, somewhat irritably. "My name is Perfect. Well, if you want to get technical, I guess it is a nickname."

"I knew it... so what's your name, really?"

"Perfection."

He just stared at her.

"Whatever... I want to get back to my headquarters so I can start researching these symbols in my crime library," she said, holding up the camera.

"Wait... you have a headquarters and a crime library but not a code name or a real costume?"

"What are you talking about? This is my costume," Perfect said. She'd spent a lot of time figuring out something that worked well for night patrol and didn't look utterly ridiculous. She wasn't trying to impress anybody, of course, but if her opponents didn't take her seriously, she'd have to work harder to subdue them.

"A t-shirt that says 'This Is My Costume' would be more of a costume than what you're wearing," he said. "You look like every other female martial artist/vigilante since that movie about that ninja assassin chick came out."

"Well, I don't watch a lot of movies, so I don't know what you're talking about," Perfect said. "And like you're one to talk in the costume department... you're barely dressed. Look, you don't even have shoes."

"My outfit is simple but it's part of a unique and distinctive look," he said. "You look like just another Elektra-Lite."

"Do you really want to be standing here critiquing my outfit when the fire trucks show up?" she said. "I mean, unregistered fire mutant outside the scene of an arson..."

"Well, I'm not a mutant, but I take your point," Ray said. "Hey, you should come with me."

"Because you're such wonderful company?"

"Because it's traditional," he said. "Heroes meet, have some kind of misunderstanding, fight each other, then team up and save the day."

"Is that really traditional?"

"Well, it's never happened to me," Ray admitted. "But it happens all the time in the comics."

"I wouldn't know," Perfect said. "Anyway, good luck with life... and finding a shirt... and everything, but I really want to get a better look at what's on this camera."

"Oh, okay," Ray said, looking down at his bare feet. "Well, uh, if you change your mind, I'm sure you'll know where to find me."

"I will?" Perfect said.

"Yeah, it's the biggest crimefighter and superhero hangout in town," Ray said, grinning knowingly. "Of course, you know all about it."

"Of course," Perfect agreed. "But, uh, you say it would be traditional for us to team up now?"

"I did say that."

"Well, who am I to buck tradition?" she said.