by Lucas Flint
TW shot me a warning look. “Don’t.”
I held up my hands to show that I wasn’t serious, though if I could have gone out into the crowd and picked up a few of those stickers, I probably would have in all honesty.
“There’s more than enough for everyone,” said Baron Glory, waving the stickers back and forth above his head, “so everyone, please just settle down and form orderly lines where I land so everyone can get—”
A gunshot suddenly went off in street below. It was loud, sounding like it came from right next to me, but I didn’t see anyone on the roof of Jerry’s Pizza Place aside from myself and TW.
But I had no time to wonder where the gunshot came from, because before the startled eyes of every person in the area, Baron Glory fell to the street below like a rock.
CHAPTER TWO
The crowd backed away quickly to form a small open circle where Baron Glory fell. He hit the street hard, landing flat on his back on the asphalt road. Even from a distance, I could see that there was no life in his eyes, though I couldn’t see much more of him than that due to all of the people standing around him in shock. The sticker sheets he’d been holding fell as well, the sheets scattering in the wind on their way down, but hardly anyone paid attention to the stickers which, moments before, had had the attention of everyone in the street.
Then one of the people in the crowd—a man who I recognized as Dr. Joel Gonzales, the doctor my family went to whenever we got sick—darted forward and, kneeling beside Baron Glory, checked his neck and felt his pulse.
Then Dr. Gonzales looked around and said, in a loud voice, “Baron Glory is dead! He was shot and killed!”
All of a sudden, the crowd broke into a frenzy of screams and terror. People ran this way and that, desperately looking for shelter from the shooter who had taken out Baron Glory. The police officers, on the other hand, began trying to herd people into some kind of order, yelling orders and telling people to calm down, but it was no use. Fear had descended upon the crowd like a ghost and there was nothing that a handful of police officers could do to keep the crowd of hundreds in order.
I, on the other hand, moved away from the billboard and looked around again. “If Baron Glory was shot, then his shooter has to be somewhere nearby, right?”
“Right,” said TW. “And I think I know where he is.”
“You do?” I said, looking at TW in surprise. “How?”
“I followed the trajectory of the bullet,” said TW. He pointed to the building next to this one. “I saw it come from the upper windows of that apartment building right there, though I did not see who the shooter himself was.”
“All right,” I said, nodding. “I’m going after the killer before he can get away.”
Ignoring the frenzied cries from the crowd, I flew from the roof of Jerry’s Pizza Place down to the alleyways behind it. Landing on the trash-strewn street, I saw the back door of the apartment building open silently and a man step out of it, closing the door behind him on his way out.
I had no idea who the man was. He was tall and thin, probably even thinner than me, and wore all black, like a sniper. The only thing he wore that wasn’t black was the mechanical eyepiece over his right eye, which probably helped him aim his gun. Speaking of gun, he carried a guitar case in his other hand, which I figured was how he was transporting his sniper rifle.
“Hey, you!” I shouted, pointing at the man. “Stop right there, killer!”
The shooter, however, just took down the street faster than I expected him to. He rounded a corner and disappeared from my sight.
“Playing hard to get, huh?” I said. “I’m not going to give up that easily.”
I flew across the street and around the corner, where I found the sniper already halfway down the alleyway. Drawing a silver disk from the pouch attached to my belt, I threw the disk at the ground. The disk bounced off the street and walls and headed directly toward the shooter’s head.
But the shooter whirled around and blocked the disk with his guitar case, sending the disk flying harmlessly off to the side. Then the shooter pulled a pistol out of his belt and fired two shots at me before I could react.
I flew upwards, just barely avoiding the bullets. It forced me to slow down a little, just enough for the shooter to disappear around another corner from my sight.
Growling in frustration, I took to the skies and flew above the buildings. I immediately spotted the shooter below, who was running down another alleyway as fast as his long legs could take him. I overtook him and landed directly in front of his path and held up my fist.
The shooter—who hadn’t even been looking where he was running—ran straight into my fist. He staggered backwards, cursing under his breath and grabbing at his face, while his eyepiece fell to the street, though I ignored it in order to focus on the shooter himself.
“You’re a fast one, I’ll give you that,” I said, putting my hands on my waist. “But you’re not fast enough to escape me. Since I’m a superhero, I’m going to give you a chance to surrender peacefully. And if you don’t give up, I’ll do a lot more than just let you run into my face.”
The shooter stopped staggering, but he kept rubbing his face. Nonetheless, he looked at me, revealing sharp green eyes that were full of amusement, of all things.
“Murder of Baron Glory?” said the shooter. He chuckled. “I didn’t kill anyone, pal. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
I tilted my head to the side. “You’re dressed in all black, have pretty good aim, and ran away from me as soon as I told you to stop. You even had an advanced eyepiece thing on your eye to help you aim. If you’re not guilty, you’re doing a great impression of someone who is. And besides, if you didn’t kill Baron Glory, then who did?”
The shooter suddenly pointed at me. “You did, of course.”
Before I could point out the obvious—namely, that I wasn’t the one with the gun here—the shooter pulled out a detonator from nowhere and pressed the red button on it.
The eyepiece on the street began blinking and beeping loudly, until, without warning, a bright light flashed from it. The light was blindingly bright, to the point where I literally couldn’t see anything. I threw my hands over my eyes, trying to keep myself from going blind, but even with both hands covering my eyes, I still felt the bright light burning them.
Finally, however, the light faded away, and after a couple of seconds, I lowered my hands to see what happened. As soon as I did, though, I wished I didn’t, because the shooter was gone and I stood all alone in the alleyway by myself, with the now-deactivated eyepiece the only evidence I had that the shooter had even been here.
CHAPTER THREE
“Where did he go?” I said, looking this way and that for the shooter. I turned in a complete circle on the spot, trying to find the shooter, but he seemed to have vanished into thin air like a ghost.
TW flashed next to me, a worried look on his face. “I don’t know. The light blinded me, too, and—”
“Wait, the light blinded you?” I said, looking at TW in disbelief. “How did the light blind you? You’re a freaking hologram.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t be blinded,” said TW. “Besides, what really matters is finding the killer.”
“Easier said than done,” I said, gesturing at the empty alleyway. “He’s nowhere to be seen. Of course, I guess it’s possible that he could have turned invisible and might still be here, but that’s pretty unlikely.”
“It appears that he got away,” said TW, folding his arms in front of his chest. “You barely kept up with him even when you knew where he was going. Now that he’s disappeared, I doubt you’ll have an easy time finding him.”
I scowled, but had to admit that TW had a point. There wasn’t really anywhere the shooter could have hidden in this alley, but that didn’t mean I would be able to find him. He seemed like a pretty professional shooter, so I bet he had all sorts of ways to sneak in and out of places without being seen. The thought of letting Baron Glory’s murderer get away sc
ott free like that was beyond frustrating, but at the same time, there wasn’t anything I could do about it at the moment.
Instead, I bent over and picked up the eyepiece and looked it over. “Well, he left this behind, so we have at least one lead, though not a big one.”
“Yes, I’ve never seen anything quite like it before,” said TW as I put the flash bomb in my pocket. “Perhaps it holds a clue as to the identity of the man who killed Baron Glory.”
“Or maybe even the identity of the guy who hired him to kill Baron in the first place,” I said, “because that shooter guy didn’t look like he was doing this on his own. He has to be an assassin. Like Lethal Injection.”
“He probably is,” said TW. “Unfortunately, I don’t know who could possibly have hired him to kill Baron Glory. It doesn’t help that I barely know a thing about the superhero himself.”
“Baron Glory does have a ton of enemies,” I said thoughtfully. “Titan King wasn’t the only supervillain he’s defeated. Maybe one of his old enemies hired this assassin guy to kill him.”
“That is likely,” said TW. “The only thing I don’t understand, though, is why he said you’re the killer. You obviously did not shoot Baron Glory with a gun. You don’t even have a gun, for Pete’s sake.”
“He was probably just saying that to confuse me,” I said, shaking my head. “Probably not worth worrying about, honestly. The main point is that he got away before we could find out anything about him. Jerk.”
“Perhaps he’ll show up again sometime,” said TW. “Assuming, of course, that he doesn’t have any other targets in—”
TW was interrupted by the sounds of footsteps beating against the concrete, followed by shouts from nearby. All of a sudden, half a dozen police officers appeared at the other end of the alley, armed with guns, which they immediately pointed at me as soon as they saw me. TW, of course, vanished as soon as the police appeared, leaving me alone against six officers who looked more than ready to shoot me if I did anything.
“Hey, you!” one of the officers shouted. “Hands up! Don’t move a muscle!”
“Yeah, no thanks,” I said, taking a step back, “I know you’re looking for the shooter, who isn’t here, but—”
The police officers immediately started shooting at me. I flew straight up into the air and away from the alleyway as fast as I could. I heard the officers continuing to shoot after me, as well as ordering me to come back, but I ignored the orders and flew as far away from the alley as I could. While I would have loved to stay and tell the police that they got the wrong guy, I knew that the police were obligated to arrest me on the basis of my illegal superhero status, so I had every reason to run away from them, rather than stay and try to tell them what I knew.
But I needed some time to think, so I made a course for the one place in the city I knew I would be safe: Target Practice.
-
Thanks to the Injectors, my old training site, Warehouse 19, was no longer suitable for training and practice. The big hole in the wall, plus the destroyed office, kind of made it hard to train in private, not helped by the fact that its location was no longer really much of a secret, given how the police went there to arrest the Injectors I defeated.
That wouldn’t have been much of a problem, but TW insisted that my training was far from over, so we looked for a new place in Rumsfeld where I would be able to train without being seen. It took us the better part of a week, but we eventually found one place that fit the criteria we were looking for: A place I called Target Practice.
Located just outside Rumsfeld, Target Practice was a series of abandoned storage buildings surrounded by very tall barb wire fence and a faded sign that said ‘KEEP OUT.’ From what I could gather, Target Practice had, at one point, been a storage area back in the 90s, but had been abandoned when the guy running the business got arrested for tax fraud and no one bothered to take care of the place. It may have seemed strange that anyone would just leave so many buildings abandoned, but there were also structural issues with a lot of the buildings themselves, apparently making them unfit for any sort of commercial or private use.
But it worked great for me. Although the individual buildings were not as big as Warehouse 19, they nonetheless offered enough privacy that I never worried about people stumbling on me while I trained. The enclosed buildings just meant I had to train a little differently. For example, when I practiced my target skills, I had to take into account all of the ways that my projectiles could ricochet off the walls, floor, and ceiling in order to avoid hurting myself accidentally.
Still, it was a good place to train and practice, with plenty of room for me to do whatever I wanted for as long as I wanted. I had spent a lot of time here over the summer break, practicing my skills and learning how to use my powers better, all under the watchful eye of TW. I sometimes wished that we had Warehouse 19 again, because it had been a lot bigger, but this worked well enough for my needs.
Landing behind Storage Building 1, I entered the building through its back door, which I closed carefully behind me, because the back door’s hinges were rusty and if I was too rough I might accidentally break it. It was very dark inside, thanks to the electricity in the area being cut off after its owner was arrested, but thanks to the night vision capabilities of my goggles, I managed to see where I was.
Storage Building 1 was the building I spent the most amount of time in. It had two floors, one with about twenty-five storage closets, while the upper floor was mostly where the office was. I didn’t spend much time up there, because there wasn’t enough room to train. Mostly, I spent time on the base floor, where the storage units were, because there was more room to train down here.
Today, however, was not a day to train. I walked over to the other side of the receptionist’s desk and sat down in the old, creaky office chair which had been abandoned here years ago. As soon as I sat down, TW flashed into existence next to me, a worried look on his face.
“This is bad,” said TW.
“You think?” I said, looking at him incredulously. “Of course it’s bad. With Baron Glory murdered and his assassin missing, I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of bad.”
“I wasn’t exactly thinking about that,” said TW. “I was more worried that the police might blame you for Baron Glory’s death.”
“Me?” I said, rolling the eyepiece between my fingers. “Why would they blame me for his death? I didn’t kill Baron Glory. I actually tried to capture his assassin. True, I failed, but—”
“But the police don’t know that,” said TW. “Those officers just saw you standing alone in the alleyway holding that eyepiece. And then you ran away rather than comply with their demands, which is exactly what you would expect a criminal, especially a guilty criminal, to do when faced with the police.”
I scowled. “If they think that, then the police are a lot dumber than I thought.”
“It’s not dumb to make reasonable assumptions based off the evidence you’ve got,” TW pointed out. “Especially if the key suspect in a case refuses to cooperate.”
“If I ‘cooperated’ with the police, I’d still go to jail even if I proved that I didn’t kill Baron,” I said. “Illegal superhero, remember? I’m surprised you’ve forgotten that already.”
“I haven’t,” said TW. “I just wanted to share my theory with you so it won’t blindside you if it turns out to be true.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I said. “The best way to prove my innocence would be to catch that assassin and bring him to the police. The only question is, how do we track him down?”
TW looked at the eyepiece. “Maybe that eyepiece could help us. It might have some kind of tracking technology inside it that will help us find him.”
“Maybe, but what’s the point of tracking the eyepiece when we already know where it is?” I said. “No, I think a better thing to do would be to find out where he bought it. If we could find out the name of the company that created and sold this thing, then we might be able to t
rack down the guy who bought it from them.”
“Good idea,” said TW. “Unfortunately, I am not sure how to do that. Is the company name written anywhere on its exterior?”
I turned the eyepiece over in my hands a couple of times before shaking my head. “No. It’s possible it could be custom made, which would explain why it doesn’t seem to have the company name on it anywhere.”
TW folded his arms across his chest. “Or maybe the clue to who built it is inside it. If we take it apart, we might be able to find clues to the identity of its creator that way.”
I frowned, looking down at the eyepiece again. “But I’m no good at taking things apart and putting them back together. That’s what Kyle does.”
“Kyle,” TW repeated. “You mean Kyle Denniger, your best friend, yes?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “What about him?”
“What if you asked him to study the eyepiece and find out its origin?” said TW. “You’ve told me that he’s interested in science and engineering, correct? If so, then he might have the tools and know how to take apart the eyepiece without seriously damaging it.”
I considered TW’s proposal. Kyle was indeed my best friend and I had no doubt that he would jump at a chance to study a piece of tech like this. He even already knew that I was the superhero Trickshot, one of the very, very few people who knew my true identity. It would make a lot of sense to ask him to help.
On the other hand, as a general rule, I disliked involving other people in my superhero stuff. It was just too dangerous. Between fighting supervillains and average criminals, I had more than enough problems to deal with that most people would have no idea how to handle. Besides, the more people who knew my identity, the higher chance it became that my real identity would leak out to the world and I would get arrested for practicing superheroism without a license. It was just better for me and everyone else I knew if I kept my normal life and my superhero life separate.
At that moment, however, my cell phone started ringing. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I saw that it was Kyle calling me, coincidentally enough. It was an odd coincidence, but I decided to answer the phone and catch up with Kyle anyway.
