Marcus sat on the floor of the hallway next to his Mama. He was seven years old and he knew that his job was to be the man of the house and protect his Mama.

Mama, however, had her arm around Marcus’s shoulders and wouldn’t let him get up.

“Shh, baby, just keep still,” she said. “Don’t let him know we here.”

The door was being hit so hard that Marcus was afraid it would break and the man would soon be inside.

“Come on, just wanta talk.” the man said loudly.

“Don’t be scared of the bad man, Mama,” Marcus whispered. “I’ll keep him away.”

“You a brave one, Marcus. But he ain’t a bad man, not really. He just got a devil in him. He wants me to give him some money.”

“He robbing us?”

“No, no. I used to give him money, but it got to be too much. That stuff they call crack, it has him all tied up, he can’t think of nothing else. If I sold this house and gave him everything it wouldn’t be enough.”

The door pounding stopped. Then the window on the porch rattled. The man was trying to find a way in.

Since Marcus started going to school, Mama had told him to stay away from the young men on the street who offered their product in small plastic bags, each marked with the brand name of the gang that sold it.

Crack, the newest thing on the streets, had found addicts among people who had managed to stay straight before. It was stronger but each hit was cheaper, so more people could buy it.

It also destroyed lives and homes and marriages and families faster than any other drug. Marcus had been offered a free sample, even a free glass pipe to smoke it with, by laughing gang members who cared nothing about turing a child into a junkie.

The pounding on the door stopped. Everything was silent.

Marcus tried to stand up, but Mama kept him on the floor. She put her finger to her lips.

Just when Marcus was sure that the man had gone away, a furious kicking at the door commenced, accompanied by a string of curses.

Marcus’ heart pounded in his ears as loudly as the kicking, and fear squeezed him.

Then the heavy sound of feet going down the front steps signaled the man’s retreat.

Mama didn’t get let Marcus go for another five minutes.

As they stood, Marcus finally dared to ask, “Who is he, Mama?”

Mama shook her head and sighed. “He’s your uncle, baby. My big brother, Carl.”

*****

“How big was he?” the junkie asked.

“Bigger n’ Shaq, man, I swear. All in a suit of armor, with a sword that could cut you in half.”

“You lie.”

“I ain’t. I saw him take out at least ten bangers.”

“Shoot,” the junkie said. He was so skinny that the seemed like a skeleton wrapped in skin. He had a scraggly, graying beard and held a ragged, too-small blanket around himself as he sat against a brick wall.

Marcus had done his best to make himself look like a junkie too. He walked the streets and slept on the sidewalk for two days to establish that he was one of the lost and desperate of the city.

“Called hisself Knighthawk. You hear that name, run the other way,” Marcus said.

The junkie just snorted and lowered his head. Marcus knew that he didn’t really care about this news, all he cared about was getting more white powder to lessen the burning in his veins.

If he ever heard the name Knighthawk again, though, the junkie would pass along Marcus’ story, adding to the growing mass of rumor and speculation that was spreading throughout the neighborhood..

Marcus repeated this conversation with three other homeless people in the next few hours.

This time the plan was Marcus’ idea. Mostly. He and Randall were both pleased that they had caught the murderers of the elderly Russian man so easily, and with little danger to themselves.

Of course, those murderers were first time killers, Valley kids out for a thrill. The next job for the mighty Knighthawk was to find out who was supplying supervillains to the drug-dealing street gangs.

The gangs were experienced, armed killers, and wouldn’t be pushovers. They could also use this new connection to call in super powered backup. If Knighthawk appeared in his full armored glory to knock heads and get answers, he would soon face an opponent who would be much harder to defeat.

So Marcus came up with the idea of building up Knighthawk in the minds of the gang bangers long before the hero appeared. He remembered from his days on the streets how much rumor and gossip figured in their lives.

When standing on a street corner waiting for the next drive by shooting, bangers were full of stuff they had heard about from a cousin or a girlfriend’s neighbor’s ex-husband.

After spreading the word in the homeless community, the next step was to go undercover with the gangs themselves.

*****

Marcus came home from school and found his Mama crying.

Mama had to go to work shortly after Marcus got home every day. She cleaned the offices of white folks in a downtown skyscraper. She had some stories to tell about how messy the office people were. Those people didn’t care, they left a mess on the floor and in the morning it had disappeared, like magic.

The magic was Mama’s strong right arm and iron will. The job was hard and her knees ached by morning, sometimes she could hardly walk by the end of the shift. She did it for him, for her baby, though Marcus hated her calling him that.

He was eleven, almost grown up. Old enough to stay at home alone in the evenings and cook for himself.

He didn’t always stay in and do his homework. He was ashamed that he disobeyed Mama, but also thrilled that the teenagers on the street corner were letting him deliver their little packets or be a lookout for cops and other gangs.

The day that Mama was crying, a window in the back of the house was broken. Everything inside was a mess, with anything that the burglar didn’t want thrown down and forgotten.

The television in the living room and the radio in the kitchen were gone. Not much else, they didn’t have much.

“Who did this?” Marcus demanded. He immediately thought that he could get his new friends to find the thief and beat him up. Kill him, even better. He couldn’t tell Mama about his new friends, though, so he clamped that thought shut.

The last thing Marcus expected was that Mama would know who did it.

“He looked at it,” Mama said. “It was open here on the couch.”

Marcus hadn’t noticed before that she was holding an old, battered photo album. He had never seen it before.

“I kept it in my room, never showed you. Look here.”

Confused, still angry, Marcus moved to look over her shoulder at the album. Mama pointed at a picture of herself when she was seventeen or so. She was standing next to a tall and slightly older man.

“That’s Carl, that’s your uncle.”

Marcus froze. All he knew of Carl was dim memories of a man banging at the front door. He couldn’t understand why Mama was talking about him now, and why she had never talked about him before.

Then the reason dawned on him. “THAT’S who stole from us?” Even more anger poured into his gut.

“I been giving him money again, and he said he would stay away. But yesterday I didn’t have it.”

“I’ll kill him.” Marcus stated flatly.

Mama shook her head. “He protected me all through school. He got beat up more times than I ever knew making sure I was all right. So you will leave him alone.”

A tear came, though Marcus tried to fight it, and rolled down his cheek. “Yes, Mama,” he said.

*****

Marcus turned the limo off of Mulholland Drive, and headed down the hill. While Randall and his date enjoyed the fanciest restaurant in Beverly Hills, with the lights of L.A. spread out before them, Marcus had some business down in the hood.

Randall’s date was the lawyer who had arranged Jerard’s adoption. Randall had impatiently waited until the adoption was final before asking her out. He didn’t want to give her the excuse that she didn’t date clients. She was pretty enough, Marcus thought, but too skinny. He liked women with a booty a man could hang onto.

It took a surprisingly short time to get from the richest area of the city to the poorest. Once he passed under the 10 freeway, he was in his element, among the people he had grown up with.

He had to pause in an alley and put fake plates on the limo, just in case any cops were watching the gang he was about to talk to. Randall didn’t need any knocks on the door about why his limo was seen where it shouldn’t have been.

Not that he really expected any cops to be watching. He remembered that limos, Mercedes Benzes, BMW’s, Ferraris and Maseratis were common visitors to the street corner where his gang had sold their wares. Most of the customers in those cars were white, and many were faces that you could see on the screen at the local multiplex.

Marcus turned off Vermont onto the street where he had decided to make his buy tonight. He couldn’t do it in the area where he had grown up, there were still people there who would recognize him. He had chosen the territory of one of the smaller gangs. It was the same area where he had been doing his homeless act.

He spotted the lookout, a boy of eleven or twelve. Standing alone on a street corner, the boy could slip out of the pool of light from a street lamp and vanish if any approaching car looked suspicious.

The limo moved down the narrow street, between the lines of parked cars on either side. Marcus braked the big car and stopped where the boy could see him. He pushed a button and the window rolled down with an electric whine.

Marcus had done the same job as this kid for about a year before he was formally admitted to the gang. The boy walked towards the limo.

“Hey, man,” Marcus said. “I’m really lucky to find you. I been looking for a connection for hours.”

The boy held out his hand. Marcus gave him a stack of bills.

“They’ve all been chased off, man, no one’s safe. I guess the knight hasn’t found you yet. Better warn them, he will.”

Without a word, the kid vanished from the light. In the normal routine, he would return alone with a small plastic bag full of powder.

Instead, two older gang members followed as the boy returned with the merchandise.

“What you sayin’?” the taller of the two asked. He wore a black do-rag on his bald head.

“I been trying to find guys like you all night, but they too scared to sell.”

The taller teenager looked at the other one, then back at Marcus. “Why?” he asked.

“This knight, you know like from a goddamn fairy tale or something, he been busting them up. You the only ones I could find still in business.”

“I ain’t heard nothing like that.”

The shorter gang banger turned to his friend. “I did,” he said. “Some crazy lady collecting bottles told me about a nightbird or something. Said she saw him take out twenty guys.”

Marcus smiled to himself. His earlier efforts had paid off.

The do-rag banger sneered. “We ain’t scared. We can take anybody comes at us.”

“Suit yourself, man,” Marcus said. “I gotta get back to my boss.” He held out his hand. The twelve year old handed him a small plastic bag. Marcus let the window whine closed and moved the limo down the street.

The little bag went into a storm drain a few blocks away. Maybe the fish in the ocean would enjoy it.

*****

“Why should I go?” Marcus asked. “I ain’t even met the man.”

Mama was dressed in her best meeting clothes, with a dark blue dress, a hat that had flowers on it and gloves with lace trim around the wrist. “He was your uncle,” was all she said.

Marcus was a hard fourteen, sure that he knew how the world worked and what was really important. Sitting in a church listening to people say good things about a thieving junkie seemed like a foolish waste of time to him.

“He stole from us, Mama. We still don’t have a TV after he took ours,” Marcus sneered. Being at home without TV after the burglary had made the streets even more attractive.

Mama looked down. She sat on the threadbare couch in the living room, and suddenly looked old. “I know,” she said. “I know.” She struggled to keep from crying, which was all she had been doing since getting a phone call from the L.A. coroner’s office two days before.

“He was found in a alley, they didn’t even know who he was,” Marcus said. “He was just another junkie. I ain’t going to no funeral of no junkie I never knew.”

Marcus slammed his way out of the house and went to see his brothers, the guys who gave him something to belong to, something to believe in. They were important, they were his real family.

Mama never talked about her brother again.

*****

It took over half an hour to put on the Knighthawk suit, and make sure all the systems were powered and working. He was never going to duck into a closet and quickly make a dramatic reappearance as the hero. By the time he was ready the criminals would be long gone.

Marcus had left the limo in the parking lot of place that sold both fried chicken and chinese food, a few blocks away. The van had been there waiting for him, and he switched vehicles and went back to watch the gang at work.

He had to do this before the gang members had a chance to talk to anyone who would make them doubt what he had told them. It was now only a little over an hour since he had been there in the limo.

He could see the lookout on the corner. The boy fidgeted while he waited for customers.

A couple of customers came and went, in ratty neighborhood cars. Then one pulled up that the lookout recognized. It was an old Ford Taurus that was either dark blue or black, it was hard to tell under the dim streetlights. The boy smiled and nodded at the driver.

Soon several others came out to talk to the Taurus driver. Marcus could see the do-rag wearer among them. The driver was someone they knew. They talked loudly and laughed. More importantly, they had suspended their vigilance in looking out for oncoming cars.

Marcus sped towards the gang and braked hard, sliding the van around so it blocked the street. The Taurus couldn’t get out without backing all the way down to the next cross street.

He was out the sliding van door in full costume before the gang bangers knew what was happening. He swung the blue crackling sword blade at a short kid who was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt. The kid collapsed to the pavement.

The sword was a non-lethal weapon that knocked people out when the blue energy field contacted them, but the gang members didn’t know that.

Marcus was counting on fear of the sword, plus what he had told them earlier, to make this a short fight. However, defending their territory to the death was one of the most important parts of being in a gang.

Two more bangers fell to the sword. Marcus glanced at the Taurus just in time to see the driver swinging a shotgun up and poking it through the passenger side window. He grabbed the barrel with his left hand and pulled it away. The driver yelled in surprise, then started screaming at him.

Marcus thrust the crackling blue sword through the window of the Taurus and the driver went silent. He turned to see the do-rag gang banger reaching into the pocket of his baggy jeans.

This was the tough guy who thought he could take anyone, even a superhero. He was probably reaching for a pistol.

Marcus didn’t give him time to get his gun out of his pocket. Yelling an improvised battle cry, something like “Yaaaaargh!,” Marcus rushed directly at the do-rag wearer.

Either the battle cry, the crackling sword, or the sight of a man in armor running straight at him, made the gang banger decide that running away was the better part of valor. He turned and broke for the darkness near the closest house.

Running in the Knighthawk suit wasn’t easy. It was made of light materials, but it was still clumsy, and he couldn’t see very well through the clear window, with it’s bullet proof plastic covering, in the helmet. He would have to talk to Randall about some design improvements.

Marcus had spent years running while wearing full army gear and a fifty pound pack. The suit wasn’t as heavy as that. He was able to stay right behind the kid.

For the plan to work, though, he had to lose his prey for a moment. Long enough to let him make a phone call.

He let the banger get ahead and turn down a space between a fence and a house.

He waited a moment until he heard the young gang banger say, “Damn, I can’t get no signal...”

Marcus walked down the path where the kid had gone, where he found the do-rag banger concentrating on something in his hand.

Marcus grabbed the kid’s right wrist and pulled a cell phone out of his hand.

“I’ll take that,” Marcus said through the speaker of the suit, which made him sound like a robot. The he spun the kid around and patted him down.

The kid didn’t have gun after all. “Run away,” Marcus told him. The kid obeyed, disappearing in the direction of the alley.

No one in the immediate area would be able to get a signal until Marcus left. It had been Randall’s idea to put a cell phone jammer into the Knighthawk suit.

That didn’t mean that someone out of the jammer’s range hadn’t gotten through to whoever sent super powered help when needed. Marcus meant to be gone by the time some muscle bound creep flew or ran super fast or magicked his way onto the scene.

He drove the black van a couple of blocks away and under an overpass. The suit was easier to get out of than put on, and in a few minutes Marcus was in jeans and a t-shirt.

The two large magnetic signs for Landy’s Plumbing Supply attached easily to the sides of the van. Marcus still drove around the city in circles until he was sure no one was following him.

*****

“So who did he call?” Randall asked. It was morning, and bright sunshine filled the office.

Marcus shrugged. “Just a number. 323 area code.”

“All the best villains live in west L.A.,” Randall said. He picked up the phone that Marcus had put on his desk. “I should be able to find out who the number is registered to.”

“Might be a front.”

Randall shrugged. “It’s the beginning of the trail. You in for the long haul? You sounded reluctant to put on the suit again last time.”

“I’m in,” Marcus said. “I been thinking about what crack did to our neighborhood, our people. Someone got to fight back. I don’t think the trail ends with street gangs, or even in South America.”

Randall looked serious. “You’re thinking about what most people in the neighborhood believe. The C.I.A. The president back then, the daddy of the current one.”

“It’s not just neighborhood talk. There was this reporter, pretty much proved it. Then his paper fired him and pulled all his articles off their web site.”

“Not to mention that he died mysteriously a few years later.” Randall said.

“Yeah. That. For now, though, I would like a day off.”

“Sure,” Randall said. “I’ll be in here all day, I don’t need a bodyguard. What for?”

“I’m gonna go see my Mama, and ask her to tell me all about my uncle Carl.”

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Power vs Power and all related characters are © and ™ 2007 Robin Reed.
Metahuman Press is © and ™ 2005-2007 Nick Ahlhelm.