1. Just a little setup on the Firebug mini-plotline...
2. Swearing warning: again.
Given who's doing the swearing, though, I'm surprised it wasn't worse.-----
45th and Sprang
Street Level
The fire hadn’t yet spread to the neighboring buildings, but that wasn’t much comfort for the G.C.P.D. officers down at street level trying desperately to keep the situation from becoming too chaotic to control. In an effort to retain some semblance of order, they’d cordoned off the entire area. Yellow caution-tape was everywhere, and uniformed patrolmen were standing on the street corners trying to keep the crowds of onlookers away. Police cars, both marked and unmarked were parked across the roadways blocking all traffic in and out of the area except in the entry lanes set aside specifically for Emergency Services personnel.
Anomen swerved the car in around a pair of black-and-white G.C.P.D. squad cars and brought the vehicle to a stop. He popped his door immediately afterwards and sprinted to where someone had set up a mobile command post of sorts.
Enara and Anomen found Detective Nathaniel Patton standing by the open door of his unmarked. In his hand was the vehicle’s radio receiver, attached to the main unit by a coiled length of cord. “Where are you, Sarge?”
A burst of static and the crackling of flames came through over the radio frequency. “Right on him, I've got this mother-!” Detective Sergeant Sarevok Anchev responded as he continued pursuit. The suspected perpetrator had taken to the building’s roof, and several of Gotham’s finest, including the Sarge, were right on his heels.
Back down below, Nate shouted a warning over the radio. “Take a shot, Sarge, don’t risk close contact!”
The immediate response was the sound of several sets of hurried footsteps pounding against a flaming roof, then a handful of grunts as the Sarge and the officers backing him up vaulted some obstacle or another. “I almost got him!” Anchev growled into the walkie-talkie gripped in his left hand. There was a sudden, loud * Whoosh! * and then a scream.
“Sarge! What happened?! Answer me!”
Patton actually found himself relaxing somewhat when an elongated stream of vulgarities shot back over the radio, finally coming to a close with one extremely angry-sounding “Ass-pirate motherfucker!”
”You all right, up there?”
“No, damn it all… I lost him!”
“Say again?”
Anchev grumbled into his radio as he extricated himself from the smoldering remains of his favorite blazer. “Bastard got away, Patton…” he growled. A couple of uniformed patrolmen tried to help him up, but he waved them away. “…and he toasted my best jacket while he was at it. Jackass.”
-----
“Nate! What can we do?”
“Is there anybody in the apartment house still?”
Nate Patton was busy, alternately yelling into his radio and staring in morbid fascination at the flames licking out of the burning building. He looked away from both tasks when Delryn and Kell approached him. Patton shrugged helplessly at their questions, clearly frustrated at being forced to sit on the sidelines while so much was happening. He frowned. “I don’t know. We’ve been doing our best to evacuate the tenants, but we can’t do much without support.”
“Where’s F.D.G.C.?!” Enara demanded; she held her hand above her eyes, trying to shade them against the bright orange light blossoming from each and every one of the apartment building’s windows.
Another frown. “Warehouse fire few blocks away. Big one. They’re scrambling a few engines to us over here. Should be here any time.”
Enara growled. “Don’t think that’s gonna be good enough. They should be here already. Damn it, I’m heading in there…”
Patton grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and yanked backwards so hard she nearly lost her balance. “Are you crazy, Kell?! You can’t go in there!”
She spun around and glared at him until he let go of her blazer. “Someone has to. If not me, then who-“
A window up on the fifth floor of the building exploded in a shower of broken glass and splintered wood. Cracked, jagged shards of the shattered windowpane and ruined frame rained down onto the asphalt below.
A dark silhouette suddenly emerged to fill the space left behind by the destroyed window; it stood there, backlit by the yellow and orange flames of the raging fire, for only a fraction of a second before diving out towards the street, swinging across to a building over on the other side of 45th, and then dropping straight down to the road below.
Delryn, Kell, and Patton looked on in astonishment, but it was Enara who finally managed to speak first. “What the hell?” she whispered.
The figure standing across the street was facing away from them, but soon turned, his black cape billowing out behind him from the motion. Cradled in his arms, and curled up into a tight, little ball, was a young (probably only a short while out of her teens) woman dressed in her nightclothes. He gently lowered her to the ground, and she looked up at her rescuer, still trembling. Wrapped close to her chest was a tiny infant – crying now, but otherwise seemingly no worse for the wear.
The Batman put a hand on her shoulder and smoothly turned her around to face the awestruck detectives. “See those police officers over there? They’ll take care of you.” His voice came out sounding not quite gruff, but far from warm, as well.
Anomen and Nate rushed forward, quickly flanking the (understandably) shaken woman and quietly shepherding her and her child to a waiting ambulance. Enara turned to join them, but his voice, speaking to the back of her head, stopped her in her tracks.
“Detective Kell… that’s the last of the tenants.”
She turned and tried to look him in the eye, but couldn’t seem to scrape together the courage. She nodded mutely, instead, her eyes cast downward, apparently finding her shoes supremely interesting. By the time she’d managed to work up the nerve to even look up again, he was gone.
“Who was that masked man?” Patton joked from some distance behind her.
“Stop it,” she said, frowning at him.
There were several drawn-out, tortured wails in the distance as a half-dozen of the F.D.G.C.’s fire engines barreled down the street. “Finally…” Enara grumbled as the cavalry finally arrived and began swarming into action. She leaned against the hood of Nate’s unmarked, suddenly feeling very tired. Nate himself had taken it upon himself to go hunting for the Sarge, who had apparently made it to one of the adjacent rooftops. His latest radio transmissions had suggested he hadn’t been seriously hurt, but no one would be able to relax until they knew for sure. Patton had taken Anomen with him, leaving Enara alone (relatively speaking) down below.
Not knowing what else to do, she made her way back to her own car, hauled open the passenger-side door and collapsed inside. She reached into the back for one of Bonnie Lewis’ photo albums, and began flipping through it. “Who killed you, Bonnie? Who would do a thing like that?”
