InsaneJournal

Siena Harper’s suspiciously secretive behavior did not go unnoticed by the keen senses of Tay Lance. When someone gets a phone call and immediately ducks away someplace private, that is potentially interesting.

What makes it more interesting is seeing a fully costumed Redbird sneaking off down the alley next to their building.

A hurriedly dressed Huntress -- still in the process of getting all of her costume on -- acrobatically makes her way down the fire escape as Redbird starts roaring through on a motorcycle.

“Hey!!” Huntress catches onto a railing with bent knees, turning upside down as she pulls on her last glove. Then she grabs onto the railing over her head with her two gloved hands and flips another two floors down. “I said, HEY!!”

She kicks off the third floor landing, crossing the alley and landing expertly atop a closed dumpster thanks to her freakishly acute sense of balance. She pulls her tight hood over her hair and tugs up her facemask just as Redbird comes speeding by. “What?! Hey -- WHAT!”

Jumping off the dumpster, Huntress pursues Redbird down the alley on foot. She sees Redbird skidding to a stop right at the alley’s exit and then disappear in a flash of teleportation along with the motorcycle. Huntress comes to a quick stop, stomping her foot angrily and shouting at the empty air.

“BITCH!!”

Redbird is quickly bounced to and from the Justice League Satellite’s cargo bay bulk teleporter -- with Artemis manning the controls -- and appears in Midway City only seconds after disappearing from Hub. She wanted to appear on or near a street or path she could immediately take off on her bike from towards her destination. In hindsight, she realizes she should have been more careful what she wished for from her marksman teammate. Because she is exactly where she wanted to be. In Midway, in the direction she wants to go, in the correct lane.

In traffic.

Redbird quickly jerks the throttle and fishtails her way around the cars flying at her and past her. Horns blare angrily at her, and so many comments are shouted in such a brief amount of time that she could easily spend the next two hours right in this spot kicking people’s asses. Luckily for them, she has someplace to be.

The highlighted GPS coordinates Warhawk has given her appear on the HUD of her helmet. It’s two blocks away from her and on the move, which is interesting. Warhawk didn’t just know where the kid was. He has the kid tagged.

Getting more shouts and fingers cast her way, she cuts across an intersections traffic and speeds off to her destination which happens to also be the site of an unnaturally low hanging storm cloud with what she could swear was just a dragon flying in and out of.

She so hates this bitch.

------

Davis Karnes, the young runaway employed at Rex Stewart’s garage, isn’t very mechanically-inclined. Nor is he detail-oriented enough or strong enough at math to be very useful at keeping the records. Honestly, he’s not even that good at cleaning the garage. He is really shown up in just about every way on the by Lindsey, and she, unfortunately, is soon to be leaving for college.

Davis half-expects to be dead by Christmas due to a workplace accident.

But for now, he lives and has work to do. Specifically, he is fumbling around inside of Rex Stewart’s hidden bunker, the Aerie, trying to get ready all the gear Rex told him to over the phone. Something is up, and Rex is coming for a quick change into Warhawk. Davis guesses suiting up as Warhawk isn’t as quick and easy as stepping in and out of a phone booth.

Actually, he knows it isn’t. Not with the list of things to do that Rex rattles off to him over the phone.

Davis has started by stopping the charging of Warhawk’s armor prematurely, since there won’t be time to get the batteries full or whatever. And he had to do that first because the batteries need a cooldown period. Or so he’s told. Now, he is searching for and trying to remember the weapons Rex wanted.

What the hell does a Saturnian seizure net look like? Seriously, does it look like a net? Because Davis doesn’t see anything that looks like a net. A net should look like a net. And how is he supposed to know what the warp axe is? There is a rack mounted to the wall that is literally dedicated to just axes. There are no labels. Why so many axes? What is wrong with just one, trusty axe? This weaponry is ridiculous.

Davis has finished doing the best he can by the time Rex Stewart comes barging in. There is blood on him, and it mostly comes from a shoulder wound. The rest looks to be minor scrapes and cuts he endured from an explosion or something from the look of him. Davis simply gets out of the way without offering apology or excuses for why half the weapons asked for aren’t on the table and why half that are there are probably the wrong ones.

“Go home,” is all Rex has to say to him.

The expression on Davis’ face -- usually tuned to one of annoyed indifference -- gives away some surprise and confusion. “Huh?” Technically, his work shift isn’t over, and it isn’t like Rex was around to supervise him. Why does he need to go home? The home being referenced by Rex is the hotel room a few blocks away that Rex pays most of the bill for where Davis stays.

Rex grunts in disapproval of the axe Davis left out for him and drops it back on the table. “Close up, go home, don’t come back for anything until I tell you to.” Davis listens to the instructions along with the sounds of Rex hurriedly putting armor on. It’s a mix of metal slapping together, power systems whirring up and clasps locking together. “Call Lindsey and tell her to stay clear too.”

Davis acknowledges Rex’s order with an indignant half-shrug and leaves the Aerie in no hurry. He exits through the front door to Rex’s second floor apartment, and soon as the door closes, his pace quickens to more quickly vacate the premises. The implication he just got from Rex is that whatever is going on is going to or may come home.

------

Redbird is quickly realizing she never quite grasped the insanity Tattoo Dawn is capable of.

A small area of Midway City now lies in utter devastation from Tattoo Dawn becoming completely unleashed -- or at least, what Redbird would hope is Tattoo Dawn unleashed. Because there is a decrepit Viking ship tearing through the street like the concrete is water with decayed skeletons in Viking garb attacking the traffic. The sky immediately above is covered by an unnaturally localized storm cloud, blasting away with lightning strikes. And the grim reaper is standing tall in the center of an intersection with all lights shining green.

This shit better be the upper limit of Tattoo Dawn’s crazy.

Still tracking that GPS marker, Redbird zips through the intersection and leans low, passing right under the grim reapers swinging scythe. She pulls a tight corner around him and heads down another street through a shower of sparks from a nearby lightning strike. The road she’s now on is more like a disheveled parking lot. No vehicle is moving but hers, and all of them are either parked or wrecked randomly around her.

Up ahead, she can see a boy that corresponds with where the GPS is leading her. He is out in the street, standing with an older man and woman. She presumes from the body language the adults are the boy’s parents, despite looking too white to be so. It occurs to her that she really doesn’t know what to say to them to make what she’s about to do not appear like a straight-up child abduction.

However, her hand is forced by the appearance of a jungle cat sprinting across vehicle rooftops on the same path as her -- towards the boy. She outpaces it on her motorcycle but loses ground to it every time she has to manuever around obstacles while it gracefully bounds over them on a straight path. Her tires squeal as she skids directly ahead of it from the side, facing a straight path between vehicles to the kid. She grabs onto a car door handle as she slows sharply making that hard turn and yanks the door open behind her as she speeds forward. There’s a loud growl followed by a thud heard past her back.

Redbird breaks out from between two columns of vehicles, not slowing down as she heads for the family. She barrels on past, snatching the kid in passing and pulling him onto the bike ahead of her.

This is going to be very awkward if she has the wrong kid.

“Marty?”

“Hey! I, uh... yeah?” They boy, with scruffy dark hair and a dark Foghorn Leghorn t-shirt, is apparently Marty.

“I’m Redbird.” She slows down enough to control her bike while she removes her helmet and hands it down to him to put on.

“Duh,” he says defensively. He’s not dumb. He recognized who she is. He eyes the helmet skeptically before putting it on, giving himself a comically oversized head. His voice echoes and is muffled by it. “What’s going on? Where are we going?”

Redbird doesn’t answer, because she realizes in her haste to get the kid she didn’t think ahead to where Rex’s nearest bunker is. It’s not her fault. Years have past since she even saw one of them, and back then, they generally used them for... things other than bunkering.

If she needed any other indication that she had the right kid, she gets it. All of the living tattoo chaos seems to pause as the entities that are physically able turn and take note of her. She could have probably gone without ever seeing the grim reaper point at her, but she’s distracted from that sight by the appearance of Tattoo Dawn.

The other woman is in the air, being kept airborne by two flapping hawk wings that have sprouted off her back. She doesn’t only see Tattoo Dawn. Tattoo Dawn sees her as well and sees her holding the boy. Redbird can swear she hears whatever overstretched rubber band holding together some measure of sanity together in Tattoo Dawn’s head snap like a gun shot. Tattoo Dawn just shrieks like a banshee, and all the tattoos stampede toward Redbird and Marty.

“...Away.” They are going away, Marty. Redbird’s motorcycle roars off deeper into Midway City at full throttle with a horde of everything Tattoo Dawn could imagine to put on her body in pursuit. Her path is aimless at first as she focuses only one evading living tattoos. She has no idea right now where Warhawk’s nearest bunker is, but she does remember one location vividly enough. It isn’t terribly close to their current position, but it is the only bunker she can think of off the top of her head.

Redbird turns down a tight alley, trying to bottleneck everything in pursuit enough to slow it all down. Small flying creatures have no problem with it though and begin to swarm. So, she drives across the street and straight on through a storefront window. The tires of her bike squeal through a clothing and jewelry department until she smashes out through another window with only a fraction of the flyers still chasing her.

Forced into a sharp turn to avoid something large and fast nearly colliding with her, she gets herself back on track and looks to see an ice cream truck driven by an evil clown nearly right on her rear tire.

The fuck was wrong with Tattoo Dawn’s childhood?

“What’s going on?! What’s going on?!” Why does Marty hear screeching, explosions and the music of an ice cream truck? It is difficult for him to see with the helmet on, apparently.

“Nothing!” As the ice cream truck pulls alongside them, the clown reaches out for Marty. Redbird snaps her elbow out, ramming it right into his nose with a gush of blood and a squeak.

Redbird manages to keep Marty out of reach of Tattoo Dawn’s horde long enough to get within sight of the bunker she remembers. It appears to be one shed among a dozen at the back of a plant nursery, but on the inside it should look very different.

She plows through the closed chain-link gates with the front end of her motorcycle and heads toward the back on a straight path. An unnatural twister rips through the air ahead, crossing into her path. It quickly turns into a raging pillar of leaves, soil and debris. She avoids driving right into it but the winds overtake the back end of her bike. Losing control, she gives up on it and focuses on getting Marty off of it safely in the crash. Marty shouts and tucks into a ball around his oversized helmet, going through bushes with Redbird tumbling right after him.

Redbird pulls the boy back up and urges him forward. Looking behind her, she sees several living tattoos closing in on them fast. The grim reaper is at the open gates. The storm cloud gathers overhead. A fucking shark fin is moving through the ground. She tells Marty to run towards the sheds and follows after him, lingering behind only to smack that damn persistent clown with the potted end of a sapling. Marty runs on ahead, pumping his short legs furiously.

Redbird sees Tattoo Dawn in the air but turns to follow Marty. As she does, a large snake lunges out of the nearby plantlife and drags her to the ground. It’s a familiar attack, and she knows this fucking snake. Catching her off guard as it did, one of her arms is tangled at a bad angle behind her back, severely limiting her ability to fight it off.

“Get -- get off of her!” Marty comes running back with a shovel in hand. The helmet is gone now, having been tossed aside as he ran. Now, he bats the snake in the head with the flat of the shovel. It only stuns the creature enough to disentangle from Redbird, but Marty keeps after it. It hisses and writhes angrily at his feet as he swats and swats down at it. His hits -- the results of a boy’s small arms and a shovel too big for him -- do little to actually harm the snake. That is, until he figures out to turn the shovel to its side. It’s then that the snake gets hacked almost in half and disipates in a puff of vapor.

For what feels like a long moment, Redbird eyes the huffing, angry little boy and finally begins to realize why Tattoo Dawn would be after him, why Rex would have him GPS tagged and why he looks nothing like the adult couple who stood by him like they were his parents.

Thunder erupts just over their heads, and a shockwave rattles down upon them. Something just exploded against the side of the dragon flying above, and the beast reels off to one side. Warhawk soars on past it, coming out of the storm cloud and heading for Tattoo Dawn.

“Warhawk!” Marty’s expression changes quickly, and he points Warhawk out in case Redbird is missing this.

Redbird isn’t. She grabs Marty’s extended arm and hurries off with him to the bunker as other living tattoos close in on them.