A Misty Walk [Blue Jay]

It was the middle of the night, in the middle of a dark slum alley. To one side was an old cafe being slowly reclaimed by rats. To the other was what was once a law firm, and ironically, thirty minutes ago, the scene of an illegal weapons trade. The air was now quiet, disturbed only by the occasional set of footsteps or the odd cat. One could almost call it peaceful, or, perhaps more accurately, had the face of peace. A mood of quiet solace could easily be found in such a place, as many people without warm and safer homes had. Blue Jay, however, was entirely confused.

At first, he had thought the weapons dealers were what he was here for tonight. The dozen or so gang members had quickly fled the premises with their five knocked out compatriots, leaving their illegal arms behind as he’d kindly requested. But, even after he’d found out what each gun looked like in chunks, not everything quite lined up.

The problem was, there was a severe lack of children. Right place, right time, but the little white note that had this alleyway’s coordinates and the time of thirty minutes ago had “children” written at the bottom. Normally those little words made sense when he got to the place. “Break”, there’d been a train cart to destroy. “Aid”, there’d been someone to help. But “children”; he’d been working his brain on that one for the past ten minutes and couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

A sound caught Blue Jay’s ear. Had the night not been so quiet, he likely would have missed it, and if he hadn’t been looking, would not have spotted the shifting shadow. It was hard to make out much of anything of the person, given the darkness of their clothing, but one article was clear; a cape. This wasn’t an entirely accurate statement, but in Blue Jay’s experience, normal people didn’t walk around in capes in the slums in the middle of the night. He would bet this person was a super.

It was a long shot, but he had no other clues. Blue Jay vanished from where he stood, appearing an instant later not far from where he caught sight of the shadow. His sword was still sheathed on his back and he made a mental effort to look as least threatening as possible. He was not looking for a fight.

“Excuse me!” He called, speaking at what would normally be considered normal volume, but his voice amplified by the silence. “Sorry to bother you, but do you have any idea what this could mean?”

He held out to the person the small slip of white paper. Hand-written on it was a set of coordinates, here, and a time, thirty-ish minutes ago. At the bottom was the word “children”.

Blue Jay was left blinking as the woman - as he was seeing now that he was closer - angrily snatched his paper and began yelling at him. While she talked and for a couple of beats afterwards, he simply gave her a confused look. He had thought this was going to be a long shot of a question and at best he was going to get a negative reaction and thus a target to chase, but not at all did he expect to get a lecture from some person he’d never seen before dressed in all black and wandering the slums in the middle of the night.

“Oh! The missing children.” He said with a nod, finally remembering what she was talking about. “Of course I’ve seen the news. It’s hard not to.” He’d done a bit of research on the case when it’d first become more public and had been loosely following it when he got a moment between the other things he’d been doing. Other stories, like whenever Pandaemonium suddenly decided they didn’t like a certain building’s choice of location, tended to take precedence on his radar, but he felt it was important to be at least aware of as many of these sorts of things going on in the city as possible. The most recent numbers she gave him, however, were new. Last he’d checked, it’d been 34 missing and one found with no further leads.

He took the paper back and pocketed it. “Are you looking for them?” He asked, jumping to that as a likely conclusion. “I’ll help you.”

“Blue Jay, I’m part of the Bulwarks.” He said happily, smiling. “Nice to meet you, Misty.” He took her hand.

And regretted it immediately. He grit his teeth and bore the shake, but he got out of it as soon as he could. Her appearances had given him no hint to just how strong she actually was. Besides that she was pretty obviously a super.

He resisted the urge to shake off his squished hand. Appearances meant very little when dealing with supers; he guessed this one was on him.

“So do you have any leads? I apologize, but this has been kinda dropped on me so you probably know a lot more about the situation than I do. So I’ll be your sidekick for this one.” He said. “The One who Walks in the Mist and Blue Jay - sorta has a ring to it.”

Blue Jay took the map and, unfolding it, scanned the contents. This wasn’t the first map of the docks he’d studied, and was far from the most complicated. He quickly lined up the outline of the area to the one he had in his head.

He turned so that Misty would be able to see the map as well and pointed to one of the of the blocks that lay just outside of the slums. “Most maps won’t tell you this, but there used to be a bank here. This whole few blocks burned down a couple of decades ago and they built right back up on the old foundations. Only, the bank didn’t burn. It was made of stone. They demolished it and built a new storefront to match the rest of the new developments in that area. The bank had underground stone vaults - I would bet money they’re still there. Caved in a little, maybe, but those things are built to last. I would also bet there’s an entrance to it somewhere.”

He folded the map and handed it back to her, basically beaming with the feeling of being useful for once. His obsession with maps didn’t come in handy often, but every once in awhile those hours spent stooped over an old historical map he’d had to get special permission to access, sketching careful lines on his own forming copy were good for more than sateing boredom.

“Might be a place to check as well.” He finished cheerfully. He began walking past her to signify he was ready to get moving, but as he had said earlier, she knew more than him. He’d be following her wherever she thought best to go. The night was perhaps half over, so it was best they got on with their search. He would’ve have any problems keeping up.

No verbal response, but her departure was clear enough. It was time to get moving.

The highroad was often the easier one for someone like him, and so Blue Jay took again to the rooftops. Keeping up wasn’t hard; teleporting from a rooftop to one a couple of buildings down almost instantly meant he could keep up with most people. The trouble was not losing Misty to the night. He had to watch for movements in the darkness rather than the black-clad woman herself, and more than once he thought he had a good sight on her only for her to vanish into the shadows a moment later. He only kept up because, if he lost track of her, he could catch up pretty quickly once he saw her again.

Once they were nearing their destination and he realized where they were going, he felt happy she’d not just brushed him off. She’d decided to take his advice. Blue Jay kept his eyes keen to the shadows, watching for anything that might relate to the missing children or lead to them. Searching was not his forte, however, and he didn’t expect to find much. He was mostly waiting for Misty, who seemed to have a much better idea of what she was doing, to say she’d located what they were looking for.

Blue Jay had come to stand beside the stopped Misty. His eyes widened at her statement. Had he been on his own, he would’ve glossed over this area as unsuspicious. Nothing strange stood out to him - no shapes in the shadows (besides them, of course), quiet conversations, or signs of shady business. It was actually one of the nicer places in this area. He hadn’t much of an idea as to what Misty’s powers were, besides that trying to track her in a crowd would be impossible, but he had little reason to doubt her assessment. He nodded.

He was a couple of steps behind her when she walked through the door. The clerk at the front desk cared little about the placement of the two supers who had just entered the front of the bank that he alone was manning. The thought ‘I don’t get paid enough for this’ seemed to flash across his face as he snapped out of his daze, fumbling with the pen in his hand while he tried to remember which button he was supposed to press in this kind of situation. Figuring it’d be best if the police didn’t get involved just yet, Blue Jay intervened.

He vanished from where he stood, appearing a moment later on the desk in front of the teller. The next he was on the ground behind the man. The quick and nonlethal method of preventing unwanted police summoning button pressing was simply to pull the man’s chair back and away from the desk. Blue Jay then grabbed the back of the collar of the man’s shirt. Not painfully or anything, just to keep the man from jumping to his feet and lunging for means of calling backup.

He felt bad for clearly scarring the jaw slack from this man, but there wasn’t much else he could do. Nor did he have much of a plan of how next to proceed. Looking up at team leader Misty, he waited for stage two of plan “Just Walking in Unannounced”.

After carefully setting the knocked out man in his chair, Blue Jay wandered over to Misty's side. The cart was not a move he had expected, but resourcefulness was important, wasn't it? Not all that sneaky, though; if they weren't careful, the kidnappers would get the heads up that someone was about before the two of them could get the drop on them. Whether that was the goal of Misty any longer was unknown to him, but he would trust to follow her lead. Speed could often outdo stealthiness, right?

Blue Jay kept quiet and listened to the sound of the cart as long as he could hear the wheels. There was likely supposed to be a thunk of it hitting a wall or a flight of stairs or something, but such a sound never came. He was unsure if this was a good thing or not.

He moved out of view of the doorway to stand ready beside its frame. He listened for noises down the hall and watched Misty for a signal. His hand rested on the hilt of his blade, his fingers ready to pop the clip that held the sheath to his back.