<strong>Kid Arrow<br/>October 13, 1985,<br/>In-Transit,<br/>Pacific Ocean</strong><br/><br/>As far as military flying vessels go, the Dwight D. Eisenhower was all right.  A portly ensign continuously made his rounds with an assortment of juices, sodas and snacks, but the Kid was not particularly hungry.  Every time that the ensign approached, the masked adventurer bade him away.  Arrow seemed too busy reading the debriefing anyway.<br/><br/>Agent Murphy had been watching the back of the Kid's helmet for a while now, working up the courage to approach him.  After considerable deliberation, he quietly got up, approached the costumed crime fighter and gestured to the seat.<br/><br/>"Is this seat taken?" Murphy asked.<br/><br/>Kid Arrow glanced up at the man, blew a pink bubble with the gum he was chewing, popped it, and rolled it all back into his mouth.  Then he glanced at the seat.<br/><br/>"Free country, pal," the Kid said.<br/><br/>"Thanks," Murphy replied.  He sighed a bit as he eased into the chair, buckling himself in.   "I'm Agent Abel Murphy," he said, extending his hand out to the kid.<br/><br/>The kid glanced at the hand, raised an eyebrow, and then took Murphy seriously.<br/><br/>"I know who you are, Agent Murphy.  Read the briefing."  The Kid tapped the paperwork in front of him brusquely.   "Is there something that I can help you with?"<br/><br/>Murphy frowned, slid his outstretched hand into his own coat pocket and removed a small envelope.  He placed the envelope, marked Top Secret, on top of the Kid's papers.<br/><br/>"The Comedian's dead," he said.  If he had wanted to see some sort of reaction from the teen archer, there was none.  The young man simply opened the envelope and looked through the crime scene photographs.<br/><br/>"There's one towards the end that you might find interesting," Murphy said, rubbing his nose.<br/><br/>The Kid glanced at Murphy, then just went to the last photograph; an image taken by surveillance of a masked prowler entering the Comedian's high rise apartment.  It was a close-up of the masked intruder's face; a familiar face indeed.<br/><br/>"Rorschach."<br/><br/>"Familiar with him?"<br/><br/>"Worked a case with him back in '83.  Scary guy."<br/><br/>"But the Comedian was scarier."<br/><br/>"He had his moments," the Kid said.   "So what's the deal?  You think Rorschach killed the Comedian?"<br/><br/>"No.  But we have a problem."<br/><br/>A photograph of Rorschach and a woman, taken from someplace outside of a kitchen window.  The image was not clear, and the Kid could not identify the person Rorschach was speaking with.  He would not have known who she was anyways.<br/><br/>"I have no idea who this is," the Kid stated.<br/><br/>"Dana Dreiberg.  Intelligence confirms that she was associated with the Minute Men."<br/><br/>The Kid shrugged.<br/><br/>"So what?"<br/><br/>"We worked this shit out eight years ago, Arrow.  No more capes, no more masks, only grunt police work.  We put a lot of these whackos on ice, and the few that slipped past us did a good job hiding their midnight crusades.  But this..." Murphy slapped an image of the Comedian's dead carcass on a New York city street,  "This has the workings of being a shitstorm; mask gets killed, another mask investigates, convenes with another mask.  It's bullshit.  And it's criminal."<br/><br/>"Washington wants you to put a stop to Rorschach and eliminate any vigilantes along the way.  Failure to commit to this mission will revoke your clearance of the Keene Act and put you up on federal charges if you ever don your ridiculous get-up again."  Murphy paused, letting everything sink in.   "The Fed is not fucking around on this one."  Murphy rose to his feet and began to walk off.<br/><br/>"Agent Murphy, does it ever bother you how much of a dickhead you are?"<br/><br/>"Excuse me," Murphy said, turning about, his eyebrows knitted with anger.<br/><br/>In a very pacific way, the Kid shrugged.   "I would have done it if you had just said please.  Asshole."  But the Kid was not in any way serene on the inside; all he could think about was how fucked he was.  Had he been older, he might have relented to quit the hero game; but he was too much of an arrogant prick to quit anything.<br/><br/>