<strong>Hellion<br/>Quincy's, Brooklyn<br/>12:27 AM</strong><br/><br/>The song's ended. A straight in a ballcap and members-only jacket has gone into the club, so she's gotten a glimpse of the thick just inside the door... he looked Samoan, wearing an XXL t-shirt that looked a half-size too small, with biceps like ham hocks and no semblance of a neck.<br/><br/>Another song after that one, but the batteries are wearing out, and she can hear the tape slowing down, the pitches getting lower.  So she flips the tape off and listens to radio waves... some blithering idiot screaming that the demons of hell are in the MTV, static, news... more speculation about the disappearance of Dr. Manhattan.  It's a call-in show, so she listens for a few minutes; public opinion always makes for good comedy, and occasionally it provides some insight.<br/><br/>The caller is making a train-wreck of logic in an attempt to state that Dr. Manhattan is actually behind the border infringements of Russia into Afghanistan, but Hellion listens for long enough to hear a couple more callers.  One speculates that Dr. Manhattan is trying to find a cure for cancer.  Another says that he's actually dead; he'd disintegrated himself in the sun or something.<br/><br/><em>How the fuck am I supposed to save people who are this fucking stupid?</em>she wondered.<em>These simpletons are supposed to be the soldiers of a revolution?</em><br/><br/><strong>12:32</strong><br/><br/>The hole she's picked in the masonry has left a rounded wedge of brick missing completely, and in the street below, she sees no motion but the changing pattern of green and red light from the bottom of Quincy's' fire door.  The last caller sounds female, older-- maybe in her sixties or older, just from the pronunciation of her words-- and she says something so very clearly that the Hellion actually smiles, under her mask, upon hearing it.  "The Doctor Manhattan character... he did a lot of things for our country, like some kind of hero.  But I remember life before him... World War II, the Depression.  Things were bad then, but we survived.  This... super human, I don't know where he's gone, or what he's doing, but I hope he's gone for good."  The host prompts her to continue.  "If there's a god out there, then the only good thing he's done for us since the flood was to let us the hell alone.  People will never get any better," she coughs into the receiver.  "They won't get any better than they are, unless they have to.  No... super-man's gonna save us from Russia.  We've got to save ourselves."<br/><br/>Over the metal grid, she sees a shadow from the streetlights of the main road, indicating that someone's entering the alley. The shadow hems at the edge of a knot of utility meters and the diamond-glimmer of broken glass on the asphalt.  Hellion expects her target to be in the building already, so she pays the foot traffic little mind.  The call-in host is saying that they're out of time, so she turns the dial a bit more.  She hears the strains of The Smiths, How Soon is Now (http://www.commonsaints.us/music/hsin.mp3).  It's kind of nice, she thinks.  Like the ocean, like some clean black sea broadcast through the air to her ears in this man-made rock and steel bastard of a city, something purifying and alien in this waste-chute of an alley.<br/><br/>She pivots her face to catch the shadow's caster in her periphery, and feels her breath catch in her throat.  Her mind tries to make sense of what she's seeing, and fails momentarily... the woman looks like some kind of Vegas performer, perfectly composed and carrying herself with a preternatural grace.  And as she makes her way into that alleyway-- her pin-heels crossing the asphalt and brown crystals of glass, the cracks where brown grass bleeds through like an old wound-- Hellion decides that, if the woman's going inside to work, then she'll have to make a visit there herself.<br/><br/>She's holding two glass bubbles, spinning them... Hellion hasn't seen it done so well, except, perhaps, a few years ago in the Soviet States, where the circus was a splendor unto itself.  And in the security of her shadow, she lets herself stare at the woman's figure, her fluidity, and lets a smile creep beneath the skull's grin of her mask-- at least, that is, until the woman looks up-- and directly at the Hellion.<br/><br/><i>Son of a bitch.</i><br/><br/>She delicately eases apart the earphones from her head, tucks them in beside the Walkman in her coat pocket.  Is this some kind of... what, a killer?  She has the moves, the panache-- maybe she's some kind of dancer?<br/><br/><i>Fuck, I don't know what she is.  But I'm not losing the element of surprise.</i><br/><br/>Sighing, she checks her mask, leaves the goggles dangling loose around her neck.<br/><br/><i>Well.  You made me, honey.  One point for you.  So let's see what you think of this.</i><br/><br/>She stands, shrugging the coat from her shoulders, and slings it over the rail to hang like some dead beast's slick hide.  Emerging from the shadow, the streetlight casts her figure-- slender, feminine, full-busted and dressed in something like a black oil slick.  She's not carrying a weapon.  Her face, below her eyes, is hidden by the black mask, the silvery paint of a grinning skull, and the October breeze stirs the cropped black hair from her temples.<br/><br/>She is descending the stairs of the fire escape-- their counterweights yield and let the stairs swing down until they crash into the top of an improperly placed dumpster, and then the black-clad woman hops the rail and lands, soft as a cat if not as silent, some fifteen feet from the figure in leather and lace.<br/><br/>"Vinnie the Angel," she says aloud, her voice mingling with the disco music from inside the club, muted by the steel door as it is.  It's the Beegees-- Loving You Inside Out (http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/12/1/444595/20%20-%20Love%20You%20Inside%20Out.mp3).  Hellion hates the Beegees, but the sexual imagery of what goes on inside Quincy's makes it downright comical.  "You know Vinnie?  Maybe you work for him?"  Thick treads on her boots carry her closer.  She hesitates there, well beyond arm's reach, and looks the woman over once more.<br/><br/>No secrets... even a rudimentary study of human behavior would have detected the dilation in Hellion's pupils, the subtle tensing of her eye muscles.  She likes what she sees.  Half-circling the woman, she makes no attempt to hide that she's studying her.  "Though I must say, I rather hope that you don't.  You look... more evolved... than that worm."