Green Arrow #3
Dream Quest - Part Three
Extended Family
By
New York, New York
“They’re going to Bludhaven,” Eddie Fyers said as he spat out the burnt remains of his cigarette, then ground the smoldering butt beneath his heel. He cradled the telephone receiver between his shoulder and ear, as he used both hands to coax another ‘cancer stick’ out of the half-empty carton. There had been a time, only a week past, when Eddie hadn’t smoked for months. That had been when he’d joined Connor Hawke in the monastic sanctuary known as the Ashram.
Connor had recently left the Ashram, though, obsessed with the idea that his father— the original Green Arrow, wasn’t as dead as everyone thought he was. Connor had embarked on a quest to find Oliver Queen and Eddie had come along to keep Connor out of trouble. Ever since then, for some reason, he’d found himself back in habit of chain smoking four, or more, packs a day.
“Alright, keep an eye on them both and keep me appraised of any other changes,” came the cold reply, then there was a click and Eddie grunted as the connection was severed. Fyers’ face twisted into a grimace of distaste. There had been no hesitation from the voice on the other end on the line. Fyers knew that no one could have known about the decision Connor and his brother had just made. Yet, there had been no surprise at his news. Only the instructions to continue his surveillance.
Eddie sighed and turned his head to watch as Connor and Roy walked up to meet him. Roy’s daughter, Lian, was perched on her father’s shoulders and Connor carried the child’s plastic ball, as he walked along side them. All three were laughing happily.
Eddie almost smiled. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Connor that happy.
His joyful thoughts were short-lived, however, as Eddie quickly remembered that he was spying on the youth. It’s for the kid’s own good, he thought, berating his self for feeling guilty. It didn’t make him feel any better, though.
“What’s wrong, Eddie?” Connor asked as the trio came within speaking distance of the older man. Eddie realized that his self-disgust was clearly apparent upon his features.
“Yeah, who was that on the phone, Fyers? You’re bookie? You look like you lost a grand on a bad bet,” Harper’s smirk said that he wouldn’t be too unhappy if that were true.
Eddie returned Roy’s mocking glare. There was no love lost between the two, but Eddie’s eyes weren’t angry. Instead his statement was dead. Empty. It was the professional face of a man who’d been a spy and an assassin. The face of a man who’d killed more people in his life than most people will ever even meet. Roy’s cocky grin withered beneath that calm, dead stare.
“Eddie?” Connor asked again, his concern audible in his voice.
“It’s nothing, kid. Like he said, it’s just a certain venture that doesn’t seem to be going the way I want it to,” with that, Eddie brought up his lighter and lit the cigarette that had been waiting patiently between his lips. Turning away, he started towards the car, the conversation most emphatically over.
Keystone City
“Your futility becomes annoying, Hitaka. End it now and I will still grant you a clean and painless death.”
The grim demand was met with an explosion of gunfire. George Hitaka cursed fluently in three different languages, squinting against the brilliant glare of the muzzle flash, as his Skorpion sub-machine gun sprayed a horizontal curtain of death across the far side of the room. To either side, his two remaining bodyguards followed his lead. Spent rounds flew as they continuously fired three-shot-burst from their surplus Russian Kalishnikov assault rifles.
“If you insist upon being rude, I may become aggravated. If that were to occur, I may decide to take out my frustrations on you,” the deep, threatening voice came from the left this time, sounding from nearly halfway across the room. Hitaka and his men turned immediately, the deadly arc of their gunfire slicing across the room.
How?! Hitaka’s mind raced, desperately seeking an answer, How is he able to move so freely without being seen. His voice comes from all directions and he strikes down my bodyguards with impunity. Is this some spirit that plagues us and kills my men? Some hungry gaki who we have unknowingly offended?
After only a few more seconds the cacophony of explosions began to stutter to a halt as the Skorpion and one of the Kalishnikovs discharged the last of their ammunition. Cursing under his breath the taller of Hitaka’s pair of bodyguards hurriedly sought to reload his assault rifle, while his partner covered him.
George Hitaka, the Yakuza lieutenant charged with establishing their organization in Keystone City, railed against his impotent vulnerability. Fumbling a cartridge of ammunition from his jacket pocket, he almost cursed aloud as it fell from his shaking hands and bounced across the floor. His words died on his lips, however as his eyes were drawn to the floor besides an overturned waste bin.
Half buried in the trash spilled from the wastebasket was a small black tape player. The young Yakuza blinked the sweat from his eyes and stared hard at the little black cartridge. The wheels in the tape player were still turning. Hitaka knelt, lifting the tape player in his hands. First rewinding the tape for several seconds, he then pushed play.
“…being rude, I may become aggravated. If that were to occur, I may end up taking out my frustrations on you…”
Hitaka’s guards turned, weapons half raised, to find their master holding the tape deck, a frown creasing his brow. So this is how the gaijin devil moved about without being spotted. He merely pressed play and threw his little tape players into different parts of the room. But, why? To distract us perhaps…
There was a grunt and the sound of something heavy being moved. George Hitaka turned to see a huge, massively muscled figure raise up from behind him. With only the slightest sign of exertion, the towering behemoth lifted a heavy filing cabinet and sent it hurtling into the bodyguard with the loaded rifle. George’s eyes widened in terror as the man crumpled beneath the force of the blow.
His second bodyguard, however, managed to keep a better head. Having just finished loading his own weapon, he brought the rifle up to his shoulder and drew a bead upon their attacker. He never had a chance to fire off even a single shot, though, as the massive figure charged across the room, with a speed that belied his awesome bulk. The bodyguard barely had time to grunt as he caught a shoulder block to his sternum, which forced every last ounce of air from his lungs and shattered several ribs. Then, a horrendous uppercut caught him beneath the chin, crushed his jaw and propelled him three feet into the air. He was comatose by the time he landed.
Hitaka’s still empty Skorpion dropped from his limp fingers. He was no novice to bloodshed, no mere initiate into the realm of violence and death. He was a Yakuza of the new school, the boryakudan, which means ‘violent ones’. He had killed and tortured and betrayed more men than he could rightly remember, each death earning him the ire zumi tattoos that covered his upper torso beneath his white business suit. A veteran of many gang wars, there had been a reason that the head office chose him to establish a branch of their organization in Keystone City.
Hitaka had never met an opponent like this one, though. He had never faced someone who so completely outclassed him and his men- someone who could completely destroy eight trained Yakuza soldiers, tossing them about as if they were children’s toys.
George Hitaka looked upon the masked face of his killer and recognized his end. Still, he did not think to beg for mercy. Instead, his hand inched towards the tanto, the Japanese long knife he kept under his blazer, even as he fell back against a cluttered work desk, feigning a paralyzing fear. His killer walked towards him with the confidence of one who has nothing to fear, because he has already conquered everything in sight. Hitaka swore to himself that he would die avenging the death of his men and, even more importantly, erasing the smug, overconfident attitude of this gaijin monstrosity.
The beast, for despite his form he could not be a man, stood looming over Hitaka’s cowering figure. With a kiai yell, the Yakuza lieutenant sprang up, drawing his blade from its wooden sheath, preparing to thrust it at his attacker with the speed of a striking cobra. But, if Hitaka moved with a cobra’s speed, the gaijin moved with the speed of lightning, snatching Hitaka’s wrist before the blade had even fully cleared its sheath. Struggle, though he might, Hitaka could not free himself from the iron grasp that gripped his forearm.
The man known only as Bane, stared intently into his victim’s eyes. A slight tightening of his massive fist caused the tendons in Hitaka’s arm to strain and bones to scrape against each other. He watched as Hitaka winced, but made no sound. Bane knew this man, or more importantly, knew his kind. Hitaka had thought himself dangerous, a predator of men. Bane intended to make him realize that he was, in truth, only the prey. Only then, would Bane have mercy and take whatever might remain of the Yakuza’s life.
There was the electric sound of an arc-welder, and the sense of motion just outside the line of sight. Bane’s head snapped to one side, as something flashed by his face, missing by only inches. Turning back to his victim, Bane found that the Yakuza’s head dangled limply, as his eyes stared off into the distance with the glazed vision of the dead. A single round burn mark, the size of a quarter, marred the Yakuza’s forehead, smoke still drifting from the charred flesh.
Snarling with disgust, Bane let the man’s carcass fall to the floor, before turning to search the surrounding ruins of the once pristine office building. His gaze hunted the shadows and wreckage, seeking the thief who had stolen his kill. Finally, he stopped, muscles tensing as his heated glare came to rest on a far corner of the debris filled room.
“This was to be my assignment,” he growled, his voice filled with menace. “You had no right to interfere.”
A figure stood half-hidden in the shadows against the far wall, his only reply a casual shrug. Bane growled, his fist clenching as he took a step forward. Even with his opponent cloaked in shadows, Bane did not need to see the silvery glint of some unknown weapon being raised against him, to sense the attack.
Already prepared, Bane threw himself to the left, seeking to avoid the unknown assault. Instead, there was a brilliant flash that burned ten times brighter than the noonday sun. Despite being blinded, Bane did not pause, but instead threw himself over the work desk, making sure to place it between himself and his mysterious opponent.
When his eyes finally cleared, however, his attacker was no where to be seen.
Bludhaven
“Are you sure he’s here?”
“He’s here, Connor. Trust me.”
“Well then how will we find him, Roy?”
“Dammit, Connor! I don’t know! He’ll… he’ll find us… I guess…”
“That’s great, kid. Hey, while we’re at it, maybe we can just stand right here and wait for Elvis to find us too, huh?”
Connor turned to stare at the surrounding buildings, tuning out Roy and Eddie as they continued to argue behind him. Bludhaven was a lot like Gotham, the youngster decided. Both cities seemed throwbacks to some bleak almost, medireview age. The buildings, raising tall, dark, and grim seemed to glower down with obvious displeasure at all of the scurrying insects that crawled about at their feet. Connor could almost feel the cities dislike. It wasn’t quiet as if Bludhaven hated it’s thousands of tiny inhabitants, rather, it just seemed to be a general sense of disapproval.
“They can be pretty intimidating, can’t they?”
Connor turned around, a smile on his lips as he prepared to greet the owner of that familiar voice. He paused, however, when he saw who was standing besides Nightwing.
“Hey, Connor, Roy… Fyers. You guys said you needed some help, right? Well, we’re in luck, I just happened to have some reinforcements in town and… um… Connor?” Nightwing’s happy greetings stumbled to a halt as he saw the look of panic on Connor’s face.
“uh oh,” Roy muttered under his breath, backing away from Connor and the new arrivals.
Eddie hung his head, releasing a tired sigh. Shaking his head, he dropped his cigarette and ground it beneath his boot, moving to loosen the straps on his gun holsters.
Connor, could only stand and gape, unsure how to respond.
“Hello, Connor. You seem to be healing well,” murmured Dinah Lance, aka. The Black Canary, as she flipped a lock of hair from her face and regarded the young bowman with a cool, cold glance.
Next Issue: Will it be Connor and Dinah – Round #2?! How can Connor ever find Oliver if the people he turns to for help keep beating him up? Join us next issue and see if maybe, they can find a way to talk things out.