Fuel to the Fire [Open]

[Lois Lane]

Well this wasn't what she had been expecting. She had simply wanted to get a good story, and expose some criminals within the government who were working to rig new laws in their favor. And doing it in a more corrupt fashion than normal, too. but apparently not everyone approved of the article she had posted, bringing light to some things that most reporters decided not to get involved in. That was just how she liked to do things- she wanted the truth, even if it meant putting herself in the line of fire in the process.

However, she hadn't been expecting to get caught in that line so soon. Or rather, she hadn't been expecting to get chased by a bunch of goons with guns so soon. It had been a long day of working on a story, gathering some information in a town she wasn't that familiar with. She sometimes liked to go out to the different sources, rather than be one of those reporters that focused too much on the truth of the internet.

All she had been thinking was getting home and kicking her heels off to enjoy a nice night with romantic movies and lots of ice cream. It would have been such a lovely night.

But she had never made it to her car.

Instead, she had seen the men start to pop out from the shadows. Five or six of them, in all. She hadn't really taken the time to count while she was running for her life, trying desperately to get away from them. Unfortunately, she had run into the wrong area of town, which seemed to be occupied mostly by uninhabited buildings. Not only were goons after her, but so was her own bad luck. Since there was no one there to hear her screams, she decided to try and lose the men by ducking into one of the abandoned buildings. Too bad that they had seen her move and had been smart enough to follow her in, chasing her up numerous flights of broken stairs.

She found herself on the roof, leaning against the edge as the men slowly arced in front of her. They all had guns, and they all looked more than ready to use them. And there she was, with only her purse and one shoe to defend herself with. Where had the other one gone? Damnit- she had liked those shoes, too. Frowning, she looked from them to the men again, slinking back just a little bit more. The men raised their guns, and she let out a scream as they opened fire. But the bullets never touched her. She didn't feel any pain, only a whooshing of the wind blowing past her ears.

In a short lived moment of luck, Lois found the ledge she had been leaning against had given way, saving her from getting riddled with a million holes from the trigger happy hired goons.

However, that moment of joy was short lived when she realized she was now plummeting to her death from several stories up.

Out of the frying pan, into the fryer.

[Chris "Darkhawk" Powell]

Great Mysteries tended to be some of the things that swirled through Chris Powell's head: why the world was round, what was the dark matter that held the universe together, how the Mutant Gene first came into existence, why he was the one to get the Darkhawk amulet.
However, the one on his mind happened to be one of the most mysterious of all: What the heck was he doing here? Standing on a corner, in a random city, exploring. Well duh. That would seem a bit of an obvious answer, to anyone that would happen by and see him inspecting everything up and down and all around. Also, the mystery didn't lay in how he had gotten here. He remembered leaving his house and driving here, on some kind of purpose. The puzzle lay in exactly why he was here, on this particular day. Chris knew that he shouldn't be here. His whole heart screamed that he should be home with his family. However, a trick of the mind had somehow brought him here, to this street corner, and as he was soon to find out, at a particular time. Perhaps it was a weird form of Extra Sensory Perception that brought him here, he couldn't know.

As he took in the scene of the day, suddenly, from a glass door to his left, a raven-haired woman burst out the doors and started to a car parked a couple blocks farther down away from him. Chris had seen it in passing earlier.
What he hadn't seen was the band of goons that suddenly broke out of the alley, waving guns and being obviously after the tall woman. Immediately she jumped and bolted, the thugs hot on her heels.
Someone in distress. Well, Chris wouldn't be Darkhawk if he wasn't willing to help. So Grabbing the amulet around his neck, he concentrated, and in a flash of light he wasn't Christopher Powell anymore, but the masked hero Darkhawk.
Launching himself into the air, he propelled himself off the concrete and caught a current of air that took him in the direction the woman went. He prayed that he wouldn't be too late, that she wouldn't get caught in a dead end alley and be executed by firing squad before he could get to her. Along the way, he noticed a lone shoe stuck in the ground and he took a moment to swoop down and pick it up.

By the end of the chase Chris couldn't help but admire the tenacity and endurance of the fleeing woman. Even with one shoe she still was going full-pace, and dived into an abandoned building. With a determined push Chris flew around to the other side and forced himself through a window as the thugs followed. They had gone a long way. She couldn't give up now. But if she did, Chris would still be there. He wasn't sure if any of the thugs had seen him yet as he chased the goons up the stairs, diving through windows and up to the next floor on occasion. He always made sure to keep himself about fifteen feet from them, to reduce his chances of being seen. Stealth wasn't a problem, either, the Darkhawk's shoes were pretty quiet on any surface, even the creaky boards of the run-down building.
The body- whatever it was- inside the suit was starting to get pretty tired when they finally reached the roof. Through another window, and Chris found himself spreading his wings behind the raven-haired beauty, posed like Jesus on the cross, head straight up.
A scream. Gunshots. But almost as quickly as she had been there, she was gone. The edge of the roof that she had been standing on had given way under her feet. With a gasp, Chris threw up an arm to try to deflect the bullets now heading for him.
Much to his surprise, a blue, thin film made its way into his line of vision, and the bullets ricocheted off of a force field.
Well, he was learning new things about the suit all the time.

The woman was still falling. Quickly Chris pulled his arms to himself, initiating a state of freefall. The only reason he caught up to her like he did was because she was spread out backwards, and he was more streamlined. Though he was heavier, they would fall at the same rate, as in Galileo's experiment on the Tower of Pisa.
Well, In any event, Chris managed to swoop down under her and maneuver so that he could reduce her speed and land her on her feet at the same time.
Darkhawk came to land at her side, holding on to her elbow. For the kid, it was a bit of an awkward position. "Erm- Hi. Nice to meet you, ma'am." A bit of a hesitant conversation starter, before he glanced up just in time to see the flunkies peek over the side of the building and start firing. Chris raised his arm again, and the force field came up, shielding them from the rain of bullets.

[Lois Lane]

Lois had been expecting to splat at any moment- she had been sure there was supposed to be some kind of splat. However, she never became sidewalk pizza, instead landing lightly on her feet as though she had just jumped down a couple sets. But she hadn't done that- she had fallen from a few stories up, high enough that she surely would have been killed by the impact, or at least severely wounded. Then the thugs would have killed her, for sure. Had she gained some kind of super powers, then? An ability to protect herself from smashing against concrete? Maybe the mutant gene was popping up in people from her world now that it had been established as something from the other world.

No, she had been saved. Of course- it would be silly to think she had done anything for herself, after all.

She looked at the suited warrior, having never seen anything like him before in her life. She was used to tights and capes, not wings, metal and masks. This one... was he from the other world? Or.. .the world they had invaded? Honestly, she still wasn't sure which way it went. In any case, he didn't look like a hero she had written about. He was much more polite than a lot of them, too, even going as far as to say hello to her. She would have responded right away, too, but the sudden gunfire from above them had scared the tar out of her. She let out a little yelp, clinging to the warrior while her face took refuge in his shoulder.

Once again, she wasn't harmed. Carefully, she peeked an eye from its hiding spot, looking up at the gunfire raining down above them. Not one bullet seemed to get past some kind of barrier he had put over them. Well, Superman certainly didn't have anything like that. He probably would have shielded her with his thick, sexy body. This one seemed a little on the small side for that, anyway.

"Wow, that's a neat trick," she said, her heart finally slowing down again, "but I don't think they're going to like not being able to kill us." And she was right- the men were already moving from the edge and heading back inside the building, to try and get down there to shot them from a closer range. They weren't super smart, naturally, and figured it was only their position that needed to change.

"I have a lot of things I want to ask you, but maybe we should get out of here first..." Superman wouldn't have, of course. He would have stayed to make sure the bad guys went down and got arrested. But she didn't know what kind of hero this one was, or even if he was a hero at all.

For all she knew it was just two bad factions fighting for the right to kill her first. Such was her life.