Chapter 26 Cloaked blaze

I sighed.

It had been a long day.

First, yet another bank robbery, then a grocery store stick-up, then a car crash on fourth, then a drunk causing trouble at a hotel.

This super-hero stuff is not all it's chalked up to be.

I needed some action.

I took off, gliding from my perch lazily. Gradually, I decended until I was skimming the tops of the shorter skyscrapers, flapping occaisionally to maintain my altitude.

Dane and Raven were in town for the day, Dane doing the usual 'scouting for trouble', and Raven out looking for work. We were beginning to run out of money, so Raven decided to find some sort of job to do that would give us a steady source of income. I heartily agreed. I was getting tired of canned soup.

A crackling noise issued from the earpiece I had embedded under a scale next to my ear. Dane. Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

"FIONA!!" The sudden blast of sound caught me off guard, and I tilted in flight before correcting my course, shaking my head in an attempt to soothe my ringing ears. Or was that 'speak of the devil and he will blast your ear'?

I cocked my ear, my scale digging into the button on the side of the device. "Dane! Not so loud, please! You gave me a headache!"

"Sorry, but you need to see this! It looks like there's some guy trying to burn down an office building on the north side. He seems to be wearing a black cloak, and-"

"Wait, did you say black cloak?!"

"Yeah, why?"

I swerved north, and put all my strength into flapping. The world turned into a blur around me as I flew faster than I ever had before. "Thanks, Dane. I'll see you at the site. I have to go now, I'm almost there."

"Wait, Fiona, what-?" I cocked my ear as far forward as it would go, turning off the device. I needed to focus.

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I circled around the black plume of smoke, watching the building below. An older office building, it burned like a cardboard box.

Suddenly, I spotted the tail of a long black cloak, just trailing out of sight in a window. I flipped in midair and dove, my neck stiff as a spear. I spread my wings just before I hit the wall underneath the window, and slowed my speed to glide up and settle on the sill.

The glass from the ceiling-to-floor frame was shattered, with blasted, glittering shards lying here and there on the thin green carpet. I squeezed inside, my bulk just barely fitting in the large marble hallway, and slithered down in the direction I had seen the cloak disappear, my head snaking along in advance.

I pushed it around a corner, only to shrink back, just in time to avoid getting my snout cut off by a large sword, which buried itself in the stone at my feet. I let out a fire-filled snort, immediately fusing the sword to the marble, then shot my head around the corner, my jaws snapping closed just inches from the edge of the cloaked figure, which jumped back, and drew yet another sword, setting itself in a defensive stance.

I took a quick glance around, noting that the creature had chosen the center of the building to battle in, which gave me an advantage. Here, the hallway ended in a large, circular room, extending up the entire thirty stories to a dome of glass, which let a ray of sunshine down to the tiled floor. Smoke filtered out of several doors, on different balconies around the edges of the room.

I snapped my attention back to the cloaked figure, narrowing my eyes and trying to look as fierce as possible. "You picked the wrong day to mess with me, sucker!" I snapped my tail through the air for emphasis, fans snapping against the bony spikes, making a loud crack!

Suddenly, the creature dropped it's sword, then took a step back, and lowered it's hood.