Night of the Living Stalker (PREVIEW)

The Raptor

Night of the Living Stalker

Boise, the City of Trees.  At night, everything appeared so peaceful from so high up.  The city lights sparkled and glowed with all the intensity of any of the other bigger cities in the United States, yet it didn’t have nearly as much noise or clamor; not nearly as much traffic or construction.  It’s times like this that Joseph liked to go out, though tonight he wasn’t exactly going out and about like any normal kid his age did.
Tonight, he was the Raptor.
The half-man, half dinosaur superhero looked down upon the world from his vantage point atop the Aspen Condos building.  His piercing gaze looked at everything from a whole new level.  As Raptor, he could see things with enhanced, almost hawk-like vision, and not only could see the city streets below him, but could zoom in on all the details, pick out individual faces in the crowds, and even read some of the signs on the ground below.
Of course, right now he was just looking.  He wasn’t searching for anything in particular.
He felt his feathers ruffle a little, the movement jerky and slightly uncomfortable in his costume.  He reached back and righted the feathers with the stubs of his fingers that lay beneath the long claws.  He had to be careful not to cut through his suit.  Even having owned this form for quite a few months, he still wasn’t used to all of the quirks his ‘other self’ happened to have.
But discomforts soon had to be put aside.  His tracking eyes caught movement in the dark streets below; a man was running quite quickly down the sidewalk towards a nearby alley.  It didn’t take long before sirens and whistles to go off down the nearby street as cops began driving towards the direction the man went.  But the man reached the alley before they could see him.  By the time they’d get there, he’d be long gone down a side-street and into the rest of the Boise Underground, just like the rest of the criminals the Boise Police failed to catch.
Well, he’d escape the Boise Police.  He wouldn’t escape the Raptor.
Joseph quickly opened up the hidden flaps on his arms, unsheathing them through a special zipper strap and uncovering the feathers beneath.  As he let them extend and made sure none were stuck, he looked down and judged the trajectory of his fall.  Feeling the wind to make sure he wouldn’t misjudge his flight, he took a few steps back on the roof, and then jumped.
Right away his unnaturally light body was nearly carried aloft, though it wasn’t until he spread his arms and let his feathers catch that he actually began his glide down.  The glide was fast; focused upon quick descent rather than his usual, almost leisurely flights from building to building; but it wasn’t too uncontrolled either.  He had been practicing quite a lot over the past couple of weeks.  He had to make sure his flying was performed right, so that he could avoid any accidents like on his first couple of forays into the Idaho sky.
The glide didn’t even take him a minute.  Circling down to keep himself from overshooting his target, he slowed his descent and landed upon the roof of the building nearby.  Quickly folding his arms so that his feathers wouldn’t get in the way, he started running the moment his feet touched the ground.  He cut the distance he lost while the man had run down the alleyway quickly before deciding to leap to the ground below.
He always did like to be a bit flashy, so Joseph let his descent match as such.  Keeping his feathers unsheathed, he leapt off of the building into the alley below, allowing his feathers to catch his fall.  The glide down the remaining three floors instantly slowed from what would have been a nasty fall to a very light drop.  His appearance was almost angelic; like a dark angel having descended from the heavens, only to become a devil to those who dared to stray from the law or justice’s hands.
The current perpetrator stopped dead in his tracks not ten feet from the Raptor as he touched the ground.  Joseph’s enhanced eyesight, once adjusted to the dark, quickly allowed him to see relatively clearly in the otherwise dim and dark alleyway.  The man in question before him was a wanted fugitive he had seen on the news, who had escaped the Boise Penitentiary a couple of days earlier.  He was likely desperate, and more than likely armed thanks to the two days he was out on the Boise streets.  The world would appreciate him behind bars again.
“That’s far enough,” he half-said, half-snarled from behind his black mask.
The man took a couple steps back in disbelief.  “The hell are you supposed to be?!” he asked.
Joseph rolled his shoulders a couple of times; for theatrics, of course.  “I am the Raptor.  The law’s not happy with you, mister.  I’ve come to make sure it takes care of you.”
The man’s formerly fearful face became a sneer as he reached into his coat pocket.  Joseph acted fast.  He had a feeling that the man was armed, but he knew that even though he could take him, innocents could get hurt.  He quickly did a hop-leap to one side so that he could keep the wall behind him, ensuring that the man wouldn’t have any extra potential targets out on the streets.
Just like that, the man pulled out a small-caliber pistol and fired at the strange half-reptile.  Joseph let his instincts take over.  Right away, his still-unsheathed feathers were crossed together, covering his vitals and leaving them protected.  His feathers were far more solid than any bird’s feathers, being almost scales, and smaller bullets couldn’t harm them.  Two shots meant for the gut bounced off harmlessly, while he easily dodged the third meant for his head.
While the man began to stare in sudden disbelief, the Raptor quickly took it to his advantage.  In that moment’s hesitation he quickly folded his ‘wings’ against his body and charged at the speeds of a jungle cat, slamming his shoulder into the man’s gut and sending him flying backwards.  The man hit the ground hard as the impact jarred his body.  He quickly got to his feet again, and despite the injury he went into a fighting stance and threw his fists at the creature.
The Raptor blocked the first blow with his arms, dodged the second and the third, and before the fourth could be made he did two rapid punches to the man’s gut.  Without giving him a break, he made an uppercut that got the man in his right shoulder.  The man backed up, grabbing his gut from the recoil.  Before he could move back too far the Raptor dropped to his hands and knees and swung himself around, using his tail as a club and knocking the man’s feet out from under him.
The fugitive fell to the ground in a heap, flat on his back.  He tried to get up, but he fell again, blacking out from the stress.  Yet another bad guy grabbed and bagged by Boise’s ‘resident bird of prey.’
The Raptor quickly reached into a slot in his costume on his back and pulled out a rope.  Without wasting it, he cut it into appropriate pieces and tied the man’s wrists and ankles.  Upon making sure none of the injuries he inflicted were too serious, he dragged the man over to a lit corner of the street alleyway and promptly placed him there in a heap.  He then finished by scratching at the ground with his claws, scratching a three-clawed logo on the ground by the man’s legs.
He smiled at his handiwork, but then noticed a nearby crowd starting to form.  He quickly made himself scarce.  Using the claws on his hands and feet he began to climb up the stone of the building almost like a squirrel, keeping balance with his tail.  It wasn’t long before he was at a height that he could fly off and maybe use his grappling hooks for extra lift.
The police soon arrived at the scene, though Joseph knew that the best thing for him was to be long gone by the time that happened.  Some quick leaps and a couple of grappling-hooks later, and he was up to a high place again, looking down upon the world, daring Boise’s criminal underworld to rear its ugly head again for him to bat aside with a clawed hand.
It felt good to be a superhero.

To be continued...