Knightwatch Night Patrol

Ace watched the motorcycle getting closer as he tracked the man jumping off of it. This would be close, but Ace could pull this off easy. Just phase through the bike and explosion sure to follow then counter strike at his predicted location. Just like throwing a knife, just Aim and....

Ace tensed body up as he got ready to phase. He timing had to be just right and BAM. Xiao pulled him off is balance and into a manhole. Jason lost control of his compressed fire and the energy flooded back into Ace. His skin fires began burn at an extreme temperature.

"LET ME GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, GET OF ME! LET! ME! GO!!!!!!!!!!! HE IS MINE, I WILL END HIM! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Ace was still flaring out wildly from the compressed energy as he struggled against her. It was completely and utterly useless to physically struggle, but Ace was to mad to try and phase out of her grip. Bad part was that she was now trapped at close range to his temps.

That thought alone snapped him out of his anger. It was like a chill running down his back despite the heat. Jason was burning his friend that was holding him. Even if she could take it, no one could withstand it for long. Jason brought the temp of his flames back down to his normal temperature. He went limp in Xiao's grip. He muttered

"Its okay Xiao. I'm alright. Lets go get him"

The ever temperamental Jason was back under control. He would not harm his friends.

BIKER
Xiao tries to ignore Ace’s angry rant, worried about his ability to control his temper. Just a short time ago if she was in his place, Xiao would’ve lost her cool and turned into a dragon. Instead, she found herself the patient one, trying to calm him down. Thankfully Ace had the presence of mind not to continue once they were below. Xiao also had to stifle herself from being exposed to Ace’s extreme heat... it was probably as potent as the other energy users in Knightwatch.

“Yes, I think we can go up now. Get ready to fight if he’s waiting for us.” She said, listening for any activity on the surface before punching the melted concrete out.

Xiao was instead met with a scene of silent, blackened carnage, as the demon bike’s explosion completely slagged a large area around the point of impact. The lower front of the building was completely gutted, a charred husk that remained standing thanks to good engineering. The demon was nowhere to be found. The police and firetrucks were on their way to the site, and it wouldn’t be long before the authorities might ask them questions.

Xiao looked around, wandered around, and sniffed around, touching the blackened boot tracks left by the demon biker. “...I... I can’t find him. I have his scent but... He’s gone. He must have used magic!”

“I don’t think we can do anything more at this point. I hope Ethereal is alright.” She looked up to the top of the building where dark energies were being flung around. “Do you need help to go up?” Xiao asked Ace, seeing as she could jump the entire thirty floors up in a single bound.

WITCH

As the blade connected with the witch girl’s arm, she unsurprisingly keeled over in pain, as her arm seemed to explode into viscera and gore. Each droplet of blood seemed to transform into more of those buzzing hell flies, and began to surround Ethereal’s face, trying to obscure his vision.

The demonic shadow dog, if it could still be called that, sprouted wings. It was determined to make itself scarce for now; the hell flies swiftly descend on the unconscious witch, and began to surround her as well. Her skin started to develop sores where the flies land. The demon wanted to eliminate all the loose ends, especially the one who was central to this evening’s chaos.

The flies would move to blind Ethereal, but the one empowered by the dark ethereal would have none of it, and he would make them feel his wrath, as the energy would bubble to the surface and create an aura almost that would eviscerate any of the flies unfortunate enough to touch it and allowed him to look upon the female spellcaster that had been foolish enough to attack him. Her arm would be fine, but it seemed that the flies had other plans with the girl, something that he would not have any of. Without even a moment of hesitation, he would place a hand upon her side, letting his own energy form a skin upon her, pushing away the flies while the demon escaped, not that he was worried about them.

This girl was innocent, her only mistake being that of the hubris of summoning a demon. This field that covered her would eviscerate any of the flies that would try to damage her, though he could not do anything about the damage that had been done, not within his destructive form that he had assumed, which meant that he would have to wait a little while before being able to do anything. ”Don't worry, no one else is going to hurt you.” Ryan muttered as he examined the painful sores that had risen upon her visible flesh, both worried and somewhat indignant. His personal demon was gone, but he had managed to save one life.

”I wonder how Dragon Girl and the fire guy are doing.” He muttered, running a hand across his cheeks and smearing the black blood that had flowed from the cracks.

"You know man... most of the time"

Jason put his arms around Xiaos, neck and shoulders to get a good grip

"I prefer elevators"

Jason was not the biggest fan of heights. Probably one of the main reason's he never really tried to develop flight powers other then when he jumped off the roof one time as a kid. He dowsed his flames almost competently by this point. No need to burn Xiao even more then he already has. Only his normally white hair was a burnt orange color.

Once Xiao felt Ace was secured for the jump, she built up the strength in her legs and leapt up, launching with a dusty take off that left cracks in the ground. The wind rushed past Xiao and Ace rapidly, and the dragon girl found herself clearing the roof line by about ten feet. She lands with a thud on the roof to check on Ethereal.

“How’s the witch... is that her? Oh no, she needs a hospital!” She rushes over to their fallen former foe, checking her pulse. She also looked at her ally, who seemed a little worse for wear. “Ethereal... what happened up here?”

Ethereal''s black irises fell to Xiao as she jumped to him, curious and alien almost as  they considered the female that had jumped to him. He had forgotten that his cheeks were stained with the black blood that had been produced from his transformations, smirking to her as he spoke with that smooth and calming voice. ”It seemed that a demon was possessing her, so I saved her but that kind of meant I had to sever the arm.” He noted looking down upon the female with a shake of his head. ”I doubt we can take her to a hospital, otherwise we might get.....blamed for things.” he said with a roll of his eyes as he looked to the other heroes.

”Could we take her to the base for proper medical treatment?” Ryan would ask looking to Xiao and then Ace.

"But first, lets take a selfie!"

Jason patted himself down as he searched for his camera. He finally found it in one of his belt pockets. he dragged the three of them together, with him in the middle. He let his hair fade back to white for this picture

"one two three cheese!"

Snap! Jason took a picture of the three of them together. He had a big dopey grin on his face

"Alright lets get her back to base!..... How are we going to do that?"

Jason didn't see the car around anywhere, but did that mean it was destroyed? He didn't really know

Xiao’s expression was rather frigid as Ace took a most mood inappropriate picture. The girl was unconscious, horrible welts all over her skin from whatever those hell flies did to her.

“...Take pictures of our combat scenes too, Ranger will want to hear of this at least. I can bring her to base.” Xiao tended to the witch, using medical equipment from her ultra-flat backpack to secure her neck in a brace for the trip. She assumed Ethereal would handle transportation.

“...Wait a minute, I recognize her. She’s Deborah Green, the pop singer!” She exclaimed, taking out her own device and scanning her chronicle of past news. She holds up her phone and plays back the news video of the incident at the record company building. “She was involved in a hostage taking incident some weeks back with her record company. Sigh... looks like we have lots to talk about once we get back.”

KNIGHTWATCH BASE

Former teen pop icon Deborah Green was now confined to the Knightwatch Base’s newly upgraded medical facilities. Her condition was fairly stable but she’d be waking up missing one arm.

Xiao sat quietly at Deborah’s bedside, awaiting Ranger’s debrief of their situation after submitting a report.

Unlike most nights the man known as The Ranger had not stayed at Knightwatch Base until dawn the next day sitting idly at the computer, going over old cases both law and other, training with one of the other members, or even on patrol. No this night he had gone home and slept what could be called a good night’s sleep in two years but it didn’t last of course only about four hours into it he woke up to the sound of his laptop going off. Muttering under his breath something about having actually been in the middle of a good dream, or something of the sort he made his way over to the laptop and opened it up reading whatever it was that was so important it had to wake him up from his slumber that his own team suggested he get.

Of course within minutes he was dressed in his ‘costume’ and was riding the elevator down into Knightwatch Lair, fully awake now and pondering everything he had read. As well as everything he saw on what surveillance footage he was able to transfer from the Knightwatch Computer to his own ‘smart’ device. The elevator opened and he walked in and made his way through main room and off to the left into a corridor that lead to a sort of conference room. Once there he pressed a button that turned the ‘windows’ in the room black and then started playing and re-playing the nights patrol over and over on them. Keep in mind of course these ‘windows’ covered all of the walls in the ‘conference room’, or as Ranger had come to know it while under the tutalige of The Black Knight: The Screw up room.

Over the base loudspeakers the AI voice rang out “Dragon Girl, Ace, Ethereal please report to conference room 3 immediately. Dragon Girl, Ace, Ethereal please report to conference room 3 immediately.” Out of the three Xiao was perhaps the only one to know what conference room three meant, but maybe just maybe they still had this little area in the future and Ethereal had heard stories of it. Either way when they all found their way into the room and had taken a seat, as Ranger’s back was towards them when they walked in, he began to speak. “So, who wants to tell me what happened tonight first?” As if he didn't already know.

Ethereal ignored the firestarter, his face within this selfie looking uninterested as he looked down to the female and shook his head, no pleased by how an innocent had managed to get harmed within this. Lifting her up, he would form why appeared to be a small construct of dark ethereal that would serve as a plane, one that would fly her along with him as they flew home. Lifting himself into the air with his crackling black wings, Ethereal took off at an inhuman speed, making sure that the female was protected against any winds that would have harmed her, and feeling a change within him. He could not waste time, as something told him that flight would not be possible for too long.

As soon as they reached the base, Ethereal rushed her to the medical bay and made sure that the female was properly dealt with before his body fell to his knees like a ton of bricks. The flesh of his face was burning, cracks that had formed burning as they began to close, turning into pink lines before fading away and leaving him with a face spattered with blackened blood. His eyes were now back to their natural blue color, and the wings fell limply against this back, drawing a groan of pain as the aura about them disappeared. His body was in immense pain, and he could barely move for a few moments.

Weakly he would slump against the wall, not even breathing but one could look into his eyes to see that he was alive. His wings were clumsy on his back, drooping lamely against his back and racked with an unknown pain that he could not quite place. Ranger would call for them to come to the lame room, as his father called it within his time. Standing to his feet with an immense amount of strain, he would make his way to this room and plop down on one of the seats, muscles screaming in agony. The ranger had his back turned towards him, but he could tell that he was rather disappointed in the three.”I.....” He tried to start as a lance of pain shot through his forehead. ”I lost control.” He admitted hoping that his did not look as bad as he felt.

Jason walked into the conference room, whistling at the site of it. It was nice. This base really had just about everything now didn't it? He plopped down in one of the chairs, munching on some food item he managed to grab. He grimaced sympathetically as Ethereal told Ranger he lost control. Jason almost had as well. Damn near hurt Xiao who was only trying to save him. He cleared his throat to cover for ethereal, and expalin the whole thing as best he could.

"Okay, it started out as a normal patrol ya know? Everything seemed fine till we came across an apartment complex on fire. Before we could even more, some sort of biker covered in flames nearly hit us then drove off. From there, we broke into two teams, Ethereal and Dragon Girl to deal with the biker and me to deal with the fire. Made since right? Send the Pyro to put out the fire. I got out as fast as possible from the car and headed striaght for the fire, while they head after the biker in the car. I don't know what happened on their end from there, but I can tell you about the fire. It wasn't natural in the slightest. I rocketed up to the tops story where the fire was the worst, obviously the place where it started. I get in and try to start putting out the fire when I was... resisted. Whatever this was, it was capable of turning back my will for a bit. I had to be really close to the fire to put it out and even then that was just temporarily. I stop trying to put it out and just try to get people out from there. Get into a hall way and I can here this... laughing... cackling? Yea it cackled. Chilled me straight down to the bone. From another door though I could hear children so I went after them first. Got them alright for sure but well... It appeared. It was so damn weird, I have to no Idea even how to describe it. To many arms that had to many fingers on the hands, eyes were in the wrong place, its voice was wrong for its size, everything... just everything about it screamed wrong. I had kids with me, no way I could fight it right there. I blasted us out of there and ran down the halls with the kids. Got them outside to some paramedics then went straight back in. Too late though... that thing was gone. The fire was weaker though so I put that out and pulled out more people. found a couple... remains of its meals. I've hunted predators before and it looked like this thing had eaten a few of them. But some, it looked like it just killed. That took a bit."

Jason put both hands behind his head as he thought about the monster. That thing would pay for what it had done

"After that I took off after the others. I jumped straight into the fight, but I didn't really do anything. That biker..."

Jason squinted

"It could put out a lot of fire it seemed"

Xiao followed her two teammates to the conference room. She listened as Ace filled in most of the evening’s situation, looking at Ethereal a bit worried.

“That is what happened, more or less. The enemy we fought were... supernatural in nature, and I personally didn’t know what they were capable of, or what they were here for. I would dare to say they were demons. We'll need members with knowledge in the supernatural to deal with them next time.” Pause, then Xiao switches to the video feed of their patient in the infirmary on the wide screen.

“Meanwhile, the girl we brought in is Deborah Green, the singer. About six weeks ago she and two of her friends took her record producer hostage over... conflicts in their contract. She was incarcerated in juve but escaped, never found.” She brought up the news footage of the incident where a robot lady had bravely taken them out.

“Now she’s here in stable condition. Ethereal has already healed her, and by tomorrow I think we should wait until she recovers so she can help fill us in... and, I’m sorry they got away.”

The Ranger already knew what had happened that night, or at least he knew the majority of it. He got all the details he needed from the report that was submitted and the video feed from the NSDA surveillance cameras located around Chicago that Black Knight and Black Arrow had long sense hacked into and made it so the feed from the streets was sent to Knightwatch Lair’s super computer as well. However he wanted to hear it from them. He had personally recruited both Ethereal and Ace, and Xiao had been on the team sense almost its creation, so he expected better out of the three of them. Even if they were still just kids, well okay Xiao was a kid by the other two were technically legal adults. However after how they handled themselves tonight…

Shaking his head he listened to each and every word the three of them said, however much…or little. Nodding his head when Xiao finished he turned around to face them and sighed, he hated being the big bad boss. But, he had seen enough death in his short life and did not want these three to end up dead or worse; killing someone else. He knew what that did to a person especially someone as ‘good souled’ as these three were. “It was your first night out on patrol together as a team, and Ethereal and Ace I know you two are the newest members of Knightwatch but I had hoped putting you with someone close to your own age and with more experience would make your first time together as a team go smoothly. However I know you cannot always handle what happens in situations like this.”

He paused for a moment before continuing on with his little debriefing speech. “For what the situation was you handled it quite well, sending Ace to deal with the fire was the best call. Had it been a normal fire he would have dealt with it no problem; the addition of the fire department would have seen to that. None of you could have realized a member of the ‘gang’ stayed behind. As for the ‘ensnaring battle’ against the other two…demons… that most certainly could have been handled better. Property damage was freakishly high and…” he sighs shaking his head “At least you three made it out alive and didn’t kill anyone. We will deal with Miss Green tomorrow…in the meantime all of you go get some sleep, and Ethereal I would advise not using that form of yours for quite some time. Hit the showers then go home and sleep or pass out here. Either way you’ve all earned a good night’s rest.” With that the Crimson Archer walked out of Conference Room 3.