Dan woke up with a start, certain he’d heard someone in the hall. It was still dark; the sun had not yet cracked the skyline. If someone was in here, they’d be in for a shock: Dan Mitchell had the entire layout of his downtown apartment memorized to the inch, and his tomahawk was already in his hand.
After listening for a few more minutes, Dan decided it was nothing. Reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp, he set his weapon down on the bed, rubbed his face and eyes, and reached over to pet his savannah cat, Brushfire. Not the original Brushfire; she'd died while he was in his coma. The first thing Dan had done when he was strong enough to stand again was go looking for her. Instead, what he found was the agency that had taken her when they'd cleared out his apartment. And, she'd had a litter. Dan had adopted her son for moral support during his long journey to rehabilitation. Perhaps it was morose, but he couldn't help but naming the cub Brushfire, after his mother.
Dan’s room was decorated sparsely with western and Native memorabilia, from a classic Johnny West doll from the late 70s to paintings by modern Native artists. His window, currently tinted, had an amazing view of downtown Kansas City from the 10th floor. Having pulled the curtains closed, he knelt to pull a plastic box from under his bed, then set it on the bed and opened it. Brushfire immediately became interested in what was going on, and began sniffing in and around the box.
Dan pulled out his spare costume, identical to the one he’d been wearing when he'd been seriously injured that night, when his friend had died at his side. The costume consisted of a brown leather jacket, his mask and face paints for accent, some black, leather-like pants, and a pair of short engineer boots. There was also his belt, which had a holster for his pistol (kept in a drawer near the bed, not in the box) and his grapple gun, which had 100 yards of Spectra rope. Unable to stop himself, Dan reached in the drawer an pulled out his Navy pistol, holding it's familiar weight in his hand. The weapon hadn't tarnished or seemingly aged at all in 10 years, though that didn't surprise Dan. It was, after all, magic.
Looking down at his arm and leg muscles, Dan realized he’d have to do a lot more working out, if he were going to take up this responsibility again. And from what he'd seen on the news the past several days, Kansas City needed him more than it ever had.
Leaving the box on the bed, Dan stood up and looked out his window at the city below. Maestro was behind bars now. Dan had stopped to watch the arrest on TV at a different bar further down the street, after he’d knocked Maestro out and diffused his bomb. Dan shook his head, realizing that the villain had been prepared to blow himself up in order to kill The Plainsman, a has-been hero of little danger to him. What a maniac.
Distracted by a siren in the street below, Dan looked out to see several men turn down an alley across the street, avoiding detection of the police cruiser, which kept going up 13th. Who am I to argue? And he put on the costume once again, and grabbed his tomahawk and his pistol. Then, opening the secret panel he’d built into the wall of his bedroom, Dan took the makeshift ladder he’d built between the walls up to the roof, and out a hatch. Looking out over the city, he took aim with his grappler and fired at a lower building nearby. For the first time in years, The Plainsman was watching over Kansas City.
*********************************************************************************************************
Dan’s friend Zorby was an eclectic kind of guy. Short for Zorbinsky, Dan had met Lee at a weekly poker game he’d been playing with some of the guys on the hospital staff during rehab. Turns out Zorby was the step-son of one of the players who couldn’t make it that night. He was much younger than anyone else at the table, early twenties. And unlike most of the guys at the game, Zorby didn’t work at the hospital; he was a manager at a record store, KC Discs.
That’s where Dan stood now, on a Friday afternoon. “What do you mean, it DIDN’T come in?” Dan asked Zorby, frustrated. Unlike Dan’s tall, well-muscled form, Zorby was short and stocky, with a goatee and flame-red hair.
“Sorry, man. Something about a train wreck or some such,” Zorby said as the door jingled.
“Zorby, don’t be so cold! You’re talking about Zeppelin’s alternate turquoise cover! That thing is worth thousands!”
“Doesn’t stop a train wreck,” Zorby said, sighing. Just then, a young Asian woman walked up to the counter. “Oh, hey Leah,” Zorby nodded. The woman circled around the counter and grabbed one of the store T-shirts they all wore, pulling it on over her own top. As her black hair came through the top, Dan looked on, stunned. It was her.
“Can’t believe the damned bus was 20 minutes late. I didn’t even get a chance to grab lunch,” Leah said, walking to the computer/register to clock in. The young Asian woman looked up and said a friendly “Hello” to the customer. Leah’s eyes wrinkled for a moment behind her rectangular glasses.
“You look familiar. Have I met you before?” she asked.
Dan tripped over his tongue. “I...No, don’t think so. I’d remember you,” he said.
“You’re kind of a sweet talker, aren’t you,” she joked.
“Guilty as charged,” he laughed.
“Hey, hey, you guys done?” Zorby broke in. “I need to bug out. Dan, grab a bite?”
“Sure, man. Nice meeting you, Leah. I’m Dan by the way,” Dan said. And Dan and Zorby walked out into the evening.
“Zorby, that’s the girl!” Dan said a few yards away.
“What, where?” Zorby looked around.
“No, you idiot. Leah! She’s the girl at the bar I told you about!” The two paused in the street at a don’t walk signal.
“Oh!” Zorby said, thunder rolling in the distance. “Well, tough luck on that one, then. She’s taken.”
The two crossed at the light. “Taken? What? You?” Dan asked.
“Pshh, no, not me,” Zorby literally brushed his hand through the air as if pushing the thought away. “Some guy, student at Welmount. Sciency guy of some kind. Besides, isn't she kind of young for you?”
"No comment," Dan said sullenly. Well, he thought to himself, That’s a disappointment, but at least she’s not dating Zorby. I don’t think I could take that. Dan kept his comments to himself as the thunder rolled closer.
“Pizza?” Zorby asked.
“No, had it for lunch. Deli?” Dan countered.
“Sure. Jimmy B’s?”
“Sounds great. Good potato salad.” A lightning strike nearby made both of them, and everyone else on the street, jump. An instant later, the front of an electronics shop shattered, and something zipped inside at high speed.
“What the heck was that?” Zorby asked. But Dan was gone.
On the street, people were looking into the shattered remains of the plate glass window. From inside, another lightning bolt shot out, hitting one of the pedestrian gawking in and knocking her into the street.
Then, from above, a man in black and brown, his face disguised in a mask and war paint, swung down on a wire. Landing just to the right of the shattered window, The Plainsman drew his gun. Pushing the onlookers out of the way, he glanced in quickly. Yep, just as he suspected. Texas T-Storm, his old super-speed foe. Must have just gotten out of lockup after the last time he busted him eleven years ago.
Dan heard the mumbling behind him as he prepared to make his move. “Hey, it’s the Plainsman! Thought he was dead!” “I thought he retired.” “What’s a Planesman?” Etc. Nice to know they remembered him.
Leaping onto the window’s edge, shattered glass all around his feet, Dan scanned the area down the barrel of his shaman-blessed revolver. Where did that...there! Dan fired, but too late. The blue and black garbed villain known as Texas T-Storm zipped past him, knocking him out the window and onto the concrete, tailbone first.
Dan winced, but quickly recovered, swung his gun arm around, and fired at the sky. Fortunately, the pistol had a special power. It never missed. Even a clumsy attempt at aiming, such as the one Dan just made, was guided by ancient mystical forces, and hit its mark. From the sky, several yards in the air, came a scream of pain, and Texas T-Storm crash-landed on a two story building across the street.
Dan could hear the police cars coming; someone in the crowd had probably called them. Pressing his advantage, the Plainsman sprinted across the street, pulling himself on to a retail awning, then manually tossing his grapple to the roof. He hauled himself up as quickly as he could, flipped over the side and dropped four feet to the roof below. His shoulder ached now, but not as much as his face would have if he’d simply stuck his head over the edge: a bolt of energy flew directly past him, so close the hairs on his arm stood up.
Dan drew his tomahawk and moved in quickly. At range, T-Storm had an advantage. But while he was very fast, he was not hand to hand trained. The villain struggled to get to his feet with the bullet wound in his side, but Dan swept him from behind as he butted the villain with the blunt side of his axe-head.
The thunder continued to roll in, but Texas T-Storm fell back on his elbow. Beside him was a bag of “loot” he’d stolen from the electronics store. Odd target for a supervillain, Dan thought.
“Please,” the defeated T-Storm begged. “You’ve got to let me go! He’ll kill her!”
“What? Who?” Dan asked suspiciously, tomahawk still prepared to strike.
“My...niece. He’s got my niece.”
“Slow down, Tex. Who has your niece?”
“Maestro.”
