One of the unfortunate consequences of being on a team is the occasional need to take one for said team. This was more often than not the case simply by virtue of location; Victory was the only other LAW member on the West Coast, and she both A) could not fly herself, being reliant on the Shooting Star (her home base, situated out of an alarmingly advanced jet which was inconveniently often being repaired or refitted) to do so, and B) lived and worked out of Seattle. This presented a grave inconvenience to Aztech, since it meant, realistically, that pretty much any problems in California or Nevada (tragically all too common) became his problem.
It was a further truth that superhuman activity mapped pretty closely to population density, and so California was pretty much constantly having one problem or another; if it wasn't Dr. Dementor or Fearomone in San Francisco, it would be Baron Boom or Annie Hilator here in LA, Senor Lazorz or Panthera in San Diego, or really any one of the several hundred semi-recurrent problems plaguing the region, and by extension him, thanks to most police departments' sadly and thoroughly inadequate capability to deal with threats of a superhuman nature. Oh, sure, there was that 'Pacific Powers Coalition' or whatever they called themselves, helping out local police departments, and as far as he knew, a couple others elsewhere (including those damned uncooperative Lone Star Rangers in Texas), but those were a varied bunch of varying capabilities, and couldn't deal with the biggest threats alone (which was why they weren't LAWmen in the first place).
At the end of the day, it would be LAW that would need to take on anything really major, and as far as those went, unless it was Class C or up (meaning a group or individual who could threaten a major population center or entire geographical region in the US), Aztech would be handling it on his own. So this call was really only marginally surprising. Irritating in the moment, yes, but thoroughly routine, and at least it hadn't been the other, rather harder-to-ignore sorts of calls that were really orders more than suggestions. Came with the territory, but still.
"Hey Aztech. Big Bird said to check in."
"Oh." Sharp eyes tracked the momentary look of surprise on Aztech's face, even as he quickly masked it. Sparrow. Shrike's latest hotshot teen (young adult? when was the kid's birthday?) sidekick, Sparrow. This was, what, the fourth or fifth one? They grew up so fast. And then took on other avian identities. 'Peregrine', 'Osprey', 'Harrier'; serious names that always contrasted with a sunnier personality than you'd expect after spending years with the Shrike. He'd always found it funny himself that they always went for larger birds of prey, but at the end of the day Shrike was still 'Big Bird' (a nickname he despised, which rapidly turned it into 'Big Brood' instead (which Shrike found even worse)). "It was Shrike's authorization code, so I expecte-"
"He went to go beat on Totenkopf a little more," the young woman said, shrugging in the exaggerated fashion you had to for people to actually see your shoulders in these little face-to-face chats. "Stormfront broke out again and the old man figured, hey, all these neo-Nazi types just love each other to bits. Which is unfortunately true, since he doesn't seem to want to dish."
"God. Did he just drag him in for no reason? LAW or not, the Super Act-"
"Relax," she shot back, her tone very reminiscent of his nephew's whenever he'd been caught sneaking out. "We found Totenkopf planning bombings all over Chicago a couple days ago. We were just gonna check in, make sure he was seeing his parole officer and everything, but domestic terrorism is always a no-no. Look, it's nothing to worry about, he's mostly safe in the Aviary."
"That is...not reassuring."
"Hey, come on. The old man puts people in traction, not body bags."
"That's even less so."
"Look, complain about it to him, alright? I'm only calling because FBI wires have been screaming about some 'Knox' kid, and they've gotten wind of him over in SF. Some kind of hostage situation over at the UCSF Children's Hospital. We'd asked Victory to check it out, but she's busy doing something with the Navy out in Hawaii. Me, I'd fly out and check in myself, but 'someone's always got to watch the wires'", saying the last in an exaggerated, bestial growl that was still almost a dead ringer for Shrike's low rumble.
"Duly noted, Sparrow, I'll head out momentarily. By the way, Mefisto ambushed me a few minutes ago; get Alec or The Whizard out here to send him home."
"Whiz is out, but I'll get Alec to teleport over. Good luck with the Knox kid."
"Thanks, Ava. Say hi to Silas for me," Aztech said before cutting the call.
Knox. That boy's name rang a bell. Something in Vegas. He'd interrogate Suit's systems about it on the flight over. At full burn on a semiballistic flight path, he could be there in a couple minutes, but he should probably take a little longer, one to let the self-repair systems finish up (ETA: 4 minutes seventeen...sixteen seconds), and two to avoid showing up on radar as a missile launch (seeing as how that had gone pretty badly back in the Cold War...). He'd just make a straight burn over in Green, get there in 10 minutes or so. Take it slow, relatively speaking, and use the time to read up on Knox's dossier, maybe have Suit interrogate local PD networks to find out the tactical situation. Formulate a plan of attack.
With a quick look down to give Mefisto a nice little parting gift (a nice little sleeping bag of 4-inch-thick goo from the immobilizer, and another 200 kV love tap for good measure), he gave a quick wave for the civilian crowd now gathered around snapping pictures which would doubtless be splashed all over social media in a few minutes, made a heroic pose for a Times reporter (in the style of a trophy hunter over a downed animal), then switched to Green and rocketed up to start his burn over to San Francisco.
"Suit", he subvocalized, "activate cruise control, destination UCSF, and pull up LAW's dossier on Andrew Knox."
"Acknowledged", came the reply, and a 276 page dossier of assorted newspaper clippings, observations, and occasional outright speculation was pulled up in front of him. Light reading compared to some of Shrike's other work. Still, he only had ten minutes or so.
"Remove all pages not flagged 'essential information'," Aztech said, sighing.
With another "acknowledged" from Suit, Aztech found himself left with twenty-three pages of Shrike's observations.
"Size eight font," he groaned. "The man is a monster."
