[center][img]http://txt-dynamic.cdn.1001fonts.net/txt/dHRmLjcyLjAwMDAwMC5WVzV0WVhOclpXUSwuMA,,/powderfinger.regular.png[/img][/center]
[center][img]https://image.ibb.co/mhMGNm/cutmypic.png[/img][/center]

The Tiger: An Interim
March-October, 2020.

March flew by, Marvin had--for the most part--spent the rest of April and May cleaning up the criminal gangs in and around Brooklyn. By June, crime in Brooklyn had dropped to nearly zero; consequently, the city began to speak. Whispers of Brooklyn’s mysterious vigilante spread similar as the wildfire which engulfed New York City months earlier. In the wake of crime’s depression in the Brooklyn area, Tiger was able to focus his efforts on other things. Come the end of July, he was able to finish his mixed martial arts training, achieving inhuman levels of prowess in: Taekwondo, Judo, Boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muai Thai, and Krav Maga to name a few.

He had also went about setting up cameras on every street in Brooklyn, including alleways. All of which programmed to the same frequency as the magic detecting satellite he helped Grim build earlier in the year. There was little which occurred in the city of Brooklyn which escaped the Tiger’s watchful eye, normal or mystic. Earlier in the month of July, he had thrown Independence Day festivities; a block party for the entire Marcy housing projects. There were school supplies for the kids, fireworks, Marvin had even partnered with the local homeless shelter and invited the city’s disenfranchised for the celebration.

Not all the month of July was peace for the Tiger, he watched vigorous as Grim, Lady Arcana, and several other vigilantes he had never seen before repelled rebel forces in the Middle East. A hundred thousand men or more versus six or seven vigilantes, and the vigilantes won. Marvin was tickled at the sight, if there was any inkling of desired secrecy in the vigilante community, it was now gone. It was national news. The repercussions--good or bad--meant the citizens of New York would grow to love or hate masked men such as himself; which way the public leaned Marvin could not yet tell; the populus (and he, himself) were still new to this ‘hero’ phenomenon. Marvin was unsure how much longer he could shroud himself behind the Tiger’s mystique, the public eye was well set on the hero community, and though he personally did not care too much about having his identity exposed, to have his veil lifted would mean he would have to begin anew. One could never be sure what enemies one may make in this line of work, no matter how secretive one attempted to remain.

Marvin had assumed there were others like himself out there after meeting Lady Arcana, Grim, the Tree, and the others during the riots. Since then, he had been watching them all--creating countermeasures for each one. A swell of joy fluttered within as he imagined Grim was doing the same. [color=lightsteelblue][i]Nice improvements on the jet, by the way. I’ll need to tell her when I see her next.[/i][/color] As July waned, The people of the Marcy projects were watching him, too. News of vigilantism around the nation focused the Marcy residents’ formerly unconcerned eyes on the large warehouse which overlooked the whole projects as though it were some five star hotel high rise. They begun to wonder just who--or what--had suddenly made their slums crime free. But many of the citizens, like the criminals Marvin had preyed upon, never heard nor saw anything.

July faded into August; the dead of summer was never Marvin’s favorite time of year. His suit oxygenated itself, but it was still partly made of leather and on those arid summer midnights when the air was still and the people of the projects slept, Marvin was leaping across the city’s rooftops. Even with the projects relatively safe, the Mob began entrenching itself in the five boroughs once more. Marvin drove the dregs of the mob from his part of town with a lightning ferocity; he had not taken out the upper brass. In truth, he did not intend to; there were grander threats worthy of his attention, the Mob’s infighting would assure they took care of themselves sooner or later. A few sightings of Brooklyn’s resident vigilante by the city’s insomniac and night owl population, and murmurs about the moniker of the Brooklyn mask spread: ‘Claw Man’, ‘Kitty’, ‘Jaguar’, all feline related. Marvin heard the whispers and each guess amused him.

Life as a vigilante was not glorious, especially for Hayes. Most of his time was spent in the warehouse where he watched the world as it progressed. Part of him wished he was out there participating in its advancement, establishing relationships; but so is the isolated life of his line of work. While the world advanced technologically, Marvin watched. He designed and installed into his current suit a rotation of different visual nodes: one for night vision; there was another for motionsense; in borrowing from Grim, thermal and heat vision, and by replicating the design of the magic sensory satellite’s features, a node for visualizing magic energies large and small within a long radius.

He continued working with the samples of magic energy he attained in March, but he made no great advancement. August lulled, and Marvin’s desire to stir swelled; he travelled around New York, pursuing the night life. Clubs, bars, ballrooms; he figured it best to spend some of that money he had saved and network with some of the city’s rich and depraved. He forged friendships with some of the city’s most powerful politicians, bankers, crime figures, and celebrities. Come the middle of September, there was no member of New York’s elite who Marvin didn’t know. He opened small non-for profit organizations, started a martial arts gym, and was in the process of mapping out a minor trucking business; in part so he could replenish some of his disposed wealth, and in part to draw the eye of some of those same crime figures he had become friends with. After all, the crime bosses knew Marvin, but they didn’t know it was Marvin himself who was also terrorizing their illegitimate kingdoms.

Or so he thought.

A brisk October morning, Marvin was out for a jog. New York winter was approaching unfettered. Marvin typically wore the torso piece of the suit underneath his workout clothes in case he did need to act suddenly; lately, Marvin was not as sharp. Maybe it was the lack of crime, maybe it was because his galavanting had softened him; he was beginning to enjoy the softer things in life--fine wines, jewelry, women. Lots of women. His in ring persona never quite left him, though he hadn’t been inside a ring in almost a year. When the mask was off, he was still loud, abracious, cocky. The dissonance between himself and the Tiger had to remain wide, lest a being keener than himself deduce the two parts were in fact one whole. So when Marvin failed to notice the gunmen trailing him on his route, enhanced senses and all, it was only indicative of one cold fact: Grim was right.

No matter how many gangs he took down, how many charities he opened, or how much he tried to protect an entire city when he was only one man, eventually he would slip. Whoever had been watching him was waiting, documenting every mistake he made. Each shot boomed louder in his ears than normal; and for a mere second between hearing the gun’s blast and the initial impact of the first shot, Marvin knew today may be his last. The first round hit his shoulder blade and exited through his right bicep, the second tore through his glutes and splintered his hip, the third burst through his back inches from his spine and curled out through his abdomen. A fourth hemorrhaged his hamstring and blew through his knee entirely.

Marvin fell face first into the concrete, in the middle of the slums he swore to protect. The masked gunmen kept firing, Marvin still clung to life; and had it not been for the returning fire of two drug dealers, the gunman who stood over him may have had time to deliver the [i]coup de tat[/i]. The two drug dealers, men who Marvin knew but never bothered even during his escapades as Tiger, stood over his dying body. One of the two, named Lamarcus, spoke first,

“Aye, ain’t that Marvin?”, the other man, Trevon, added,
“Oh shit, yeah, that is him!” then Lamarcus chimed,
“Why they hit son like that? Fucked his shit [i]all[/i] up!” Trevon, one who always got excited at the sight of violence, almost giggled at the comment,
“On god they did.” both were hardened to even a gruesome sight as this, a lull fell over the interaction for a few seconds as they pondered. Lamarcus spoke again,
“We gone help ‘im or what?”
“Shi’, migh’ as well.” 

When Marvin woke in the hospital a few days later in King’s County Hospital, he was bandaged nearly from head to toe and hooked up to several tubes. On the television above his bed there was a news report,

[quote]BREAKING NEWS

“Jennifer Greene with Channel 52 news. Several days ago, a man was shot and left for dead in Marcy’s Brooklyn housing projects. A police investigation launched into the shooting uncovered that the victim, 24 year old Marvin Hayes, former Middleweight IBC boxing champion, may be connected to the new vigilante presence sweeping the nation. More at 6.”[/quote]

He must have left the warehouse key in his pocket!

A pan of the skycamera fixated on the warehouse, there were police wagons and swat vans trying to break down the front door, to no initial avail; after prodding with a battering ram, the defensive measures activated. A massive flashbang followed by a torrent of non-lethal armor piercing rounds sent the streamlined officers careening backwards. On the lower levels, the gunrack walls in the ballistics lab flipped around, an array of weapons exchanged for blank hollow steel walls. On the fourth floor, where his engineering room was; more importantly, where his official and prototype suits hung along every wall, the hollowed partitions opened in back and the mechanized arms from which the suits hung were reverted into the hollow spacing. When the walls closed, they were as regular walls should be. One would not know the walls were actually hollow unless they had built the infrastructure themselves. As for the engineering drawings themselves, they remained. Marvin figured he would be caught someday, and should someone attempt to replicate his designs, they couldn’t build them the way he had so it was of little consequence.

A knock on his hospital room’s door; the FBI. A tall, slender man in a creme trench coat sauntered in and flashed his badge. In a detached voice, he spoke,

“Marvin Hayes! David Ramsey, FBI! You and I need to have a chat, hm?” Mr. Ramsey showed his badge as confirmation and pulled the blue hospital chair next to the railing of Marvin’s bed.

[color=lightsteelblue][i]Well. . . fuck.[/i][/color]