Mockingbird, page 1
part #8 of Marvel Heroines Series
The man’s broken jaw was the least of his worries as I hurled him into a tower of shipping crates, each one falling on him like novelty Jenga blocks. In my defense, he had tried to shoot me with a spray of bullets from his automatic weapon.
“A machine gun?” I scoffed, somersaulting out of the way and taking cover behind a concrete pillar until he emptied his clip. “I haven’t fought an Eighties villain in a while.”
The woman next to me grinned, her teeth sharp and her claws even sharper as they retracted with a satisfying schnick. Greer Nelson AKA Tigra looked electric as she crouched for cover.
“How about a distraction?” I connected both ends of my battle staves together until they made a long javelin. Above us, a beloved exhibit close to the size of a Kombi van was affixed to the ceiling.
“Not the shark from Jaws,” Tigra groaned, realizing what I was about to do.
“His name is Bruce,” I said, darting off.
More Marvel Heroines
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Black Cat: Discord by Cath Lauria
Silver Sable: Payback by Cath Lauria
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Domino: Strays by Tristan Palmgren
Outlaw: Relentless by Tristan Palmgren
Squirrel Girl: Universe by Tristan Palmgren
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First published by Aconyte Books in 2023
ISBN 978 1 83908 217 7
Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 218 4
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For Poppy Rose, a woman of STEM
Chapter One
There are two hundred and six bones in the human body. I’d only need to break six for permanent damage to a very specific asset. My opponent and I were matched for speed, but I was a better fighter in close quarters. His precision though… maybe seven bones? His hand-eye coordination was superior to anyone I knew, but if I feinted left then I could bring a stave down on–
“Bob? Barbara Bobbi Morse?”
“Hmmm?” I snapped back to attention.
“The Palos Verdes property,” my lawyer asked, patient. “Are you willing to be bought out?”
My eyes darted to the sharp stare of the man across from me. “You hated that house.”
“And now I want it,” he replied, petulant as ever.
The fingers of my soon-to-be ex-husband Clint Barton – AKA everyone’s least favorite Avenger Hawkeye – were tapping out the beat of a Mötley Crüe song on the table. I hated Mötley Crüe. The quirk of a smile that played across his face told me he knew that I knew what he was doing.
I returned the smirk, thinking about how in that position I could fracture his ulna and radial bones in one swift blow. Try playing Robin Hood then, I thought. It was like he could read my mind. Or at least my intent. His own smug expression faltered, and he quickly snatched his arm off the table. We had been many things as a couple, but we were never ones for idle threats.
“All we want is a fair division of assets,” Clint’s lawyer said. To his credit, he flashed his client a look that expressly communicated “behave”. That told me he knew him well.
“And we could have that,” my representation countered, “if Mr Barton here would have agreed to the prenuptial agreement my client asked him to sign, which he said that he did.”
“Which he lied that he did,” I mumbled.
Jennifer Walters was extremely overqualified for this situation, and it was out of respect for her doing me this favor that I held my tongue when she kicked me under the table.
“Kick” was a kind word for it, actually, given that She-Hulk wasn’t known for her… restraint. I let out a slow exhale of pain, the breath escaping between my teeth so as not to be noticed. Clint noticed, because of course he did. He never missed anything except birthdays.
Straightening in my seat, I tried to look engaged. I tried to look attentive and nonchalant and like I wasn’t thinking about how many seconds it would take for me to throw him out that window. Nothing permanent, mind you. I knew he had a trick arrow in that quiver that would have him springing back through the human-shaped hole in the glass and brushing off his shoulder in as many seconds as it took for me to toss him. It was just the catharsis of it all.
It was another full three hours and twenty-two minutes of back-and-forthing before our lawyers decided to mutually call it a day. At least somebody could agree. I flinched at the thought of what this session had cost me and bitterly wondered if Clint’s lawyer had an hourly rate cheaper than mine. No, I thought. I wasn’t going to do that. I promised myself that no matter how ugly this got, I would not become the bitter divorcée he seemed so determined to make me.
In the bathroom, I splashed water on my face before remembering I wore makeup, but my complexion was unaffected. If this setting spray could hold up under an assault from Skrulls, it could get me through my marriage breakdown. Blinking away the droplets on my eyelashes, I glared at my own reflection. The charcoal pantsuit I had put on to look professional, to look serious, felt more like a costume than anything I wore in the field as the super hero Mockingbird. My usually bright, blue eyes looked dull and even weapons-grade concealer could do little to hide the fatigue on my face.
“Pour myself a cup of ambition,” I mumbled to the woman in the mirror, getting myself together. My mother had taught me this. Whenever I needed strength that I didn’t have in the moment, borrow it from other women until you believe. In this instance, Dolly. My hands smoothed down the fine lines of the suit’s tailoring as I checked for creases and hell, my butt looked amazing in this. Head high, ”9 to 5” hummed under my breath, I strutted down that office building’s hallway like I owned it. Jen and Clint’s lawyer waited at the elevators, heads close together in a conversation I only picked up the final sentences of.
“I’m a criminal lawyer, Jennifer,” he huffed. “I don’t even know what he wants me to do here.”
“Besides be criminally annoying?”
He huffed out a laugh and I realized with surprise there was more chemistry between these two than there was in the last few months of my marriage. They separated when the click clack of my heels on marble announced my arrival. He offered me a polite nod, his eyes hidden behind red shades as he used a white cane to negotiate his way to the elevator Jen held open for him.
“See you in a few weeks,” he told her.
“A pleasure, Matt.”
As the doors pinged shut, I tilted my head in a way that said everything without saying anything.
“No,” Jen replied, pulling me into the next available elevator. “Not a word.”
“I have several, but I’m afraid they’ll cost me.” I smirked.
“He’s a colleague.”
“A softly spoken, quite fit and frankly disarmingly handsome colleague.”
I was tall at five-foot ten, but I felt tiny as Jen looked down at me over a pair of stylish Gucci frames.
“The only thing messier than negotiating a super hero divorce,” she began, “would be doing so while ‘negotiating’ with the opposition.”
“Sustained.”
We stepped out into the Los Angeles sunshine right as the influx of food trucks descended for the lunchtime crush. I thought I heard Jen say something like “ooooh, tacos!” but she was gone from my side so quickly I couldn’t be sure. It was barely a beat before she reappeared, beaming as she held up two cardboard trays overflowing with food.
“Lead the way,” I laughed.
Nestled together on a park bench, our feast spread out between us, we ate in silence as the office buildings emptied out around us.
“Guff pie hove hell aye,” she said through a mouthful. I spoke ten languages and conveniently one of them was
“I used to love this city,” I sighed. “Now it just feels stifling.”
“Hey,” Jen said, gaze traveling from mine to the scene and back again with sympathy. “Every breakup is varying degrees of bad. One day, with enough time and distance, you’ll look back on this and laugh.”
“Or fly kick someone out a window.”
“I knew that’s what you were thinking!”
“Not the whole time. I just… I’m sorry. I know you’re helping me out with all this, but when we’re up there, nitpicking over this car or that bike, I genuinely have no idea how we got here. How did it get to this point?”
“Firstly, you’re paying me to be here,” Jen began, ticking off points on her green fingers. “Secondly, love is nonsensical. It sands off all the edges of a person, it converts all the red flags to green, it turns every sour note sweet. You can’t see it when you’re in it and the only way to be in it is to blindly jump.”
A warm sense of respect and friendship and loyalty spread through my chest as she spoke. I’d been insistent on paying her, knowing the hours it would take and time away from more desperate clients. Even though she’d agreed because I’d annoyed her so much about it, I knew it was a criminally discounted – and still expensive – rate.
“That’s a poetic way to say sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.” I smiled.
“Eh.” She shrugged. “I’m a slam poet.”
We cleaned up our rubbish, Jen finishing everything I couldn’t eat and I thought grimly about the way my suit didn’t fit me like it used to: baggy in spots where it had previously hugged my athletic frame. The stress had caused me to lose weight, my cheekbones sharper and jawline more pronounced. Sunglasses on, chin up, be your own boss, climb your own ladder echoing through my skull, we strolled past Clint’s growing crowd with only a few passing glances.
“What are your plans tonight?” Jen asked. “I’m on the red-eye back to New York. Early margaritas and karaoke?”
“You know how I feel about karaoke.”
“It brings out the worst in people blah blah blippity blah.”
“Besides, I’ve got a mission. My last as a West Coast Avenger, actually.”
She cast me a quick sideways glance.
“What?” I prompted.
“Nothing.”
“Say it,” I whined, rolling my eyes.
“I would not want to be whoever is going up against Mockingbird tonight.”
•••
The man’s broken jaw was the least of his worries as I hurled him into a tower of shipping crates, each one falling on him like novelty Jenga blocks. In my defense, he had tried to shoot me with a spray of bullets from his automatic weapon.
“A machine gun?” I scoffed, somersaulting out of the way and taking cover behind a concrete pillar until he emptied his clip. “I haven’t fought an Eighties villain in a while.”
The woman next to me grinned, her teeth sharp and her claws even sharper as they retracted with a satisfying schnick. Greer Nelson AKA Tigra looked electric as she crouched for cover, our team of just five S.H.I.E.L.D. agents outnumbered three to one. On paper, that is.
“Come on, Bird,” Tigra purred. “Give the others an early mark. The two of us can handle these idiots on our own.”
The line between flirting and fighting with danger was always blurry with her and the flash in Tigra’s eyes made it even blurrier still as the rat tat tat of gunfire finally died off. I’d been tracking “these idiots” for months thanks to a tip from one of Tigra’s old Confidential Informants from back in her law enforcement days. A “weapons shipment” was all it had been called, but given the lengths these guys had gone to keep it secret – shell companies, shifting dates, even their numbers – it all told me this was something important. Or maybe that’s what I wanted to believe, but I was desperate for the distraction: more professional, less personal. That was my new motto.
“They out?” Tigra questioned. “Hey you! Unnamed Agent! Stick your head out and have a look, will ya?”
Such was Tigra’s fearsome reputation, the agent almost did it too before I hissed at them to hold their position, unseen. It had cost me to get this far: these guys were the main suppliers for all enhanced weaponry on the West Coast and I’d had to let three shipments of varying import pass through unbothered so they wouldn’t know we were on to them. They were clever, having hijacked a nearly perfect pipeline to get their products into the city and undetected under the guise of touring museum exhibits.
Now ancient artifacts have some security, but these fellas were careful enough to make sure their quarry would be of low interest to your everyday thief and therefore your everyday attentive border controls. An exhibition destined for the Academy Museum on the history of the moving image, however, was the perfect Trojan Horse. So effective was their ruse, even Tigra had been uncertain as we’d hidden in place and watched the shipment get wheeled into the empty exhibition space.
“Are you sure?” she whispered. “All the nerds who work here seem to know them.”
“Tradecraft 101,” I’d replied. “Establish genuine, believable relationships. They’ve probably been dealing with these guys for close to a year, it seems authentic. But you know what doesn’t?”
I pointed out the triceps of the “touring curator” as he signed off on the last crate delivery with his team.
“Museum workers aren’t that swole. He looks like a Die Hard henchman.”
“Yeah, hot and Swedish,” had been Tigra’s response. I’d been proven right when we’d confirmed that all civilians were out of the museum and made our move. We’d been able to take out a handful before it got to this point, using our lack of numbers and their excess to our advantage. They needed to weave through the Stories Of Cinema permanent exhibition to get to their setup space, so Tigra and I had tracked after them silently.
I’d swept the legs out from under one guy in front of the triangled mirrors of the Bruce Lee section, our reflections distorted with his costume from Enter The Dragon behind us. My eyes had fixed on the nunchaku perfectly preserved behind glass as I’d choked that man to unconsciousness, my fingers itching to use them but good girl instincts winning out.
“As little collateral damage as possible,” S.H.I.E.L.D. Deputy Director Maria Hill had asked of me. I’d promised. So I cuffed him, marked his position, and left him for the clean-up crew just in time to see Tigra emerge from her camouflage behind the overflowing floral gown from Midsommar. She jumped on an unsuspecting assailant’s back, taking him out much the same way I did then patting his head like he was having a brief nap.
The two of us had picked them off one by one, the rest of our team holding position until our targets eventually noticed their dwindling numbers. I’d hoped they’d send a few more scouts out to look for them, get a few more on the scoreboard, but they’d gone straight to their generic weapons stash. It had been tucked out of sight so as not to raise suspicion, but I could hear an electric drill now as they desperately tried to crack into their new supply. We needed to take the rest of them out before they got to whatever was in those crates. They were low on bullets and we were low on time.
“I count eight left,” Tigra said, sniffing deeply. “Including one who tragically uses Lynx Africa.”
I unclipped three surveillance spheres from my utility belt and rolled them out in different directions. I watched on a tiny, handheld monitor as they did their job and mapped out the terrain.
“All right,” I began, connecting to the team through our earpieces. “The three of you work to flank the trio with the firepower on the left. Tigra and I will tackle the remaining five who are low on ammo… for now. We move in twenty seconds.”
An echo of confirmations came back, Tigra looking at me questioningly.
