The Muse leapt from building to building. She was happy to live in a city like San Francisco where the buildings were close together. If she lived in a suburb, she'd probably have to drive from place to place-or to a potential crime scene, where she was headed now.
On the rooftops, she went unnoticed. People rarely looked up, especially now, at night. And if anybody did spot her, the Muse would be gone so quickly, they would assume she was a bird or a squirrel.
Even after the recent press, the world had quickly forgotten about her. There were one or two articles wondering about the identity of the woman who'd fought a fury beast on the Golden Gate Bridge, but the consensus was she'd been killed by the creature.
Nothing much exciting had happened since then-not that she was complaining. One Minotaur in a lifetime was all she needed, and she was happy with her nightly routine of prevent-ing such mundane occurrences such as robberies, car thefts and vandalism.
But now that summer was approaching, nocturnal activities were on the rise. And more people meant more suspicious noc-turnal activities. It also meant less sleep for the Muse, who was of course in reality Emma Sonnet.
In two weeks, that wouldn't be a problem-it would be summer vacation, but now was the beginning of finals. That was enough to keep most kids stressed, but Emma also had to add patrolling the city to that tab.
If something happened on the streets below, it felt like an alarm clock going off in her head-she'd immediately focus on the source of the disturbance. This evening, it brought her to the jewelry district.
The Muse stood in the middle of the boulevard. At first, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, but as she scanned the street lined with various jewelry stores, she noticed a hole cut through the window of the nearest one.
A small hole, but big enough for a man to crawl through.
Cautiously, the Muse approached the window. It was dark inside, but she detected a shadow lurking within. As her eyes focused, she saw he was dressed in black. Either he was a pro-fessional cat burglar or a poet with nothing better to do. Either way, she would stop him.
But suddenly something struck her hard on the back of her neck. The shock and pain sent her crumpling to the ground.
"What're you doing?" a man's voice whispered from inside the store.
"She was snooping," a woman's voice returned. "So I clob-bered her."
"With a crowbar!" the man said, terror filling his voice.
"You probably killed her. I'm not taking the rap for you on this."
"Relax, sweetheart," the woman said. "She's still breathing.
She'll just wake up with a really bad headache. And she's dressed like one of those homeless punk rockers. Nobody'll believe anything she might say anyway."
The woman crawled through the hole into the store. She held a large, wool sack in her hand.
"Besides," she told her partner, "we'll be well outta town before she wakes up."
"I told you I didn't want to hurt anybody."
"She was snooping, she deserved it. Now let's get to work."
Using the crowbar, the woman pried open the cases that held the smaller pieces of jewelry and then filled her sack. Her partner carefully cut open the display cases to subsequently remove their contents.
As the woman began to pull open the next case, the crow-bar was suddenly yanked out of her hand. She lost her balance and toppled into her partner.
"What're you doing?" the guy whispered. " This is delicate work."
"Like whacking somebody with a crowbar?" said a girl's voice through the darkness.
The two froze in fear. They assumed the girl the woman had clobbered had a friend with her. But as the speaker stepped into the light, the crooks were even more surprised when they saw it was the girl herself!
Luckily for the Muse, she had a somewhat harder head than your average person (though not in the way her friends would think). Yes, being hit with a crowbar hurt, and kids don't try this at home, but when you're a superhero you generally shake it off pretty quick.
But, this woman and her accomplice were dangerous and she obviously had no problem hurting innocent people. The Muse didn't like that one bit.
"It's not very nice to sneak up on someone with a crowbar,"
said the Muse. " Flowers perhaps, or maybe even chocolates, but…"
"And you're gonna get it again if you don't get outta here, little missy!" the woman threatened.
"Did you take a course at the Learning Annex to learn how to speak thug?" said the Muse. " Something tells me you didn't pass."
"Looks like we got a comedian here," said the woman as she ran toward the Muse, raising her fist to strike.
"Shouldn't that be comedienne?" said the Muse.
Calmly, she grabbed the woman's wrist, giving it a gentle twist. The woman fell to her knees.
In quite severe pain, she tried to scratch at the Muse with her other hand. " Sorry," said the Muse. "I'm not into catfights."
The Muse grabbed the woman's other hand and twisted them both behind her back. The Muse always carried a few feet of rope in her pocket for just such situations, and quickly bound the woman's wrists. She tied the other end of the rope to one of the display case's legs.
The Muse then turned to the man, and his eyes widened with terror.
"I didn't hurt you, lady," he managed to get out.
"But you would have left me there," she reminded him, "and that's just as bad."
The man whipped out his glass cutter. " Don't come any closer. I don't want to have to hurt you, but-"
But the cutter was snatched out of his hand.
He didn't even see the Muse take it, but now she stood across from him, holding his now useless weapon.
"W-what are you going to do to me?" the man stammered.
"Wait."
"W-wait?" the man's voice cracked. "Wait for what?"
The Muse shushed him.
Some vehicles were approaching.
"That should be the police," said the Muse. "I took the lib-erty of hitting the silent alarm when I came in. Now, I want you to be a good boy and surrender. Then tell the police all about what you and your girlfriend do for a living. You can leave the part about me out."
"And if I don't?" the man said defiantly.
"Well then, you shouldn't write your name on your burgla-ry tools."
Two patrol cars rolled up to the jewelry store. When the officers peered inside, all they saw was a frightened man and woman tied quite securely to a display case.
Surprisingly the man told them everything.
