Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Unlicensed Venice Beach PI Kate Bishop/Hawkeye is working her 1st case - finding out who's been online stalking college student Mikka. She saw Larry Gort secretly photographing her and caught him and found some incriminating messages on his phone.
Now she's taking him to the police station and trying to contact Mikka to come and press charges. But she's getting no reply. (And we know she's been kidnapped.) He protests that he loves the girl, and he didn't send as many messages as Kate claims are in the folder of evidence she waves under his nose. She also finds a flyer for TBC in his wallet, which she's seen as posters in many places. (And we saw 1 dropped at the abduction site with Mikka's bag.) Larry says it stands for Take Back Control. He joined because he thought it was a therapy group which would help him stop obsessing over Mikka, but it made it worse - and sometimes it feels like it isn't him sending the messages.
At the station Kate asks for the Cyber Crime unit to take Gort in. She tries Mikka's phone again but we now see it lying by her bag in the alley. She gets an interview with Detective Rivera who says she's previously talked to Mikka and repeats what she told her then - the level of harassment isn't high enough to press charges. Especially without Mikka here now. And Gort could bring assault charges against Bishop! The Detective isn't wild about superhero PI's who meddle in bank robberies (last issue) where they could have got civilians hurt. But if Ms Bishop behaves herself she won't dig too deep into the state of her PI license. And the interview's over.
Outside Kate meets her newly-hired tech assistant Quinn who's been looking into the emails and tech messages to Mikka. He's discovered that some of them were sent at identical times so there must be at least 2 senders. So maybe Gort was telling the truth when he denied some of them. Now she wants Quinn to keep digging to find some actual IP addresses behind the web of proxies and VPNs. He tries to ask her out on a date to an outdoor revival film festival but she spots a TBC poster and decides to check that out.
On the way she runs into 3 frat boys assaulting a girl. She pulls out her collapsible bow and some arrows and threatens them. They don't back down so she takes them down with some trick shots and acrobatics. Then she draws her bow on a 4th guy who turns out to be an innocent bystander who's just wandered into the alley. The victim tells Kate the boys were her friends but they suddenly turned on her. Then another friend in a car arrives to take her home, and Kate tells the attackers she'll be watching them. The 4th boy introduces himself as Johnny and says there's something in the air that's making folk act worse than usual lately. The pair flirt a bit.
Then Kate goes goes back to her apartment/office Hawkeye Investigations where she sees the hand-drawn paper sign gone and the glass in the door smashed so someone could break in. Inside she finds her neighbour Ramone who angrily asks why she's been calling her girlfriend, who turns out to be Mikka. They discover they're on the same side. Ramone admits that Mikka's actually her ex-girlfriend, but it's complicated. Anyway they were supposed to meet but Mikka never showed, and then 2 hours ago she found her bag and phone with messages from Kate. And the TBC flyer advertising a meeting tonight on campus.
Kate knows Gort can't be involved because Mikka was alright when she nabbed him and he was still at the cop station 2 hours ago. But she slipped a couple of trackers on him and she now detects that he's not at the precinct or at home. Angry Ramone wants to go beat him up but Kate tells her to stay here in case Mikka turns up or contacts the office. And also she doesn't want Larry beaten up - yet.
She finds him at the Kinney College South Quad where the TBC meeting is. He'd previously discovered Mikka was writing an article about the group and he'd told them about it. Now he was worried for her. He wanted to warn her but was also worried about approaching her. Kate tells him that Mikka is missing and she's going to the meeting to investigate. Larry wants to go with her but she won't let him. So he gives her a mask they all wear and a password 'Dominatio'. But now he's worried about *her*.
Kate enters the meeting and sees the masked leader addressing his masked brainwashed followers, at least 1 of whom is sporting a gun in an ankle holster. The leader, who's emitting some sort of energy, spots her and asks for the password. But that turns out to be last week's password so the group turn on her and chase her out of the room.
As she runs down the street unmasked bystanders join the mob like they're infected by the hate. Or as Johnny said, like there's something in the air. She can't shake them and she has to avoid crowds that might join in. So she runs onto the mostly-empty pier. But the crowd chase her to the end and she's cornered.