You Were Never Meant to be a Hero (Quackbur Superhero AU)

Chapter 4: Songbird

Wilbur's few villain captures typically happened on his night patrols, seeing how nighttime is when most villains were active. The few villains he had managed to snag off the streets were ones involved with back alley deals and minor acts of theft. Occasionally he stopped a mugging.

Smart villains worked at night, and the dumb ones typically tried to steal things in broad daylight.

Powerful villains like Smile and Ace did both.

Wilbur assumed that most villains kept their operations confined to the nighttime hours, but the big name villains would execute their plans in broad daylight. It was something of a power move, showing that no matter how many heroes you have on duty they can still get away with crimes. It's why The Blade always operated during the day, to quickly combat big name villains when they make major threats.

You'd expect more heroes to patrol at night, but it wasn't really that common. Nighttime take downs didn't get as much publicity unless there were explosions going on. And heroes need to sleep too.

That's why Wilbur's sleep schedule was so fucked. He changed his patrol hours depending on the month. Some months, he'd patrol during the day, where he performed more rescue oriented work. And the other months were his night patrols, the patrols that he got paid for because he'd actually manage to snag villains off the streets.

His night patrols are typically where he starts getting involved with vigilantes. Illegal heroes who never went through the proper training and follow none of the laws when it comes to heroism. A lot of the vigilantes in the area knew him as the hero that would be willing to dump the villains they captured with the police so they didn't have to risk getting spotted. Others of them, he'd even consider friends.

Honestly, his partnership with the vigilantes was the closest thing Wilbur ever had to his own Hero Agency. Wilbur filed the reports (leaving the names of any vigilantes involved out of the report since, y'know, illegal) and would drop off the villains if a vigilante requested it. The vigilantes would typically perform most of the takedowns.

Of course, that didn't mean that Wilbur didn't have his own takedowns to be proud of.

He's discovered that when you have wings, it's easy to get the drop on unsuspecting villains. Ambush attacks, if he could take them out with one strike then the magpie avian was golden. His chances of winning the fight decreased the longer it took the takedown, so he had an easy system to alert vigilantes if he was in trouble.

Aka, Wilbur was a magpie and thus was extremely good at bird calls.

The hero couldn't exactly have the vigilantes in the area sync up with his com system without exposing himself and them. So, to protect his vigilante friends and himself, they set up a system where different bird calls meant different things. If Wilbur saw a situation he couldn't handle? A specific call to alert nearby vigilantes of the problem. If Wilbur was in a nasty situation? They had a specific call set aside for when he needed help.

They also had a call for simply checking who all was in the area.

The vigilantes all had different calls specific to them (typically whichever bird call they could actually mimic the best). So they could let Wilbur know if they needed him for something or if they wanted to check in.

They also had an inside joke about the insomniacs in this part of the city wondering what kind of crazy bird convention is going on outside at night.

Speaking of vigilantes, there's one of the calls now.

A mimicked pigeon call with a slight hiss under it. Time Bomb's call.

Wilbur tilted his wings and swooped in the direction of the call, following it until he spotted the masked vigilante. Once the vigilante noticed Wilbur's approach, he stopped the call and waited for the hero to land. Wilbur pulled his wings in and landed in front of the vigilante on the roof of the building.