Birth Name

Unknown

Born

Unknown

Abilities

The Maltese Falcon is an adept street fighter. It is unknown whether he is a metahuman or just a human in a costume. The costume itself is made of Kevlar and ceramic armor. His helmet contains a scanner, with which he monitors police bands. The Falcon can also emit a piercing shriek that can deafen and incapacitate anyone nearby who hears it. It is unknown whether this sound is produced naturally or electronically.

Affiliations

None.

Biography

Outside of the classified information in City Hall, little is known about the Maltese Falcon. He takes his name from the title of the Dashiell Hammett novel and is the self-appointed protector of the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, the same neighborhood in which Hammett’s detective, Sam Spade, lived.

Personality

The Maltese Falcon is known to be terse and abrupt when speaking to others. He is very much a loner and has never been known to work with others, metas or not.

Excerpt from Reckoning

Naturally, I’d heard of him. I’d even spied his rooftop silhouette a couple times. The circumstance of our meeting was a simple convenience store holdup on Hyde Street.

As luck would have it, we both happened upon the scene of the crime-in-progress at the same time. The clerk on duty had been able to trip the silent alarm and I overheard the police call through the earphone of the tiny scanner I carried. The Falcon, of course, has his scanner handily built into the electronics of his helmet.

He swooped down, landing directly in front of me as I casually strolled toward the door. “Bad time for shopping,” he said, waving me off. I was perfectly okay with sitting this one out, since it gave me the opportunity to see a seasoned pro in action. I was as excited as I was as a teen when a new issue of Supers magazine came out.

Despite his warning, I followed him to the door. As soon as he opened it, a piercing screech erupted from him. I still don’t know whether it’s mechanically produced or a sound he can make on his own. Either way, the effect it has is to hammer on eardrums. I was glad to be behind him, since those in the path of the sound – in this case, the robber and the cashier – were temporarily deafened. Each immediately covered his ears in pain, which was all the opening the Falcon needed to take out the gunman with a swooping punch. He can’t fly, but he’s very fast. He cleared the distance from the door to the bad guy’s jaw before I could even move.