Two GCPD officers stood outside the apartment door, quietly psyching each other up for the entry. They'd announced their arrival and had ordered the unknown assailant inside to stand down, it would be on the report. The older of the two gave his partner a quick, nervous glance. This was always the most difficult part.
"And a new mayor, it looks like. This beautiful city's got ambition, I'll give her that. Maybe we'll have the Champion as one of our traffic cops, next."
The assailant's monotonous monologue bounced off of the apartment walls and just got past the door, and both men swore the voice didn't creep them out. Another glance at the partner. They swore it didn't.
THWOK!
The door burst off of it's hinges and they ran into the domestic structure, watching their corners and clearing each room systematically as they'd been taught at the academy, adrenaline pumping through their veins with almost disconcerting haste. And the voice continued.
"That's our agenda now? A watertight law enforcement regime run by egomaniacs and metahumans? I'm a hypocrite, but that's beyond the point here. There's got to be a bit of balance."
The older partner stepped into the kitchen and the barrel of his gun bounced awkwardly against the chest of a purple-suited man in make-up leaning against the door enjambment with a knife in one hand. He pulled the trigger by way of sheer instinctive reflex and regretted it instantly, fearing he'd shot an innocent in what was more than evidently a rookie error. But the bullet disappeared moments after leaving the weapon's mouth, swallowed up by a flutter of darkness that eluded the police officer's logic for a moment. Next, there was a knife in his throat and he hit the ground, spluttering helplessly as arterial blood littered the living room furniture.
"I've been lonely. It's time to make some new friends. Or, time to rekindle the fire of friendship with old ones."
Percival Knight's psychotically unhinged alter-ego, the Midknighter, stepped over the dying man and made his way through the hallway, tearing the knife out of his victim's throat with an apathetic jerk and embedding it disinterestedly within the mouth of his younger partner who had just turned the corner and was looking over his shoulder at something in the next room. Such a lapse in form proved to be his demise.
The Clown Prince Crusader lit a cigarette as he lumbered out of the apartment, dropping the lighter onto the floor and igniting a stream of gasoline that had been poured about the entire building of more than 15 families, all of them locked into their rooms with an assortment of chains around their doors. Their only hope was hopping out of the window and down the fire escape, where a ragtag group of police turned gangbanger crooks stood waiting with a variety of heavy weaponry. The fire would burn from the top floor downwards, illuminating the city skyline and acting as a sort of homing beacon to which the overtly helpful would flock.
“Frickin’ psycho, right?” Shaking her head almost dismissively, Bethany closed the browser window and sat up on the bed to face Anya. “So, what’re we gonna do?”
Anya continued staring blankly into the screen, unresponsive until being issued a stern nudge to force her attention.
“Hey! What’re we gonna do?” Bethany repeated.
“I donno,” came the response. “It ain’t like we gonna all of a sudden turn on each other. We just...gotta stick together. We don’t travel all over and fight terrorists. All we can is keep ‘em outta Gothic and...” pausing, Anya began sniffing the air. “You smell smoke?”
“Nope,” Bethany replied with a shrug. “Maybe someone’s cooking down the street and Miss Kitty’s hungry.”
“No, no. Check the news.” Although unsure what, exactly, Anya found something to be amiss, and already she was up and in the closet while Bethany got to work on local news sites.
“Oh! There’s a fire out on Big Dog Avenue! A lotta people in trouble.” With that, Bethany joined Anya in changing into the outfits for their yet unnamed alter egos. Out first, Anya opened the window and stepped outside.
“Meet me there if you can.” Slapping the domino mask over her face, she bounded from the four story height, moving as quickly as she could to the scene of the incident, coincidentally near where she used to live with her parents.
The weirdest thing was almost seeing so timely a response in that particular neighbourhood. “The heck’s with all the heavy weapons?” Anya questioned herself, arriving on an adjacent rooftop. A sharp, mildly painful tingle shot up her spine and into her brain, though the flames posed no threat to her at that distance. Ultimately deciding to do what she could and help direct the others down to the police below from the fire escapes, she leapt from the rooftop straight in through one of the barred windows, shattered glass cutting into her flesh, bits and pieces remaining even as her body healed, sealing it in. She rolled to a stop just behind where a family was struggling against an unmoving door. Motioning the startled bunch aside, a Spartan kick sent the whole thing off the hinges, freeing them to take the front door.
“Everybody out!” She shouted, moving hurriedly throughout the floor in a low crouch, as an animal might, occasionally destroying doors to free families. “Take the fire escape if you have to! There are cops waiting outside.” Tch. For all the comfort that brings people in this city, let alone a neighbourhood like this.“Bet you never thought you’d be glad to hear that,” she joked in an attempt to make light of the situation.
Continuing as she could throughout the building, her kinesthetic sense proved invaluable where smoke obscured vision, though as she made another round to ensure everyone who could was gone, a number of scents hit her, even through the flames and smoke, somewhat difficult to discern. Gasoline...blood...And something...a person?...Kinda familiar...But I don’t know what. Soon after, she figured half of the apparent matter, shouting to herself, “somebody set this fire!”That explains the weapons. They’re on a manhunt! Not long after, an extended round of gunfire traveled up to her ears. Assuming they’d found whoever was responsible and were engaged in a gun fight, she conducted the rest of her sweep in a hurry so she could hurry outside and help them out, or at least get a vantage point first.
Spotting Bethany in her own suited disguise on another rooftop nearby, she ran up that way first to brief her on the situation thus far. But as she arrived, Bethany seemed to barely register her presence. She stood with wide, teary eyes, a hand placed over her mouth, the other over her chest. “Anya...look.” She pointed down the street, directing Anya’s attention back to the building.
There was no gun fight. No bad guys. Just the “cops” standing over the bodies of numerous families of men, women, and children. Anyone who took the fire escape had been doomed, and Anya had herded them to their own slaughter.
“Wait here,” she commanded her friend, jumping back down herself to confront the men responsible. Throwing her hands exasperatedly in the air, danger sense still going wild, voice raised to an alarming degree, her presence was immediately felt. “What the hell just happened here!? What, lose your fckin’ manuals on how to do your fckin’ job!? How are you even cops!? You—”
“Look, kid,” one man stepped forward, cutting her off to retort. “I don—”
“No, fck you, dammit!” she responded in turn, jabbing her finger in his face. “I don’t give—!”
That time they cut her off by simultaneously opening fire on her.
The world came to a near halt. Anya reacted. The first backflip landed her foot square against the jaw of the man in front, most likely shattering it to bits. She kept moving, backwards to get some space between them, guided largely by her kinaesthetic sense and natural reflexes out of the way of any serious damage. Once the firing stopped, she moved back in to close the distance, putting herself in the midst of the group. A miniature thunderclap slightly disoriented the group enough to get her a decent head start on taking them out. She kept a constant reminder to hold back or she’d kill them, though parts of her debated that they deserved it for what they’d done and she should just let go.
Nevertheless, the men were taken out in quick and brutal, but nonlethal fashion, leaving Anya shaking as she stood over the bodies of the unconscious and deceased. Without a word, she returned to the rooftop where Bethany stood watching. “Let’s get outta here before I lose it and change my mind...I think I got a scent, so we can find who hired these rent-a-cops and...”
Just then, it hit her. The same kind of carnage. Complete disregard for others. The ragtag assortment of seemingly disorganized but actually organized goons, and the scent, to which she’d finally placed the mortifying face.
“You, go home,” she solemnly warned her friend. “There’snothing else for you here.” And, as if it were a foregone conclusion, she turned her attention away to start tracking. A part of her knew and was somewhat glad, even if still more worried, in figuring Bethany would linger anyway.
More than half of the apartment building's roof exploded outwards, releasing a massive cloud of dust that permeated the night sky and an even larger cloud of shrapnel which rained down upon every side of the structure with a projected radius of more than a block in each direction. The neighborhood was torn asunder by the horrified cries of unfortunate pedestrians, most of whom had clamored around the scene with their mobile devices out. They'd kept back up until the end of the street, filming the entry of the unknown heroine, the massacring of several families immediately afterwards, and the eventual vengeance she wrought upon them. The few that had remained after witnessing the initial gunshots had made to cheer but she'd disappeared before they'd so much as realized what had happened.
Now, a handful of them lay dead, bits and pieces of debris distorting their once curious forms. Survivors and on-lookers fled, with those few possessing family or friends amongst the fallen lingering, either to mourn or to make an attempt at salvaging the lives of their beloved. Gothic City was one of the world's largest, most densely populated cities. This disastrous event was but a microscopic blip on the map of tragedy one night in the dystopia could offer humanity.
One man, a thin steel pole stuck through his lower abdomen, looked up to the unforgiving night sky and, with tears of blood running from his mouth, screamed, "WHERE IS OUR SALVATIO - -"
BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA!
Bullets from the gullet of an inconsiderate Kalashnikov silenced him before he could complete his dramatic death rattle, an opposing survivor from the ragtag team of fallen gangsters managing the act of murder as he lay on his side, both legs broken and rendered useless by the unknown heroine. He began to chuckle triumphantly before a slab of stone twice the length of his body kissed the earth his form was resting upon and flattened him with instantaneous effect.
Elsewhere...
"I wasn't expecting her."
The Midknighter sat upon the ledge of the only room thus far unaffected by the flames with the closest building to the apartment structure in his view, two female figures poised upon the rooftop, one of them distinctly recognizable. She had begun to speak to her accomplice when she paused and tilted her head towards his direction, her shoulders visibly stiffening.
"There we go."
His stark white visage made no effort at expressing joy at the sudden turn of events, face perpetually downcast and disinterested, almost as if the impending encounter bored him. It did not. In fact, he relished the prospect. But quietly. And knowingly.
Preparations were made in moments, with the Clown Prince Crusader donning both his top hat and his dark purple bowtie in one fluid, practiced movement, using the cane within one hand to direct the darkness around him towards the wall with the opened window, delivering an immense ball of shadow-comprised destruction to the plaster and forcing it outwards in what he considered a welcoming gesture. Then, he constructed a squeaky but sturdy chair and eased himself into it, body slouching lazily but not carelessly upon the seat.
With a dragon's throat of hungry fire just down the hall, the Midknighter folded his arms and tilted his head to one side in apathetic anticipation, body both unmoving and unapologetic.
The feeling sank in before she had time to realize what was going on, and Anya acted before even she knew what she was doing, doubling back and tackling Bethany to the canvas, taking extra special care not to be too rough with her friend. The cacophony was worse than anything, especially so for ears as sensitive as hers. Still, both girls managed to get off relatively unharmed, in contrast with the civilian onlookers.
Anya was quickly back to her feet, though the continued effects of excessive stimuli on all of her senses left her without much bearing on the situation, regaining most of her composure to receive the scene below through mortified eyes. By then, the sinking feeling had returned and would not subside. Still more worried for her companion than herself, but knowing her previous request seen as unreasonable, she ducked low on the roof and spoke in a low whisper.
“He’s still in the area. You don’t hafta leave, but keep your distance.”
Directing her attention in the other direction, squinting, she just barely made out the incoming projectile attack as it got close, leaping off the rooftop at the last possible moment. Avoiding a direct hit, she nevertheless took loose damage from shrapnel and the shockwave, the latter which propelled her farther off the roof—
—and crashing right through the window of the room the assailant was in.
Anya lay on her back a while, groaning both at the pain and the prospect of more foreign materials trapped in her body for removal later. Upon opening her eyes, her face twisted into a scowl at the upside down form of the enemy, which she quickly corrected, moving upright into a defensive crouch.
“You sick, demented, murdering freak. I swear to God if my friend has even a scratch, you’re the next dead body tonight.”
But she didn’t yet bring herself to attack, first offering a question to sedate her perplexity. “Why do you even do it? What the hell do you even...?” Shrugging, as though he should understand and respond in turn, staying at the ready in case of an attack, and ready to flee for when the flames would come.
As if to acknowledge the terrible quality of his joke, the Midknighter's face remained impassive, nothing but his mouth moving, and even so, infinitesimally, as if the effort was beyond him.
"So that was a friend of yours, then? What's her name? Where does her family live? Any pets?"
He blinked, form statuesque. The twisted nature of his gravelly, ice cold words permeated the rising air between them and the pools of black beneath both eyes appeared to darken.
"I really hope this isn't going to be one of those scenarios where you decide that you've finally had enough and come at me, because that will end bad for everybody. Of course, I'm not suggesting there won't be a time for blood and guts, but I've always been more comfortable with talking first. I'm quite the talker. My wife, she hated it. Funnily enough, when I was slicing pieces of her body off, she couldn't stop! And she had a shrill voice." The Midknighter leaned forwards a fraction and slowly brought one palm up, gently tapping his forehead with one hand in a mock face-palm, unblinkingly boring his eyes into those of the crouched Anya's. "What am I doing, we've already discussed my dear ex-lover, haven't we? Yes. Although I recall being interrupted halfway through our visit by that blonde companion of yours.That..." His soulless irises managed to grow colder and the effect it reaped upon the atmosphere was almost enough to combat the steadily incoming flames. "...Was very, very rude."
Outside, more gunfire ensued and one could only assume more of the Clown Prince Crusader's men had arrived at the disaster-struck venue. Without so much as acknowledging the terrified cries of the men and women who had hoped they might survive the shrapnel through their fallen bodies, he sat back in his chair, brushing a stray lock of ragged green hair out of his face with slow, disinterested movement.
Amidst the tense lock between unequal enemies, Anya’s attention was continually drawn outward and back, focus drawn toward the roof where Bethany had been and returning to the villain. That she had yet to see her friend resurface in that place, she remained unsure whether it was pretty good or extremely bad. Without knowing, she was unable to focus entirely on the man in front of her.
That is, until he mentioned Bethany. The lightly sprinkled threats did not escape Anya’s comprehension, and she nearly did just as he said, slightly unnerved by the base prediction, the only thing that stopped her acting on impulse. Her hair stood on end and her entire body ran cold.
She forced herself to sit and listen, though only halfway, through barely restrained anger, almost visibly shaking in grisly anticipation. Through his rambling, Anya found herself still barely paying attention. Her memory of the first encounter was unclear, marred in a way that she couldn’t remember much of anything, from the words spoken to the “blonde companion,” whom she hadn’t seen since. The only thing that stuck from the prior meeting was the fog of all the fear, now replaced almost completely by a nervous fury.
The sound of Gunfire outside snapped Anya out of her pensive anger and she let out a low growl. Cursing internally, but saying nothing aloud, she leapt back out the window into the space between the buildings. There she found a large green dumpster, which she tipped clean over, digging her claws in and dragging it out to where the commotion was coming from. At a farther distance, her eyesight was pretty shoddy, but the difference between a gunman and a civilian running in fear is pretty clear. With a grunt, she slammed the garbage container on the ground in front of her, setting it between the gunman and she before giving a heavy thrust with her fist to send it hurtling at him like a billiard ball.
Predictably, the young, enraged heroine reacted as if she were a balloon and the chaos several floors below them were a thin needle.
She exploded.
Carrying herself with a quiet menace she extracted herself from conversation with the twisted madman before her and without breaking so much as a sweat crippled the unintelligent gunman on the ground, his agonized screams cutting through the angry shots in the air and drowning out those of the innocent. Both knees were bent forwards in a ninety degree angle and his collarbone rested upon his mangled form as if divided into numerous alternating sections. Blood poured from his orifices.
"He's suffering."
The Midknighter stepped out of the shadows to the right of the mutilated human being and calmly lowered himself until he was resting lightly upon his haunches, weathered suit threatening to burst at the seams despite the Clown Prince Crusader's recent gaunt. Another plume of fire made itself welcome within the room they had just departed, a chilling testament to how fortunate they were that they had vacated the space. Percival Knight's ugly alter-ego did not so much as flinch.
"Do you kill the baddies? I want to see if you're one of those vigilantes. See if we're playing for keeps, here."
Refusing to give the teenaged protagonist a clear chance at attacking him, the Purple-Suited Psychopath reared up and tapped the tip of his cane upon the alley floor once, giving the directive for a host of razor-edged shadows to emerge from the darkness like tendrils and embed themselves within the howling gangbanger's body, targeting his afflicted areas with uncanny precision, but being wary so as to kill him.
Recklessness. A gross miscalculation. That's what it was. When she'd made her move, Anya acted on pure rage. The emotional pressures of the night had, rather quickly, mounted too much for her, and she'd lost control. An uncontrolled strike sent the disposal unit colliding with the thug before he could properly note the situation. He was...actually very unlucky to have survived. Just as unlucky as it was unlikely.
"I didn't..."...mean to...
Anya stopped completely and fell on her behind, staring in shock at the grotesque form brought about by her own careless actions. She wanted to think there was some way to fix it, but with his condition, he seemed just as likely to survive an attempt at saving as he was waiting to bleed out.
Managing to pry her eyes from the mangled mess of a man, she fixed her once more timid eyes upon the master of the fiasco. She heard him but, as she was, Anya was not prepared to move. She stood perfectly still up until the moment the helpless thug was impaled. Her eyes went even wider and her mouth, hanging ajar, clamped shut as she swallowed hard and mentally kicked herself into action.
Scrambling to her feet, she stammered a weak command just loud enough to be heard. "Stop all this! What's...stop it. Give it up, or...at least call your guys off. I...don't wanna hurt anybody else, but I can and will if you don't stop." The sensible part of her knew he wouldn't likely oblige, but another hoped he was crazy enough to do so.
Little more than a few feet away from the writhing victim of both the feline-themed heroine and himself, the Midknighter kept his gaze upon the suffering creature, waiting for some sort of response from the girl. When she finally spoke, her voice dripping with hopeless despair, the Clown Prince of Chaos glanced at her with his peripherals and emitted something resembling a sigh, his lips refusing to part much despite the gesture.
"Oh... No."
The man at his feet screamed a little louder, the tendrils of darkness thickening, and the Apathetic Antagonist turned to face the floored Anya, regarding her with evident contempt. Silence fell upon him for a moment, mystery surrounding whatever thoughts the Twisted Tyrant possessed. Then, he shrugged, and the shadows around him exploded outwards like massive tentacles, firing past both Anya and himself and filling the courtyard at the heart of the chaos where most of his men were situated. The screams of the pathetic being at their feet were mimicked by his afflicted brethren and the night sky was torn asunder by cries laced with pure agony.
"Are you satisfied now, child?"
The tentacles retracted with frightening haste and brought back with them each and every one of the gangbangers Anya had requested be called off. They squirmed helplessly upon the ends of the malleable black spears, their eyes wide and confused. The Midknighter stared placidly at the fallen girl and had the dying men form a barricade around him, forcing her to tear them apart in order to get at him.
"Don't start something that you cannot finish. You asked for this. Now, kill them, or let them suffer as the pigs they are."
The sinister clown's curt, vapid reply cast a heavy weight over Anya as she resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to shut it down by force...if she could. While physically more than capable of handling him in some capacity, as evidenced by the last encounter, her for possessed a mental edge in more ways than one.
Anya cringed as the criminal ensemble was forcibly wrangled together and put on a painful defensive display around their apathetic ringleader. While not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Anya understood what he was going for. Still, she hadn't really come up with a way around it. Not really sure how exactly to deal with the man-made barricade put in front of her, Anya did the one thing she could think to do in the spur of the moment.
She switched to all fours and charged directly at it, making as if to barge right through. However, judging an approximate distance, she leapt off the power of her legs into the air, hopefully above the suffering men lined between them, attempting to pounce directly on the Midknighter. To crush or just to pin him, she hadn't exactly calculated, but all she concerned herself with in the moment was getting to him and working from there.
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