No, not that penance. I just named him that because... I couldn't think of anything else at the time. It's a hero story I wrote for my English class. Check it out and comment please :)
“Everybody on the ground! This is a robbery!” The magical words that rang in the magical place, accompanied by the proper gunfire from the men in black ski masks were like a spell that made everyone drop to the floor and freeze all movement. Four men armed with AK47 assault rifles were scanning the entire first floor of the bank, dressed in menacing black leather jackets and black jeans to accompany the masks. Nobody dared to move, but plenty of quiet cries and gasps were heard from the floor, as if a graveyard full of awakening noises. Even though the commotion was quite short, it was sufficiently long for one of the customers to escape. He hid behind the darkened corner of the corridor that lead to the supply room, watching with icy blue eyes as one of robbers threw a bag towards the cashier. A walkie-talkie on his belt sprang to life.
“Van is outback. No more than fire minutes so hurry up!” The man that threw the bag at the cashier fired just above the poor girl whose make-up was completely drowned in tears of fear. She squealed loudly, like an abused animal, while continuing to shove the bills with her numb hands into the bag.
“Nobody try to be a hero!” The shortest of the bunch fired his gun in the air and a few more fearful squeals and cries sprang out accordingly.
“Hmph…” He didn’t utter a heroic punch line, did not give off a stare of valor, simply frowning beneath the electric blue mask that covered most of his face, leaving only holes for eyes and cutting off just above the mouth. That was the only outstanding piece in his outfit, as he was dressed in a casual everyday gray one piece suit and black leather shoes. All four of the men turned to face him, their guns off safety.
“Hah! What a goof!” - exclaimed their leader, his finger managing to scratch the trigger, but never pulling it back for the fatal shot. A blue lightning shot out of his palm, lighting up the place with a ray of hope. The man fell flat onto the floor; eyes closed, and smoke grazing off of his ski mask. Consequentially, the other three men scattered across the floor, running behind columns and doorways. Without wasting another precious second, the masked man moved.
It was quite a sight to see, even if it only lasted for significant moments. The man moved at speeds that were inconceivable to a human body, sliding smoothly in a seamless motion that appealed to be nothing more than electric blue blur to the human eye. Everybody kept their head down, unable to see exactly what went on, but two of the three terrorists were effortlessly knocked unconscious in a matter of seconds.
“Stop!! Or I… I blow her br-brains out!” The last terrorist was hugging a body of a young girl like a defensive shield between himself and the masked man. His rifle was pressed to her quivering temple, as his own unsteady mind was trying to come up with ways to escape the impossible situation.
“Go ahead… Make my day.” The careless tone with which he spoke staggered the young girl and the terrorist. His eyes widened slightly, his grip weakened around the rifle and with a momentous blue flash later, he joined his buddies in the unconsciousness.
“You alright?” He looked down at the girl, who fell onto her butt as soon as the grip of the terrorist left. She looked up at her questionable savior with eyes full of tears and terror.
“Y-yes… Did you really mean…” As her voice struggled to get out of her throat, he guiltily smiled down at her.
“Every word of it.” He carelessly smiled down at her, ignoring her stretched hand.
“Help! I think his heart just gave out! Call the medics!” An elderly woman was on her knees beside her husband, shaking him vigorously and panicking as he did not move.
“Here. Let go.” He took extra precaution not to touch the woman, patiently waiting for two men to pull her off his body. The masked man quickly ripped apart the older man’s shirt after collecting a blue jolt of lightning in his hand he zapped the man’s chest, making light gasp and open his eyes. While everybody began to cheer, he had already disappeared with a blue flash, leaving a word “Penance” etched into the wall of the bank.
“Ugh…” He signed heavily after taking off his mask. The insides of his shabby apartment looked disheveled and messy, with numerous fast food papers and boxes of pizza lying around carelessly. He took off his suit and hung it up inside the closet of his bedroom, giving the electric blue hero suit with yellow lines a disappointed look. There was a small television and a matching dresser in the corner next to his king sized bed. He walked into the kitchen, where the fridge was almost always empty and the dishes were almost always stacked in a dirty pile. A phone hung by the cupboard with a number one blinking on it. He pressed it on.
“Hey umm… How are you coping? Look I know our last conversation went bad but… I’ll keep your secret, don’t worry, I’ll keep it with me I mean… We can still be friends right? Or what I meant to say was… you’re not going to survive for too long without heroine so I guess we’re more like business partners now huh? Anyways, you should finally face him. Quit hiding, he won’t stop messing with the city until he faces you. I know you don’t watch TV so… he left a message for you. He wants you to come to the at tonight. He’s got hostages. Oh God… Please don’t go… please…” Her voice began to break off and crackle in a way that was all too familiar to him. They broke up two weeks ago.
“Hah…” He deleted the message, hearing her voice still caused some jolts to run up his spine. He sat down on a wooden stool beside the cabinet and opened it with a heavy sign. He relaxed for a second and jolts of electricity began to madly dance around his body, waltzing to music only he could hear. He took out a small bag from the cabinet, inside which were four vials full of the precious drug. The electricity that ran up and down his body began to intensify and fly off into random directions, shattering the walls, floor and ceiling. The constant buzzing was drowning out the sounds of the street below.
”Ahh…” He breathed out with a newfound ease as the electricity that uncontrollably swung everywhere, shattering everything, began to die down and subside. He stuck the needle straight into his arm, pushing the entire vial of the calming drug into him. He found himself relaxed and slouching on the stool, his muscles aren’t even strong enough to hold the empty vial. It shattered on the floor but he didn’t hear it, already existing in his own illusion.
”Give her another dose! Quick! I don’t want to lose this one!” Five men in white green surgical outfits and rubber white cloves were fluttering around a pregnant woman that was twitching and moaning on the surgical table. One of the men quickly pulled out a needle and shot it into the woman’s arm, making her moans subside a bit.
”Come on honey, it’s going to be okay… Stay with me baby… I love you…” One of the men rubbed her cheek gently as she began to pass out once more.
”It’s going to a baby boy… A beautiful, very special baby boy…” He said to her in a strangely obsessive tone as she convulsed once again, this time more violently.
”I can see the head! God, if she wasn’t so drugged up we would have already had this baby!” One of the men was attempting to hold her down.
”Shut up! This isn’t any normal birth; the pain is far beyond what any human could handle alone!” The man that was caressing her cheek suddenly became infuriated, turning towards his colleagues with rage flickering in his eyes. The other men instantly followed his order and quieted down, resuming their task of helping the woman in the middle with her childbirth.
”James… It hurts… Too much…” The woman could barely gasp out her words while trying to continue to suppress the pain. The drug barely helped at all.
”Hold on baby… Stay strong… I’m right here…” He tried to calm her down, but she only desperately squeezed her hand as her body convulsed one last time.
”James… Save… Me…” She relaxed as one of the doctors had extracted the newborn into his hands. Her eyes closed slowly and unwillingly as her final breaths left her body along with her spirit.
”AHH!” An electrical zap and a scream later, the baby was crying out on the floor as the man who had him in his hands had dropped on the floor with charred smell and black smoke coming from his body, still and dead.
”No… honey… no… Please God…” James began to cry on his dead beloved’s body as another man walked into the surgical room.
”I smell success, and burned flesh?” He said calmly as he overlooked the scene with a keen eye as the scene around him began to vanish and the volume of the voices began to dissipate, turning back into his apartment. He slowly slid off the chair and fell into the floor, his body still feeling strange from the drug. He glanced at the clock with blurry eyesight, realizing he only had close to an hour left before . Stephen finally managed to stand up on his two feet with the help of a nearby wall and proceeded to make his way back into the bedroom while giving his electric blue costume a faithful look.
He arrived at the bridge at exactly , zooming past a bunch of caution signs and a whole squadron of police cars. Nobody dared to move past them and into the bridge, as Stephen figured that he had hostages. He stopped in the middle of the bridge and noticed how far off on the other side there were a couple of news vans and a lonely helicopter flew around above the shocking scene. An empty circle was in the middle of the bridge, rid of cars or people. Stephen looked around and saw a group of people lying on the ground amongst the cars, tied down. Some of them were crying, weeping and shaking in panic, but all of them were looking directly at him.
”He knows how much I hate an audience… So many people could die and all sits on my stained conscience.” He thought to himself with impenetrable gloom that never got any easier with time, unlike the heroine abuse.
”Maybe If I’m quick… A hit here and there. I have to be as fast as I’ve never been.” – ran through his mind. A hulking figure suddenly stepped out from one of the bigger SUVs, stomping on the ground with an authoritative presence. His shirt was off, revealing a skin that was colored in darker shades of gray. A pair of jeans was all that the menacing man had been wearing, as his bulky mass seemed to have been made out of stone, making his green eyes stand out brightly amongst the rocky features of him face.
”I hate you!!!” His voice was booming with maddening rage like lonely thunder in a tropical storm, hanging over everyone’s head. He quickly lifted an SUV into the air as if it were no more than a cardboard box.
”No even a “Hey kiddo, how are ya?” – He replied smarmily, while sending out a lightning bolt with a flick of his palm into the car, making it explode in mid air. Chunks of it flew in different directions like a shrapnel grenade. The smoke slowly cleared, accompanied by a few barely heard “wows” from the crowds. The man made of stone was already standing up without even a scratch on him, which was nothing new to Penance.
He immediately began to sprint, turning into a flash of electric blue once again as the accumulated the velocity of his speed into a punch, landing it precisely onto the man’s rock hard jaw. The punch that normally could take a man’s head clean off his shoulders only made his opponent stumble slightly. Penance had already turned around and dashed back, aiming the next one for the kidney area. He turned around once more, repeating the feat of unconquerable speed and landing another punch before turning around over again. It was like trying to break apart a diamond with a hammer, but Penance persisted to continue his blazingly fast assault, until his opponent was down on one knee.
Penance didn’t keep an exact count, but the number of hits was over a hundred in a matter of less than thirty seconds when he finally stopped. The brute slowly stood up off of his knee, with a few gray grains sliding off of him down towards the ground.
”Faster than lightning, but you’re not going to get away this time!” He charged at the man in electric blue, running with a speed that was too quick for a man whose density was so thick. Penance landed a perfectly timed hook as he sped by; the man’s speed was no match for his own. When he stopped, however, he was greeted a rock hard fist that flew straight out from beneath the ground, planting a crushing blow to his jaw that send him flying a hundred yards into the air.
Without wasting anymore time, the man made of stone jumped into the air after the man in electric blue, aiming to continue the assault with the power that was unreachable for Penance. After quickly recovering with a few shakes of his head, Penance focused on the incoming danger, collecting electricity in his feet and releasing it in a wondrous blue flash that lit up the bridge from above, reversing the direction of the man made of stone, sending him flying back down.
”This is my chance.” Penance quickly flipped downwards, picking up speed as he collected all of the electricity that his body could muster in his right palm that began to radiate with a bright blue color. He pulled back the punch filled with what could have amounted to one hundred thousand volts and a nanosecond later a deafening explosion rocketed through the entire city, along with a blinding white light that would make the greatest pyrotechnic jealous.
”Ouch.” The man made of stone slowly stood up from amongst the rubble, brushing the dust spectacle off his shoulders.
”I think the fall hurt more than your pathetic power.” He continued his mockery with a voice filled up to the brim with sincere hatred. Penance dashed away to a safe distance, breathing heavily from exhaustion. A few small blue jolts were slipping out from the rips in his costume. The man made of stone proceeded to lift up another car from the pile, one that was still whole.
”You think I care? This is between me and you.” Penance tried to sound uncaring, but the weariness of the attack made it hard for him to fake it.
”Hahahaha… Okay then, let’s see how much you don’t care.” With a mocking tone the man made of stone effortlessly threw a van into the group of tied up hostages that were lying nearby. Penance suddenly dashed, trying to hold his breath and push away the weakening feeling. He was sufficiently quick, but not strong enough as he stopped the car with his body, getting crushed underneath it.
”You’re a poor liar, Stephen. Your mother was too… And you killed her!” Penance realized all too late that the ground beneath him had somehow wrapped around his arms and legs, keeping him pinned down and unable to dodge the rage of the incoming monster. He threw away the smashed car with ease and watched as electricity and blood was slowly trickling down from the body of his son.
”You killed your own mother! I’ll never forgive you!” he exclaimed violently as he put one knee on Penance’s chest, making it hard to breathe.
”Who said I wanted your…” Penance’s sentence never finished as the man made of stone landed a blow to his face. Blood began quickly gushing out from his nose like the river of which a dam was broken.
”Shut up! I’ve carried this burden for far too long! I’ll kill you just like you killed her!”-he roared while landing two more punches to Penance’s face.
”You made me this… You create your own beloved’s death in the shape of her son… I was an infant…”-but Penance words would never reach the ears of reason, for those had already disheveled and withered away in his father. He had almost no power left in his body to fight with, conscience was becoming far too slippery for him to hold on to and he could already smell the cheap perfume of death. And then it started to rain.
He felt the first raindrop on his broken nose, a little gift of hope amongst the crimson liquid of defeat. Then it just started to pour uncontrollably, as if the sky had become one great waterfall. The remains of electricity inside Penance’s body began to multiply with the help of the raindrops, powering him to newer levels. A short explosion later and Penance was no longer shackled like a slave but on his feet like a noble warrior. The man made of stone slowly stood up off the ground, realizing that he too was now wet with the graceful rain.
”You made your own hell.” Penance spoke with no stark sarcasm and with no sympathy, only calmness. Then he was lightning itself, dashing back and forth much too rapidly for anyone to see anything but one big blur that covered over the man made of stone like a giant and merciless blanket, delivering electrifying blows that decimated his own father. And the rain never stopped.
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