Hero and art shit ..

CHAPTER TWO: Inks and Algorithms

Kevin Donatello had always believed every person was a sketch—lines, impressions, shading that shifted depending on how close you looked.

But Reaper?

Reaper was a whole different medium. Something inhumanly precise and impossibly incomplete.

And Kev wanted to understand him.

It had been a week since the Bellwether Gallery incident. Graf-feeny had disappeared into police custody with half a sentence about "post-industrial symbolism" and "the system rejecting revolutionary form." Kev barely paid attention.

All he could think about was the guy in the living-suit—the one who moved like a shadow and vanished like a whisper. Reaper.

He'd spent the past five nights searching.

Street corners. Rooftops. Traffic cams. Shadow forums where vigilante rumors lived and died in flame threads. He didn't have much, but he followed the trail of oddly precise takedowns—gangs found unconscious, tech rigs dismantled with surgical accuracy, zero civilian casualties.

That's him, Kev thought every time. It has to be.

And tonight, it paid off.

He was perched on the edge of a decaying warehouse rooftop in Oldport—one of those abandoned districts that had been "up-and-coming" since 2009. The sky was ink-black. Rain drizzled lazily onto broken skylights.

Then he saw it: A flicker. A glitch in the shadows across the rooftop.

And a voice.

"Echo. Mute ambient."

Kev didn't move. His breath hitched.

There. Reaper. Standing alone on a raised platform, head slightly tilted, the subtle neon veins in his suit pulsing with faint, rhythmic light. He wasn't fighting. Just... standing. Breathing. Or maybe not breathing. Kev couldn't tell anymore.

He stepped forward. Quietly.

"Hey," Kev called out.

The figure turned, slowly. No mask this time—just his face, pale and cold in the rain. Early twenties. Shaved sides, dark undercut. Eyes that tracked movement too fast, too sharp.

"I'm not here to fight," Kev added. "I just... wanted to talk. Maybe say thanks for the whole saving-my-life thing. Again."

Reaper said nothing. He stared at Kev like he was trying to analyze every breath he took.

"Echo," he said quietly. "Disengage conversation filter."

"You're certain?" Echo asked.

He nodded.

Then spoke, voice flat and low.

"You followed me."

Kev raised his hands. "Yeah. I did. You kinda saved my ass back there. And you knew stuff about me. My powers. I figured maybe you could—"

"No."

That stopped Kev cold. "No?"

Reaper's expression didn't change. "You don't get to follow me. I don't want to be followed. Or studied. Or questioned."

Kev opened his mouth, but Reaper's voice sharpened.

"I don't want to talk. I don't want to share. And I don't need your noise."

His fists clenched at his sides, and the suit flared—a quiet ripple of defensive energy.

Kev stepped forward, ignoring the warning. "Look, I get needing space, alright? But you're out here fighting alone, and I just thought maybe—"

"You don't get it!" Reaper shouted suddenly—his voice cracking like a blade through glass. His body trembled as if every word was a fight in itself.

"There's too much in the world. Too much color, too much noise, too many people expecting something. I can't turn it off—I never could."

Kev froze.

The rain seemed to slow around them.

"I'm not like you," Reaper continued, quieter now. "I don't do team-ups. I don't do banter. I don't need a partner."

Kev swallowed hard. "...Okay. I didn't know. I just thought..."

He didn't finish.

Reaper moved. Faster than before.

Kev barely brought up a guard before Reaper was on him—grabbing, flipping, striking with surgical efficiency. Kev fought back, but his attacks were broad, emotional, wild. Reaper ducked and struck with zero hesitation.

In sixty seconds, it was over.

Kev was flat on the rooftop, coughing rainwater and staring up at the gray sky. His sword had dissipated.

Reaper stood over him. Not smug. Not angry.

Just... sad.

"I'm not your mystery to solve, Scribbler," he said quietly.

Then he was gone.

Ten minutes later, Kev sat up, bruised and soaked, staring at the spot where Reaper had stood.

Most people would've taken the beating as a message.

Kev wasn't most people.

Later that night, back in his room, Kev opened his sketchbook. The page was blank.

He didn't draw a sword. Or a dragon. Or a new sarcastic shuriken idea.

He drew Reaper.

Precise lines. Controlled. Symmetrical. The tension in his stance. The weight in his silence.

He added a caption at the bottom of the page in rough, shaky lettering:

"People aren't puzzles. But sometimes, you still want to understand."

Then he picked up his phone, pulled up the vigilante forums, and typed:

Looking for someone in a shadow-skin suit. Name: Reaper. He's not dangerous unless you make him talk.

If you see him—tell him Scribbler's still looking.