There Is No Such Thing As Heroes

Chapter One - Deaths and Connections

"Well that ain't gonna do...that ain't gonna do at all".

Cain Knight's thick yankee accent had an edge of unease to it, retching dryly midway through the sentence as he took in the sight of a fresh corpse lying at his feet. Adjusting his aging beige fedora to get a better look, he narrowed lime-green eyes and scratched a short but shaggy beard.

His partner, Detective Solomon 'Sol' Alburn, crouched to one knee and scanned the body meticulously. Every tiny nip. Each monstrous gash. He took it all in, making sure to mentally document even the minutest details.

The gory wounds before him were too messy and uneven to have been done with a blade. They weren't clean cuts - entire chunks of flesh had been torn out, almost as if the victim was eaten alive.

Just like the rest of his body, the dead man's facial features were heavily mangled, and so barely recognisable at first glance. But Solomon did recognise him...he just couldn't pinpoint where he knew the victim from.

He rolled his tongue along the inside of his mouth, a habit he usually undertook when contemplating, only stopping with a wince when he came across a particular painful mouth ulcer that had popped up under his bottom lip overnight. The two men stood in a dingy alleyway cramped between two very run-down apartment buildings. Not too far behind them, a police cordon blocked off part of the street, shielding the crime scene from any passers-by or curious onlookers.

The body had been discovered just an hour before, some local kids had stumbled across it. The poor youth's dreams would probably be haunted for some time, Solomon speculated. They weren't used to seeing horrors like this every single day. They grew up after the troubled times, in a decade of peace and goodwill that Fairway City had rarely ever known.

"Whad'ya think? Limbo up t' his old tricks?" Cain finally spoke with an unlit 'Lucky Nine' cigarette perched on the tip of his mouth and muffling his words. He tried sparking the ends of the thin white-gold stick with a battered steel lighter, failed, then tried again with success. After a long drag he exhaled a lungful of thick grey smoke with a relieved sigh.

"It looks like Limbo's work" he then muttered flatly, tapping his cigarette's ash into an empty hip flask so as not to contaminate the crime scene.

Solomon scanned his eyes over the body again, racking his brain for answers. Yes, that's where he knew him from...

"No...I doubt it. Limbo's long gone, why would he come back now?" he replied as he rose to his feet, "besides, he was actually pretty close to our victim".

"You know 'im?" Cain mused with a nod to the corpse.

"Yeah...I do actually. The name's Rupert Firth. You know him too".

Cain closed his teeth on the end of the cigarette thoughtfully. After a few seconds of what seemed to be strained reflection, he began to click his fingers excitedly.

"Firth...Firth...you mean..?"

"Yep. This dead man before you is the former Doctor Knife. One of our first super-villains".

Cain let out a low whistle, wincing as he took a peek at the victim's butchered features. This was followed by another drag on the cigarette, longer this time.

"Jeez, I knew the guy retired an' all after his last stint in prison, but damn. Guess someone must o' held a grudge, huh?"

"There was another incident last night. Highmount Prison. Blackeyes, that Triad boss we took down in our first year?"

"Our very first bust", Cain smirked, "yeah, I remember 'em. Smug little asshole. I enjoyed wiping th' smile off his face the night we put 'em away".