The sky had darkened from bleak gray to a familiar black by the time Silvia took to the streets. The relentless downpour of the morning had since tapered off into a softly falling mist which managed to paint the area in a strangely dwindling light. This was the time that criminals rummaged and inflicted chaos upon Metropolis. They travelled in the slums, through the poorest areas of the city and formed petty alliances for the smallest of jobs.
The so-called 'Superheroes' that strutted around in the daylight hours were of no use, in Silvia's quite experienced opinion. They pretended that they fought for justice, but the criminals they caught were locked up for barely a week before they were out killing again. Silvia was one of the few that put an end to that relentless cycle. She did what the weak feared to do.
The girl's pale fingers grazed against her clothed thigh, feeling the chill of metal through her thin tights and smirking. The main district had been fairly abandoned besides the occasional midnight straggler (usually a worker returning from a night-long shift).
When she finally arrived at the park it had grown ever darker. The shadows of the trees blended into the blackness and their silhouettes against the sky was less pronounced than she was accustomed to. Where a lesser persons sight disappeared, sound seemed to emerge as if the volume had been steadily turned upward. The breaking of a simple leaf or twigs became the focus. Luckily Silvia was not lesser; she was enhanced. It was still dark, a minor inconvenience, but she could see very clearly the group of men that stood at the edge of the park.
They were all fairly burly; chords of muscle wrapped loosely around their arms but only one of them had legs of any particularly impressive size. The others had obviously forgotten to tone the rest of their bodies. Silvia huffed, costume shifting uncomfortably with every step she took. They didn't look like they'd put up an entertaining fight...
She could hear their mumbling from ten yards away, but as she approached it only became louder. The pathetic thugs nudged and poked at each other, smirking and puffing their chests out. "Nice outfit, Doll-face." One of them whistled.
Silvia pulled to a halt several metres away and cocked her head. She reached up and slipped a fabric mask over her face, shoving long strands of blonde hair beneath it. The mask bore the image of a jagged, messily drawn skull-like face, washed in faded navy. "You too."
She yanked the sawn off shotgun from her back with her right hand, pointed it at the face of the nearest thug and squeezed the trigger. A mind-rattling 'bang' consumed the silence as the thug's head exploded in a backwards funnel of meat, shredded bone and brains. Silvia was intoxicated by the silence that followed, and the horrified expressions that twisted to the rest of the criminal's faces. The end of the shotgun was flipped and rested on her shoulder as her free hand fell to her hip. "Hmm... I was expecting a little more blood."
Their eyes glazed over like an icy puddle, staring at the body in horror. Silvia could see every small change in their faces, every twitch until they jolted into survival mode. The shortest of the men gritted his teeth with an animalistic growl and Silvia muttered "Finally" before shoving her shotgun onto her back once more. The thug darted toward her, fist clenched and aiming directly for her nose. The masked woman dodged the hit almost effortlessly, and before the smaller man could even register that he had missed, she had reached to her thigh and grabbed a pistol from its holster.
Two gunshots cracked into the air as loud as thunder but without the raw power of a storm. In comparison to the shotgun they were quiet, coming from one direction only. Even if they could have been mistaken for the cracks of an oncoming squall there wasn't a cloud in the sky. There was less blood this time, but it splattered over the previous corpse in the same thick crimson. The entrance wounds were small and close together, but the exit punctures were surrounded by lifted skin and melded into one giant hole.
Silvia didn't give the body a second glance as it fell to the ground in a crumble. "Now, who's next?"
The next gunshots came thick like winter hail. The tin projectiles cutting through the frozen air just as harshly as the last. Each one ripped into something, be it inanimate or living, some spilling tree sap as they exited their skulls, others stuck in the bone and chipping the scalp, but all with equal indifference. They hadn't even had the chance to fight before their corpses littered the park floor, but one was spared. The largest of the lot; thick neck, large biceps, and strong legs.
The pistol was thrown over her shoulder, leaving her with nothing but her bare hands. A grin stretched across her face, left invisible beneath her leather mask. Adrenaline pumped through Silvia's veins like it had been injected with a syringe, it pierced her skin and cycled through her body in full pelt.
The remaining criminal charged but this time the woman made no effort to move. She just stood there... waiting. The man swung his sharp knuckles her way and they smashed against her jaw with a loud, wet sound. It was a hard hit and left an ache on the side of her face, but there was no blood...nor broken bones. The only evidence that he had laid a hand on her was the grunt that broke from her throat.
She whipped her head back up, index finger trailing the length of her jaw; the fabric of her mask was rough to the touch.
"That hurt." She said lowly, a hint of amusement evident in her tone. She always gave the regular criminals the first hit. Silvia's balled fist collided with the thug's cheekbone, flaying his neck backward like a willow caught in the wind. As he stumbled, he nearly fell over the corpses of his 'friends'.
The masked figure slipped forward, stepping over the bloodied men only to kick the remaining one directly in the stomach. He lurched, doubling over with a gagged struggle for air. One hand shot up, trembling and soaked in the blood of his group of vermin. "Wh-What do you want?!" He gasped out, refusing to tear his gaze away from the crimson stained grass.
The answer came not in words, but in the loud 'thwack' of her bashing his head against her knee. There was a crack and a gush of blood - the man's nose had been broken. The criminal yelled out in pain and scurried backwards. One hand held onto his nose in agony and the other was held up at her in a symbol of surrender but it did not stop her from approaching him once more.
"That's enough!" An unfamiliar voice boomed from behind her.
"Am I gonna have to kill someone else?" Silvia threatened, flipping a throwing knife from her sleeve and turning around. The man that the voice belonged to was around 6'3 in height with jet black hair and bright blue eyes. He had more muscle in one arm than all of the thugs combined, let alone her. She seemed to freeze when her gaze dropped to the giant 'S' symbol on his chest. "Fuck."
There was a moment of complete and utter silence between the two. Superman was standing with his fists clenched and arms folded, jaw tightening in fury as he stared at the vigilante. She, however, was taken back by just how massive Superman was. She had heard stories, but never imagined that he'd come after someone as insignificant as her. The stories didn't do him justice, and certainly didn't prepare her for how tiny she felt in comparison.
The masked woman had a moment of curiosity, eyes shining brightly though they went unseen...then again, you could never be too sure with Superman. The knife in her hand was flicked quickly, and directly, at the superhero. It not only bounced off of his broad abdomen, but when it fell to the ground Silvia could see that the blade had bent completely on impact.
A sharp inhale could be heard whistling through her teeth. Nerves racked her body with far more intensity then it did when faced with any other superhero. The others she could, at the very least, attempt to escape from...but Superman? It seemed pointless to even try.
Silvia cleared her throat, taking the sawed off shotgun from her back again and pointing it toward him. "I suppose this won't do much damage either, right?"
The gigantic man dropped his arms and slowly paced towards her. "You think this is a game?"
Silvia hesitated.
"Lives wasted. And you joke."
"They weren't exactly innocent lives." The girl finally said, trying to conceal the anxiousness that slowly overtook her. "Together they've killed over one hundred people, and that one," she pointed to one of the bodies. "the one with half his head blown off, he killed a five year old boy just last week."
Superman suddenly snapped forward and grabbed Silvia by the shoulder and drove her into a nearby tree, glaring daggers into her eyes. "You don't get to decide who lives and who dies. You're just as bad as they are. And you know it."
For a moment Silvia felt herself tremble, but this fear was quickly discarded. "I don't get to decide, but they do? Where were you when they killed that boy? Saving a cat from a tree?" Sap dribbled onto her costume, sticky and sinking through to her skin. She could feel it glueing the suit to her, but with such a powerful being holding her down, it was the least of her worries. "We can't all be like the great Boy Scout Superman; forgiving murderers and locking them away knowing that they'll be released and start killing again. By sparing these vile criminals, you're deciding who lives and dies as much as I am. You're just deciding wrong-"
She was cut off when the larger man's hand wrapped around her neck. She gasped, but quickly found that she could still breathe. Though he was attempting to intimidate her, and was obviously enraged about the thugs that she had killed, he wasn't hurting her. "I'm not going to be lectured by a murderer. There's plenty of room in Stryker's for people like you. You're finished."
There was another loud bang but Superman didn't look the least bit surprised by it. He must have known she had the gun pointed at his stomach before she even had the chance to pull the trigger. When he didn't even stumble back she assumed the bullet had ricocheted off of him and gave a nervous chuckle. "I should've seen that coming."
Finally, Superman let go of her only to snatch the shotgun out of her hands. The girl hadn't completely registered that he had taken it before he crushed the weapon between his fingers, turning it to nothing but dust that sprinkled onto the floor.
"Reginald...!" Silvia gasped weakly, dropping to the ground. She desperately clawed at the metal dust and sawdust on the cobble pathway. "...W-Why...?" She muttered tenderly.
Superman scoffed. Silvia froze and looked up, seeing the hero tower over her with a look of sheer disgust on his face. "You're...insane. To do what you just did."
"He was my favourite!" Silvia retorted, cradling the dust and carefully sprinkling it into an empty vial. She tucked it into her pocket and reached out for her pistol. Her shoulders were obviously tense when she turned back around, pointing the gun to where she had left the last criminal but he was no longer there. "Shit! You let him get away...figures. The next person he kills is on you."
"His name is Michael Stanton. He earns fifty dollars a week and is the sole provider for a family of six."
Silvia realised that her pistol had seemingly disappeared the way her shotgun did. "Oh for fuck's sake."
Superman appeared before her, pistol crushed in one hand. "He has a criminal record, yes. He doesn't keep the greatest company, yes. But he's clean now. For his family. But you were about to throw that all away. Now his friends are dead... Regardless of what atrocities they may have committed, they were still human lives. And human lives deserve chances. That's the difference between me and you. I don't think the human race is beyond saving. I believe that everybody has the potential to say no. Society needs their system...and right now, it's not perfect and that will only be fixed in time. When one person puts themselves above all others in society and believes that they have a duty to kill undesirable people, it always ends poorly for them."
The girl sighed at her crushed weapon, crossing her arms in irritation. "These thugs were meeting here to steal shit, kill people. Your precious system doesn't work."
"They meet here every night to go bowling."
Silvia paused. "...Fucking whatever. You gonna lecture me all night, mister psychologist? I know what I think is right."
Superman grimaced and took a single step closer. "You'll have plenty of time to talk to a psychologist where I'm taking you."
"Look, we know how this is going to play out. You'll take me to jail, I'll break out, I'll clean up the streets for you so-called 'superheroes' then the cycle will repeat itself. I ain't dumb enough to fight you off so let's not drag this out." The girl held both wrists out as if expecting the powerful man to create a pair of handcuffs out of thin air. "Though, you'd better keep an eye on the fucker that escaped. Don't want another life on your conscience, I'm sure you've got enough as it is."
Without warning, there was a huge gust of wind. It was completely unexpected on such a dry, humid night. When it had ceased, Silvia's surroundings had changed. The beautifully gloomy park was now replaced with an open ocean, and in the distance was Stryker's Island Penitentiary.
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