Monday Night in Gothic City. 4:12 A.M.
It was always darkest before dawn.
At least, that's what everyone said.
Walking under the bright lights of Gothic City, it was hard for Will Eldrik to even see the sky, let alone see how dark it was. Coming off of his night shift at the local gas station, the man's mind traveled as he wandered, eyes downcast to the cracked concrete below. Dark Vengeance. The name rang in his head like a bell, and a sort of disgusted grimace formed on his lip. The demon. With a slight shake of his head, he dispelled the thought from his mind, continuing his path. His obsession with Dark Vengeance had become a nuisance, now. Nothing more. After all, it was clear that the man was nowhere to be found...
And Will had checked.
Over the past decade, any source of the masked vigilante was hunted down and unveiled, only to reveal it to be another dead end. Curve's men told him nothing he didn't know. The government certainly was as clueless as everyone else. Even trying to follow the bat-symbol that occasionally lit up the night sky came to no avail. The hunt was dead, and as years went by, it seemed as if Vengeance was, too.
Suddenly, a loud bang resonated through the night air. Gunshots in Gothic were not uncommon, but still, the sound of it made Will jump slightly, whirling his head around to see what had caused the noise. To his left, a narrow street led to an underpass, stained in graffiti and piss stains. In the middle, two thugs, one with a gun, standing over the corpse of some drug dealer. The man without the gun was busy searching the druggie's pockets, and the other looked around carefully, finger quivering on the trigger. Damn. Blood on his work uniform was always frowned upon, but the personal opinion of a Saudi Arabian gas station owner mattered little to Eldrik.
Dropping his lunch pail with a clang, he attracted the attention of the two, and the man with the gun swiftly pulled the trigger for the last time in his miserable life.
To Will, it was not justice. As he proceeded to run over and headbutt the gunman in the mouth, he realized as much. Raising a cinder block over his head, he found a certain joy to come about the task, like he was the emulation of Dark Vengeance himself, doing the things that the caped crusader could no longer do due to whatever reason. This type of thought process was probably sadistic. Twisted. Sick. Whatever the news stations would say about the true vigilantes. But it wasn't that, not really. It was a fundamental force. It was universal.
It was war.
After the scuffle, William stood up, wiping a bit of blood from the side of his mouth. Lucky shot, he thought, as he turned his head. Huddled under the underpass, the Swedish warrior spotted a homeless man, trying to stay warm on a cold night. With a curt nod, he fished out the wallets of all three dead men, tossing them each to the elder. Only then did his eyes flicker up, to the graffiti beyond.
GOTHIC KING, the words screamed, furious and bold in their dialect. Walking over, Will recognized the symbol, something from one of the many gangs in Gothic City. But as he got closer, he spied something... off. Narrowing his eyes, Will looked in the middle of the first O, an insignificant speck of black among the grey. Reaching up, he rubbed the patch of black that jutted out to him, in an attempt to remove it. Instead, it flashed red, the miniature switch activating. Land mine? he thought, taking a bewildered step back. But the button did not explode as he had previously believed, his studies of military equipment falling short. The concrete graffiti pushed out at him, separating from the rest of the wall, and opened, a staircase sliding down from the wall of the underpass.
"Welcome, Dark Vengeance,"A robotic voice mused, as lights came on throughout the underground bunker, stainless steel floorboards and shelves and gadgetry sliding onto the walls, the cave literally building itself as Will walked inside. A box arose from the metal plating in front of him, the iconic suit of the man known as Dark Vengeance opening out to him. "An estimated report of over two hundred and thirty four unsolved police cases reside in the GCPD."
"I- I-" Will stuttered at first, before clearing his throat, taking in everything before him. Despite the man's cold demeanor, this was overwhelming. The actual lair of Dark Vengeance, ripe for the taking, cowl and everything. "Pull up the case files," He murmured, concrete walls closing behind him.
A new Gothic King would arise.
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