The desert night air was cold in his lungs. His breath was visible as he slowly exhaled. He scanned the Saks district from his perch high above the city, like the Glass octopus in a tree from which he took his name sake.
This was his first night out after finally assembling his gear. The unbearable decay of the city around him... the crime had been on the rise as the league of Techno-Doom had seized power of Gearford and set it's sights now on the whole nation; it was up to him to stop them.
He hated how the city was quiet. For a town this big, it shouldn't be this quiet. But, It gave him time to think about how it came to this:
The tragic murder of his parents that left him an orphan, then the orphanage fire that set his fragile world ablaze and left him on his own. His identity and record of birth now lost for all time, he was a ghost, and has lived like that since- hiding in the shadow, stealing and fighting to survive. Being alone made him stronger. He now lived in an abandoned goblin hive miles away from the town.
His cavern of silence, his octopus cave.
From there he trains and plans his next move in the fight to restore order.
That was enough reminiscing about tragic events. Crime didn't stop, so he shouldn't ether. His young ward was late to their meeting spot. Where had Badger Boy disappeared to? Too much time had been wasted waiting and thinking. No telling what villains had come out tonight.
“Perhaps the diabolical Dehumidifier, stealing water from people with his syringed gauntlets of doom,” he thought as he broke into a slow run, his feet slowly picking up the pace as roof tile grit and tar sprayed upwards with every boot fall. He crept up to the edge of the building, but there was no time to slow down to look for a smaller gap between the buildings. He sprinted at full pace until the end came quicker than he thought.
He put one foot first down on the fleeting area of roof and then pushed off as he leapt through the air. He thought for a moment that he wasn't going to make it in midflight, but as he slowly descended, he reached out with both hands open wide, desperately reaching for a ledge to grab onto instead of plummeting to the streets below. He clamped down on the first thing he could reach, planting his feet onto the wall, but his grip was unsteady, his left hand slipping loose as he tried not to fall. Cursing under his breath, he tried to reach for the second handhold, his breathing hard as he slammed his other hand onto the roof, grabbing the aged brick and slowly pulling himself up. He collapsed on the rooftop when he was successful.
"Fuck, that could have gone better. I should have practiced this more before applying it to real life," he said quietly as his breath slowly became steadier, picking himself up.
"One jump down, only a whole city full of jumps left," he said with a sigh, looking back at the jump. He started moving again. Learning from the last jump, he picked a better path through the labyrinth of building tops until he heard screams coming from an alleyway. He stopped on the ledge, peering down into the darkness to wittiness three thugs beating up a small Vibranni girl. He loaded up his dart gun, the darts being tipped with lethal poisons so he could imitate the creature of his namesake. Plus, killing the criminals the typical way didn’t solve anything. More of their kind would just be back the next night, repeating similar crimes. He slowly lowered his mono goggles over each eye.
"One at a time, just like everyone else. I can do this," he muttered, trying to quell the nervousness brewing in his gut. He anchored the grappling hook down, and with one deep breath, he jumped off the building into the darkness below. The air rushed passed him, making his scarf ripple. He pulled the rope to try to decelerate his decent. With ten feet left, he let go of the rope, free falling the rest of the way. He tried to aim for the space behind the thugs, but he fell short. Instead, his feet connected with the thug standing in the back, his collar bone splitting with a sicken crack, his landing making the man crumple like a piece of paper. He remembered to roll forward on his shoulder to avoid further damage to himself, and then stood up, turning to face the other two remaining thugs with bewildered looks painted across their faces. As their friend lay there, unconscious, his body looked like what an accordion would look like.
"That went better than I thought," he quietly thought, drawing his dart gun. With a quick pull of his finger, the gun bucked in his hand, sending a vicious poison-dipped needle towards one of the assailants. It hit its mark, but the thug wiped it way, thinking it was nothing. They were shouting at him for his odd choice of clothes and threatened him for interfering. A second needle fired and struck home.
They laughed at his weapons and then rushed the hero. The first assailant came running, throwing a wide left fist out. The avenger managed to awkwardly sidestep to the left and throw a fist home into the side of the man’s face, causing him to spin off into a pile of boxes against the wall. As he stood there, making sure the man wouldn’t get back up,
he was blindsided from the right side with a shot to the ribs, causing the Glass Octopus to wince in pain and feebly raise his guard up, trying to block the onslaught of blows that his opponent was trying to deliver. The glass octopus was being beaten back towards the wall.
"This is what you get. What did you think was going happen to you for trying to stop us, for taking advantage of this Vibranni girl?" The thug said smugly at his attacker.
"Nothing, I was just buying time," the Glass Octopus said, causing the attacker to stop in his place, perplexed by the masked man’s statement.
"You're trying to buy time for what? I’m gonna kill you!" The thug said.
The Glass Octopus grinned underneath his mask as the fallen thug started to scream in agony from the pain of the poison coursing through his veins. "Well, to answer your question, it was poison I shot you with earlier. I was waiting for it to take effect," he admitted as the thug stopped in his tracks, looking over to his friend in agony. The hero steeled himself as he reacted to his opponent’s loss of attention. He rushed in with an uppercut to the man’s jaw with a loud thud from his mouth slamming shut, causing the man to bit his tongue off and his brittle teeth to shatter. The man clasped his hand over his face in pain. The Glass Octopus delivered the finishing punch to the man’s face, causing him to fly backwards into a crate.
The hero picked himself up, dusting himself off, noticing the terrified girl in the corner hiding behind the boxes that weren't destroyed.
"You're safe now, child. Hurry home, now," he said, slumping against the wall from his injuries. The child did a quick nod, not knowing what to say to her savior, and then ran out of the alley. He picked himself off of the wall, walking over to each of the men and slitting their throats for good measure.
"They're going to think I’m a serial killer, but I'll pay that price for justice," he thought to himself, hearing shouting coming closer to the alley.
"Probably the bobbies coming to see what the commotion was," he said, cursing under his breath at their response time. He dropped a couple smoke bombs as he reached for the rope that still hung from the wall. As he slowly climbed, the smoke bombs went off, blanketing the area in a thick, noxious smoke, obscuring the Glass Octopus as he made his escape, although the climbing was painful from the blows he had taken.
"I really need to get a gun that makes climbing walls easier," he said at the top of the wall, slowly slinking away into the shadows
Citizens Of Antiford 