Gibbering, a man stumbles down the street. His clothing is torn, his skin blistered, his pace uneven, and yet he is determined. Walking behind him is a guard, covertly adjusting his wig.

“Man, ya had ta knock ta ole wig off huh?” he murmurs in the lunatic’s direction. Complaining, he asks the night air, “How am I ‘posed ta git any rispect at work now?” Grumbling, he adds, “Jus keep walkin an git on outta here!”

The crazy, however, seems unconcerned with his guard. Instead, he mumbles to himself, “Insane, they’re all insane. No magic, magic isn’t real, no magic and they think it’s real.” Whirling about he shouts at the guard, “A university! Ha! An asylum would be a better description! Ha!” Before the guard has a chance to react, he spins back around and continues walking. Behind him, the guard lifts a radio and says, “Hey man, when ta cops gonna get here?”

“Right now,” says a man walking towards him, flashing a badge. “Detective Anderson,” he says, proffering his hand to shake. Taking it, the guard smiles in relief, “Thanks man, ya got no idea, I been followin him fer ten minutes now.”

Frowning, the detective asks, “You said he broke into a club meeting? Which club?”

“Ta fans o’ Eldritch.”

“Got an I.D.?”

“Naw, no wallet or nuthin else neither.”

“He give you a name?”

“Naw, jus mutterin bout magic an stuff.”

“Suspicious,” the detective says with a frown. Pulling out his phone, he makes a quick call. “E, it’s Anderson. Got a guy here who broke into the fan club. Figured I should throw a heads up your way in case this is part of something bigger.” Not bothering to wait for a reply, he closes the phone and glances down the street to the crazy, who is studying the glass window of a storefront.

Looking to the man he pulls out a pair of handcuffs and walks towards him saying, “Alright buddy, let’s take you in and figure out who you are, sound good?”

Instead of acknowledging him, the man raises his hand and closes it into the shape of a fist. Anderson reaches back for his stun gun, apprehensive. But he does not have the time to shoot before the man smashes his hand through the glass. Whipping out the gun, Anderson immediately shouts, “Hands on your head, down on your knees or I will shoot!”

Ignoring him, the man cackles as he shoves his way through the glass shards and into the store. Swearing, Anderson runs forward, aware that stunning the man now would leave him writhing on the broken glass, potentially killing him. The man powers through the store, casting the other patrons aside. As he moves into the shop, Anderson curses again, loudly. He could not tell from his vantage point in the street, but this shop is a gun store!

Shouting, “Police, get out of the way!” he races through the shop until he closes in on the man who is caressing a low caliber pistol and muttering to himself. “Drop it!” Anderson commands. Instead of obeying, the man lifts the weapon and points it at Anderson. Immediately, Anderson fires his stun gun, causing the electrical leads to collide with the man’s skin. The weapon goes to work instantly, delivering its charge. The dirty man, however, does not care.

“It won’t work!” he chortles, “I doubt your gun can stop me!”

Anderson immediately drops the weapon and reaches for his sidearm as he ducks behind the nearest cover, a shelf. The man fires immediately, however, catching him in the arm and causing him to collide with the shelf instead of rolling behind it. The collision causes the shelf to fall, catching Anderson. Carefully, the man walks over and meets Anderson’s gaze. Frantically, Anderson tries to free his hand, knowing he might die if he cannot.

Looking down at him, the man pulls back the hammer on his gun, and then mutters, “No magic, you aren’t insane, you don’t need to be cured.” A glint appears in his eyes however, as he adds, “Can’t let you stop me, they need me to save them.” Instead of shooting Anderson, he holsters the gun and shoves over another shelf, pinning Anderson securely underneath. Then the man walks out of the store.

Unable to free himself, Anderson uses his free hand to reach into his left pocket and pull out a phone. His dials and says, “E, it’s me. You gotta get her down here right away, couple blocks outside of Lib U, there’s a crazy with a gun heading towards campus.” His second call is to the police as the guard from the street rushes inside. Spotting his injuries, the guard grabs a first aid kit and races over. “Did you stop him?” grunts Anderson.

The guard shakes his head, “Ain’t got a gun, not at ta school. Jus’ me an handcuffs, that ain’t nothin ta a guy like that.”

Leaning back, Anderson tries to get somewhat comfortable through the pain of his injury and discomfort at remaining trapped. Glancing up, asks the guard, “Civilians that were running, he shoot any?”

With a forced smile, the guard replies, “Naw, they got gone no trouble.”

“Good,” says Anderson in relief. “God,” he continues, talking to the sky, “this was a detour, you know. I was on my way to go watch a high school football game when you called, figured I was only a couple blocks away and might as well take care of it.”

But Detective Anderson’s misfortune is the fortune of those unsuspecting victims at the school, for as we know, dear reader, his timely call alerted one Eldritch Maiden! Of course, he has no way of knowing that his second call to the police alerted another of the city’s heroines, Ginger Snap, as well as a third character in tonight’s drama.

Eyes flashing open at the almost imperceptible vibration of his police alert, Harold grabs one of the six daggers placed strategically around his bed and attacks the air. Seeing no visible enemies, he speaks. “Time, seven p.m. eastern. Location, Liberty City derelict water substation seventeen. Self, Harold Peeteeyman. Oriented times three. No signs of mental incapacitation while under.”

He then falls silent, listening for any reaction to his words, or, any lack of reaction. After fifteen seconds of immobility, he moves to the nightstand and grabs a box bottle. After checking the label and entering a seven-digit passcode, he opens it and takes out a pill bottle. Double-checking this label as well, he spills out the entire set of pills and searches carefully for a slightly discolored one. Then he cuts it in half with his dagger. Carefully, he touches his tongue to the powder and leans back. “Poison neutralized,” he murmurs before carefully putting everything back into the box as it was before. Finally, he pulls a gun out from another drawer in the nightstand and does a weapons check.

Satisfied that the gun will operate, he moves carefully through the room, ducking under a set of almost invisible tripwires and other traps. Slowly, he checks through a tiny hole in the door before opening it. Then he steps across the hall quietly until he reaches another door. Repeating his set of checks, he opens it and enters to find a walk-in wardrobe fully capable of providing him with everything he needs to obscure his appearance.

Stepping over more tripwires and avoiding standing his full height, Harold removes several articles of clothing before leaving the room and dressing in the hall. Once suited up in a nondescript set of black pants and a matching turtleneck all with no labels, he removes a board from the floor and pulls out a slew of concealable weapons. Checking each one carefully, he slowly arms himself. Then he walks to next room and, after entering a passcode, leaves his hideout by a hidden back entrance. As he goes, his hand brushes against the wrong panel. From a hidden weapon, a needle flies out and collides with his armor before falling to the floor.

Freezing, Harold carefully lifts the needle from the ground. Then he creates a metal box around it and places the box into his pouch. Leaving and locking the door behind him, he leans his head against the metal of the door, caught up in a memory.

“Not good enough! Do it again and do it right this time or I’ll have your father come down here,” screams his mother as Harold struggles. “Make it quicker Harold! How are you supposed to become a superhero if you can’t even make a simple gun? After your father and I went to the trouble of designing one that even your pathetic power could create, this is how you repay us? With laziness and sloppiness? You’re a vicious little brute of a child Harold and I’m cursed to have had you. Now do it again, and do it right or I’ll tell your father!”

Leaning back from the door, Harold opens his eyes. But try as he might to shake it off, his mother’s voice continuing to ring in his ears. “I told your father,” her simpering voice reverberates in his ears, “serves you right you stupid little brute.” Then her voice hardening as he cries, “Heroes don’t snivel. Stop crying you pathetic brat.”

He surfaces from his memory with a rush as a man behind him says, “Yo dawg, you packing some heat huh?”

Turning, he stares down the men standing at the end of the alley. Three thugs in gang attire carrying pistols. The leader says in a confident and sarcastic tone, “Me and my boys here were just riding and saw a splotch of whitey on our block, figured we ought to roll out the neighborhood watch. Can’t let one of you dangerous white folk round here packing heat like you are. So maybe you just pass us that piece real nice and slow and if we’re feeling polite we let you off with a warning?”

Glancing aside, Harold finds himself caught staring at a nearby dumpster. It triggers a memory, this one far happier than the one that accosted him as he left his hideout. His younger self looks over to the rotund black man sitting next to him behind the dumpster. “You can call me Black, that’s what I am,” says the man with a snort. Looking back at Harold, he asks with a sly intonation in his voice, “So, I’m Black. Nice to meet you, Boy.”

Glancing at his feet through his ruined shoes, Harold murmurs, “Nice to meet you too Black.”

Back in the present Vicious looks up at the thugs. Raising his hands, Harold asks, “You telling the truth? You were just passing by due to chance. Nobody else knows you’re here?”

He hardly registers the gangster’s nod as he relives another memory. Black’s rotten teeth pop out of his grin as he slowly sinks down to sit next to Harold behind the dumpster. In his affable voice, he says, “Some people, a bad thing happens and they think the world’s gotta make it right somehow. Like everything is a scale or something. That’s some kind of crazy, I’ll tell you.”

Black shakes his head in forlorn amazement before continuing, “Some of em, a lot of my people, thinks if something is bad enough that it echoes down through their whole lives and gives em license to act all sorts of ways. But the thing is, ain’t nobody got a monopoly on suffering. Only thing you can do is make sure you ain’t suffer for nothing.”

Harold meets the other two gangster’s eyes, searching for the truth in them. Finding nothing to contradict the leader, he lowers his hands, crosses his arms, and says, “No.”

“Look at you and me,” Black chuckles, “dumpster diving just to eat! Bet you ain’t start off like this, somebody hurt you bad enough that digging through trash for a rotten piece of half-eaten apple core is better than any other option you got. Bet you’d do anything to fix that hurt, and if you can’t fix it hide it.”

Leaning in, Black motions to Harold as if imparting a great secret, “But it wouldn’t change no nothing, past is a part of you no matter who you are. Some piece of you is always gonna be that kid. Wanna know a secret though?” Black smiles and proffers a moldy piece of bread to the starving child.

Harold slowly takes it, ready for the catch. His whole body tenses, ready to run when Black says in a conspiratorial tone, “That kid is a survivor. Staying alive is the only thing that matters, and he done it. He ain’t gonna die in a gutter. He ain’t suffer for nothing.”

Angry, the gang member tries to fire his weapon. Unfortunately, for him, Vicious already got to it. The tattooed youth curses as indecision wars across his face. When his two followers also try shooting only to find their weapons jammed, alarm flashes across his face. For a moment, Vicious considers letting them leave. Then the moment, and each of the gangster’s heads, is gone. They almost invisible wires strung out through the alley and drawn taut by application of steel weights to their slack sever them with a swift motion. Weights created and placed during the conversation. The carnage is instant and gruesome, but Vicious hardly notices. He has no room for sentimentality. He is working.

As he leaves the alley, his father’s drunken slur rings in his ears, “The belt, Harold.” Then his mother’s bitter laughter joins in as she mocks him. “Into the coffin tonight you vicious little brat. A real hero would’ve created the gun faster, but with how slow you are you’d have died. So we’ll have a little reminder of what that’s like tonight after your father finishes.” Hearing him sob, her voice takes on a sudden rush of anger as she adds, “Don’t you dare cry Harold you pathetic worm! If you make even one noise while your father disciplines you I’ll leave you in the coffin all weekend you vicious little brute child!”

Harold’s concentration on the mission wavers for a second. Sparing a look back to the bodies, he swallows, the black skin covered in red splotches reminding him of another bloody gutter and the sight of Black lying in a gutter, blood running down into the storm drain, and the sight of his rotten teeth scattered across the pavement. How angry he was as he tracked down those responsible and carved his name into their bodies. Turning away from the scene, Harold clamps down on his inexhaustible rage. “You can't go back in time,” he mutters to himself, “and the ones responsible are dead.”

Then, glancing down at his hand, he calls for his power and watches as his mask begins to materialize itself out of the air. Once he finishes, he fixes it into place and walks out of the alley.

With two villains and two heroes circling one another, tonight seems destined to bring trouble with it! With Vicious stalking her, dear reader, Eldritch is certainly in for an exciting night, one that potentially brings more danger than she can handle alone. But unaware of this sudden increase in danger, can Eldritch and Ginger prepare in time for this newest foe? Find out next week in… “The Team-Up!”