by Jason Krate
"Who's out there?" Silencer called out to the darkness of the woods surrounding them all.
"A sleeping giant, one that you and your friends in the Sadistic Five woke up….one that has been filled with a terrible resolve" Baron Knight answered, "And like the one who said that quote, you both are going to wish you never woke me up."
"Don't worry love" Silencer grinned cockily, "I know how to deal with things hiding under a rock, just hold your breath."
Mourne, knowing what his lover was talking about quickly drew in a big breath upon using his elasticity ability's to increase the size of his lungs to compensate.
Silencer then before Baron Knight's eyes transformed into her poison gas form, which suddenly exploded outward into a rolling wave of poison gas which engulfed the entire park in seconds.
Baron Knight just casually turned himself into his living shadow form in response to this, in this state he didn't need to breathe, so Silencer's poison gas attack didn't affect him.
"Is that the best you can do?" Baron Knight mocked, "A bad case of gas?"
That was when Baron Knight began to hear the sound of coughing and retching coming from an area not too far away from where he was perched.
He used his Shadow Vision power to locate and zero in on the source of the coughing and retching coming from the area behind him.
He balked in disbelief.
It was the whore!
What the hell was she still doing here?
He had told her that she was free to go, did she not believe him?
Stupid woman!
In about five seconds that gas would kill her, and there was no way she was going to get out in time.
Baron Knight realised he had to do something otherwise this woman would die, and instinctively, he activated his Shadow Walking ability…and transported Rachel Addison to the one safe place he knew off.
He knew he was going to regret trying to save her, why the hell did he even bother, it's not like she would have done the same for him.
He then quickly turned his attention back to the two villains.
It was time to end this.
He watched as Silencer turned back into her flesh and blood form, her own poisonous gas not harming her in the least.
But Baron Knight didn't care, because soon he would remedy that.
* * *
"Are either one of you aware of the history of this park?" Baron Knight asked cordially.
"You're still alive?" Silencer responded in disbelief, "How is that possible? This gas is strong enough to kill a thousand people in less than a minute. It should have killed you!"
"All you've killed was a bunch of wolves" Baron Knight scoffed, "Now back on the subject. This park once was a landfill, it was reclaimed into a park by the city a long time ago. Now the thing about landfills, they were used to contain a lot of trash and that trash upon decomposing can produce flammable gas vapors of their own. That's why there were never any campfires allowed in here. And unless one knows where the methane pockets are located one would be damn foolish to come in here and try to make a fire. Now here is the thing that makes the whole thing so hilarious to me. You stupid obviously uneducated gasbag of woman don't even know what gas it is you can generate. You can generate a combination of H2S or Methane Gas, both of which can cause asphyxiation and death…but Methane is flammable and combustible. And you two happen to be standing right now in the biggest gas cloud of methane…and all I have to do now is light this match I have in my possession and then you two become the biggest gas explosion in Brightmoon City."
"Holy Shit on a Brick!" Mourne exclaimed, in his fear he had forgotten about Silencer's poison gas surrounding him and her, and while choking on it he turned to her pleadingly "Recall the gas, recall the gas before it's too late!"
He then quickly held his breath again to avoid breathing in anymore of her poison gas.
"I can't!" Silencer said fearfully, but then her smug façade returned "Oh please, what are we afraid of. He won't do it, if he sets off the gas, he'll kill himself as well."
"Oh I wouldn't?" Baron Knight asked in mock surprise, "If I can't be harmed by your gas, what makes you think a little fireworks show will do any better?"
"Okay look whoever you are" Silencer called out to the woods with her arms up in protest, looking for Baron Knight's hiding place desperately, "you win. You got us. You are a badass motherfucker, like the rest of us, and you've proven you've got skills. We could use a man with your talents. Why don't you join us, become the sixth member of the Sadistic Five and rule over the city with us. You'd have ultimate power of the lowly worms of the earth like we do. What do you say?"
Baron Knight then let out his trademark dark laughter which unnerved the two supervillians even more.
"You mean the Sadistic four, soon to be the sadistic two" Baron Knight mocked, "I've already made my point with Bone Breaker, I'm not one of you. I am out to make each and every one of you pay for what you have done."
"What?" Silencer said in shocked disbelief, "You killed Bone-breaker? Why? What did we ever do to you?"
"You killed my daughter" Baron Knight answered, "You attacked my home, you beat, rapped, and murdered the only family I had left in the world. You left me with NOTHING left to live for….but revenge. So for that….you and your friends are going to burn in hell. So now that we have that little bit of meaningless trivia…BURN IN HELL!"
* * *
Baron Knight then struck the matchstick he had in his hand against the side of the oak tree he was perched upon.
Baron Knight reveled in what happened next.
The second he had lit that match, the small flame reacted to the flammable poison gas surrounding the park and exploded out into a massive fireball that swallowed the park and everything in it in a blazing explosive inferno.
He heard the screams of the two villains cut short within ten seconds once the explosion had had its way with the both of them.
Baron Knight, while still in his living shadow form, dropped down from his perch to check on the bodies to make sure they were dead as the inferno blazed all around him.
He found Silencer's body lying a few hundred feet away from ground zero of the firestorm that had swallowed the old park whole.
She was quite dead, just a charred piece of worthless trash that was now burning in the middle of the old landfill turned City Park….how appropriate.
But Baron Knight didn't see any sight of her rubber band power bestowed lover Mourne anywhere, he wondered briefly where he went to when the explosion occurred.
He then pushed the curiosity out of his head.
He had another matter he had to deal with, one that now out of respect to his vow to his deceased daughter Kilari was forcing him to put his rampage of revenge on hold for now.
If that villain had survived this, then he would deal with in due course.
Baron Knight then swished his tattered Trenchcoat around himself and vanished from within the inferno he had unleashed within this derelict and abandoned park within a flash of light and a plume of purple smoke.
If Baron Knight hadn't been forced to go attend to Rachel Addison back at wherever it was he had sent her to in order to save her life, he would have soon sensed the movement of the very much still alive Mourne coming from outside the blazing park.
He was slightly burnt by the explosion but had survived due to his Rubber band metahuman physiology, the explosion had blown him clear of the park and he had bounced a few blocks down the street before coming to a stop.
Now he was aware that his love had just been taken away from him by some kind of monster of the night, and he had just admitted to have already killed Bone breaker.
His mourning for Silencer would have to be put on hold, this was very serious.
Some nutjob with incredible powers was hunting him and the rest of the Sadistic Five down one by one, he had to find the others and warn them, hopefully there was someone left to still warn by this time.
So with that in mi
nd, Mourne took off running for the one place he knew the rest of the Sadistic Five and the Deathborne Siblings would be found at.
The Pit.
The preferred execution spot for enemies of the Deathborne Sibling's rule of the city, the last resting place for any rebellion/resistance cells that they had caught so far.
If those two sicko's weren't anywhere to be found in their "palace" at King's Tower fornicating, then they would be at the Pit watching their enemies be dropped into the pit to their death.
Such a shame that the Deathborne Sibling's didn't know what the vat of chemicals they called "The Pit" really was, or that it would be instrumental to their downfall.
Actually it wasn't such a shame at all they were ignorant to what it really was at all.
It was almost poetic.
The Baron Knight Returns: Chapter 5
* * *
Chapter 5: An Unexpected Development
* * *
Moraes Household, Abandoned Lost Hallowing: October 8th, 2063: 9:20 AM
Rachel Addison didn't know how long she had been out, or how she had gotten here, or where "here" was for that matter.
All she knew was that after collapsing in the middle of the wild wood park that Baron Knight had taken her to (after in her opinion foolishly following after him to see what he was doing instead of running back to her apartment to find Kaitlin and get the hell out of the city) that had become engulfed in poison gas, she had awoken to find to her relief that she was still alive.
But she wasn't in her bed, and this wasn't her apartment.
This was someone else's bedroom.
And for some reason, she could smell something, something that pleasantly smelled like mint and forest pine.
She quickly looked under the bed sheets draped over her to check and see if she was naked.
To her relief, she still had her clothes on.
And she sure didn't feel like she had been molested or violated in any way anywhere on her body, so no one had taken advantage of her while she was asleep.
Which she was very grateful for, since it wouldn't have been the first time she had been raped while asleep for any reason.
Like when that slime ball bartender had drugged her with a sleeping drug, in order to get fresh with her to satisfy some kind of fetish. He had given her a drink laced with the drug, and he dragged her up to his private room when she fell under its effects. But to his ire he soon found out he hadn't put in enough of the drug to last more than an hour. She had made sure to drive her knife into his groin when she awoke and found him fucking her in his bed, she in turn afterward grabbed the pebbles he had made that day out of spite and had never gone back to that bar again.
But for some reason, it felt like something was on her chest.
She lifted up her shirt to see that on her chest, some kind of rub had been applied to it, and that rub happened to be the source of the sweet aroma she was smelling.
So someone had touched her without her say so, and what was this stuff that they had put on her chest?
She decided that it didn't matter, she should focus on finding her way out of wherever this place was.
So after making sure her knife was still in her pocket, which to her surprise it was, she made her way out of the bedroom.
She followed the hallway down to the stairs, and then she followed the stairs down to what she figured to be the main floor level of this house she now found herself inside.
She found that it was now daylight, early morning to be exact.
And if what she could see out the window was correct, she was currently inside a house located within the outskirts of what used to be Lost Hallowing after the Marauders and the Sadistic Five had their way with the place a few months ago.
She had to admit, at this distance, the Marauders and Drone filled gangland that Lost Hallowing had become just like Brightmoon City had in turn before it looked rather peaceful.
It might have had something to do with the picturesque view of Brightmoon Bay that could be seen on edge of the Cliffside that was located west on the houses property.
But ever the cynic, she knew that this meant that she was now going to have a long time getting back home to her apartment in Brightmoon City, where hopefully by this time Kaitlin had made it back and was still waiting for her there.
She also saw that strange Metahuman who had abducted her the other night was out there in the backyard area near the Cliffside.
The one that the guru called "Baron Knight".
He was out there, kneeling down in the middle of the yard, near a pile of rocks.
Surrounding him was a circle of individual rocks.
Rachel knew what this was.
She had a friend in her former pimp's gang that was Japanese, one of the few friends she actually had in the city or in her life, she had told her about this.
It was called a 'Memory circle', it was an old Japanese ritual started after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The stones surrounding him were representations of people that had been lost…and the yard was nearly full with them.
There must have been over 60 stones surrounding where Baron Knight knelt.
* * *
Baron Knight then stood up, with his back still turned to where Rachel stood looking at him.
"You're awake" Baron Knight said to her.
"How did you know I was eavesdropping on you?" Rachel Addison asked, a bit unnerved.
"Stupid whore, I told you that you were free to go" Baron Knight chastised, turning around to face her "What they hell were you doing following me, you could have been killed!"
"I don't need your worry Meta" Rachel Addison snapped scornfully.
"Well that's gratitude" Baron Knight scoffed, "I see the world really hasn't changed. A person with powers saves a person without them, and they still treat them with scorn…even if they would be dead without that person's power."
"So it was you who rubbed that gunk on my breasts" Rachel Addison said in realization, giving Baron Knight a cold stare as he knelt there in the middle of the circle of stones.
"Your lungs were damaged, you breathed in too much of the gas" Baron Knight explained, "That "gunk" I rubbed on your chest was a special kind of aroma therapy that my late wife taught me how to make. From herbs and roots found in the nearby woods. It healed your damaged lungs, but your cough will last for half the day. Before you get any ideas on the matter of my placing it on your chest area the way it's supposed to be, I was no more thorough with placing it upon your chest than necessary.
"Yeah right…" Rachel Addison scoffed, "I bet you were just looking for an excuse to peek at my tits, or to touch them, you are such a creep."
"Unbelievable…." Baron Knight said shaking his head, "Believe what you want to whore, I saved your life…again…you could learn to be grateful and say thank you."
"Stop calling me that" Rachel Addison said with a scowl, "and maybe I might be grateful to you and not treat you like a freak, Meta."
"Stop calling me Meta and I won't call you a whore" Baron Knight countered.
There was silence between the two of them before Rachel Addison spoke.
"Look…" she sighed, "I don't like you, but I do appreciate you saving me, but I wouldn't have been in danger if you hadn't of kidnapped me in the first place! Besides…I don't like being touched there…especially by a total stranger."
"Really?" Baron Knight said inquisitively, "I thought prostitutes were required to like it when men touch their breasts."
"Only if I'm being paid to allow them to, not like I have a choice. I don't like it, my job. I never have. But I need the money for my daughter and…" she then stopped in her tracks with her conversation, realizing what she was doing "Why am I even talking to you about it? You wouldn't understand."
Baron Knight stood up and looked at her, "You never gave me a chance to explain myself any more than other people ever did with me or "my kind" as you call it. You don't know me at all any more than I know y
ou. How would you know I wouldn't understand whatever it is you have to say about your profession?"
"Because you're a man" Rachel Addison answered, "They are all the same. It's all about them and what they want, a woman is nothing but a toy for them to play with."
Baron Knight scoffed, and pointed at a nearby stone, "See those two stones? Those are my two wives. I married only twice during my life. Both of them died. They were not some toy to play with for me…they were the light of my world….all of these stones….they were the light of my world. Now…now there's nothing left but Darkness."
