by Logan Jacobs
I did not want to deal with that emotional woman’s screams and demands that I should kill the Wendigo anymore. I wanted her out of my sight, and I knew that the creature would return to its nest before it cared enough to track down a single woman.
“It isn’t tracking her,” I explained as I ground my teeth together. “She’s just a piece of prey, and he’s had many others before her.”
“But--”
“I am not his prey!” the woman finally said even as she kept her face buried in the Silver Squire’s chest. “He’s obsessed with me, I told you! I knew him back when he was human and I rejected him, and he did all this because he couldn’t deal with--”
“Enough already,” I interrupted her. “Get her out of here.”
“But, Shadow Knight--”
“Take. Her. Out. Of. Here,” I ground out as I clenched my hands into fists. “Now!”
I didn’t like the look that my apprentice gave me, but he gathered up the woman in his arms and began to lead her out of the hotel room.
As I watched the Silver Squire awkwardly try to comfort the woman while they exited the room, I reflected on what she’d said. It was true that the Wendigo had performed so many mutation experiments on himself that he barely qualified as a human, but he was still human. Even as I looked around at the animalistic nest of body parts he’d made for himself, I knew there was still a human inside of him, somewhere.
Sure, it sickened me to see what he’d become and what he’d done, but I had to follow my code because what I’d told my apprentice was right. Without a code, I was no better than the very villains we fought against. Even if I didn’t create nests made out of body parts now, what would stop me from reaching that point if I started to kill whenever I wanted? Where was the line drawn when you were already a murderer?
No, it was better like this. I was better like this, with a code of ethics to follow to ensure I never strayed too far from the right path.
“Shadow Knight!” a yell suddenly crackled through my earpiece. “Shadow Knight! The woman was right, the Wendigo is outs--”
There was another scream as my apprentice was cut off. I cursed under my breath and then barreled out of the room and down the hall. I realized that I should have listened to her because while she might have been hysterical, she had just been captured by the Wendigo, and I should have believed her when she said that he was after her.
But it was too late for that now.
My heavy footsteps echoed through the hallway of the old motel as I tore open the door to the back lot. I saw the Silver Squire in the parking lot as he grappled with the Wendigo to keep him away from the terrified woman.
The monstrous creature was taller than my apprentice by a good amount, but he was made up entirely of skin and protruding bones. Its bone-like antlers gave the creature an imposing amount of height, and it towered over the Silver Squire as they fought. Its arms and legs appeared as thin as twigs, but its bones must have been enhanced by the mutations because it was holding its own against the Silver Squire.
My apprentice grabbed the Wendigo by the antlers and was barely fending him off, and I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up that hold on it for very long.
I charged forward and slammed my shoulder into the Wendigo’s side to knock him away from my apprentice and the woman. He clattered to the ground in a sprawl of limbs, but he skittered quickly back up to his feet.
Up close now, I could see that he’d mutated even more during his time in prison. His hair was brittle and thin around bone-like antlers that protruded from the back of his head. He was hunched forward in a way that made his ribs stand out even more, and the nails on his fingers were more like blood-stained, warped claws. His teeth were sharpened to dagger-like points and stained red with blood as its black tongue lolled free from his mouth.
“Do you believe me now?” the woman shrieked hysterically behind me. “Nothing will stop him! He isn’t even human anymore, look at him!”
“Me… human…” the creature said as drool dripped from the tips of his exposed, yellowed teeth.
There was clearly some sentient thought left in it, and I couldn’t disregard that. My own personal feelings toward the disgusting creature and if he was or wasn’t a human didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that I kept to my code, so I couldn’t kill it, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t beat this repulsive thing to within an inch of its life.
“Human!” it shouted as its long neck swiveled away from me and toward the woman.
“Don’t run!” I yelled at her.
She was so terrified that it looked like she was frozen in place, but then she just dropped down into a fetal position on the asphalt and sobbed again, and although I did feel a little guilty for inflicting more trauma on her, she would serve as a good distraction and bait for the creature’s attention.
I lunged forward to tackle the Wendigo to the ground again, and I heard as much as I felt the crunch of bone as I snapped off one of his horns against the concrete. Blood-like ichor seeped free from the cracked horn, and the creature thrashed violently against my hold on it. A blood curdling screech rattled up from his warped throat, and he nearly managed to wrestle himself free from me as he sliced his razor-sharp claws through my armor.
The slice barely reached through to my skin underneath, but it was enough for the Wendigo to get away from me. It skittered back across the ground on willowy limbs and hissed at me. Even the way he moved was closer to an insect than a human, with jerky, unnatural twitches. The man had warped himself so far away from humanity that it was difficult even for me to make sense of what he’d become.
He remained close to the ground and breathed in through his slavering jaws like he wanted to taste the air. The Wendigo then turned abruptly away from me and back toward where the Silver Squire stood protectively in front of the woman on the ground. The creature scuttled forward with throaty, mangled words that I couldn’t make any sense of.
I ran after it and fired my grappling gun at the back of his head. It latched onto the creature’s horns and jerked him backward and off of his feet. The creature struggled where he had landed on his back, and he clawed uselessly at the air as he desperately tried to right himself again.
As he twisted and writhed against the ground, I stomped my heavy boot on his chest with enough force to shatter his ribs. Then I grabbed the monstrous human by his remaining horn as he groaned in pain, and I watched as his black blood dripped from bits of his broken ribs that had torn through the skin. Despite the damage I’d done to his inhuman body, I still hadn’t done enough to kill the thing.
He lashed out with a clawed hand again that I intercepted, and then I proceeded to break each one of his clawed fingers, so that the creature howled with each snap of bone and sinew.
“Hurts…” he whined in a way that reminded me of a wounded animal.
The damage inflicted on the Wendigo was entirely my doing, and I knew it. I tried not to resort to such violence, but in only a few days, this repulsive creature had created an entire nest of dismembered corpses. With such a warped appearance and disturbing appetite, it was hard for me to see such a thing as human anymore.
Would it really count against my code if I killed this monster?
Miles would have killed him without hesitation. I hated that I was envious of him for that, and I hated that I felt conflicted at all. It should have been an easy decision for me to knock the Wendigo out and take him back to prison, but it wasn’t.
I often felt burdened by my code, but I knew the difference between right and wrong, and I would never falter.
I leveled a punch to the side of the Wendigo’s gaunt skull, and although I heard a crack, I hadn’t put enough force behind the impact to kill him. All it did was shatter his jaw and knock him safely unconscious, so that I could deliver him back to prison custody.
I held the Wendigo up by one of his horns to make sure that he was really unconscious.
“D-did you get him?” the Silver Squire aske
d as he approached me.
“What do you think?” I snapped.
The Silver Squire had actually performed rather well in the short time he’d had to fight off the Wendigo on his own, so I couldn’t really bring myself to scold him now, even if the question had been stupid.
“I’ll call for a prison transport truck,” my apprentice said as he glanced back toward the woman still cowering on the ground.
I knew what he was going to say, even as I tossed the Wendigo over my shoulder.
“Do we really… need to let that thing live?” he asked.
“We do, and it isn’t a thing,” I replied, even though I had thought of the Wendigo as a “thing” more than a few times earlier. “He was once human, and we will be made stronger for not killing him. It’s not always easy to make the right choices to be a hero.”
Miles would have shot and killed the Wendigo before it had even had a chance to speak. He never would have known, or cared to know, that this creature had once been human.
The fact that I recognized that made me a better person and a better hero, and I wouldn’t let my apprentice say anything else to question my ideals.
I was right. Miles was wrong.
“Go deal with her,” I nodded toward the woman on the ground.
“Okay,” he replied, but he didn’t follow my orders right away.
“Did you call an ambulance like I asked?” I continued before he could have any more rebellious thoughts.
“Um, no, I didn’t have a chance to before--”
“Do that first, then,” I cut him off with more instructions, and then I waved him away for the second time.
My apprentice finally scampered off to go help the kidnapped woman back up to her feet. By now, she had stopped screaming in hysterics, although she did continue to glance toward me and the Wendigo slung over my shoulder like she thought he would leap to life and come after her again.
I kept my distance and waited near the street for the prison van to arrive, since I didn’t want the woman to suddenly start screeching in my ears again. As soon as the overflow prison staff arrived, I handed the Wendigo over to them, and I washed my hands of the matter.
My prisons were more secure now, so there was no risk that the Wendigo would ever escape again and track down that woman, so she didn’t need to worry. I was sure she’d realize that once she was capable of thinking rationally, and besides, he’d only ever been captured one time before, so it wasn’t like he escaped often. He’d only gotten out this once, and now he was recaptured.
But as she was carried into the ambulance, I caught her betrayed glare, and I looked away.
“Another successful hunt,” the Silver Squire said as he approached me again, this time with a broad grin on his young face.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“And… this time we’ll make it so no one can escape the prison, right?” he asked.
“Obviously,” I snapped, “but I don’t like what you’re implying. With my own improvements as well as Miles’ assistance, it will be impenetrable.”
“Okay…” my apprentice trailed off. “Because I really had to assure that woman a lot that he wouldn’t escape.”
“She was just a hysterical kidnap victim,” I replied. “It’s not our duty to handle trauma care.”
“But shouldn’t we care about the people we save?” The Silver Squire frowned. “She was terrified.”
“That doesn’t mean what they want is right,” I said. “Every victim wants their victimizer to be killed. They all think they’re the one-and-only, special victim, but they never are. It isn’t worth humoring overly emotional women.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” my apprentice insisted. “She said he kidnapped her last time, too. She said he did horrible things to her, and that he touched her, and that he killed and ate people in front of her.”
“He’s a cannibal, and that’s what he does, yes,” I said simply, because as disturbing as that was, it wasn’t my problem. “We put him in prison, where he belongs with all the other scum of Grayville. That’s all we can do.”
“I guess you’re right,” the Silver Squire replied, but he sounded distant.
I wasn’t sure if he actually believed that I was right.
I had nothing else to say to him after that, so I silently led the way back to my parked car. I was too lost in my own thoughts to pay any more attention to my apprentice, and the betrayed screaming of that kidnapped woman still rang through my mind. It seemed like every time I threw a supervillain into prison lately, it made his victims resent me instead of praise me for it. But I didn’t care about what the city thought of me, because I would protect them, regardless.
But even if my apprentice was weak-willed enough to entertain second thoughts on my methods, I wasn’t. I knew that my methods were right, even when my resolve was challenged.
Miles Nelson would not change my mind.
Chapter 10 - Dynamo
Penumbra and I set out on foot to our next destination. There was no point in us taking one of the cars, especially since I wasn’t Miles and I couldn’t come up with technological advancements on the fly. The van was best left in his hands, so it was just easier for us to get where we needed to be without a car.
But, of course, Miles had kept that in mind when he assigned us all our targets. The next location we were headed for was a dance studio in the suburbs, and since it was around the same part of Grayville’s outskirts that our mansion was in, it wouldn’t be too far for us to travel to.
During some of the downtime back at the mansion, Penumbra had decided to practice her abilities on her own. She’d become much more confident just by having the gloves that helped enhance her strength so she no longer felt weak and useless, and she had begun to experiment more with her powers.
She insisted on carrying me to our destination, and although I was nervous to trust her to carry me safely, I allowed it. Penumbra actually seemed to be fairly competent at flying along while balancing me below her, and as long as she’d didn’t go too high up, I would be fine even if she dropped me.
Still, it was a little unnerving to fly without any control over my own movements, but I knew how life-changing it felt to be provided proper gear, so I wasn’t about to interrupt her fun or make her feel bad again. And since the sky was fully dark by now, the suburbs were quiet in a peaceful sort of way as we flew above them, so I didn’t think anyone would look up and wonder why both of us were flying through the air.
“The dance studio is up this way,” I pointed after I placed my tablet with the directions on it back into the pocket of my suit.
“So, a dance studio, huh?” Penumbra asked.
“Our next target is an ex-dancer,” I explained.
“Oh, that’s right,” Penumbra giggled. “I can’t remember her name or anything, though.”
“Grace Pernicia is the name she went by when she was performing,” I said, “but she went off the deep end several years back and started maiming her peers when they got the roles she wanted. Now she just goes by ‘Pirouette.’ ”
“Oh, Pirouette!” the blonde exclaimed. “I remember now. She was--”
“You can set us down here,” I directed.
Penumbra slowed down, and she landed us safely next to a street light near the dance studio so we could discuss our target and our plan of action.
“You were saying?” I prompted.
“Right, so like, she was a super popular dancer when I was really little,” the blonde superheroine said, “but she was old then, so I guess she’s even older now.”
“Yeah, and when she started losing out on roles to her younger peers, that was when she lost it and started maiming them,” I replied.
“Kinda sad,” the blonde woman mused as she floated a few feet away from me to get a look around the quiet street where we’d landed.
With the improvements Miles had upgraded her suit with, she was more graceful than ever in the air, and I was even a little jealous of it. Her powers wer
e far more elegant than mine were, but she sacrificed the ability to pack a real punch for lightness and fluidity.
Still, her ability to change the mass of herself and objects was going to be more useful than I could have imagined. She had been practicing enough that she could have lifted the bench beside us with ease, and even more impressively, she could have crushed it to a pulp against the ground by making it weigh more than a ton.
“It’s a little sad,” I finally agreed. “But it’s not an excuse to maim her peers.”
“She cut their hamstrings and disabled them permanently, right?” the blonde asked as she lifted and set a trashcan back down with only a wave of her fingers.
“Yeah, most of her victims are bound to wheelchairs for the rest of their lives,” I said. “One even bled to death from getting her Achilles tendon cut, so she’s a murderer, too.”
“I know,” Penumbra sighed as she floated back toward me. “I’m not excusing her or anything, but I just think it’s kinda sad how she ended up. Like she was really good at her job, you know? But she let it all go to her head and couldn’t handle someone new on the scene that was better than her.”
“I guess it’s definitely a motive,” I agreed, but only half-heartedly.
I couldn’t imagine the kind of psychotic break that Pirouette must have had to reach the point where she maimed someone just for being better than her, and I thought it sounded pretty similar to how the Shadow Knight seemed to feel about Miles. Why couldn’t Slade just understand that what we were doing was for the good of his city?
I might have been able to understand him staying stuck in his ways if he’d never known anything else, but we were clearly more effective at getting crime rates to drop. As I thought about what must have finally pushed Pirouette over the edge, a part of me wondered how close Dan Slade was to a similar breakdown.
I had a feeling that we would find out soon.
“She was the best of the best, and she just couldn’t handle getting old,” Penumbra sighed to bring me back to the situation at hand. “I hope I age gracefully, because all this hero related stress is probably going to cause wrinkles.”
