The Watch

Star City/Baker's Square, East Borough/5th May/13:56 A.M.

This little 'fad' got out of hand in a hurry.

As my bō connects with the head of another super villain, it occurs to me that I really need to rethink my life.

'Where is she,' I think to myself.

In front of me, a hero gets a bullet to the head. He goes down, twitching, as I duck behind the burnt out husk of a car.

Dropping my bō, I pull my gun out of its holster.

I peek around the car to see a-. Wait. I was expecting to see a super villain, but that's a SWAT guy.

SWAT's shooting at us?!

Suddenly, the SWAT guy spots me and raises his pistol.

I pull myself back behind the car as three shots ring out and the bullets whizz pass my hiding place.

There's an alley across the street from where I'm hiding. Out of it, sprints man dressed all in red.

I've seen that uniform before. This one's definitely not an amateur.

I fumble around with my pistol, trying to turn off the safety, but I can't get it to switch for some reason.

Finally, there's a click as the gun switches from SAFETY to FIRE. I raise the gun in the direction of the villain, but he's gone! Where did he go?! I look back to the SWAT guy.

The villain was just walking towards him. Why? Then I realized.

The officer was still reloading. I jumped out from my hiding place and put two rounds in the villain's back. One in the spine and one in a lung. The SWAT officer looked up, shocked, from reloading his gun.

I lowered mine as we starred at each other for a few seconds.

He quickly finished reloading his and aimed for me.

I bolted further down the street, as a new hail of bullets connected with the wall of an adjacent building. I was hoping that I could lose him in the melee that I was coming upon.

Everywhere I looked, heroes and villains were lying dead.

Blown apart, cut open, shot in a myriad of different places.

Most of them heroes, if the bright colored costumes were any indication. This wasn't supposed to happen. Heroes who had all but taken vows never to kill were forced to brutally tear into an enemy that would gladly do the same to them.

The ones that were still alive were fighting for their lives, with varying degrees of success.

Finally, through the dozens of people attempting to kill each other, I spotted one of my targets.

The leather of her costume was torn and scorched and she was missing her mask, but it was definitely her.

She was trying to pull her bloody katana from the skull of a dead hero.

She was distracted!

I raised my gun. If I could kill her and her sister, this would all be over. Wait. Her sister. Where was-

Before I could finish the thought, I was tackled to the ground by the owner of a hideous face. It looked like what would happen if you were to set someone on fire and beat them with baseball bat.

I found the sister. And she was currently raining hits down on me with clenched fists. All I could do was guard my face and wait for her to get tired.

Eventually, she did, and my forehead met her nose.

She rolled off of me, screaming and clutching her nose. Finally, her sister abandoned the stuck katana and, seeing us, stormed over to the two bodies on the ground. I tried to stand, but I was still dizzy from the head but, so I ended up lying down again.

The girl towered over me as she drove her booted foot into my stomach.

She yanked my gun from its holster and aimed it at my head.

BANG!