By Metahumano

Krimson Hill, a rat's nest if there ever was one. But there's also good people; Beneath the layers of corruption, of crime, and scum that prey on the weakest, there is still light, hope, and a man knows it better than anyone.

His name is Vincent Hardy, but nobody, or almost nobody, knew him by that name. No. The name everyone knew, the one some adored and others feared, was Vigilante, the masked hero who had protected the city for the past five years.

From the top of a building, he breathed in the cold night air and closed his eyes. He let the city flood his lungs, his ears. He could even smell the peculiar aroma that was in the air before the rain began to fall, and he smiled.

As he opened his eyes and looked around at the gigantic metropolis in front of him, he couldn't help but wander to the stories the old priest who raised him in the orphanage used to tell him.

"We were once a small town, surrounded by beautiful forests and mountains, a close-knit community in which we all took care of each other," The story always began and ended the same way "I think everything started to fall apart when they installed the first skyscraper. Since then, the city has not stopped growing, and the light that used to illuminate us was replaced by shadows that lurk around every corner, in every corner."

By that time, all the children in the orphanage had their bright eyes fixed on the old man, who, sitting in an old chair in front of them, with a worn bible on his left leg, continued to long for times gone by.

"It was my generation that failed this city, its people," the priest continued, now looking down at the attentive children "It will be up to you to correct our mistakes... the sins of the Father," The old man always smiled when he got to that part "Remember that your duty, your responsibility, before making a lot of money, rather than becoming superstars, then driving fast cars and dating beautiful women, is to be good people... to help others, save the city, restore the hope that greedy people and criminals have taken your people from you."

Vincent smiled as he remembered who his first mentor was, somehow. Now, at twenty-eight, he knew well that the hardships of his city had begun long before the first skyscraper arrived on the scene. Krimson Hill had been a place full of mysteries and horrors since its founding, the first of them coming from the same church that the priest who raised him belonged to.

For years, a sect operating within the church had directed the destiny of the city from the shadows. They called themselves The Reds, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that everything bad that had happened in Krimson Hill, since the first houses were installed, was their fault. The battle against them was arduous, but Vigilante had managed to end them just over two years ago, freeing the city from one of its greatest oppressors.

However, The Reds gave Krimson Hill its shape, turned it into a monster, and now that monster had grown up, could take care of itself, and was very, very angry. Without The Reds to maintain 'order' the situation got out of control and the power struggle erupted in the streets. Vincent learned early that chaos attracted chaos. What was once a city of gangsters and criminals was soon overrun with supervillains that the young hero had to deal with. It was not that before the situation was normal, but, since the fall of The Reds, hell seemed to have broken loose. On the worst nights, Vincent couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't partly his fault. Of course, he had little time to question himself.

Vigilante felt that he had already seen it all: from a troublesome spoiled girl with a lot of money and the intelligence to build giant board games where she can make her poor victims 'play' for her amusement, to a wayward girl with a bewitched electric guitar that played violent to all those who listened to its powerful chords.

Vincent was reviewing the extensive catalog of villains that he had faced in recent times, barely and had reached the former boss of the mafia who resurrected, and dedicated himself for a season to terrorize the university campus of the city, when a sound coming from a nearby alley caught his eye, so he ran towards it without too much hesitation.

Weaving his way across the rooftops, leaping from building to building with a skill that would put the best Olympians to shame, Vigilante descended until he was a few feet above the alley.

The rain had begun to fall and the night covered everything with its relentless cloak, but he could see clearly what was happening in that dark corridor. Men in ski masks were loading boxes and boxes of military-type weapons into the trunk of an old white van, their assault rifles poised in case someone appeared on the scene and tried to halt their nighttime activities. The symbol of a white sickle was visible on the sleeves of their jackets, which immediately alerted Vigilante to its origin.

"Cronos's wankers" he thought, as he watched as they continued their arduous task, those boxes weren't light at all "Unlikely, but maybe they can lead me to their leader."

"Beg your pardon, but... didn't I lock you up last week?" He asked, managing to startle the inadvertent enemies "Or was it your mates?"

The only response he received was a hail of bullets from the dangerous AK-47s carried by the thugs, which he dodged with an impressive jump that allowed him to land on a garbage can and gain momentum to jump again.

In mid-air, Vigilante reached behind his back and pulled the eskrima sticks out of their sheaths, which he threw with precision, knocking two enemies down on the spot, and a third fell to receive a powerful kick to the jaw that knocked him out. Instantly.

Rolling on the ground, the hero managed to retrieve his sticks and hide behind a container to avoid the new volley of ammunition from his enemies.

"That'll do it!" One exclaimed as the others continued firing "Make a run for it!"

The tires screeched against the wet asphalt, and the truck began to pull away toward the busy streets of Krimson Hill.

Vigilante took his time handcuffing the enemies he had knocked out. With the large number of shots that were heard in that alley, a neighbor would have already called the police, so it was a matter of time for a patrol to pass through the place, arrest the criminals, and take away the boxes of evidence that they had left behind.

The truck did not worry him, he still had the tracker attached, it was just a matter of connecting to the computer of his night lair so he could find his location and catch the remaining enemies. Cronos, the criminal leader of the city for a few years, had been escaping justice for too long; tonight, maybe he was in luck and could make him pay.

With the same agility with which he descended, Vigilante climbed back onto the rooftops and began his journey back to the place where his suit hung.

On the way, he could see the fleeting passage of a patrol car through one of the central streets of the city, with the siren on so that the rest of the vehicles were removed from the road.

He smiled as he remembered the times when he used to ride in the back of the vehicle, giving ridiculous explanations to the policemen in a desperate attempt to avoid being locked up and having Father Esteban pick him up from the police station the next morning. It was true, as a young man he hadn't been an exemplary citizen, but neither had he had many examples of good behavior growing up in the slow and poorly managed adoption system.

At twelve he already had a long list of minor crimes under his name, many of them committed with his best friend, Ryan Ovin, another of the unlucky ones who had the bad luck to fall into the adoption system. Ryan was a little older than him, and maybe that's why he could exert such influence on Vincent and push him to do all kinds of stupid things, more for fun than to cause real harm.

"They're just kids," the priest justified them when he was going to pick them up from the police station in the morning, and the plump officer got up slowly to open the cell door for them.

Of course, what started out as child's play gradually escalated in levels of danger and violence, especially after Ryan was recruited into the gang that ran things in the city at the time.

Vincent never wanted to join the gang, despite the many times his friend tried to convince him that it was the only way for people like them to progress in life. But just because he wasn't part of the gang didn't mean he had left Ryan out. From time to time, his friend was somewhat tight with money, and he begged Vincent to accompany him to rob a local or rob a house. He had always refused to use firearms when carrying out the coup, and on the occasions when Ryan took his other 'friends' to work and forced him to use weapons, he always tried to remove the clip and hide it without others noticing.

Father Esteban knew the situation. Vincent was pulled between two worlds: following his friend, the only person who felt that he really understood him and who he would gladly call brother, down a dangerous path, or hearing the voice of reason from the priest who had raised him and losing your friend forever.

However, it could be said that Vincent did not have the opportunity to make a decision for himself. Fate did it for him.

It was a rainy night, not unlike the one that fell at that very moment as he continued his race toward his lair. He and Ryan had just delivered their biggest hit yet together with a small group of petty criminals. They had robbed a small jewelry store in the center of the city, the only complication was the owner of the premises, an old man who was tired of thieves came out of the back firing a shotgun at the shadows that broke into the place. It was fortunate that he didn't kill any of them, but he managed to smash the window and set off the alarm before Vincent's teammates caught him and gave him a brutal beating.

The young criminals grabbed as much as they could and ran just as the police arrived, so they had to sneak into dark, narrow alleys to avoid falling into the hands of the law, and they might have succeeded if he hadn't arrived.

Vincent, fourteen years old, was the youngest of the group, his companions had no problem getting ahead of him and leaving him behind, almost to their own devices; the only one who occasionally turned around to give him a few words of encouragement was Ryan. But the march came to a halt when a dark figure fell right in front of the group, chilling the criminals' blood.

For some months there had been talk that there was a nutcase in the city who would jump from the rooftops, beat up criminals almost to the point of killing them, and then disappear, leaving them ready to be taken to prison; The funny thing of all was that this lunatic wore a cape and a mask.

Ryan and Vincent had dismissed the stories: 'They are tales to scare us' and 'No one is stupid enough to do that' They used to joke when someone said that a friend of a friend had crossed paths with the masked man. But, when they had it in front of them, they regretted not having believed the words of their colleagues, and they discovered that there was nothing funny about this nut.

Within seconds, the black figure disarmed and knocked out Ryan's two friends who had taken the lead, then set about watching the rest as if carefully measuring their every move.

A third, knife in hand, lunged at the dark figure to force it out of the way, but he reacted at the exact moment and with a single movement managed to knock the boy to the ground. However, the latter had no intention of giving up easily and tried to get to his feet, but only managed to get the masked man to jump on him and start punching him after another.

Only Ryan and Vincent were left standing, and they couldn't look away from the terrifying spectacle unfolding in front of them. After a few seconds, the dark figure's punches made a grotesque, wet sound due to the amount of blood pouring from the boy's face.

It was then that his best friend seemed to react and raised his gun to point at the distracted masked man, ready to pepper him where he was.

Vincent watched him and everything seemed to move in slow motion for him. He could hear the groundstrokes, see the murderous look in his friend's eyes, feel the brush of the finger against the trigger, and maybe it was instinct, maybe the most rational moment of his life, but he reacted instantly and he shoved Ryan just as he pulled the trigger, causing the shot to go wide and hit the alley wall.

At that moment, his best friend turned to see him, unable to understand what had just happened, and in his eyes, he only showed disappointment, something that broke Vincent's heart even though he was sure that he had done the right thing.

By the time Ryan looked again, the masked man was already in front of him and, grabbing his face, slammed his head against the wall of the alley at a speed that Vincent found inhuman, knocking him out.

The last one standing looked at the dark figure, now turning toward him, and was able to observe it in detail for the first time.

The black suit appeared to be leather but was in turn too flexible to be, so Vincent was unable to determine the material from which it was made. A cape of the same color hung from it, but it seemed to mimic feathers, which really caught the boy's attention. Finally, the mask, black with some orange accents, covered from his hair to his cheekbones and seemed to form a kind of short, sharp beak on the subject's nose. The three-day beard and a grimace of disgust were the last details he could detect.

"You saved my life," said the masked figure, looking at him through dark glasses built into the mask "Leave the loot, leave your friends, and pray that you will never find yourself in a similar situation again if you know what is good for you."

Before Vincent could answer anything, the masked man fired a hook pistol toward the rooftops and disappeared into the dead of night. The young man, scared, obeyed everything, but he could not leave his best friend lying there in the rain, so, making a tremendous effort, he dragged him through the alleys until he managed to put him in a small abandoned garage.

After a few minutes, Ryan woke up. At first, he looked scared, but then his eyes fell on Vincent and revealed a fury that the young man would never have imagined in his friend.

"You piece of shit!" exclaimed whom he considered his brother, at the same time that he threw himself on him and they both rolled on the floor of the place "Do you have a clue of what you did!? Do you have the slightest bloody idea of what you did!?"

"I stopped you from making the worst mistake of your life, you prat!" he replied, his voice shaking with fear.

"You killed me, you bastard! That's what you did!" Ryan yelled, and the first punch flew off, causing Vincent to spit blood "I needed that money, I needed it Vincent!" Another punch reached the young man's face, this time it was his nose that bled.

The second blow caused Ryan to lose his grip on Vincent's shirt, so the boy tried to crawl away from his friend but didn't make it much distance before he was on top of him and his head hit the cold ground.

"I owe K-O money, that was to pay him, but you wanted to be the hero and put the life of a stranger, a stranger who beat us in an alley! Before mine!" Ryan yelled in his ear "Do you have any idea what K-O does with people who owe him? Do you, you git?" Vincent tried to answer, begging his brother to stop, but Ryan turned him around and delivered another brutal punch to the face, shutting him out "He kills them in the most sadistic way you can think of!" He snapped, and traces of drool fell on Vincent's face "I don't want to see you again, is that clear? You are a traitor, rubbish, your parents were right by dumping you, Who'd want a child as pathetic as you!?"

Of all the blows Ryan had dealt him that night, that was the one that hurt the most, and he was too exhausted to say anything, not to mention that his face was absolutely red and swollen from the punches.

With that said, his best friend, his brother, Ryan Ovin, turned around and went out into the night, leaving the battered Vincent lying inside the garage.

The next day, Vincent returned to the orphanage. Father Esteban was waiting for him at the door to reprimand him, but when he saw his condition, he only dedicated himself to curing him and did not even ask what had happened. He always knew that Ryan was a problem for Vincent, and he could only berate himself for failing to help the latter stay away from the former.

The days passed. When his face regained some normality, Vincent decided to visit his friend in the small apartment that his life of crime had paid for. He wanted to tell him that he was sorry, that he would find a way to give him the money he needed, he even devised a plan for a robbery, but none of that mattered, and he knew it the moment he saw that the apartment door was broken, open to kicking.

Vincent walked into the room with his legs shaking and found what he expected: Ryan, bound to a chair, with cuts, burns, and fractures exposed in various parts of the body. His best friend had long since died, and he knew, from the way K-O operated, that at that moment the photos of the body were distributed to the houses of all the people who owed him money.

"I nicked this twat just two months ago and it was already back on the streets," one of the policemen pointed out at the crime scene, a few feet from Vincent "It seems that someone finally gave him what he deserved."

Chilled at such words, young Vincent looked at the police officer, but only gave him a mocking, humorless smile. He had met many policemen like this, and he did not doubt that if they were alone in the room, the 'law enforcement' officer would enjoy giving him a good beating before getting on his cruiser and leaving him lying like the scum he thought he was. Fortunately, for every ten policemen like that, there was one honest and dedicated to his work; on that fateful afternoon, it was Detective John Farrington who covered him with his heavy coat and pulled him away from his friend's inert body. However, Farrington's best attempts to track down the killers were to no avail, K-O was known to have bought into the police and it wasn't long before the case was shelved and sent to the overflowing unsolved room of the Police Department. from Krimson Hill.

Vincent mourned Ryan and blamed himself for his death, but also decided that he wasn't going to sit idly by. His friend deserved justice.

Convinced that it was the only way to catch him, the young man plunged into the world of crime, but not as an ally, but rather as an incredible nuisance, beating up salespeople, dealers, and low-level thugs, all people. that he knew they were associated with KO and that they could give him their whereabouts. Vincent suspected that if he bothered enough, he wouldn't even have to look for the dangerous gang member, but K-O himself would find him.

Still, he had never been a good fighter. Most of the time he ended up on the brink of death and had to receive urgent care from Father Esteban, who could only watch in despair as the fury and violence consumed young Vincent.

His late-night activities caused a stir, enough to put the gang that had killed Ryan on alert, but also to draw the attention of the masked man who saved his life in that alley.

One night, as he was preparing to break into a meth lab, where he believed KO was located, he felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder and, reacting as quickly as he could, he turned and attempted a punch, which was stopped immediately by a hand much stronger than his. There, in front of him, was the masked hero who had called himself Blackbird.

"What did I tell you, lad?" Asked the hero, in an overly intimidating voice, but Vincent's pulse did not tremble.

"I don't give two shits what you said," he replied and shook Blackbird's hand off him "I'm kind of busy, get out of here."

The masked man grunted down, but then, a half smile formed on his face.

"I should have seen it that night," Blackbird spoke behind Vincent, who had turned to guard the lab "There is a fire within you, potential, and I was foolish to ignore it."

The words managed to catch the attention of Vincent, who turned to see the hero.

"The only thing you're going to get by doing this is just end up dead, I've seen you bleed, I've seen you crawl away from your enemies, barely surviving, but I always see you return, I always see you ready to fight again," Blackbird continued "Let me teach you, let me help you and, who knows, maybe together we could stop K-O once and for all."

A smile formed on Vincent's face for the first time in weeks and he knew that from then on, he would no longer be alone.