The Crazed Vigilante chuckled.

Fully suited up, Cadell sat on a bus stop and stared at his phone. He contracted and expanded his finger and thumb against the screen to zoom in and out of a photo that had been released to millions on the internet for everyone to see.

of

Large crimson letters covered the picture in a bold font.

YOU. ARE. DEAD.

If it wasn’t for the context of the situation, the chuckle might have been warm or even wholesome. What Cadell was looking at was supposed to be a death threat but why did it seem so amusing? He tried to pinpoint the source of humour as his legs shuffled up and down akin to an impatient child.

Was it the way his body was curled up pitifully in the photo?

No.

The urine stains near the crotch region?

No, no, no.

His mind randomly switched off the topic, swiftly shifting to random things. First his fingers, then the Voice, then Hazel standing to his right side, leaning on the bus stop’s mini billboard.

Eventually, he came back to the question only to give himself an even harder question.

Right now, at the this very moment, why did everything seem so amusing? The detail of his surroundings, every nuance and grain of his perceptions, the sequence of events leading up to this moment.

All of it was hilarious.

Cadell steadied his breathing.

Obviously, the chuckle was nonsensical, so there was no point in deciphering the small action. Just like the hallucinations, the Voice, and the portals, there didn’t need to be an explanation and yet the vigilante still came up with an answer to be satisfied with.

His answer was quite a bold one. Maybe he chuckled because he felt like he was already dead despite being alive. Maybe he chuckled because for the first time in claiming his identity as Psycho the Superhero, he was becoming passive and that instead of seeking out the enemy, he simply waited for it. Maybe he chuckled because the photo to him was not a declaration of war but his final opportunity to come back to life.

One thick crimson vapour trail swirled in the air, indicating a high concentration of bloodthirsty individuals were hunting. They converged on their location, getting closer and closer with every passing second.

Cadell purposely let the Voice reach him, letting each word dripping with malice sink in.

Do you honestly think this will solve your problems? Can’t you understand this isn’t something that can be solved by resistance?

I don’t know. And I guess not.

There’s only one way you can survive, boy, the voice boomed. Let all the restraints go.

That’s an interesting theory. Let’s see then. Let’s see who’s right.

A black van with tinted windows pulled up right beside them and a split second later machine gun fire rained upon the two vigilantes. The ear splitting sound persisted for an agonising thirty seconds, completely demolishing the bus stop. Within the time frame, surely, the police were contacted twenty times.

Finally, the only sound remaining was the growling of the van’s engine. Dust settled to reveal two figures with postures too lazy to survive a shooting.

Hazel’s arm rested on Cadell’s shoulder. “Two hours. We’ve been sitting here for almost two hours. Why so long?” Despite her nonchalant demeanour, murky orange paint spiralled and danced on her Manic super suit. She entered a portal and then suddenly the vehicle filled with shouts and groans.

CRASH!

A body flew and Cadell extended a long arm catching it, neck first. Luckily, the assailant was conscious. Just about. Police sirens already blared in the distance.

“Send this message to you’re leader. Same park as before and like before bring only knives. Actually, no. Fuck it. Bring everything. Bring us everything you have.”

The Hustlers actually brought everything they had. Or at least it seemed like it.

Cadell only said, ‘bring everything’ because he thought it sounded cool but in the dead of night, literally a mob of hooded gangsters stood in the park, all masked up. Illuminated by flickering street lights, they took up at least one fifth of the area.

Hazel and Cadell stood near a bench in one corner of the park.

“I think the number ratio isn’t fair,” Hazel whispered.

“You get used it,” Cadell replied. “It never is. Armed?”

“Yup. All of them. Knives. All shapes and sizes.

“Okay, remember what I taught you.”

“I know, I know.”

“Blocking punches with your face is a bad idea.”

“Oh, really?”

“Follow the portals at all times. I’ll come in when I’m ready and then-“

Hazel yelled as loud as she could, waving. “Hey! We’ve over here! Psycho and Manic! We’re an unstoppable duo!”

Cadell turned his body to face Hazel, head tilted to one side. Even though his facial expression was covered by the Psycho mask, he prayed she could detect his anger. In such an open space, the element of surprise wouldn’t have been a massive advantage but it still pissed him off.

The mob turned to look at them.

Almost instantaneously, colours began to form and because of such a high human stimuli, the hallucination was extremely vivid. Crimson squirted from the group rapidly like a brutal wound. It stuck to the grass and expanded until every plant, from oak trees to dandelions, were a deep shade of red, matching the night sky backdrop.

Hazel raised two fingers in the air. Cadell nodded before creating four purple portals surrounding her. The nerd inside him would have been screaming if it wasn’t for the phobia triggering anxiety. Instead, he simply gasped.

At long last. The combos…

Hazel punched, kicked and elbowed into the four portals with a combination she had practised over a thousand times in Dimension Zero. The mob, which were still quite far away, started to decrease in number as one by one the Hustlers dropped to the ground unconscious. A pool of navy blue began to mix in with the crimson grass.

The four portals disappeared only to be replaced by four others and instantly, Hazel continued her onslaught. Using her mask’s camera to zoom in, every attack was sharp and precise. Out of all of their combos that they had rehearsed, this was the best for large crowds. All Cadell needed to do was randomly place the portals within the large group of enemies and Hazel could do the rest.

“Don’t panic!” a voice yelled. “Overwhelm them!”

The horde charged and without hesitation Hazel did the same while raising four fingers in the air.

Cadell grinned. Okay, he thought. You want to show off today.

While Hazel got closer and closer to the mob, a glowing orange trail twinkled in her wake. Her hand reached into an invisible portal to receive a purple staff and then she leaped into another invisible portal to appear high above her enemies.

As Hazel backflipped, with the Manic mask worn and spirals of orange paint surrounding her, she was a flying demon. She was in the air for less than five seconds but to Cadell it felt like hours. Gravity plunged her down which multiplied the speed she had already obtained from her dash. Just before contact with the ground, she disappeared once again only to reappear with her body tucked in, hurtling horizontally behind the enemy like a canon ball.

THUD!

Everyone stopped running, shocked to a standstill. Cadell scratched the back of his head.

A long line of unconscious bodies cut through the gangster swarm.

She was supposed to fly kick one of the thugs into multiple others but… human artillery worked too. Amidst at least hundred men, Hazel swung her staff at a blistering speed. Like a raid boss, she decimated thugs with a single strike but as two bodies dropped three bodies instantly replaced them.

Meanwhile, Cadell initiated his own psychological battle. He stared at every knife she dodged and disarmed, paralysed by fear.

This was all part of the plan. Hazel suggested it.

They had both decided that this was best way to eradicate his fear. He needed to be backed against a wall, forced into a situation where there was no option but to confront his demons. There was no ingenious plan or strategy. Essentially, it was all or nothing. Win or death.

Obviously, Cadell was against the idea, stressing the high stakes and how it could go terribly wrong. In response, Hazel only smiled back, followed by warm words of reassurance.

It will be okay.

You will beat the phobia.

I know you can do it.

Cadell clenched his fists as he watched Hazel defending against the mob via her camera feed. Fuelled by the phobia, terror filled thoughts grew in number.

Why did you believe in me so easily? Why did you say those words with such confidence?

Hazel ducked a knife, then lunged forward, her staff smacking into a temple. She pivoted and swung the staff again, catching two enemies in the stomach.

This is a suicide mission. We’re both going to die.

Hazel took a solid hook to the jaw, but not without punishing her enemy with a knee to the chin that sent them flying.

Closing his eyes, Cadell’s arm reached into a portal and pulled Hazel towards him.

“Conquered the phobia?” Hazel asked, focusing on the enemy charging towards them.

Cadell stared at the grass.

“No worries,” Hazel continued. Her voice was soft and reassuring despite the irregular breathing. “I’ll hold the line.”

“I…”

“There’s no formula or clever trick, Cad. Become the hero I idolised once again. Let’s cleanse crime together. You got this.”

Cadell looked up and she was already fighting four enemies surrounding her. Time slowed and then a realisation hit him.

In less than thirty seconds, in this paralysed state, he was certainly going to die.

It was now or never. No running away. No portals. He had to relive the trauma of his past.

For the first time in five years, Cadell consciously conjured a Delirium knife. Although invisible to the human eye, the four inch blade was crimson. It burned in his right hand as flashes of memories flooded his mind, memories that tortured him every night.

The phobia had always been there, just to a much lesser extent. Even before Ejiro, he couldn’t hold the Delirium knife because it was the source of his past trauma and emotional stress. Eery time he had used the weapon, it killed the one’s he loved. First it was his parents when he went Psycho. Then it was his long lost brother willingly.

Overcome with grief, Cadell sunk to his knees. The world around him evaporated away.

His younger brother had the same illness but whereas Cadell found sanctuary in a research facility built specifically for him, his brother was tortured.

The details of his brother’s death had been locked away for so long but now they shined at the forefront of his mind; It was a gory murder of 1000 slashes where limbs were constantly cut off only to be regenerated again.

As the Delirium knife crumbled away, a tear rolled down his cheek. He accepted the past.

The phobia of knives disappeared. The world around him materialised again.

Then, before Cadell could even stand up, a knife tore through the Psycho Mask, plunging into his right eye. He seized the assailants wrist before they could push the blade further and pushed them through a portal.

Instinctively, he dodged numerous more blades with minimal movements, only moving back ever so slightly. 80 per cent of the evasion was reflex, 20 per cent were clever guesses formulated from years of experience. His eye glued to a dead body inches from his feet. The body rested on its front, two knives embedded in the back.

Hazel…

The back stab wounds told Cadell everything he needed to know. Hazel never turned away from an attacker and would never let an enemy sneak up on her so easily.

She had protected him.

There was no time to mourn. Instead, while punching and kicking and punching and kicking through dozens and dozens of enemies, he focused on the perpetual headache.

The whole fight felt fake.

Of course, he was the one doing the butt kicking but somehow it felt like he wasn’t doing it, as if he was viewing a film, seeing Psycho the Superhero knock out gangster after gangster.

Thud, thud, crack. Bodies dropped. Bones snapped.

Pop, pop, pop. Useless gunshots rang out as the bullets only whizzed through portals

“Surround him!”

More punches, gunshots and shouts proceeded until only the gunshots ringed out. Cadell stopped fighting. He took off his mask to reveal a decimated right eye leaking blood. The bullet hailstorm continued for a solid minute before stopping.

He looked at the group of thugs with a blank facial expression. “Leave. Don’t you have families to go to?”

There was a brief silence at first but then, and not to his surprise, most of them dashed away.

However, two remained.

They argued. Their emotions were so strong that Cadell could hardly see their clothing. One embodied terror, bathed in blue paint, while the other overflowed with bloodlust, bathed in gory red.

“What the hell are you doing? Let’s leave! It’s over!”

“It’s not over until he’s dead. I’ll kill him.”

“Zalen, we need to go!”

“You leave!”

The scared one swore before running away.

Cadell sighed. “Why do you want to kill me so badly?”

The man took of his ski mask. “My brother died because of you. He was killed in prison. I only was twelve.”

Cadell waited for more details. There was none.

“I’m sorry. Those weren’t my intentions. Now leave.”

“No.”

Cadell snorted, anger building up. “No? I sent your lab into space. I’m the strongest person in this world! Nothing can stop me. I’m cleansing crime and stopping-,”

“Stopping what exactly, huh? You take some guy, send him to another country with a portal and then what? You knock one of us out and then what? You’re not doing shit for this city! We’re still going to be scheming around these neighbourhoods because that’s how we do things. Do you think we’re just going to stop because some bloke stops every heinous crime? Drug dealing and stabbing up the competition pays well, I don’t know what to fucking tell you! You haven’t improved shit! We stabbed your partner a billion times and you don’t even try to kill at least one of us? You’re just going to let us scatter around like rats just to stop us again? You’re useless! Useless, useless!”

At this point, an absurd volume of blood had leaked out of Cadell’s eye resulting in a wide downwards streak across his face, even managing to taint the Psycho logo on the super suit. He glanced at Hazel’s corpse before looking back at the man before him.

Everything he had said was correct.

The will to do good and to make the city a better place dissipated along with the obsession he had clung onto for so long.

Then he agreed with a thought in his mind. Since the onset of his powers, it was a sinister thought that he had ignored time and time again. The first time he heard it was in a Chemistry class, trying not to doze off, and from that point on he resisted against the words. Until now.

Kill him, boy, the voice boomed.

Zalen made a dash for him, knife in hand, but abruptly froze, falling onto his knees.

His head bounced once on the grass before rolling beside Cadell’s feet.

The decapitation was astonishingly swift. Even if the invisible Delirium knife could be seen by the human eye, it would have been a blur. It burst into one portal and out of another to illustrate a perfect arc motion.

The Crazed Vigilante let the moment sink in. He had just crossed a boundary. The action was literally the antithesis of everything he was supposed to be. Instead of coming back alive, he had descended into something darker.

Hazel was gone. Psycho the Superhero was gone. His identity was lost once again and he couldn’t kill himself because that was too easy. To top it all off, he was now part of the curse he had sworn to cleanse.

Of course, the whole situation brought him agony. However, floating above the grim thoughts and the despair, a horrible joke he didn’t even find funny materialised.

Mucus ran down his nose. Tears welled.

“Batman would disapprove. Is there a reset button?”

Covering his face with an arm, the Crazed Vigilante cackled.

Not with vigour. Not cheerfully. Not with a smile.

He just cackled.