It was dark. The sleepy suburban street was all but bereft of life. The houses lining both sides of the street and their occupants had long since fallen asleep. The lights meant to illuminate and push back the dark were all unusually absent.

Without even a flicker.

A figure walked down the middle of the dreary street. Under their dark boots, the reflective yellow road paint seemed to fade and lose it's reflective shine. The figure continued down the road, coming to a stop at fork, and glanced down the two opposite streets, both lit by still working street lamps. The figure waved an arm towards the leftmost street and, as if candles hit by a gust of wind, the lights were all snuffed out as the figure continued down the chosen street.

Elm crouched, his figure hidden behind a bush half a road away, peeking out from between the foliage. He was currently possessing his skeleton, Wishbone. He'd been right when he thought he wouldn't have time to finish his planed super suit, he barely had time to finish the sketches, and show wishbone how to use the hack saw he'd bought, before it got dark. So still intent on an outing. He'd dressed Wishbone in a pair of jeans, a black shirt, and a long black trench coat with a hood he had in the back of his closet. The whole getup hung loosely from Wishbones, well, bones, but it was the best he could do with the stuff he had in his apartment. He also had to tape some of his dads old work boots to the skeletons feet, so they wouldn't slip off the thin skinless foot bones. Finally, some cheap work gloves, and a dish rag he tied over the lower half of Wishbones face to obscure the fact he was a skeleton, and the disguise was ready.

Sure, Wishbone now looked more like an edgy mugger, but he really only wanted tonight to be a simple testing of the waters. Just trying out his first night as a hero, maybe scare some muggers away or something. Then, after wandering around the streets near his apartment for an hour or so, he saw this mysterious person snuffing out the lights. Elm was pretty sure he wasn't ready to fight any other gifted. He wasn't even really all that sure on fighting normal people yet. But this person was just too suspicious!

As Elm followed a good half a street behind the light snuffer, he started to imagine what would happen if he managed to foil a super villain plot on his first night! Wouldn't that be a great debut? He could probably apprentice under a famous hero if he did that!

A little giddy at the possibilities Elm decided to speed up his pace and get a little closer to the potential villain. Make it easier to hear any evil plots.

Elm slowly decreased the distance between himself and the suspected villain. He was only one house back when the figure turned left and approached one of the many identical houses on the street. Elm freaked out a little at the unexpected movement, and dived into the front garden of the neighboring house. Luckily the soft bed of soil muffled the sound of his impact, because when Elm peaked up above the tall flowers obscuring him he could see the figure entering the adjacent house seemingly unaware. Mentally breathing a sigh of relief, Eml stood up from the loosely packed soil, brushing off some of the damp dirt still clinging to his coat and pants. He was about to start moving toward the house the figure just entered. Then everything went bright. Elm glanced around. It seemed like all the lights that were previously turned off by the mysterious gifted, had just turned back on all at once. Including, it seemed, the motion activated light pointed at the garden Elm was currently in.

SCREEEEEEP SCREEEEEEP SCREEEEEEP SCREEEEEEP

Also an alarm

"WHO THE FUCK, IS FUCKING WITH MY DAISIES!"

Which had apparently woken up the occupant of the house.

Elm stood there in shock. He should probably have run, but his panic response was closer to a possum then a gazelle. He rationalized his lack of doing anything by thinking,' Well a hero would clear up the misunderstanding' Though that delusion was blown away when an oddly familiar looking fat man, came out of the house waving around a massive double barreled shotgun.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM? NO ONE FUCKS WITH MY GARDEN!"

Even if Elm was capable of speaking wile controlling his mute skeleton, his panicked mind probably wouldn't have been able to respond. He's barely ever seen a gun outside of movies or games, let alone had one pointed at him. Not knowing what else to do Elm simply shot both of his hands straight up in the air. A mistake it would seem.

BANG

...

Startled by the intruders sudden movement, Clark had reflexively pulled the trigger. The hip fired shot took the garden vandal full in the chest, knocking them clean off their feet, only crash to the ground right on top of Clarks prized African Lily's.

"OH SHIT!"

Clark had only intended to scare off whatever bastard had messed with his garden. Concern written on his face, he slowly edged forward toward the un-moving body with his gun held loosely in his left hand.

"Uhh, you still alive?"

He walked right up beside the body. No movement. He poked it with the barrel of his gun. No response.

"Shit, Teddys going to be pissed."

He really shouldn't have shot this guy. His nephew had pulled some strings to get him this gun, and it would likely take a lot of money to shove this whole incident under the rug. Well it's better he faced the music now, rather then later. Clark pulled out his phone, and called the 'friend' in the police that Teddy had told him to contact if anything like this happened.

As he was pacing around his ruined garden, yelling into his phone, describing the events that took place to his police contact. A gloved fist smashed into the back of Clarks head, knocking his bulging form to the ground. Shaking his head, he peered up with bleary eyes at the person he'd just shot standing over him. He could see a massive hole through the left half of the chest where light was bleeding through from the streetlight beyond. Above that the rag covering the lower part of the face had fallen off revealing a pure white skull of a face. Clark quickly brought the phone back up to his face, completely forgetting the fallen shotgun.

"Holy shit balls! The skull faced fucker just got back up an--THWACK

...

Wishbone punched the fallen aggressor.

-THWACK

Though the structural damage done was rather minor.

-THWACK

The amount of force involved was certainly enough to prove a threat to his masters control.

-THWACK

Wishbone decided that elimination was the best way to mitigate this threat.

-THWACK

-THWACK

-THWACK

-SPLACK

-SPLACK

-SPLACK

-SPLAT

-SPLAT

...

Elm lay on the ground recovering from the shock of being shot, mostly by crying and a having a small panic attack. The surprise more then anything, had been what made Elm disconnect from Wishbone. He slowly recovered, his back shuddering with his sobs, against the living room floor. He'd managed to flail off the couch when he'd first disconnected. Once he'd calmed down enough to reconnect to Wishbone, he returned to laying on the couch, closed his eyes. He need to see how much of the situation was salvageable. He pushed on the connection. His perspective was zoomed through his living room, though the unused TV and off into the night. When he opened his metaphorical eyes in Wishbones body, he found himself grabbing onto the shoulder of the man who shot him, looking directly into the mans mangled face.

Blood oozed out of the mans eyes, ears nose and mouth. He could see the right ear was hanging by a small thread and the left arm hung uselessly at the mans side. Likely broken trying to defend from the skeletons hammer like blows. Elm looked into the mans un-focused eyes, one was listlessly rolling around, while the other simply didn't move. Elm looked up at Wishbone's still raised fist, ready to enact more pain on this man. Elm fist. The cheap work glove was bloody and torn, through the rip's elm could see the tell tail white bone. Stained red. There was blood on his hands. Elm let the fat man drop and brought both of his hands up to look at. How did this happens?

The blood was very red.

"ᵂᵉʳᵉ ˢᵉⁿᵈᶦⁿᵍ ᵘⁿᶦᵗˢ ᵗᵒ ʸᵒᵘʳ ˡᵒᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ˢᵗᵃʸ ᵒⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᶦⁿᵉ"

Elm glanced down at the phone sitting in the grass. The threat of arrest seemed to finally snap Elm out of his confusion. He quickly stood up. He'd need to hide. But he couldn't risk leading the police to his house, so he'd have to find another place to hide the bloody cloths and Wishbone for the day.

And so Elm ran.

...

The captain of the integrated hero policing team looked over the report on his podium, before looking down at his gathered subordinates. Four heroes, generally not strong enough to go solo, and one ex vigilante on probation, not trustworthy enough to go it alone. A sorry lot.

"Listen up! Earlier this morning an APB was put out on a possible new villain in town. Power unknown, but they at least seem able to take a 12 gauge point-blank and still kick the crap out of the mayor's uncle. They are described as having a skull for a face, but we don't know if that's just a mask, or related to their power. Unfortunately our only witness is currently getting their face put back together, and the security cameras at his house seemed to have been tampered with as they cut off recording 10 minutes before the attack was suspected of happening. I'll be sending you all out in your usual squads, Except for Ms probation, your going with Dan and lynda. I'll be adding however, that you are not to engage directly unless you get your other squad as back up. There will also be teams of the boys in blue helping with the search, so stay glued to those radios. Alright that should be it, questions?"

"Are we going safety's off?" A serious looking fellow near the front wearing an upgraded swat uniform spoke

"Negative, perp is likely a new gifted! And so, were using kid gloves, so hopefully we can avoid making anymore villains or vigilantes if we can. However prioritize protecting yourself or civvies if the perp seems unstable."

"Are there any bonuses related to this case?" Asked a very mercenary looking woman in the back

"Not yet, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it, seems most likely it's just a bruiser, and not a particularly strong one. No ones gonna put a bounty on a probable trash power like that."

"..."

"Alright questions done, your search routs have already sent to your communicators. So shove off and find me that runner!"