One Moonless Night
It was darkness the boy found himself in. He did not expect anything else. In fact he had grown to prefer it. They had hurt him for weeks, and he did not want to see what he had become.
The pain.......the pain was there again....they had been beating him for god knows how long...but there was a greater pain.....one even they could not inflict on him again..........
His father........
His mother.........
His dear sisters.........
A tear slid down the face of the boy. He had been unable to help them.........if only he had been stronger......bigger.......and now because of his failure.......they were.........
A light flooded the room. His captors had returned.
He fought them. But he was too small, too weak. One of them drove a kick into his stomach. His will to fight went out of him with his wind.
They dragged him to the place where for days on end they had spilled his blood, and laughed at his tears. They dumped him in front of her.
The boy didn't know her name. All he knew was that she was in charge of his pain.....his agony. She smiled at him, but there was nothing good in her smile.
"I grow tired of him. Hurt him badly."
The captors replied. Once again they began beating him. Once again he tried to fight. And once again he failed. With clubs and whips they beat him to the ground. They laughed while doing it.
One of them grabbed his right arm and twisted it around his weapon as hard as he could. The boy screamed as his arm broke. The man took the scream and laughed, and proceeded to twist the arm around and over the weapon again and again, breaking the bone into knives of marrow and ripping up the boy's arm into a bloody ruin. The screams grew louder. The woman drank in all in, enjoying it in a way that was terrifying to watch.
Another one of them took a barbed blade, and drove it into the boy's left calf. The boy's lungs ached like fire, but he screamed even louder as the man wrenched the blade back and forth, destroying the calf muscle. Tears began running down the boys cheeks. For the millionth time, he wished he was dead.
"That's enough."
The men withdrew, as the boy crumpled, in a world of agony. The woman stood. A smile on her face, she walked to the small form huddled in front of her. The smile turned into a snarl as she lashed out with a vicious kick which snapped the boy's head up.
"You like the pain, boy? Did you like it when we slit your sister's throat? Huh? Huh?"
The woman delieverd another savage kick to the boy's face. The boy felt a crack as his nose broke.
"You have no idea what pain is, boy. But I'll show you."
The biy was seeing in blurs now. But he saw one of the men hand the woman something. And he heard the whistling at the woman swung something.
The left side of his face exploded in new pain as the woman slammed the object into his head. Thrown backwards from the impact, he tried to scramble away from this woman, only to find he had nowhere to go but off a cliff face that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He realized he was on some sort of balcony.
The woman swung the weapon again. This time, the boy felt the greatest pain of all as his left face seemed to crumble inward. His left eye puctured and collasped. The boy barely felt it. He was beyond pain now.
The woman laughed, the most icey sound the boy had ever heard. As he lay there, he suddenly felt an anger rising.
"I....i...lll......."
The woman looked amazed at this boy, who by every right should have been dead, as he spoke.
"I'lll.....kill...you...............a...a....all........"
The woman's face twisted in fury, and she swung back the weapon and delivered her final blow to the boy's chest. The boy felt his ribs break as he fell off the balcony. He screamed one last time, a living feeling of pain, as he........

....opened his eyes to regard the building he had found. The memories, subdued, were shoved back down into the cavern of his mind Erik kept them in. One day.......I'll find a way to lock them in there forever......
Erik Ravensky shuddered as the pain of the memories coursed through him again. This time he didn't fight them. He let them come.
Slowly, he raised the piece of metal and cybernetics incased in an artificial gel that he used to make his arm look normal by covering the metal with what looked like normal skin in front of his face. This was now what stood for his right arm. His left eye, a clear shade of blue, twisted as he examined it for about the millionth time. A slight mental command, and the gel he used as artificial skin began sliding away from the left side of his face. The metal underneath gleamed dully as the white iris twisted back and became the grey of metal. The new pupil was red, the red of rage.
The red of vengeance.
Erik Ravensky regarded the lethal weapon that was now his right arm. And the memories came back to haunt him again.
I should have helped them....If only I had been stronger........stronger.......
But from this voice of self-damnation rose another, a voice of a friend.
You were five years old Erik.......there was nothing you could have done......you were but a child........
Erik shoved the voice away as the rage, the mad fury, rose into his being. It was the one driving force of his life, the one that would lead him to whatever fate it chose.
The past was inescapable, but he would never let it happen again. Never! He was no longer a weak pathetic child! He was a living weapon, a weapon of divine justice!
His family had called him Erik. His few friends did also. But for the evil that had poisoned the world, that had made a once great world sick and diseased, he had adopted a new name. For tonight, Erik Damien Ravensky was dead.
He was Vengeance.
And it was time to spill the blood of the wicked.
"Computer, scan the building, lockdown all targets and find out their alignments."
"Scanning.....7 targets, 6 Corrupt, I Pure."
"One Pure? Advance scanning on the Pure target." How could one of those bastards be Pure? They slaughtered an entire building of people. Unless......oh crap............
"Scan completed. Target is female, and appears to be of another species of humanoid."
"Shit, they have a hostage. This changes everything........." Vengeance muttered to himself. Female........that is bad. Very, very bad...........humanoid? Eh, I'll figure that out later.
"Computer, scan the Pure target's physical being and emotional wavelengths...see if she's been.........violated in any way........" And if she has, there will be hell to pay.
"Scanning completed. Subject has not been touched. Emotional signs show fear and distress, but no trauma."
"I still have time then. It's time for justice."
As Erik spoke, the artificial gel slid away from his right arm. There was a slight whirring and a grappling hook slid out of his metal forearm. Noiselessly, he shot the grappling hook at the building. There was a slight clink as the hook embedded itself into a stone part of the roof.
"Computer, give me the locations of all the Corrupt targets!"
"Acknowledged."
A second later, a 3D image appeared in front of him in the image of the building. There was a blur of computer calculations, and suddenly there were 6 flashing dots in various locations of the image. Erik looked it over for a second, then dispelled it.
His arm whirred as Vengeance reached for it, and a second later he pulled a small ball shaped object from his arm as it expanded to full size. Micro-minaturation technology can be SO useful.
"Computer, blow out the lights!" he yelled, and hurled the ball at the nearest window. The sudden confusion of no light would last for about 7-8 seconds. In that time he could take down two of the bandits, maybe three.
The ball crashed through the window as Erik ran backwards to get a better angle on his swing. In the building all the torches suddenly blew out in a sudden windstorm as Erik leapt off the roof he was on and started his controlled fall. He swung around the building and............

.......walked into the chaos of the town with a knowing look on his face. He grabbed the nearest passer-by and yanked him into a face to face view.
"What's going on!?!?!" he yelled into the man's face.
"It's bandits! They assaulted our Mayor's house! We need to......" the man stammered to this dark figure who, to him, looked worse than any bandit. He never got to finish his sentence as the figure dropped him and disappeared into the darkness of a nearby alley. Feeling relieved, he continued to run to where he understood the incident was happening.
Erik didn't need a guide. He saw the smoke. He traversed the rooftops as rapidly as he could, as fear and worry began to knaw in his being. Finally he came onto the scene. His heart sank.
The building was in ruins, and he could see bodies scattered around it. A low moan escaped him. He was too late.......
Erik's eye suddenly caught the sight of a man leaning over a woman. However, from the angle and distance he couldn't tell if the man was hurting her or trying to help her. Only one way to find out. He thought, as he leapt off the roof towards the man and woman.
The man didn't even notice the fact that someone had just landed next to him. Erik could see why at a glance.
The woman was very badly hurt and unmoving. The man, apparently in his late 30's, had apparently mistaken her for dead. The fact that he was crying was enough for Erik to figure out that this woman meant something to him.
"What happened?" he said, almost demanded, as he kneeled next to the man and woman.
"My wife...bandits...." the man managed to stammer out. That was all Erik needed to hear. Shoving the man aside, he examined the woman. She had apparently been stabbed in the stomach with some sort of blade. And she wasn't breathing. Erik checked for a pulse, Nothing. Shit.........
Erik began to perform CPR, as best as he could remember how it was done. The man protested a bit, then realized in some way he was trying to help her. Erik proceeded to the breath of life, and then went back to the chest compressions.
"Shit, this isn't working..........." Erik muttered. The man looked at him with pleading eyes. In a frantic yet calculated way, Erik pressed a few buttons on his arm and a tazer extracted from his forearm. The man looked at some alarm at this recent development. Erik pressed a few more buttons decreasing the dosage of electricity so it wouldn't be lethal.
"Clear!" he yelled, and zapped the woman on the chest with his makeshift paddle. The woman's body jumped, but there was no change in her condition. Erik increased the voltage.
"Clear!"
ZAP!
Nothing. Erik increased the voltage and tried once again.
"CLEAR!"
ZAP!
Nothing still. In anger and panic, Erik thumped his left fist as hard as he could on the woman's chest, as if he hoped to somehow jumpstart her heart.
"COME ON, DAMN YOU! YOU'RE NOT DYING TODAY!" he yelled, as he watched the woman's chances decrease more and more. No.................
"Angel's Laughter."
The voice startled Erik out his state, as a white glow began to effuse the woman. As Erik watched, the wound in her stomach closed up, and to his extreme relief, her chest began to move up and down again. She was alive.
As the man began to weep with joy over his recently saved wife, Erik rose and turned to the figure who had spoken.
"Thanks Christine."
Purity nodded her head and went to see if there were any complications with the woman. The man was deliriously thanking her as Erik watched as more members of Legacy arrived.
"It took you long enough." Erik muttered to Ash.
"Well Erik, not all of us can take to the rooftops in the blink of an eye. We had to fight our way through a crowd." Ash replied. Erik didn't bother replying. Compatriotess was looking at the burning house with worry. She raised her staff and muttered some incantations while making some staff motions. Rain suddenly began to pour in a torrent, and in seconds, the house was extinguished. Compatriotess made a few hand motions, and the rain dissipated.
"Sir, sir...." a voice came. It took a second for Erik to recognize he was the one being spoken to. It was the man whose wife he had tried to save.
"Yes?"
"As the mayor, I just wanted to thank you for trying to save my wife." the now revealed mayor told Erik.
"You're welcome. Who did this?" he asked.
"Bandits. They broke into the house.....oh god, it was horrible. They killed everyone......the guards..the servants...everyone....thank god my children weren't here........"
Erik had stopped paying attention. The villages were beginning to extract bodies from the ruined house. Erik's eyes had been drawn to one. He left the mayor and walked over to the men removing it. With a motion of his hand he waved them away. He knelt to examine the body.
It was the body of a young woman. She couldn't have been any more than 19. Her throat had been cut, along with most of her outfit. Her eyes stared off into thin air, glazed with death. Erik could tell from her body's condition she had been raped before her throat was cut.
Erik sadly closed her eyes. This woman had been filled with youth and life.....she had laughed, cried, loved hated......she had had a universe of possibilities open for her life.......and it had all been snuffed out...it had all be taken from her...........by someone else who had thought they had the right to play God.........
Erik suddenly felt the rage rise up. The doers of this would die screaming.
He stood as surveyed the ground. It only took him a second to locate horse tracks leading off into the woods. He started after them, tracking his prey like a wolf.
"Erik, what are you doing?" Christine called to him.
"Taking care of business!" Erik yelled over his shoulder as he.......

........smashed through the window like a kamikaze pilot, sending glass spraying all over the floor. He hit the ground rolling and flipped up to his feet. His eye switched to night-vision and locked onto the nearest bandit. He snapped his fingers out and 6-inch blades slashed out from his metallic fingertips. With a snarl he lunged at the bandit like a rabid animal.
The bandit never knew what hit him, as Vengeance slashed his hand through the air and tore the man's entire throat out with one ripping slice. As the caratoid arteries began to spray blood at high pressure, Vengeance brought his hand back in a scything backhand blow, severing the man's spinal cord. The bandit's head toppled off to the side hung by shards of his flesh as his body crashed to the ground.
Venegance was already turning to his next target as he blundered in the general direction of the noise swinging his weapon. Erik retracted his finger blades as he ducked under the bandit's wild swing. His hand contracted into a fist as twin razor-sharp drills extracted from the back of his hand, and he swung, driving his fist straight into and through the bandit's lower torso. The drills turned on and proceeded to tear through the man's stomach wall and through his intestines as the man screamed in horrible pain. Vengeance yanked his hand backwards pulling out most of the man's organ's with it. As the man fell to his knees still screaming, Vengeance cocked his hand back and drove the drills straight through the man's eyes and into his brain. With a whirr the drills turned on, pulverizing the man's face into a red blood spraying mess. Erik snapped the drills off and whacked the body aside.
The third bandit was still in the midst of standing trying to figure out what was going on as Vengeance aimed his arm at him. There was a snap and four razor sharp hooks attached to thin metal cords lanced out of his fingertips. The man suddenly screamed as they embedded themselves in four corners of his face. Vengeance twisted his hand and grabbed the cords and yanked as hard as he could. The man screamed as the hooks procceded to tear away his entire face like a bloody mask. The man fell deadly silent as his tongue was tore away with his face. With his face seemingly turned into a bloody skull face, Vengeance stomped hsi feet in a quick one-two succession. Blades concealed in his snapped out from the toe of them. Vengeance did a flip and lanced one of the blades upwards in an axe kick, slicing the man open from groin to sternum. He then brought his other leg across in a snapping mid air split, decapitating the bandit. The bandit fell, finally mercifully dead.
The fourth bandit had figured out what was going by then and had managed to light a torch, which he swung at Vengeance as a weapon. Erik ducked, spun, and sliced his leg up in a flipping backwards kick, cutting off the man's hand. The torch flew through the air. In a blur of movement, Erik snatched the torch out of the air with one hand and grabbed the bandit's hair with the other. With a snarl, Erik shoved the man's face directly into the torch's flame. With a scream, the man's face caught fire. With the almost sweet smell of cooking flesh in the air, Erik flipped the torch around and drove the pointed end of the torch through the man's rib cage and heart. Almost as an afterthought, he tossed the burning but still alive bandit aside. The screams were music to his ears.
The fifth bandit went for him. He was huge, nearly seven feet tall and well over 300 pounds. With a roar, he swung a huge club at Vengeance. Vengeance weaved past the club. The huge bandit tried to backhand him, but his slow clumsy blow missed by a wide margin. Vengeance swung his hand back and pistoned his hand straight through the bandit's chest and rib cage. Finding the heart, Erik wrapped his hand around it and tore it right out of the man's chest. The bandit made a small gurgling noise and stared dumbly at Vengeance.
"Have a heart." Vengeance snarled, and drove his metallic fist with the heart straight into the bandit's face. The bandit's skull caved in and exploded out the back of his head along with his brain as Vengeance drove his hand straight through the man's skull. He yanked upwards and pulled his hand from the ruin of the bandit's head, the heart still in his hand. He crushed it and tossed it aside, then almost casually licked the blood away from one finger.
"Sweet." He said, and turned to deal with the sixth bandit.
Only the sixth bandit wasn't there. Covered in blood and streaked with gore, Erik stared dumbly for a second.
And then he heard a shriek coming from the following room.
"Shit!" Erik swore. He had gotten so caught up in killing the other bandits he hadn't noticed oen of them had left the room. He lunged for the door, hoping to God he wasn't too late. He'd never forgive himself if he was.
The door was barred. Erik gave a quick mental command and a section of his left leg snapped out. Erik yanked what looked like a metal tube out of it as the section snapped shut. He pressed a button the tube.
The tube expanded in his hand and the top part split into a 180 angle. As some mesh emerged near the bottom and styled itself into some random patterns, there was a hiss and a 5-foot blade compused entirely of blue humming energy almost flowed out of the top end of the tube. The blade flattened out and solidified, and Erik suddenly had his PainoftheCorrupt sword. One swing and the door was reduced to flaming cinders.
Erik smashed the remains aside and walked into the room.
"That's far enough." a voice told him. Erik turned in the direction of the voice.
The final bandit was standing at the far edge of the room. He had a knife to the throat of the female hostage. In the back of his mind, Erik finally understood what the computer had meant by "humanoid."
She's an............ELF. A goddamn elf. I don't believe it. I thought Xaxargas destroyed all the elves.............
But there was no mistaking it. It was an elf. Her long slanted ears and silver eyes said that enough. This particular elf was dressed rather strange, at least to Erik's point of view. Instead of a dress or a robe, she was wearing a black trench coat. Hmmmmm, maybe they modernized....... A fan of hair was about her head, but Erik couldn't tell the colour. And in the end it didn't matter.
The elf was looking back and forth from her captor and Erik, as if trying to decide was less threatening, the guy who had a knife to her throat, or this blood-splattered figure who had just smashed through the door. Erik didn't blame her. Dammit...he's too far away for me to jump.......I'll have to rely on intimidation and psycology....hope there's an opening.
"Go ahead, kill her." Erik declared. "She means nothing to me."
The bandit had not expected to hear that.
"What do you mean?" he said. "I'll cut her throat! I swear!"
"What does it matter to me? I came her to kill you and your.....recently departed friends. What does it matter if some innocent girl dies? Remember that next time you pick a human shield."
"I'm an elf." the elf girl declared.
"Shut up....." the bandit snapped.
And then it all went crazy.
The elf girl pointed at the bandit, and suddenly a jet of water sprayed in the bandit's face. He seemed even more surprised then Erik. For a second, he dropped his guard.
And that was all Erik needed.
In one quick motion he brought his arm up. A weapon extracted from it and armed.
Twip!
A dart shot from Erik's arm and buried itself in the bandit's neck. He yelled. The elf took the advantage and elbowed him in the gut. He groaned and let her go. As she ran, he snarled and cocked back his hand to throw the knife at her.
But suddenly he stopped........
And then he began to scream..which quickly tapered off into a low moaning as his skin suddenly started to melt. He sank to the ground, clearly in agony, but unable to make the noises to indicate it.
Erik made a small noise of saitisfaction.
"Are you all right?" he asked the elf girl.
"Yes....but by Poseiden, what is that stuff you used on him?" the elf girl said, looking horrified. Gagging slightly, she turned away from the thrashing body.
"X5879ZY Nerve Toxin." Erik said. "One of the deadliest substances know to man."
"Why did you do that...."the elf girl said, looking away from him.
"Because it needed to be done. What's your name child?" Erik asked.
"Sage, and don't call me child, I'm 76 years old." Sage replied.
Erik blinked.
"76 years old........you've certainly aged well, young lady......" Erik stammered.
"Elves age different from humans.......is he done dying?" Sage tossed over her shoulder.
Erik regarded the body.
"Just about." he muttered.
"Good. I'm leaving. Thanks for saving me." Sage said, heading for the door.. It sounded rather phony to Erik, but he wasn't the best judge of voice usage and even if it was, Erik shrugged it off. Mine is a thankless job........
And suddenly flames shot from the entrance way Erik had come in through not five minutes before. Sage shrieked and tried to run backwards, which resulted in her falling on her rear. She scrabbled backwards as the flames began to consume the doorway.
"Fire......."she said, her eyes alight with fear.
"Shit." Erik cursed. He should have noticed the building was composed mostly of dry wood. But he hadn't, and the guy he had set on fire had set the building ablaze.
"Put it out!" Sage yelled. Erik regarded her. She doesn't like fire.
"How?!?" Erik yelled back.
"Then get me out of here!" Sage yelled.
Erik assessed the situation.
Hmmmmmm....only way out flaming out of control...and a elf girl who is terrified of fire. Well, you know what they say: If there aren't any doors, make your own.
"Computer!" Erik yelled over the crackling din of the fire as he turned to face the opposite wall.
"Yes?"
"Missile launcher!"
"Acknowledged."
His arm whirred as the missile was extracted and set into place. Sage scramble out of the line of fire.
Erik launched the missile at the wall, which blew apart in a spray of wood shrapnal. Before Erik could do anything, Sage proceeded to leap out the hole. Erik watched in some amazement. She really is afraid of fire.......I hope that wasn't a long drop.
Erik glanced behind him at the room going up in flames, then followed Sage out through the hole.
The drop was rather short.

"So you're sure you don't need any more help?" Erik asked the elf girl called Sage, as they watched the building collaspe and burn.
"I'm fine. Those bandits took me by surprise, but I'm fine. I can go on my own now." said Sage.
"Are you sure? You don't want me to escort you home?" offered Erik.
"I have no home, and I don't need a bodyguard....." Sage muttered. She turned to leave.
"One thing Miss Sage." Erik asked.
"What?"
"Just where did the water jet come from?"
"Me. I'm a master of water magic." Sage replied.
And with that, she disappeared into the forest. Erik watched her go.
Then that begs the question..........why didn't she PUT out the fire?
Erik shook his head and started down a nearby path. Some things were better left unanswered.

Some time later, Erik came to the campfire where Legacy had set up for the night. As he emerged in the clearing where the fire burned, Christine reached for her weapon, then recognized him.
"Erik!" she exclaimed, looking at his blood splashed clothing. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine Chris. Where are the others?"
"They're off gathering more firewood. Where did all that blood come from?"
"Don't worry, it isn't mine."
As Erik sat down near Christine, she looked him over and sighed.
"You disappear and then reappear covered in blood hours later........what have you been up to tonight, Erik?" Christine asked.
Erik regarded Christine as he reflected on the night. All in all, I'd say justice was served tonight. Yes, it was was. All in all, a good night. A good hunt.
As Christine looked at him, he gave her the only answer he could.
"Just doing my job Christine...........just doing my job."


The End