#Not counting the years she spent working at a brothel in Chicago

[ohgoddard]

Fist of Fire: Omega.1.4.

Heroes dying is nothing big, unless they were big of course. They die all the time, the villain arms race pulling ahead for but a few minutes. However, its never for long. A villain can never stay in power for long. Unless they’re in congress. I did my fair share of damage to those guys too, believe me. I hated those bastards. In my quest to achieve a quiet head, I had to pop a few. Some were heroes. At least they called themselves that.

Making the honor “hero” a job is up there in the stupidest things humanity has done. No one signs up to be a hero, they are intrinsically one. This is where you get people like the Ultra-Knight, and the race riots of Carson City after his ‘crusade against crime’ ended three dozen lives. Three dozen black lives. The agency covered for him, laying a marvelous case out that pointed to some law infraction in each of the persons lives, calling it all probable cause. Even the fourteen year old who happened to be carrying eyeliner she accidentally didn’t pay for. You can imagine how the case was received.

I was fed up with it. Not with the case specifically, however I was in those crowds in Chicago, but with Heros in title only. People who saw life saving as a paycheck and not the obligation that comes with their job or circumstance. I detest hero academies, hero schools, the whole agency. They may call me an abomination of the costume, a terrorist, but I am more of a hero than they ever were or will be. Because I knew when the “hero” wasn't a hero at all. I’ve been pulling on your chain recently doc, so i’ll give in just this once. Then it's back to the usual lunacy. Celerity of mind only comes once in a while, I hope you understand.

Fantasma was my first. Not my first killing, that was done a few months before hand. Some pimp in a brothel with kids. No, Fantasma was my first hero killing. This might surprise you, because the official cause of death was ‘blunt force trauma by result of duty’. I was that trauma. Fantasma was a sick man. He used his powers of invisibility to get blackmail and perv on the people. He used his office as a way to escape consequence. No one is going to believe you, that a hero would blackmail you? Watch you while you sleep and shower? Record you in your intimate moments? Preposterous it would seem.

No one had proof. How can you, when the very man you claim to be stalked by cannot be found. The police most likely knew, but did not do anything. They used him to go beyond the 4th amendment, search a perps home without them knowing. Had I known what he was doing sooner, no doubt would I have done the same. It would have saved lives. I know all too well of the suicides he has caused. Some of them were at his insistence for some sick game. I found all of this in his files he kept on every single person he blackmailed. For someone so great ta breaking in, he kept a surprisingly lax protection for himself. But I am getting ahead of myself. I do that sometimes.

Did you know Fantasma watched you too, doctor? I am surprised as you are. I thought I remembered your name when I heard it. I read it in those files of his some time ago. You must have been traveling in the city at the time. He hadn’t the time to confront you I suppose. Not like he had anything worth knowing on your file. You were gone too quick. Count yourself lucky, doctor. He did awful things to the women he liked. Anyways where was I? Yes, right.

The voices told me about Fantasma. I heard his name countless times but ignored it, much like every other hero name I heard that wasn't my own. However this one managed to get past me, I could not tell you why. Perhaps it was because it was a cry for help. A cry for help from someone to stop Fantasma. In my usual speed, and backed by an increasingly rare curiosity into the problems of the public, I went over. Stopped a car wreck, a mugging, bank robbery on my way there. No one ever talks about those. Always the bad, never the good. I made my way to the cry, but I could not find it. It had stopped. 

My search revealed the body of a young man, no older than 22. Three gunshots in his chest. A Polaroid resting on his wounds, covered in his blood. It was a clear shot of him and another man, being very… close with another. I found his body in an alley, in between two tall brick buildings. Dozens of people walked by, yet few could tell me if there was even an alley there, let alone if they heard a gunshot. This boy called out Fantasma’s name before he passed, before someone shot him. Now I am the last person to tout my investigative skills, but even the most fly-brained of private eyes could figure out where to go from here. But I needed proof. Not because I was going to go about this in a legal way, mind you. No, I needed to know for myself. I didn’t care then for the politics between the agency and the public, I still do not. However, there are plenty of people that steal the identities of heroes. I do not want to execute an innocent.

I still haven't, by the way. I only take care of the crooks.

Around this time people still thought I was the real Omegaman. I still by birthright, technically. You get what I mean. So strolling into the Chicago branch of the hero agency was a piece of cake. Now you may have a hard time imagining this building because its been destroyed a few times in its lifetime, so let me paint you a picture. Think of the most beige and sad administration office ever. Lifeless grey cubicles lay beyond the pretty receptionist in the lobby. Filled with a few dozen hard-working pencil pushers who kept up with hero jobs, categorizing them, and other boring maintenance tasks. A farm of human life and effort. Truly, the realest evil is the ones we cannot punch away.

Anyways I walked in, costume in full, and just walked into the records room. Omegaman was not to be questioned. His duties were beyond that of Ted Bizby, hero accountant. The records rooms were old school. This branch had not caught up to the modern day, and it made things a variety of easy and difficult. Easy in the sense that everything I needed was kept in one succinct file, easy to read and handle. Downside, the sorting system of the past century seemed to have also evaded the Chicago branch of the agency. With my super-speed and with great effort given to cover my tracks, it took me seven hours. Over nine-hundred heroes in the city, I know in my broken mind the identities and weaknesses as documented by the agency by heart. I also found Fantasma. Frances Garcia-Hernandez. Aged 39, lived in a four room home on the outskirts of the city. No wife and children. God has little miracles for us all. Attached in the file was a picture of him, visible. A thin goatee went around his flabby face. His body was not made for fighting. It would make things easy for me.

What made it even easier was the forty five page complaints against this hero. Every single one followed the same story. Blackmail. Each complaint was flared on the paper, “investigated; dismissed”. I took his file and left the agency. While flying back to my home at the time, a woman’s homeless shelter, I pulled up my phone to check the police database.

Every person who complained on that list is dead. Natural causes. Varying from falling A/C units, debris from nearby hero fights, stray gunshots from gang fights, you name it. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to know this is bullshit. It seems impossible, of course, that any one person can do all this. But not any person is invisible.

It was three days after I made my discoveries that I flew to his home. Crime never sleeps, but I need to. He lived in a very small gated community beyond the city boundaries. Fantasma seemed to live in irony, being someone who breached others security, kept lax home security, but at the same time wanted the very best money could buy. A man of very puzzling interests. Shame that many of them were illegal. His home was a modest one, two rooms per each of its two floors. I came as Kiara that day. It was very easy to get into the gated community, apparently Mr. Garcia-Hernandez had many young women callers. You can imagine why.

Can you see why not all  my murders were bad? I even hesitate to call them murders. More like the removal of cancerous tumors. Or de-leeching.

It was early evening when I knocked on his door. I had dressed in a hoodie and jeans to look as normal as possible. It made it all the more sickening when he opened his door and smiled at me. He stood about my height, but luckily packed exactly as much danger as I expected. He was dressed ina  wife-beater and boxers. His teeth were a disgusting yellow, and his balding head managed to actually cap it off with peak creep. He said to me, “Why, I don’t remember having an appointment today. But my memory is spotty and I could always use the company.” His breath reeked of alcohol. The hero of the people indeed. He put his long and controlling arm around me and beckon me into his home, and I took note of the speed he locked the door behind me. The first time he has done that.

This was not the first time I had been in his home obviously. I had been here before, in the room upstairs filled with industrial servers where he kept gigs of blackmail. But he didn’t know that. And now I had him trapped. This is where the agency’s official deah report differs. It reads that a villain had found his identity and infiltrated his room and killed him in his sleep. What happened was I beat him with a chair leg. Brutally. He had no chance. I rendered him the first stage of human evolution, the sludge he truly was at his core. I spent hours beating him. I tore him apart with my hands after the chair leg broke. He was long dead before hand but I didn’t care.

He would feel all the pain he caused.

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“That will be all for today, thank you.”

She sounded much more strained today. I turned my head to look at the doctor, doing my best not to intimidate. I asked her with genuine sincerity ,”Doctor was I too descriptive today?”

“No,” she replied. “No, you were good today. I think we are making progress. By.. by getting you to open up about your problems we are closer to fixing what is wrong with you.”

She was lying. She is not ok. Something about her heartbeat. Her sweat. She is scared. But this isn't the fear of me, no I know what that feels like. It's the fear of.. Oh i'm an idiot.

“Doctor, don’t worry about your information getting into the wrong hands. I used his servers to smash him into pieces. He had no back ups. You and many others are safe from copycats.”

A slowing of the heart, a strained smile. “Thank you for your reassurances, Kiara-”

“Omegaman.”

“Omegaman. But I am ok, really. These sessions are about you.”

I flash her my gayest smile. “If you still feel scared, I can escort you to safety.”

It had the intended effect, the heightened heart rate and the blood rush to the cheeks. Her usual professionalism took over, sadly.

“Miss Ki- Omegaman. This is a professional environment. That is all for today.”

I laughed as they carted me back to my room. I still need to sell the crazy look.

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