Urban Legends 0.00

This is a prologue, and is entirely setting the table for future continuation. This is only a look, but don't touch chapter. You have been warned.

There are dive bars, and there are dive bars. The ones on the main drag - those were for the constant stream of tourists and other visitors. This wasn't one of those.

Cheap fluorescent tubes cast an antiseptic glare over the aged slab of wood near the entrance that was the proverbial "bar", their light offering an at best wan glow to the beaten tables and chairs near the front and not even that to the booths against the far wall. There, only the occasional ember glow of a cigarette marked activity in the dark - and lay a shroud of privacy over those least interested in scrutiny.

Nursing a large, cold mug of cheap beer - a tall woman let her eyes gaze into the liquid without seeing it, irises unfocused, mind adrift. Even in the dark of the booth she occupied - her eyes seemed to reflect a light not found in that dank shit hole of a bar, and even her sleek silhouette seemed out of place in such a trash heap.

"Calling all units. 211 at 315 North Green. Backup requested. Possible meta activity." A police scanner crackled through a scratchy old speaker in the corner, followed by a burble of voices from officers responding to the dispatcher. This seemed like a cue - and where the tall woman had been, only a half full beer mug remained, frothy contents still settling.

***

Quiet sobbing interrupted by the rumble of angry men shouting played as the soundtrack of the well lit corner bank branch - it's glowing green signage so bright as to lend a slightly sickly glow to the spray of shattered glass on the floors within and the sidewalks out front. A gang in dark wool balaclava masks and practical black coveralls worked methodically but hurriedly to load sacks of cash into a waiting van - while a few others held long rifles at the ready, with heavy, curved magazines clipped to their belts. All were armed though, pistols in hand or at the hip, and tension evident in every action and step.

There were men and women kneeling on the floor here and there inside, wrists and mouths held tight by crudely applied duct tape - some with eyes shut against the terror, others with eyes open in abject fear or apathy. A few forms lay prone, crimson pools forming slowly around them - with empty gazes staring at nothing forevermore.

As the figures in black hurried, the sounds changed - interrupted by the approaching wail of sirens.

"Cops! Come on! We've almost got it all. Where's Bill?" One voice - a gruff man - snarled.

"Codenames asshole! Brick's coming. Cracking the vault wasn't easy y'know!" Another man, his voice a hoarse rattle.

Before more could be said, a new figure emerged from the back of the bank with a puff of dust gathering about him as bits of debris fell from his broad shoulders. A vast tank of a man, his balaclava ill-fit around his meaty mound of a head and his coveralls torn as he stumbled into the bright bank lobby a few steps behind those last few carrying bags of cash.

"There he is. Bil...Brick! Get over here. Time ta' go!" The gruff man again, shouting now over the rising sirens.

Brick never got a chance to respond - as a moment later, one of the walls of the bank behind him exploded in a shower of dust and concrete fragments, a fist erupting through the mass to strike the monumentally large man directly in the back of his head. The force of the impact knocked him forward into a self service bank terminal - shattering the machine and spilling its load of paper bills and coins into the air and onto the ground in a spray of metal and plastic.

"Oooof! Bill hurt! Who hit Bill?!" The big man called out in confused alarm, his words slurred and speech slow. His own shout accompanied by the alarmed calls of his peers, as rifles swiveled towards the settling debris cloud behind him and the figure emerging from it.

She was a tall woman, with broad shoulders and wide hips - her features sharp and handsome. The lobby lighting made her hair look a slick oily black as it sat up in a high, long tail tied off by a simple black band at the back of her head, and her pale gaze seemed alight with a glow all its own. Gray dust and flecks of taupe painted wall fell loose from the knuckles of her black fingerless gloves as she curled and uncurled her hands into fists and her breasts pressed against the straining grip of the black vinyl cups of her bare-shouldered leotard with every heavy breath she took.

"FUCK! IT'S HER! BRICK GET OUTTA THE WAY!" A voice called out from the gang near the van alongside the metallic sound of rifles being brought to bear, followed by overlapping staccato bursts as rifle after rifle discharged multiple rapid fire rounds towards the dark-haired woman.

But with sprays of more dust - bullets tore holes into walls, but never flesh, and moving as fast as an olympic sprinter the woman in the black leotard appeared behind a man standing by the open driver's side door of the van, and with a firm grip and a twist, seized his head and turned it just so. The sickening sound of his neck snapping was followed by the potato sack noise of his body slumping to the road limply.

More shouts followed, more frantic now - accompanying ever more gunfire and ever closer sirens. Until there was no more gunfire, and no more shouts, just bodies in black on the road and floor - some groaning and cradling shattered arms, others forever silenced. Only the giant and the tall woman remained - he now standing amid the ruined lobby of the bank, clad in dust and debris; she on the street outside, looking inwards.

Then, as police cruisers begin to arrive to the screech of tires and brakes - the two figures raced to meet, fists raised high, and with a roar and the chimes of glass shards bouncing, fell backwards away from each other from the force of their mutual strikes.

The woman would rise, the giant man would not - though his chest still heaved with labored breath even as blood darkened his now askew mask, and a bruise began to purple her cheek and blood trickled from her lip.

"The Goddess! Shit, how many of them you think are dead?" New voices, a woman officer calling out as she emerged from her cruiser, service revolver drawn.

"Who cares? You think they cared if they left a few of the tellers and guards dead?" Another officer - a man pulling on a bulletproof vest as he crouched behind his open car door.

Even as they spoke, spilling from their vehicles, the tall woman in her shiny black vinyl leotard - marking her apart from the functional wear of the criminals and law officers - turned and fled into the night, making a single powerful leap to an alley fire escape that clattered loudly as her hands found purchase upon it. But then only the sounds of the city as she slipped into the unlit gap between office buildings, lost to eye and ear.

***

They called her "Goddess". Some said it with awe, others with spite or envy. It was both a slur and a kind of salute - she had saved so many, but hurt as many more - and taken the law violently into her own hands too often for any law-abiding citizen to feel entirely comfortable with her presence. And she had taken lives. Lives that many would whisper deserved to be taken - ugly men, and even women who had hurt and killed others and would surely do so again. But having your head crushed against a wall or your neck snapped without pity was no justice, and so she remained a creature of shadows.

Leaping a rusty chain-link fence with a single running jump, she landed atop a dumpster several alleys away from the ruined bank branch. Only a stray cat's meow answered the muffled metallic clank of her landing, the windows of the poor tenements above silent and dark in the empty hours after midnight.

She glanced behind her, and forward, studiously observant - her eyes aglow with a blue starlight that was not a reflection from the cloudy pitch black sky above or the distant streetlamps, and seeing nothing of concern, slipped to the alley floor silently.

Clad in some sort of vinyl - shining wetly like the blackest pool of oil - she would have been a sight to behold for an unseen observer. Her skin was a tan olive complexion dappled by reflections from passing vehicle lights on the faraway street - and her hair as dark as her outfit. Fingerless opera-style gloves with knuckles bulging with inset armor ran partway up her biceps, while improbably wedge-heeled boots gripped her skin-tight from foot to mid-thigh. Her leotard was cut high, baring the flare of her hips - while her back was exposed almost to her waist, the front rising to an armored bustier that gripped her heavy breasts while baring her shoulders and upper torso entirely. She wore nothing at all on her face, though a golden torq ringed her neck - abstract filigreed patterns etched into its polished surface.

All in all, more the kind of thing one might wear to an after-hours event for comic costume play than to burst through a wall and kill several men with their own hands. But there she was nonetheless, crouched now over an army green duffle bug hidden behind the dumpster, pulling a long gray trench coat out and tugging it on with haste. Then, with a quick motion of her hands and a shake of her head, her long hair was free to fall in waves about her face - and the golden torq unsnapped with a heavy metallic click, only to disappear into the bag.

And then she was gone, bag slung over her shoulder as she found an unremarkable car made in a previous century parked a block away, and with a low grumble its engine came to life and she pulled out into the now silent night.

***

"Excellent! What an experience! Imagine what they can do with some more money to work with?" A red-haired man with a well groomed but graying beard spoke to another as they walked outside some large warehouses, bright noon sun beating down on them as they navigated a maze of cargo containers stacked haphazardly and men working to unload their contents onto pallets being borne by forklifts.

The other man's response was more tepid than his counterpart's. "They can make it bigger, sure. But better? Come on. Sure, violence is fun. But sex sells." His shaved head reflected the sunlight, and the wetness of sweat clung to it as the heat settled in.

"I've got a surprise for you then. We've got another session scheduled. That was just the prologue." The red-haired man chortled amiably at his peer, and tugged a slim glass and metal slab from inside his well-tailored suit jacket, bringing its screen to life with the tap of a finger. "See? It's a multi-part thing. They've had the first bit working for over a year. The rest is new."

The bald man snorted, but his gaze remained on the screen with an interest that belied his attempt at nonchalance. He spoke after a moment's pause, considering the screen's contents. "Is all that even safe? I saw that show a few years ago, well at least before it got dumb."

"Oh man are you joking? That was a stupid tv show. This shit is real. We could be fucking rich if this shit works. Come on. I wanna get lunch down at the new Asian place they opened downtown. We should be back in time for the next event if we leave now."

And with that, the pair hurried off towards a large parking lot at the end of the row of vast warehouses.