Krähe - Charles Bedlam (book club suggestions .txt) 📗

001
-She Who Cries Wolf-

The night was cold in the grand metropolis of Nocturne. The city lights resembled the brightest stars in the sky, but no matter how marvelous the city looked, evil lurked within it. It was very windy that night, not quite winter, but in the first week of December. In a building; just one of the thousands of nameless structures standing in the city, a group of a dozen men were hard at work, trying desperately to build a weapon that would bring Nocturne crumbling before them.
“We have to make sure everything is right,” said one of the men. “If we mess this up even a little bit, it could go off and take us with it.”
Two of his colleagues carried a heavy metal object to a table in the center of the room. They fit it to a much larger metal piece. The bomb was coming along quite well.
“So how powerful is this thing?” another of the men asked.
“Think Hiroshima,” the first man chuckled. “Once we finish the bomb, we can hold the whole city for ransom!”
All of the men laughed. The idea of harming people tickled them. They were almost done with their instrument. All they needed now was the the detonator. Another of the men was bringing it to the structure to complete it. Just then, the lights went out. The men panicked at first, but their leader calmed them down.
“It's just this stupid building! Someone find the damn fuse box!”
Flashlights danced in the darkness. Before the lights could come back on, one of the men screamed as an ungodly rattling rang out.
“Get those lights on!”
Another man was taken. His screams echoed though the darkness. Finally, after several minutes and losing two more comrades, the lights came on. The four missing men were tied to the ceiling, gagged and unconscious.
“How'd they get up there?!” one of the remaining men screamed.
They had armed themselves with guns. They were under attack, but by who or what exactly was a mystery. They searched behind crates and under the catwalks, but they found nothing. Their leader looked up at his friends, hanging from the ceiling and saw something that made his heart skip a beat. Two glowing red eyes were staring at him from the shadows.
“Above us! He's above us!” he shouted.
Just as his men looked up, a shadowy figure dropped down and landed in the center of the room next to the bomb. He stood at 6', 6”, his dread locks hung out of his hood and down to the middle of his chest. He wore black pants and a black shirt with a black sleeveless trench coat. Bloody bandages were wrapped around his arms. In his hand, he held a silver and black scythe. The thing looked like it was forged in hell. The most disturbing factor of this person was the horrific burlap mask he wore. Pain and suffering was its face. His eyes glowed through the black holes in his mask.
“It's Krähe...,” one of the men said. “It's the Crow of Nocturne...”
The men all backed away from him.
“What are you waiting for?!” their leader cried. “Kill-”
Before he could even finish his sentence, Krähe whipped his scythe around. The blade flew off of the staff, attached to a seemingly infinite chain and took down all of the remaining men except for their leader. Just as he aimed his gun, Krähe whipped the blade at him. The gun shot off as the scythe hit it and the force made the man drop it. The man tried to flee by running up a set of catwalk stairs. He almost made it. Using the blade and chain of his scythe, Krähe launched himself up to the catwalk and forced his prey to the ground.
“So what will you do with me?” he asked Krähe with a cocky twist to his voice. “Will you kill me? Or does your sense of justice prevent you from doing so.”
Krähe said nothing to the man. He released him and turned to walk away. The man seemed surprised. But after about twenty feet, Krähe turned to face the man once more.
“I'm going to give you a head start,” he said in a deep, dark voice. “Five... Four...”
The man, now terrified, turned and nearly jumped down the stairs.
“Three...Two...”
Using the blade of his scythe as an anchor to the ceiling, Krähe swung down to the lower level to subdue the man. He knocked him out with a hard punch to the face and tied him to a support beam. With the men taken care of, he made his way over to the bomb and found the detonator. It was circular and hollow with magnets on the inside. In the bomb it would have fitted into the battery. When a switch was hit, the wheel would have turned, aligning the magnets with other magnets within the bomb, completing the circuit, and leveling Nocturne City. Krähe crushed it in his hand, then left the building through the window as the police arrived.
Krähe waited on the roof and watched the police take the terrorists into custody. Satisfied that he had done his job, he shot his blade out and swung across the city, seeking out crime, feeling the burning desire to make them suffer just as he had in the past. When he closed his eyes, all he could think of was finding his daughter's corpse when he returned home from work one night. He had to make them pay. They all had to pay.
Atop a building, Krähe spied a lonely deli after dark with the lights still on. At this hour, all of the food stores in this part of the city should be closed. He took a closer look from an alley across the street. As he looked in through the glass, a man was taking money from the cash register. Krähe skulked into the alley behind the story and listened. He could hear crying and another man. There were hostages. He didn't know how many, though, making this a very delicate situation.
Krähe decided it would be best to flush them out, rather than going in and risking the lives of innocent people. He moved to the front of the store and tapped the glass of the shop with the tip of his scythe. The robber at the register froze and looked up. He was surprised to see no one there. He walked over to the window and looked out, gun at the ready. He turned to walk away, dismissing the noise. Before he could take three steps, he heard an ear splitting screeching on the glass. He slowly turned and saw Krähe's dim red eyes staring at him. In a panic he fired his gun and Krähe was gone. The man turned on his heels and ran. Krähe, on the outside, ran to the back of the store and listened.
“Let's get the hell out of here!” one of the men yelled.
He waited atop a sign where there was no light and he couldn't be seen. Three men exited the building, bags and guns in hand and ran down the alley. Krähe followed them, taking them out one by one in quick succession, ending their crime before they could get away. Krähe took the money back to the people of the deli and set them free. It was a family of Asian Americans. He returned what was stolen and turned to walk away. The family's young daughter grabbed the bottom of Krähe's coat. He turned to face her.
“Thank you, Krähe,” she said innocently, “you're my hero.”
Without a word, he left the building and swung to the rooftops once more. It was time to head home. The city streets were quiet, at least for now. Krähe made his way through the city until he reached a large apartment building. It was tall and sort of run down with a giant clock built into the top, sort of like Big Ben from London. Not many people that lived there were awake at this hour, but a few windows shone in the night. Krähe swung to the top of the clock tower and entered through a hatch in the roof.
He removed his coat and mask and hung them over his arm as he made his way down several sets of stairs. A locking mechanism kept this door closed and sealed to ensure no one could get in. There is only one floor directly beneath the clock and it served as his apartment. After that, it would be six floors before one could reach any other living person.
The hallways were dark, decaying, and full of webs from lonely spiders. But it was home. Krähe came to a door with an hour glass carved into the wood. A single sliver of light above the door was all that illuminated this solemn place. He opened the door and entered his living quarters.
“Aleena, I'm home,” he said, closing the door behind him.
He waited for her to respond, but she did not. He moved into his bathroom and disrobed before getting into the hot shower. He stood there, the water streaming down his tired, muscular body. He watched the blood spiral down the drain. He had been careless lately and it was costing him. Before he entered the warehouse, he had gotten into a brief scuffle with Dr. Weaver. His metallic legs had cut him across his arms. He needed to be more careful, but lately he'd just been feeling so... down. He almost didn't care if he was killed or not. But he had to keep fighting. There were many more people to bring to justice. No, they can't be called people. Monsters.
He stepped out of the shower and stood before the mirror. His brown skin and black hair were clean now, and his eyes had gone from their deep red back to their usual dark brown. In his cabinet was a medical box. He pulled from it a curved needle and some thread. He proceeded to sew up his wound, disinfect it, and bandage it up. He went to his master-sized bedroom and sat on his large bed. A dresser and a rack for his scythe stood against the opposite wall. The wall opposite of the door held a set of glass doors. Beyond them was a balcony, overlooking Nocturne and it's bay.
Krähe got dressed and hung up his scythe. Then he slowly walked to the glass doors and opened them. He stepped out on his balcony and met a 10 year old girl in an old style European dress. Her black hair was tied in two, pigtails, her dark blue dress fluttered in the night breeze. She floated about a foot above the ground and stared off into the distance.
“I see you can float again,”