"No, no, please, no…"
"Hey baby, don't be like that…"
"We won't hurt you…too bad…"
"Yeah, take it easy…it'll be fun…."
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
The three men whirled around, while the woman simply stared up in shock at him. The men instinctively reached into their coats, grasping the grip of a gun or knife or some other implement. Slowly, the woman pushed herself away from her attackers, struggling with her shaky arms.
As a light breeze disturbed the evening fog, he stepped out with a soft click. His lean frame was encased in a black suit, double breasted with a white shirt and wide black tie. In his left hand was a simple cane, made of some dense wood painted black with a metal tip. Atop his head was a simple black fedora that did little to obscure his face. However, he had something else for that, something much more sinister.
A mask, predominantly black, completely obscured his face from the others. The right side was completely black, albeit with a white eyebrow and a splash of white that came under his eye. Where there should have been a mouth was only glossy black, extending up almost to the edge of the jaw. The nose, however, was white, as was a large section of the left half of the mask. However, the eyebrow was black, and five long, thin black triangles extended a few inches below the eye, which seemed to complement the brilliant orange eye behind the mask.
One of the would-be rapists said hesitantly, "Who're you?"
The mysterious stranger replied eloquently, "A passerby, simply noticing a woman in need of assistance."
"That's what we're here for," another replied, "So fuck off!"
As he said so, a pistol came out of his coat, its muzzle leveled at the masked man's face. He grinned sadistically, then lowered it until it was leveled at a point between the man's legs. The masked man took a slow step forward, asking dangerously, "Are you sure you want to do that?"
Before the man could answer or even move, the masked man leapt forward, ripped the gun out of the man's hand, and backhanded the man with the butt, knocking him fully ten feet to the side and caving the side of his head in.
Dropping the dripping gun to the cobblestoned street, the masked man reached deep into his coat, and came out with a massive revolver. The barrel extended eight inches out from the man's hand, with a large black rod mounted under the barrel. The immense muzzle, seemingly spanning half an inch, was leveled at the lead man, whose gun seemed to look like a child's toy next to the mysterious man's hand cannon.
The masked man tilted his head slightly, then started laughing. He laughed and laughed through the mask, like an insane man. Then suddenly he stopped, leaving a deafening silence in the air. Unconsciously, the two remaining rapists slowly started moving backward, away from the masked man.
He said loudly, "Backing up isn't going to save you. This revolver fires a bullet twelve point four-five millimeters in length, and generates enough energy on impact to blow through a cinder-block wall and kill the man standing behind it."
Easing the hammer back, the masked man said quietly, "Have fun in Hell."
Pivoting off his right foot, the man turned and pulled the trigger. A massive tongue of flame erupted from the muzzle, so bright it lit up the whole alley, and the man's torso exploded in a cloud of blood. The masked man took the brutal recoil as if it was a light tap on the palm of his hand, and calmly turned to the last man, who had started running down the alley away from the formally dressed man. Sighing to himself and picking his cane back up, the masked man said softly, "Ah, a runner."
Leaning forward and gently gripping the brim of his fedora with his left hand, he closed his eyes, and felt the wind ripping by him.
Two blocks away, the last remaining man stopped, chest heaving from the effort of running for his life. Taking a deep breath, he straightened up, and tried to walk calmly back home, as if nothing was wrong. As he got step after step closer to his apartment, he started relaxing more and more. He thought to himself, I'm free! He'll never know where I went! Crazy motherfucker.
As he fumbled with his keys at the door to his apartment, he didn't notice the eyehole on the door suddenly darken, as if someone- or something- was inside, looking through the eyehole. As he slid the key into the door lock, he didn't hear the hammer on a large-caliber revolver being eased back on the other side of the door. So when he finally got the door open, he was completely taken by surprise by what he saw.
The masked man, tall and dark like Death itself, revolver leveled at his head, said, "Hi, remember me?"
The hammer fell, the gun kicked back, and the whole building echoed with the report of the revolver. Casually sliding the massive handgun back into his coat, the masked man turned, and vanished in a puff of smoke, lost to the night….