Blind Man lay in a puddle of his own sick, because he was a tortured anti-hero.
"Urgh.. Argh." He shifted uncomfortably. The empty whiskey bottles clambered on the floor.
He felt edgy, because that's what the kids like.
"I can't believe I can't see!"
His neighbors shifted restlessly in their bed. Annoyed that they did not know about Blind Man when they signed the lease.
"GOD! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!"
Blind Man seized the crucifix around his neck. He was super religious when it was plot important. He really took that shit seriously sometimes. Like when he had to kill a crime boss who was super evil but was suddenly reminded that killing was a sin.
"Oh well. At least my other senses have been enhanced by my blindness."
He remembered that fateful night, the streets of Hell's Kitchen. He really had no business being there, being a successful criminal defense attorney, but he was really into gentrification at the time. Gentrification and Pabst.
Suddenly, a beggar burst out of a pile of garbage he probably lived in.
"Gad zooks!" Blind Man yelled.
"RAAAWR!" was the tragic downtrodden beggar's bestial cry.
"He's mad with radiation!" Someone yelled conveniently.
The lawyer was frozen in fear. The beggar sniffed the air. He was blind, but he could smell the terrified man's stinky fear.
"Please don't bite me!" Blind Man begged, removing his wallet and throwing wads of cash at the homeless man in hopes of creating a distraction.
He failed to dissuade the creature, and its rotten yellow teeth sunk deep into his neck.
Sweat ran down the hero's face as he flashed back to reality.
He remembered the friendly Chinese man who trained him.
"You must feel with you other senses, Blind Man." He said, in broken, racist English.
Blind Man ran into a wall.
"Try again," the old man said firmly.
Now he was dodging the debris the old man launched at him. Deflecting old cans of Pabst with his cane.
"It is time," the Chinese man said grimly.
Next thing he knew, the old man was dying in his arms.
"Sensei.. who did this to you?"
"Fat..Man" He passed in his arms.
Blind Man let the body fall to the floor, posturing dramatically. "I'll find this Fat Man, sensei! Your death will not go in vain!" and he walked into the night, without even calling 911 or the cops or anything. Classic Blind Man.
Later that day, Blind Man was defending a client, as one does, when he ran into the sexy prosecuting attorney. He could tell she was sexy because he smelled her sexy pheromones that only sexy people have.
She stood, her back arched, her breasts thrust forward in a ridiculous way. She looked like a victim of some nefarious chiropractor, like the one Blind Man fought last week. But she was alive, and smelled sexy.
"Problem, Blind Man?"
"N-no.. it's just.. I'm very.. flustered, because.."
"Because of my sexy pheromones?"
"How did you..?"
"I'm blind too, Blind Man. In case you didn't know."
They both laughed, and Blind Man knew he wouldn't drink himself to sleep tonight, because he'd be doing too much masturbating.*
* Blind Man #25 - Blind Man used to be afraid of masturbating, before the incident that gave him his superpowers.
The Fat Man stood, smoking a huge cigar. He oversaw the production of the latest street drug, one thousand times more addictive than crack. The orphans worked tirelessly, working on the complicated chemical process that rendered the marijuana into a fine paste, mixing it with cocaine and heroin and probably other drugs too. It was all very scientific, and well beyond the pharmacological skills of most orphans. It was really quite impressive.
"Now, to test to product," the Fat Man said, lifting an orphan up with his massive hand, and plunging a syringe into his arm.
"This is really unpleasant!" the orphan moaned, feeling sedated yet on edge, and kind of hungry. "I want to clean the bathroom all night while rambling about uninteresting bullshit, but I also kind of just want to sleep!"
"It is.. perfected." The Fat Man grinned, dramatically.
"We will be making with the so much cash money, I think! Da, Fat Man?" asked his Russian associate.
"Well.. one of us will be," The Fat Man said menacingly, wrapping his anatomically impossible large hand around the Russian's neck.
"I was being fool to trust you, Fat Man!" And then the Russian was dead.
"Tell me everything you know about the Fat Man!" Blind Man yelled, bringing his cane down hard on the head of some hapless pusher whose family had lived in the neighborhood for decades. They had moved there after the auto-manufacturing crash. Pushing was pretty much a way of life for him growing up. It was either that or slinging burgers at the local Marvel Burger. He remembered his little brother, stuck at home after their father left. Of course, his memory was a little hazy, what with the crazy white man beating on him with a stick at the moment. The whole thing was rather terrifying.
"What the fuck, man?!"
"Slime like you makes me sick! These are God's children you're poisoning!"
"Stop hitting me with that—AUGH!"
"Tell me about the Fat Man! Now!"
"Uh.. he's fat?"
*wack*
"And he's a man!"
*wack*
"And he controls all the crime in the city!"
"That's all I needed to know." His eyes narrowed. He brought his cane down on the pusher's head one last time, causing him traumatic brain injury he would never completely recover from. As he awoke, hours later, he pulled himself out of the dumpster Blind Man had thrown him into after rendering him unconscious. He smelled, his head rang, everything was hazy. He was missing the rest of his supply. All the money he had been saving would have to go to repay his distributor. He started crying. He stopped after blacking out a second time.
Somewhere in the night, another angry white man prowled the streets. This one sporting a fedora and carrying a shotgun. He didn't approve of the weak and ineffectual methods of the other heroes of the city. Their damage was mainly collateral. He preferred shooting people with his gun, just like the criminals did to his family. If he wasn't allowed to have a family, then nobody was allowed to have a family.
"I am.. The Annihilator." He wracked his shotgun, sending an unspent shell rolling down the street.
"Holy shit!" Someone yelled, seeing the man in the duster walking down his street, toting a shotgun. He tried to flee, but The Annihilator winged him with a blast of 00 buck.
"AAAAUUUGGHH!" He cried, grasping his mutilated arm. The Annihilator casually walked his way, bending down to violate his personal space as he spoke to him in gruff whispers.
"Do you have a family?"
"Y-yes!"
"Not anymore."
A gun blast rang out in the strangely desolate streets. Pigeons flew everywhere, symbolizing something. God had another angel. The calling card of The Annihilator.