#2:Life on the Street

He could somewhat hear the pained croak escape his throat, the pain still clawing at his skull and brain. Aaron Challis still couldn't see anything, a vibrating darkness obscuring his vision. Aaron clawed at his bed, and felt his blanket on top of him; his parents must have placed him back in bed and placed the blanket back on top of him after they had regained consciousness after The Pocket had knocked them out, along with Aaron.

He still couldn't quite believe anything that had happened several hours ago, a few minutes after twelve o'clock. Some black-clothed, mulleted monster with a wolfs skull for a head had broken into his house and had knocked Aarons bedroom door off its hinges before it had attempted to rip his head off with tendrils from within its chest, growling about salvation, or something along those lines.

Even though Aaron believed he had convinced the beast to focus its attention on the criminals and low-lives that infested Chicago like a swarm of locusts, the last thing he had seen before he had blacked out was The Pocket standing over him, saying "fine" before it had run off at an impossible speed. For all he knew, The Pocket might have just run off and decided to leave him alone. If it had decided to listen to him, then why? What made him special?

Aaron pushed himself up, straining his breathing as he clutched at his bed. His vision was coming back, and from what he could see, his door was still on the floor, torn off its hinges; the part of the hallway wall that The Pocket had thrown him into was still heavily pitted and cracked.

Aaron gritted his teeth as he thought about how much the damage would cost his parents, not to mention how they would try to explain it; who the hell was going to believe that a wolf skulled-head, blank eyed monster had tried to rip your sons head off?

He turned his head to the left and saw that the black blood from when his father had shot The Pocket was gone, as was the thick liquid that had covered his head when The Pocket had briefly wrapped its tendrils around his head.

Mom, Aaron thought.

Almost as if though on cue, he heard two voices coming from downstairs, though they were barely audible. Aaron knew that it was his parents, thinking he was still unconscious and trying not to wake him up.

They obviously wanted to know why The Pocket had suddenly left and why their son was lying on the hallway floor. Deciding to briefly turn on his phone, he saw the time:6:53.

Maybe...it'll be on the news.

His parents always watched the Today show, every morning. If The Pocket had listened to him and had decided to go Rambo on the criminals in Chicago, somebody was sure to have noticed it, and there was no way a nationwide news show was going to pass on the opportunity to report on murders committed by a skeletal werewolf.

"Wait! Listen, Ethan-you hear something?" Aaron heard his mother, Margaret, whisper to her husband and his father, Ethan Challis. Aaron knew that his mother wasn't an expert at whispering, though, so anyone could listen to her "secrets"; it was one of the reasons she had regular fits of uncontrollable anger that weren't really directed at anyone in particular, because somebody had heard her trying to say something behind someone's back.

"I think it's him! Aaron! He's woken up, and coming down the stairs!" his father said with a loud sigh of relief. Ethan Challis was best known by his family and community for being incredibly reclusive, not wanting to talk to anyone due to a dislike of people in general, a lack of social skills spurned by his status as the black sheep in his family for telling incredibly rude and violent jokes to relatives. From what his father had told him, he had realized that the jokes would only inspire further hatred rather than replace it with laughter, so he stopped talking unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Aaron!" his mother cried as he reached the last step, grabbing him by his shoulders and twisting him around.

"Mom, what-!"

"You see that bruise on the back of his head, Ethan? What the hell are you thinking getting out of bed, you idiot?!" his mother screamed at him. Aaron gritted his teeth and squinted as the screaming racked his eardrums.

"Aaron, I suggest you walk back up those stairs and lay down on your bed! That animal threw you into the wall, you aren't gonna be thinking straight at least until Monday!" his father barked at him.

"Thanks, mom and dad! I'm pretty goddamn happy I survived, too!" Aaron spat at their faces as he spun around to face his parents. He had just woken up from nearly being slaughtered by something that should not exist except for in those stupid horror stories passed down on the Internet, and yet to his parents, it was business as usual:find a way to make him look like the villain and then guilt-trip him when he refuted their horrible logic.

"This isn't about you surviving, son! You have a serious head injury and you're probably not gonna be thinking too good after what happened last night; the least you could do now is think logically about getting some rest for God's sake!" his father told him.

"No! I have homework to do over the weekend and that thing, The Pocket, is still out there! If it's still hunting and killing innocent people, we know its weakness! We can stop this thing from causing more incidents like this!"

"Come on, Aaron, are you seriously thinking you have the power to fight that monster? Can you stop acting like a moron and listen to your father just this once?" his mother sighed as she slapped her face, trying her best to hide the annoyance on her face.

"Now, usually, when you think of a superhero, you think of Superman or Batman, men who fight to protect the weak but make sure not to stoop to their enemies' levels. But what if superheroes killed? Would they still be heroes? And what if I told you these individuals were real? Well, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, one dark and brutal vigilante seems to have sprung off the bleakest comic pages and started a spree of terror upon criminals" they heard Matt Lauer say as the Today show began. Pushing his parents aside, Aaron rushed into the living room, seeing an ominous scene on the TV:a house surrounded by crime scene tape, police cars, and heavily armed policemen.

"Within this home, it seemed to be just like any other night-neighbors would hear the yelling, the screaming, the crying. They wouldn't do anything, though, as the husband, Marcus Bell, was a brute of a man, standing at six foot eight and weighing three hundred and forty six pounds. Nobody was sure if he had any criminal connections, and nobody liked to think of what he might do to them if they snitched. last night, though, everything changed in an instant" Gabe Gutierrez said as the camera switched from the house to a crying black woman, her face plagued with unbelievable terror.

"I-it was...big!" she gasped, obviously horrified at the mere fact that she had to go back to the past night.

"More than six feet, just barely shorter than my husband. It had these black clothes, long sl-sleeves, gloves, pants with a brown rope! The rope...it was its belt! And its head was so horrible! It had these white eyes that just stared us through, and a really big smile on its face! Its-its teeth were so sharp, and its hair...it was black, long in the back but short in the front and on the sides!" the woman whimpered, barely holding back tears.

"I was looking up, 'cause I was knocked to the ground. Its face started blackening, and it groaned like a dog while it looked at our light. I don't think it liked the light. But, it ran up to my husband, and, so fast! It was so fast! A blur, like a blur! He just stood there, his mouth was so open, and then that things chest opened! It looked l-like its guts were coming out before they wrapped around my husbands head and tore it off, right off! The guts, they went back into the things body before it grew my husbands face! But, it looked like it didn't like my husbands face, 'cause the face...it turned to dust! You gotta understand, so many things were going through my head, when that thing crouched down and picked me up and said something like, "Woman, you will be fine, you don't have to worry about anything else" in this deep and growling voice like an animal! It turned around and before it could leave, I asked for its name. It just said, "The Pocket.""

Aaron slowly turned around to see his parents behind him, their faces twisted into almost comical expressions of boiling anger. Aaron himself could barely comprehend it; that thing had actually listened to him! It was being called…

...a superhero?

"What did you do?" his father growled, sounding almost like The Pocket itself, animalistic and guttural.

"Well, you see...that thing was gonna kill me, so I asked it why it was like this. It told me that, amongst its kind, they killed the miserable, so I made a suggestion, to...kill criminals in...Chicago" Aaron summarised to them, slowly backing away as both of his parents' expressions turned into pure murder.

"So you told the thing to become a...superhero?" his mother asked, practically spitting the word "superhero" out as if though it was a piece of rotten meat.

"No, I said nothing along those li-!" Aaron was trying to say when a heavy knock came upon the front door. Thankful that the distraction pushed back his parents' chance to potentially murder him, Aaron sprinted to the door and unlocked both of the knobs and threw the door open.

What stood before him was a six foot four person dressed head to toe in black, save for a brown rope that acted as a belt; covering its head and shoulders was a black trash bag, which the person almost immediately flung off, revealing its long black hair, completely white eyes, and a wolf skull head.

The Pocket.

The hulking beast casually pushed Aaron aside as it stomped in and slammed the door shut. Almost as if though acting on instinct, his father whipped a .45 Magnum out of his pocket while his mother ran into the dining room and pulled a four inch long butcher knife out of the knife rack.

"Hey!" Aaron snapped at The Pocket, who stopped and turned its head toward him, its grin still etched into its face. The creatures eyes suddenly slid back into the sockets somewhat, its fangs bared.

"What do you want, child? I have already obeyed one of your commands-do you think that I am your pet, human?" it growled, though with annoyance more readily apparent in its tone rather than anger.

"What makes you think you can just walk into my house like this? You sure as hell weren't invited the first time, and none of us gave you a call to come over now!" Aaron pointed out to the creature, not fazed anymore by its borderline demonic appearance. To its credit, The Pocket also did not back down, leaning forward as if though it was about to tackle the young human that was currently loud mouthing it.

"Where else am I supposed to stay? It only makes sense for me to rest in the home of the one who suggested that I not kill him; if you have already forgotten, that was you" it snarled.

"But this is my house! You can't just make this your damn Batcave!"

The Pockets grin faded and was replaced by a look of pure confusion; from what Aaron was able to tell, its expression was the best approximation of raising an eyebrow that it could do without any eyebrows.

"I...do not understand. What is a Bat-?"

"It doesn't matter what you understand!" Aarons father growled, catching the attention of The Pocket, who seemed to realize the man was there for the first time. "I'll give you two choices:you can either leave and quit terrorizing my family, or I can blow your brains out, and this time, I won't stop until you're really dead!"

The Pocket bared its fangs once more growled like a bear, causing Aarons fathers hands to tremble, though he still kept the gun trained on the creature before him. Aaron stepped back, knowing that not even a burst of light-which it seemed to be vulnerable to-would stop The Pocket, and he remembered how badly it had beaten both of his parents; judging by its body language and the incredibly deep growl, another encounter would end up with The Pocket standing over a mangled corpse.

"Your light...I hate the light!" The Pocket spat, carefully eyeing the muzzle of the gun while it balled its hands into fists.

"Oh, I remember just how much the light hurts you! Hell, I'll keep firing until your head bursts into flames, if that's what it takes to make you piss off! Now beat it, jackass! You have ten seconds:ten, nine, eight, se-!"

The Pocket suddenly rushed forwards, a blur of black and white running faster than Aaron could blink. Aarons father was sent flying into the small iron gates that kept the fireplace closed, and at the same time, The Pocket snatched the gun out of his hands and threw it to the floor; it burst into five pieces upon impact.

Next, it ran straight to Aaron's mother, who tried to stab The Pocket as best as she could. The creature simply grabbed the knife and threw it onto the dining table before shoving her back.

Aarons father managed to push himself up and pull out the serrated hunting knife out of his pocket, the jagged edge gleaming in the light of the window. As Aarons mother screamed and tried to fight back while The Pocket grabbed her shoulders, he attempted to lunge at it, but the beast somehow noticed him and spun around in a blur. It grabbed his right wrist and threw him back, where he landed on his head on the foot-rest before he bounced off.

"Hey! Get your disgusting hands off my m-!" Aaron yelled as he charged at The Pocket. His battle cry was cut painfully short when The Pocket lifted its foot and stomped on Aarons own right foot while still holding onto Aarons mother. He fell forward and curled his legs inward, screaming entire sentences of nothing but profanity.

"You" The Pocket growled, turning back to face Aarons mother.

"What do you want from me?!" she sobbed, tears running down her face as she was forced to look into the pale eyes of every monster from her worst nightmares combined; there was nothing to distract it and save her now.

"Make me something to eat."

"Wait...what?" she said. She suddenly snapped out of her misery and couldn't believe her ears; did this thing just ask for her to give it something to eat?

"Give me food! Do you know how much a man starves when he has eaten little more than scraps from the waste for thirty seven years?" it asked. The Pocket was still grinning, and even in its deep yet raspy voice, Aarons mother couldn't believe this creature, and she immediately pushed it off.

"You break into my house twice, threaten my son, attack my family, damage my property, and get yourself called a goddamn superhero despite acting like an asshole, and you're telling me to COOK FOR YOU ?!" she screamed.

"Yes."

"Who the hell do you think you are, you piece of ugly shit?! You've got a lot of damn nerve to bust into my house twice and think I'm gonna be your fuckin' maid! You know what you can do? You can take that ugly goddamn smile off your disgusting face, and shove it straight up your ass while you get the fuck out of here! Oh, and I hope the door hits you on the ass on your way o-!"

Too quickly for her to comprehend, The Pocket sntached the knife off the table and pressed it against her throat with a level of speed that would have led to most people clumsily pushing the knife through the skin.

"That was not a request; you will give me something to eat now. Your whining and disobedience has become rather annoying, like a child with a puzzle that is not even close to being-" The Pocket growled, only to stop itself. It gave off a soft noise that sounded similar to whimpering, though the grin remained, and it lowered the knife and let go of Aaron's mother.

Aaron's father was getting back up, still clutching at the top of his head and cursing under his breath. Aaron himself, meanwhile, was pushing himself off the floor and still clutching at his right foot. Looking at her husband and son, and realizing one of them was still alive and the other not injured seriously, she looked back at the creature that had held a knife to her throat just a few second ago.

"What do you want?" she asked softly.

"What do you have?"

While they were waiting for all of the food to either be heated or put into the microwave, Aaron looked at The Pocket, who was staring at the microwave, his eyes glued to the screen of light and the slowly turning food, even as it remained in the dining room and stood a good five feet away from the kitchen.

"Are you a man or woman?" he asked it.

"Aaron! What are you doing?" his father snapped as The Pocket turned its head to look at Aaron, then his father, then back to Aaron.

"Well, if you're going to be breaking into my house and stealing my food, I should have a right to know!" Aaron sneered.

"I am male; does my voice and clothing not make that clear enough to you?" The Pocket said.

"Well, you're obviously not human, so excuse me for being curious!" Aaron told him. The Pocket then looked at Aaron's mother for a second before turning back to Aaron.

"Your human females have large breasts as well. The fact that I do not have protruding breasts also indicates that I am male."

"Wait, so your women also have...boobs?" Aaron asked him; his father was the one to respond with a slap to the back of his head.

"Just what are you?" Aaron's mother asked The Pocket, repulsion still evident in her tone. It was one thing to be feeding an intruder and attempted murderer; it was something else entirely to be feeding something that wasn't even remotely human.

"I am a Dekllanian. I do not come from this world, or even this realm" he told all of them.

"But, but...how the hell is that possible?! You're saying you come from a completely different universe entirely!" Aaron's father cried out. The Pocket pulled out a chair and took a seat, the chair creaking beneath him.

"Perhaps it is best if I told you everything...so far. To pass the time while we wait."

And so he told them his true name-Breynz Hrandor-and of his family, his time in the War for Argon, as it had come to be known, his new family, his loss of them and everything he had worked for, the ritual that had given him the power of empathy, and his arrival in the human realm.

When he finished, Aaron and his parents looked at him with squinting eyes and mouths open for intense questioning.

"So you just randomly decided to jump to some other dimension when you could have stayed in your own?" Aaron's mother asked. The Pocket growled at her in agitation, contrasting with the ever-present grin on his face.

"Were you not paying attention? My realm, my people-they are both too rotten deep within their cores to realize the extent of their suffering and learn from it" The Pocket explained.

"So why just randomly attack humans coming to the silo? What did those people ever do to piss you off?" Aaron asked him.

"Were none of you listening? I came here to help the miserable, to save them from wasting away in a life that cared for them not. I could feel the misery, the self-loathing, the bitterness that they felt; they came to the silo, trying to prove themselves to their peers in the face of their misery."

"So you just murdered innocent people? Innocent children?" Aaron's father asked in shock. From the way his face was twisted, he made it obvious that he was ready to kick this serial killer out, even though he knew he would be overpowered yet again.

"I did not murder them; I freed them from a life of emotional torment. I showed them that there is something better than life, beyond life. My people kill the miserable, but they do not learn from the causes of these miseries. They simply do it to fulfill their tradition."

"So their screaming and begging for mercy did nothing to stop you from ripping their heads off?!" Aaron's father screamed at The Pocket, who simply sat there, looking up at him.

"They told me to leave them alone, that I was a monster, that they they did not wish to die. They were lying only to themselves" The Pocket said.

"But, they were...they were people! They were somebody's child! How could you think about killing other people's' children when your own children were-!" Aaron's mother was screaming until The Pocket opened its mouth as wide as a snake would and roared at her, spraying pasty white saliva in her direction and making her and Aaron jump out of their seats.

"Listen Nietzsche, I don't care about your feelings, you will not threaten my wife and s-!" Aaron's father was barking at The Pocket.

"You shall not speak ill of my family, innocents too young to die at the hands of a gibbering madman" he growled at the three humans before him. The microwave rang, and he stood up and looked at the white box that said "READY" in large green digital letters.

"It is ready" he told Aaron's mother, who was still looking up at the grinning beast with horror.

In a minute, sitting before The Pocket were ten hot dogs, six cups of shrimp noodle soup, four cheeseburgers, and twenty pieces of popcorn chicken; to the side was a liter of Ozarka water. The Pocket scanned over the food-though nobody could be sure if his grin was just there or if he was actually happy about the food-and turned to the bottle.

"How do I open this?" he asked Aaron.

"You just grab the middle of the bottle, and twist the cap until it comes off! Do you not have bottled water back home?" Aaron asked him, annoyed.

"The bottles used by the Dekllanians had a seal on top that simply had to be ripped off; nothing as complicated as this" The Pocket explained.

"A seal? What the hell…" Aaron's father muttered under his breath.

"I can hear you well" The Pocket told him without turning to face him.

"Your hearing...right" Aaron's father sneered as The Pocket began eating.

He picked up the plate full of popcorn chicken and tipped it over, slowly dumping the food into his large mouth. While he was chewing on that, he started chugging from one of the soup cups and finished it in three seconds before moving on to the next one, and then the next one, until he was done with the chicken and soup in forty eight seconds. He picked up a cheeseburger and bit off half of it with the first bite, and then finished with three more bites. In one minute, all of the cheeseburgers were gone, and in two and a half more minutes, the hot dogs were completely devoured. The Pocket picked up the water bottle and let the water simply fall into his mouth and rush down his throat, his head tilted back and his jaws opened wide.

Slamming the bottle back down onto the table, The Pocket stood up from his chair and faced Aaron and his parents, all of them staring at him with wide eyes and drooping jaws.

"Where can I go clean my body now? It has been long since I have bathed" he asked them.

"Umm...er...the shower is upstairs, in my bathroom" Aaron's mother plainly told him. "Aaron, go show him where the shower is."

"May I also take these clothes off for washing?" The Pocket asked, clutching onto his rope belt.

"Uh...yeah. When you're done, the dirty clothes go into the white basket in the laundry room; it's behind the door directly to the right of the refrigerator" Aaron's father said, his eyes still wide.

The Pocket nodded and undid his belt before untying his boots. Aaron and his parents started screaming at him the moment he started untying his boots.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!"

"Were your parents not smart enough to teach you some goddamn decency, or did they just not give a shit?!"

"Are you kidding me?! None of us want to see your balls!"

"Is there a problem?" The Pocket asked as he took off his boots and slid his pants off.

"Yeah, stupid! You're supposed to take your clothes off right before you enter the shower, not in front of everyone!" Aaron yelled at him, even as he took off his gloves and started pulling his shirt off.

"I did not think you humans would be that crude and sensitive; my people do not have any problems with undressing themselves before friends and family if they are to bathe" The Pocket shrugged before he walked to the laundry room door and opened it, laying his boots at the foot of the white basket before he dumped his clothes into the basket.

"Where do you think you are?! You are amongst human beings! We are different from you!" Aaron yelled at him as he walked out of the laundry room. The Pocket turned to look at him, his yellow skull-like head contrasting greatly with the pitch black fur covering his whole entire body.

"That might be so, but you are also very prone to whining" he scoffed before he turned back around and walked past Aarons parting parents. "Now, where exactly is this "shower", as you call it?"

Gritting his teeth, Aaron hurried behind The Pocket, noticing how his mother struggled to keep her gaze away from his rear end.

Not nice to stare, asshole, Aaron thought while he made his way in front of The Pocket before they started walking up the stairs.

Their journey to the shower was silent until Aaron slammed the door into his parents' room shut and walked over to the bathroom door. He looked straight into The Pockets blank eyes and spat right into his face. If The Pocket was angered or felt threatened by such an action, he didn't show it, for he simply rubbed the saliva off with his arm and kept the grin on his face.

"Who do you think you are to mooch off of us?" Aaron spat while he slid open the door into the shower and placed a blue towel upon the rack on the other shower door on the right and in front of the slid-open door.

"Moo-ching?" The Pocket pronounced as he walked into the shower.

"Yeah, living off our stuff! Just what makes you think you can walk into my house and say, "I want food! Let me use your shower! Let me take my clothes off in front of your family"? This isn't even your dimension, and you're acting like we're your maids and butlers!"

"Where else am I to reside? Not only are you the first human that has actively resisted my attempts to save you, but you have also suggested that I instead go after the criminals, for some reason."

"Oh, and I bet you loved every second of it, didn't you?" Aaron mocked as The Pocket slid the shower door shut. "I bet you loved it when you tore his head off and ate it, right?"

"Not really. When I save the miserable, it feels like I am truly accomplishing something; I am doing something good by releasing them from a pathetic existence. When I killed that man, though, it did not feel like like I was being helpful. I was killing a narcissist, a man who felt miserable only because he did not get exactly what he wanted" The Pocket sighed.

"Are you serious? You would rather kill people who did nothing wrong than those assholes and psychopaths who enjoy murdering others because it thrills them?" Aaron asked in shock as The Pocket turned the shower head on and water rushed out. He was even more surprised by The Pockets ability to turn on the shower without any explanation.

"How did you know how to turn the shower on?"

"Showering systems used by Dekllanians are similar" he answered plainly. For the next two minutes, the only noise was the rushing of warm water from the shower head. During those two minutes, Aaron saw The Pockets furry arm reach out and grab a bottle of body wash; three seconds later, he put it back.

Another similarity?, Aaron guessed in his mind. He looked at his reflection on the shower door; for a moment, he thought he saw The Pocket behind him, but he shook it off, realizing his mind was toying with him. He had never believed in aliens, but not only was one now in his shower, it looked like something out of his nightmares.

"It is the duty of those who are still alive to learn from what causes misery" The Pocket suddenly said, pulling Aaron out of his thoughts.

"What?" he asked.

"When I chose to come to a different universe, it was with the desire to have the natives of wherever I arrived realize my mission, and learn from their mistakes. I would make sure that they did everything that was possible to end the sources of these miseries, and that included rehabilitating the criminal element" The Pocket elaborated.

"But that's the problem! People don't learn! They can't! They get sent to jail for five years for shooting down some random person, they get released, and they go back to being what they were before-an animal!" Aaron ranted. "The government and cities set up laws prohibiting the use of weapons, but these people are criminals! They don't care about laws! They're the ones who kill and rape and set fire to other peoples' livelihoods!"

"Then it is the fault of the system of justice for not doing better at rehabilitation" The Pocket retorted.

"They don't need rehabilitation! They need punishment! They send them to prison to educate them to be better citizens, but they ignore the fact that prison conditions toughen a criminal, and when they're released, they turn into an even greater savage! Send a teenager to jail for robbery, he gets out two years later and kills someone!" he spat viciously. "Don't you understand? It's because of the criminals and the fact that they aren't being punished that innocent people are suffering! It's not their fault that they're unhappy-if you take away the criminal element, then people will finally be allowed to appreciate life, something a murderer or rapist doesn't appreciate!"

"But-"

"If you're gonna be called a superhero by the news, then you need to be a real superhero!"

The water suddenly started hitting the shower floor instead of The Pocket judging by the increase in the noise of its impact.

"What is a… "superhero?" I heard your mother using that word, or...something similar to it…" The Pocket remembered.

"What, you don't have comics in your dimension?" Aaron asked. The silence that greeted him made him guess the answer was "no."

"A superhero is somebody-or something-that helps people, like a policeman, or firefighter; but they're something...greater. A superhero doesn't work for some collective body, they work above the law. They have powers or equipment, knowledge, and resources that allow them to crush criminals and save the innocent and defenceless when the police aren't there. Not every superhero has powers like you, but those that do are able to make themselves into something greater...a legend...a paragon."

"Powers? I do not have powers; these are simply the naturally acquired biological defenses of the Dekllanian species" The Pocket said.

"But to us human beings, your traits are beyond anything imaginable. They used to just be the stuff of peoples imaginations, like superheroes themselves; something that people only dreamed of when they wanted to fight back. But now-now, it's real! With your empathy, you can find the criminals, and with your super speed, strength, and ability to absorb peoples heads, you can stop them for good! You can save Chicago!"

"But is that not the responsibility of the local authorities?" The Pocket asked as he turned off the shower.

"It should be, but it's not" Aaron grumbled. "They're either paid off by the gangs to stay away from the investigations, or they're so restricted by bureaucratic red tape all they can do is guess who did what and why. But as a superhero, you work above the law, outside the system. There's nothing that can hold you back! Nothing!"

"So you are saying that I should become a vigilante? Why not work alongside the authorities?"

"Yeah, if you wanna call it that, but I personally find the word "vigilante" to be too...extreme. And do you really think the police will try to listen to you? They're either gonna arrest you for being a vigilante, or if you decide to work for them in the first place, they'll have you taken to the government so they can study you to create a new weapon of mass destruction. Humans have a tendency to lose it somewhat when they see something beyond their understanding" Aaron explained to him as he slid open the shower door and grabbed his towel, before he closed the door again.

"So? Are you ready?" Aaron asked him.

"I did not want this" The Pocket growled. "The fact that you humans cannot learn from your mistakes, like the Dekllanians...it is disgraceful! There is no justice in it!"

"Yeah, well welcome to Earth" Aaron muttered.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Stephen Wong did not believe in patience as a virtue. Born in San Francisco to Mandarin Chinese immigrants who had fled from the Communist Revolution, he had lived in the squalor of various American slums for the first sixteen years of his life, with his father working as a Pacific fisherman while his mother worked at a clothing factory. Despite their hope for the capitalist American Dream, the nation had scoffed at their people for their so-called "Communist roots", and Stephen was often alone during the day, waking up and going to school and then heading home alone to the slums of San Francisco, where the racism and roaming street gangs had taught him to expect results from his work, and to be tough.

During his sophomore year of high school, he and his family had moved to Chicago, Illinois, where the crime was even greater and the racism even stronger. Always having deplored the crime that had infested San Francisco and which now claimed Chicago, Stephen had pushed himself to his mental limits in school to become a policeman, and not just any kind of policeman:he wanted to be a detective so badly, to directly investigate the evidence and nab the lowlives themselves; above all else, he wanted to put his experience to good use, and make some kind of difference.

He had made it to Cornell University and had even achieved his dream of becoming a detective for the Chicago Police Department. The one thing in his way was his impatience.

Even though there were still many crimes in Chicago, less than half of them were solved. Killers and robbers were getting smarter, and there wasn't much evidence left at crime scenes to think of even a person of interest. Of course, Detective Stephen Wong would have none of this, and it was often because of his demand for something to happen that his cases went unsolved.

That wasn't what troubled him at the moment, though. His mind was completely fixed on this sudden attack by a vigilante, which itself was rare in Chicago, and it wasn't just any vigilante. This person-if it was even that-called itself "The Pocket" according to the only eyewitness, and had ripped a grown mans head clean off, and seemed to have run off with it. Its mask-if it was a mask-looked like a wolfs skull with pale eyes and long black hair, while its clothes were all black, save for a belt that the eyewitness said was a rope.

Sounds a hell of a lot like SCP-1471…., Stephen was thinking when someone knocked on his door.

"Come in" he said. The door opened and a tall, lanky middle-aged man wearing wire frame glasses and a black polyester coat walked in, his neck hunched and his head bent to the left side.

The man dropped a folded white piece of paper on Stephens desk, nodded, and walked out. Stephen picked up the folded paper and unfolded it; Terrance Lime was the artist for the Chicago Police Department and hardly ever talked to anyone, almost always absorbed in his artwork of crime suspects. He wasn't bad at his job, he was simply very strange and people felt rather uneasy around him.

Drawn on the paper was Limes impression of the vigilante:black hair long in the back but short in the front, a wolfs skull for a head, pale eyes staring right back at him, and a grin that displayed little more than fangs.

Oh my God...that looks just like…, he thought in shock as he took his phone out of his pocket.

I need to let the Foundation know about this...right now.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"You almost done with your homework?" Brian Duke asked his son as he walked past the dining room table.

"Yeah" Charles Duke answered simply as he scrawled down an answer for the problem he was currently on.

"What subject is that?" his father asked him.

"Geometry" Charles dismissively said, more focused on his homework than the only parent he had left.

He wasn't tall, he wasn't muscular, and he wasn't fast. Charles Duke was perfectly average when it came to physical activities, and there was only one area he truly excelled in:academics. Encouraged by his mother to make something of himself before she passed away due to a sudden cerebral hemorrhage, he set out to fulfill her final wishes despite his fathers begging that he get involved in a sport because he could make more money that way. It wasn't easy trying to be successful at being smart, especially in Chicago:the other black students said he was "acting white", while the white kids said he was overstepping his boundaries. But he pushed himself forwards despite the mockery and his fathers pleading, and he would be damned if he was gonna let his mother's dreams fall apart for any reason.

There was a knock on the door. "I'll get it" his father said, and he hurried into the living room and to the front door. Charles didn't pay much attention.

His father unlocked the door and slowly opened it.

"Yes-"

Charles was vaguely aware of the yellow flash before the bang knocked him out of his seat and slammed into his ears. He covered them as they started ringing like an incredibly small gong that had been hit. He could still hear the door being slammed shut and the sound of tires screeching against the asphalt, though.

Forcing himself up, Charles hesitantly stumbled into the living room and turned to the right, where he saw two legs slumped on the ground.

DAD!, Charles thought as he sprinted over to the bottom of the staircase and came across a sight that forced his appetite away.

His father's body lay on the bottom stairs, and blood and red pieces of bone covered the wall, stairs, and bottom railing. Instead of the center of his forehead, there was a hole roughly five inches wide, and he could still see ruined brain and bone inside.

"DAD!" Charles screamed even though he knew his father had died before he even hit the ground. He grabbed his father's shirt and pulled himself forward, looking into the face of the only person left that he knew had loved him despite all of the begging.

"DAD!" he shrieked; outside, he could hear the neighbors throwing open their doors and rushing outside, asking what was going on.

Charles didn't care about them; he didn't care about his unfinished homework; all he cared about was his father, and who could have done this to him.

There was a good chance neither he nor the police would ever find out.

And for that, they would pay.

If he had to burn the city to do it, then so be it.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"Rage is the death of light."

-Anonymous

(NEXT ISSUE: The Pocket begins his vigilante life in full, while Aaron dreads returning to school. But all is not well below the surface as a mysterious "Foundation" sets its sights on The Pocket, and through Charles Duke, an ancient evil, once long-forgotten, resurfaces to exact a brutal vendetta. All this in The Pocket #3:Life on the Street #2.)