Oh, if you see him comin'

Get away if you can

Just keep on runnin'

Run as fast as you can

He's a dangerous, dangerous man

And he's out tonight

And he's watchin' you

And he knows your house

No, don't turn out the lights

-Alice Cooper, "Man Behind the Mask"

-South Town, two weeks later-

The voices were fairly loud for how late it was.

Besides the skittering of leaves on the ground and the ample October wind, it was otherwise mostly the sound of an occasional car from afar, punctuated with the piercing shatter of a breaking bottle.

The seediest outskirts of South Town were even worse than the seedier parts of the inner city. No one lived here unless they were a squatter, or dared to pay whatever illegal landlord set up in one of the large, dilapidated buildings. Near a park, there were nothing but decrepit buildings, burned out cars-and the odd trees that nonetheless still stood, most of them covered in rusty chains and the remains of stolen bicycles, some of them long rusted.

Nobody came out this way unless they were complete fools, a gang, someone looking to score drugs, sex, or something else, and even then they probably wanted to go somewhere else.

Through all of this, a single man walked quietly down one of the alleys toward the commotion. His long, white hair hung in his face, going fully to his chest. It looked unkempt and wild; giving the man a more unhinged look than he usually had. He was very handsome-even downright pretty in the face-but the look in his eyes was somewhat deranged. It was almost like there was something disturbing going on behind them; some sort of trains of thought that were not for the faint of heart, and as a result one did not want to look into them for long.

The man was on the taller end of average; perhaps around five-ten, but was powerfully built. His arms and chest were large, he was clearly defined, and his legs were long and clearly very strong looking, as one could see through the slightly loose black jeans he seemed to wear. On his top was a slightly tattered but tight sleeveless shirt, and this was topped with a sleeveless, black long jacket and heavy, lace up boots. He wore not much out of the ordinary, yet there was simply something that stood out about him. A presence...though it was not a positive one, but rather one that made you want to walk the other way, and quickly.

As he walked slowly and deliberately toward the hollering men-roughly six of them around, heaving bottles and generally causing a ruckus, they were planning on going to cause some general trouble when the long-haired man came toward a gate with some chains on it; noticing the chains, he removed them, literally tearing the last one off with a clanging sound.

He clearly held a strength that was at least somewhat on the abnormal side.

The sound it made caused one of the punks to cock his head, his bottle of cheap liquor in his hand.

"Eh? The fuck was that?"

"Dunno, you're drunk. Shut up. Where we goin?"

"Nah, I heard somethin.'"

"Who cares? We'll just beat 'em and leave 'em if they start shit."

The man, hearing the words, narrowed his already dark eyes, pausing to wrap the chain around his wrist...placing it behind his back. He then rigged it over his shoulder in such a way where his other wrist was likewise chained, though in a way where he could balance with the arm if he were to leap around, or perhaps use it to hold someone still.

His breathing was heavy, slow, and deliberate as he approached the punks, the six of them finally stopping and wondering who their guest was.

"Wrong turn, buddy," one said. The sound of the rattling chains, coupled with the man's heavy footsteps, slightly unnerved him for some reason. Perhaps it was the chill breeze that just blew by, as well.

As he closed in, he peered at them through his long hair, which continued to whip about his head in the breeze, a few more leaves skittering across the street.

The punks had no idea what was up with him. The fact he had one arm chained behind his back and the other at the side was downright confusing. He continued to take a few more steps forward, looking around the place, taking it in silently, as if he were trying to remember something.

The men around the fire looked at each other.

"I dunno if you heard us," he said. "But I think at this point we might relieve ya of a few things, then, alright?"

The white-haired man shifted, the chains shaking ominously when he did so. Something about the look in the strange man's eyes made one of them nervous, as well as the fact he remained eerily silent, save for his breathing.

"Hey, uhh...boss…"

"Shut up," he said, finishing off his cheap liquor and throwing the bottle; he cracked his knuckles and took a loose fighting stance.

Running forward, he crashed into the eerie looking man...and it was like hitting a wall; he was incredibly steady on his feet and barely budged. His eyes peered at him through his long bangs...and they were enough to cause the man to shiver uncontrollably as he stepped back.

"H...Hey," he said, losing his nerve suddenly. He somehow just felt all of the will drain out of him at that moment, as if he knew he had just made the worst mistake of his now depressingly short life.

The man lashed out with a bloodcurdling snarl; his right leg came up and snapped, kicking the punk directly in the face twice, up and down; the sound, however, was not that of a solid blow, but a grotesque, bone-crushing, wet ripping sound.

The man spun around with the force of the kick and fell forward onto his buddy, the latter catching him; but when the man looked down, he screamed.

His head had a giant, bloody valley torn in it. From top to bottom, it was practically ripped in two, and the man was only holding onto his shrieking partner in the throes of death-he likely had no idea what hit him, to be sure. One eye continued to peer somewhere off to the side with the other part of the obliterated flesh and bone, but there was nothing to be done; it was like someone tore his head in two, but left it mostly on his head. Blood spewed from the mess as the other man was unable to let go in shock as he screamed. He finally threw the body down, the head's contents finally emptying on the street below.

The man who threw his dead friend down was the next to go; before he knew it, the insane man's right leg lashed out again at an angle, another horrid ripping sound permeated the air as he was sliced in two at the torso. His pieces fell to the ground as he twitched, his upper half seemingly grabbing onto things as he expired. Blood now coated the ground, the pools quickly widening.

"You fucking freak!" one said as he ran at the man with a broken bottle; he swept him down and utilized his other arm for just one moment as he grabbed him by the ankle and held him upside down as he fell; he drove his heavy heel into his chin as his head rested upon the ground.

A horrid and sickening crunch later and he dropped the corpse as his skull was obliterated, splattering its contents everywhere around.

The crazed fighter's head turned to the side as he grinned and moved toward his next victims.

One brave soul with an iron pipe in his hand tried to hit him with it; blocking it with his leg, he lashed out, kicking it in two, sending one end of the pipe into another's stomach, causing him to stumble over as he swiftly greeted him with an axe kick to the back of his head as he yelled, splitting his head open like a ripe melon as it emptied onto the pavement, adding his contribution of gore. The would-be attacker was simply decapitated with a swift roundhouse to the neck, being one of the luckier ones.

Down to two, the now blood-drenched man walked at them as they struggled to figure a way out; the rattling chains and sound of the copious amounts of blood running into the gutters causing them to try to run and stumble, crashing into each other.

As one stumbled, the white-haired man gave him several quick kicks to the face with razor-like precision and power, smashing it in more and more with each wretched blow, the second man now falling back against the wall, staring up as the other fell next to him, though unfortunately not face down...not that there was anything left of his oozing mess of a skull.

A final kick against the wall did for him with a sickening, wet crushing sound.

As the pieces of the men remained behind him, the only sound remaining being the blood running into the somewhat trash-filled gutters, the man's chains and the wind whipping about, Jhun Hoon-a very, very different version of his old self-made his way out of the alley and toward the park, seemingly heading even more toward the outskirts of South Town to an abandoned apartment complex.

Justice? He thought to himself.

Was...that it? He had administered justice to the men he had found in the overpass. The clothes fit him well, it turned out.

Maybe...they need more.

Maybe this is justice.

"Move it. C'mon."

The detective-one Donald Morris-had just parked his aging vehicle and made his way out; it was way too early to be dragged out of bed on a pleasant fall morning that just happened to be one of his days off this week, or so he thought. The graying, slightly overweight man-not a particularly physical specimen when it came to law enforcement, but he would admit he hated that part of it and actually preferred the paperwork-had gotten the distressed call at six-thirty, tumbled out of bed, gotten dressed, and made his way out into the cloudy fall morning. Only about thirty-five out at the moment-it had been a chillier than normal October-he pulled his coat around himself and sipped some of the coffee he had gotten from the convenience store near his house.

He had just had to deal with the fallout of a situation two weeks ago, with a mess that happened under an overpass-four or so hooligans were brutally killed, their heads smashed in and their bodies nearly ripped apart, as if an animal had gotten to them. Some of them had been missing articles of clothing. Due to that one having been out of South Town's borders, it had been handled by the state, but any sort of stories otherwise had dried up on it-they were being completely mum. He hadn't even been there, he had just mostly read the reports and saw the pictures. They were certainly horrifying, but luckily, it wasn't his problem.

This was, unfortunately, in his jurisdiction, much to his chagrin, and thus, his problem.

There were several beat cops there, and all of them looked absolutely ghastly. At least three of them had thrown up, apparently, he was told.

Finding the one who looked the most together, he tapped him on the arm.

"D...detective," he answered.

"What in the hells is going on that it looks like half the force walked into a slaughterhouse?"

"I...well, half the force did walk into a slaughterhouse, sir."

"Where is this apparent slaughterhouse, if I may ask?"

"T...this way." The pale officer waved him forward to the spot in the alley.

Detective Morris had seen a fair bit in his time, as South Town was known to cough up a ghastly corpse or three. He had also seen his share; not long ago, over in what they called Second Southtown, he had to check out a few kills that had involved dismembered corpses, where the limbs had seemingly been ripped from their sockets by someone's bare hands, as well as having massive slashes dug into them. Having never found the killer, all they had to go on were some ruts dug into the wall, seemingly by the killer's fingers. While Second Southtown was not in his jurisdiction either, they would often sort of give each other a hand if the crimes started piling up.

That incident had only been about three people total, and they were separated. Ghoulish maybe, horrible certainly, but nothing compared to what he saw when he turned the corner. Stopping, he blankly stared at the scene, absently sipping his coffee.

These men had indeed been butchered by something. At first, he would have guessed a very large axe, but upon closer inspection, the wounds were almost torn. He could not place a weapon for such injuries. He then thought of a hammer, perhaps, judging by the fact a couple of their heads had been smashed like melons on the ground, but even that wouldn't have explained it.

Another detective-a rather annoying one with the last name of Birkon, the detective recalled, came sauntering up.

"About time you got here, Morris," he said. "As you see it's all hands on deck."

"No shit," he said, sipping his coffee, pausing to light a cigarette. "Where's the rest of the force? Rian? His new partner? Ryan? Is anyone else we know helping here?"

"Rian and his new buddy are in Second Southtown. Ryan's on vacation with her fiancé."

"That's right," Morris said. "Well, good on them that they're missing this fun. Maybe they'll get to witness some of it later. Anyway, where's the coroner?"

"He's over here. Hey, Farley!" Birkon yelled, in his rather nasally voice which grated on Morris' nerves when he wasn't facing down a pile of gore that used to be people.

"Yeah?"

"Detective Morris wants a rundown."

"Well send him over, can't you see I have my hands full here? Or you wanna pick the parts up?"

Muttering swears under his breath, Birkon waved Morris over as the rest of the cleanup crew poked around, mostly numbering evidence, or what even counted as evidence. One of the officers was looking at the chain that had been torn, scratching his head.

Farley-a slightly heavyset man with scruffy, short-cut brown hair-stood, his gloved hands bloody to the elbows, as were the protective boots and smock he wore over everything. He had been standing over a corpse that had apparently had his head somehow cleaved or torn in two. Lots of small pieces of numbered plastic were positioned around as Farley tried to link parts with bodies, though mostly he just had to use clothing for that. Turning around, he nodded toward the detective. Morris didn't mind Farley all that much, though he thought he was a little weird.

"So...this guy," he said, nodding down. "Head cleaved in two...but...it was like, it was torn by something blunt. I can't even explain it."

Morris looked down, shuddering. "How many hits?"

"That's the thing, boss. This is one hit."

"Axe?"

"I thought so. But...I dunno. The injury would have been different. And the guy would have had to have been very strong to do it in one hit to this level. Two or three, sure, but just one? And it must have been pretty damn blunt."

"South town has some pretty big fellows," he said.

"Yeah...but then I'm looking at some of these others." Pointing to another corpse, who was cleaved in two on an angle, he nodded. "That? Done with a blunt axe? Even a sharp one would have needed something special."

Morris rubbed his chin, deciding he'd need another smoke right about now. "What happened here?" He pointed to a particularly colorful part of the pavement.

"Crushed skull. Maybe with the blunt side? But judging by the angle he was being held upside down."

"Farley, tell me straight. What the fuck are we dealing with here?"

"Gimme a sip of your coffee and I'll let you know."

"It's getting cold already."

"Do I look like I care?"

Deciding to be nice and holding out the cup for the man to take a sip while his hands were messed up-he was picking through some pretty horrid remains bright and early-he swallowed and inhaled Morris' secondhand smoke as if it were ambrosial. "It's almost like we're dealin' with some kinda...cyborg or somethin."

"Cyborg? Do those exist?"

"Rumor has it that at a couple of those tournaments they had some. I think so."

"So you're tellin' me there's a crazy robot out there?"

"Until I get a better look, I dunno no person-under a bunch of drugs or not-that could do this."

"What about Second Southtown?"

He shrugged. "Same guy?"

"Some limbs were ripped out of their sockets and there were slashes in the brick, by the sound. It was like they were played with as if they were dolls or somethin'. Different from this, this guy seems to just get off on leaving little bits behind." He sighed. "Maybe he figured out a new way to decorate the place, though."

"Alright. I'll go talk to their coroner. I'll get back to you." Farley went to try to avoid stepping on a limb as he picked his way back through the corpses.

"Jesus fucking christ, I don't get paid enough for this shit," Morris muttered under his breath, grabbing his phone to make a few calls.

The apartment was found abandoned. It still had furniture, it's previous occupants leaving apparently quickly. One would wonder if they had died and were taken out, the old, dusty and sparse furniture being left behind since no one wanted it.

Jhun sat in a chair, his black clothes still bloodied from the night's slaughter. He stared out of the window, waiting for it to grow dark again.

There were more in South Town that were probably misbehaving, after all. He could go sort them out, too.

He was doing them a favor, wasn't he?