Disclaimer: I own the idea of the Beast, but his real identity is the property of his creator, as are the League. By the way, when the killer appears, picture him as looking like Gary Oldman, just to give you something to start with.
Feedback: I would REALLY appreciate some of it.
Sean Molloy-1: Nice guess, but it's FAR more dangerous than either of those two...
Elenrod: Glad you liked the Mina and Tom Bits, and the Logan thing; I wasn't sure about it, but I figured I should mention it to establish his background at this time.
LotRseer3350: Well, here comes the League's first fight with the creature- and by the way, I'm not ignoring the fact that Van Helsing is from the same era as the League, I just think that, him having killed a radically Hyde and Dracula and saved an equally different Frankenstein in the film, I don't think he'd work.
Legacy
As they charged down the streets towards the source of the scream, Hartdegen found himself praying that the creature wouldn't pull a vanishing act on them. Admittedly, Mycroft hadn't mentioned anything about how the creature had never been caught, but Hartdegen was personally of the opinion that it was either a good climber or capable of flight.
As he rounded the next corner, he noticed that Jekyll had opened a phial of his serum and was swallowing it even as he ran. Skinner and Logan slowed down slightly to allow Jekyll room to transform, while Hartdegen just tore on in front of the group.
Part of him was wondering how he'd ended up leading the way in this charge, but he shook it off; the why wasn't important right now.
What was important was that they find this creature before it could hurt anyone else.
Hartdegen spun around another corner, hearing the now- familiar pounding of Edward Hyde's feet from behind him, along with Logan and Skinner from even further back...
And froze at the sight.
In front of him was a man, crouching on the street with a woman's body in his arms. The man's trousers were ripped at the bottom of the legs, his shirt hung on him in tatters, and his feet were bare. However, the most noticeable thing about him, even in the moonlight, was the fact that his arms were covered in blood up to the elbows.
Hartdegen's gaze shifted to the body the man was holding, and he felt ready to throw up. He couldn't quite make out the form in the moonlight, but from what he could see of her, her clothes had been torn in several places, and her skin had been...
Had been ripped off.
Like the corpse in the Military Intelligence morgue had had its skin ripped off.
"Stop that!" Hartdegen yelled, brandishing his gun in front of him and praying he didn't sound as terrified to others as he did to himself. "Get up and put your hands where I can see them!"
Inwardly, he was feeling very confused. This man didn't look anything like the creature he'd been expecting in the least; he'd been expecting something larger.
Then again, even if he wasn't what they'd been hunting, he was still a killer. If nothing else, they'd be making London a slightly safer place if they took him to jail.
Then the man turned around, and Hartdegen instantly re-evaluated the danger the man posed to them. He had a small moustache and long grey hair, cut to a similar length to Sawyer's, and a focused glare in his eyes...
And he also had a long strand of bloodstained flesh hanging from his mouth, which was covered in blood. If this wasn't their killer, it was a copycat killer.
And that could never be a good thing.
The flesh dropped from the man's mouth, and he got to his feet, not even bothering to wipe the blood from his face.
"Do you have a death wish?" he asked politely.
"No, but you do, it seems," Hyde said, walked forward to stand in front of Hartdegen. "Committing murders like that? Didn't you know that it would attract the attention of the Government? You're not exactly as quick as Jack the Ripper at moving about, you know."
The man smiled. "Oh, I knew that I would attract attention, Edward Hyde," he said, looking directly at the large form with a small smile on his face. "In fact, I was counting on it."
Hyde blinked in surprise.
"You know my name?" he asked.
"Oh, I do indeed," the man replied. Then he shifted his stance to a combat position, raising one hand to point at the League members. "Shall I show you what I'm capable of?"
Hyde shook his head, smiling in an almost mocking manner as he looked at the man. "You picked the wrong foe to try and out-muscle," he said casually. "Somewhere along the line, I forgot how to lose."
"Same," Logan said, as he extended his claws and aimed them at the killer. "By the way, what do we call you?"
The man smiled, a smile that seemed to hint that he found this whole affair funny and nobody else had managed to get the joke.
"Call me the Beast," he said.
Then he leapt towards Hyde, tackling the man-mountain to the ground before Hyde could even start to throw a punch. Having struck Hyde, the 'Beast' (And Hartdegen was beginning to see why he'd given himself the name; he definitely wasn't a normal human being) vaulted back onto his feet, grabbed Skinner's pistol before the invisible man could react, had pointed it into the sky, and fired.
Hartdegen heard a cry of pain. Glancing up, he could just make out a shape, falling from the sky some hundreds of yards away...
Mina.
This man had shot Mina from almost four hundred yards away, in nearly total darkness.
He was good.
Even Tom would have trouble pulling off a shot like that, Hartdegen thought to himself as he leapt towards the Beast, in a desperate attempt to try and tackle him to the ground. And he's pretty much the best shot with a gun alive in the world today.
Just before he could reach the man, however, his foe spun around, striking him almost directly in the side of his head. Hartdegen flew away towards a wall, but was thankfully caught by Logan before he could hit it himself.
He looked up at Logan, and nodded his thanks. Logan shrugged casually and placed Hartdegen back on his feet before his claws popped out of his hands, and he leapt towards the Beast.
This time, the Beast actually took some damage before he threw his opponent away; three long scratches on his back from Logan's right claws. However, it didn't last; no sooner had Logan been thrown away, then the scars started to heal up with a speed that Skinner had only ever seen on two people.
Mina Harker and Dorian Gray.
Oh crap, he whispered, as the Beast spun around to face him, a malicious grin in its eyes.
"Ah, Mr Rodney Skinner," he said, a malicious smile on his lips. "I should probably tell you, I've been looking forward to showing someone this trick for a long while. Who better than you?"
He closed his eyes...
And vanished. The only left were his trousers, which fell to the ground as soon as Skinner had registered the disappearance.
No sooner had the trousers fallen down into a heap, something struck Skinner directly in the stomach, knocking his gun out of his hand and him off his feet. As Skinner flew through the air, he briefly found himself remembering the brick wall behind him. The brick wall he was flying towards even as he spoke...
He wasn't going to survive this.
Just as that thought flashed across his mind, something grabbed him by the shoulders, stopping his mad hurtle through the air almost as suddenly as it had started.
Skinner blinked. He was slightly shaken, but he was otherwise in perfect shape.
Looking back, he saw who had caught him.
It was Terry.
He smiled at the robot; freaky or not, Terry was still an ally, and allies were something they appeared in desperate need of.
Terry smiled back at Skinner, before placing Skinner back down on his feet and spinning around to strike something Skinner couldn't see with a powerful punch. A slight thump was heard, and then the Beast had reappeared in front of the two of them, now with a slight bruise on his cheek.
The Beast looked up at Terry, looking, if possible, even more ticked off than he had before. "How the hell'd you do that?" he asked, rubbing his bruise.
"Mostly because you weren't expecting me to do it," Terry replied, as Logan, Hyde and Hartdegen managed to regain their feet and circled around the Beast, determined that he wouldn't catch them off guard again. Terry looked down an alleyway, and smiled. "Here comes the cavalry."
Following Terry's line of vision, Skinner saw Sawyer, Mina, Frank and Nemo come running down the street, although Sawyer was carrying Mina for some reason. Closer inspection revealed that Mina had a bullet-wound in her left thigh, which, even with her vampire healing powers, wasn't something that would go away in a matter of seconds.
"Ah," the Beast said, smiling as he saw the rest of the League walk, or hobble, towards him. "Agent Sawyer, Mrs Harker, and Captain Nemo! Good to see that the original League is still intact." He looked over at Logan, Hartdegen, Terry and Frank. "Although I see that it has acquired some new members since I saw it last."
"'Saw it last'?" Nemo asked. "What do you mean that? We have never encountered you before, to my knowledge."
"Oh, we never met face to face, Captain, I assure you of that," the Beast replied. "However, I do owe a great debt to three of you in particular, although I do resent the fact that you killed an old friend of mine."
"What?" Frank asked, looking at the Beast in bafflement. "Would you mind telling us what the hell you're talking about?"
The Beast smiled. "With pleasure," he said simply.
He looked up at the sky, closed his eyes, and briefly appeared to be concentrating. Then his entire skin grew scales, turned green, and several bones burst out of his face. His hands and feet grew long, sharp claws, and his arms and chest suddenly bulged out with muscles that looked like they were at least as large as Hyde's.
He looked at the horrified League with a grin.
"Actually," he said, his voice now sounding like he was talking through a mouthful of water, "I think I'll show you what I mean."
Then he struck out at the four newly-arrived League members with an unbelievably powerful right hook. It only knocked Frank and Mina to the ground, due to their higher-than-human endurance levels, but Nemo and Sawyer found themselves striking the ground that they'd been running along only a few minutes ago.
If there'd been something behind them... Logan thought to himself.
But then he shook that train of thought off. He couldn't worry about his friends right now; there was nothing he could do for them at present. All he could do was tackle this Beast (And he now saw exactly why the guy had called himself that), and hope that nobody would get killed in the process.
He leapt towards the Beast, landing on its back just as it sent Skinner and Hartdegen flying after Nemo and Sawyer. As it turned around to face Terry and Hyde, Logan landed on its back, slashing at it with his claws as he did so.
The Beast didn't even seem to notice the cuts. It just reached back, picked Logan off its back, and threw him at Terry.
As Logan flew through the air and struck his friend, he found himself wishing that his healing factor was better than it was; with something this powerful, he couldn't be down even for a few minutes...
But he couldn't fight the facts.
He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
"Oh crap," Hyde whispered, as he looked up at the creature in front of him. He didn't know what it was, and Henry had no suggestions to offer either. All he knew for sure was that, whatever it was...
It scared him.
He, Edward Hyde, guilty of murders that could have horrified some of the most dangerous serial killers in history, was scared of this thing.
If it could take out the rest of the League with so little effort, he doubted he'd have better luck, no matter how much more powerful he was than the rest of them...
But nothing will stop me trying! Hyde thought.
In a fit of desperation, he launched a powerful punch at the Beast's head, knocking it back by a few feet. Unfortunately, his fist struck one of the horns on the Beast's head, so all he succeeded in doing was scratching his hand.
The Beast smiled at Hyde as Hyde tried to launch a second punch, despite the blood that was now streaming from his other hand. The Beast caught the flying fist and twisted the arm back, causing Hyde to wince in pain.
The Beast leaned in towards Hyde, grabbing Hyde's other wrist as he did so.
"I hope this shows you the truth," the monster whispered at Hyde. "You cannot stop me. You have no chance against me. So leave me alone, or die."
Then he head-butted Hyde, knocking the far more human monster into unconsciousness.
As Hyde fell into oblivion, one final thought crossed him mind.
Oh crap...