His features formed themselves from the darkness like a specter, even as he walked out of the shadows. His trench coat was worn and ragged, his shoes too old to make any sound against the time-blackened cobbles. He raised his head, and under his hat, was an ever roiling mass of white and black.
Dark and Light. Good and Evil. Never merging, white and black in an eternal masque. The pattern was reminiscent of those ink blots his psychiatrists had been so fond of; he knew this, and styled himself after them. He called himself Rorschach, and he was the last wall before Armageddon.
He walked in his hunched tread, hands tucked in his coat, the rim of his hat low over his shifting mask-face. To his right, there was the filth in the shadows, the dull-eyed beggars and bestial rapists, shrinking away from him. To his left, beyond the shadows, was the filth of the lights, the rich murderers and painted whores, unaware of him as they laughed in the bright neon. Bathing their sins in pink and yellow and green to hide the bloody reds. But they couldn't hide their stench. The stench of a sinner. The stench of evil.
Inside him, a beast howled at its constraints, frothing at the chance to grab the nearest seductress and clench his fist around her tendons till she coughed blood. But he held it in check; there were worse things to address tonight. Insects can be ignored; demons cannot.
He emerged from the winding bowels of the shadow-streets, into a dark neighborhood. His teeth clenched as he heard from a house what seemed to be a man hitting some sort of child; the beast howled and raged within him to kick through the flimsy door and put an end to the aggressor. With a low growl, he stopped himself. No. There is a purpose tonight.
Ignoring the continued cries, he looked at the apparent backside of a warehouse not too far away. Here, the streets were abandoned, and yellow bulbs flickered to bath the cobbles in a sickly hue. Despite his mediocre height, he covered his steps widely and swiftly, not even pausing as he wrenched a rusted pipe from a wall in a hiss of steam. As he approached the front, he became aware of a form walking towards him. Jim Cartier, middle aged white male. Average face, memorable only by a broken nose and the cowardice that dripped from every pore.
Rorschach stood silent as the man came closer. In another, dream-like life he had seen this Cartier before; he had clubbed the soft man in the nose with the sign bearing "The End Is Nigh" to convince him of his present betrayal.
In a nasal voice, he told Rorschach of the risk he was taking by doing this; nonetheless, he was fast to comply as a hand gripped him roughly by his hair.
"Lord!" breathed the man in panic, "Please, please… man, I told your friend I'd help… Just lemme go…"
He sighed in relief as the grip slackened, withdrew a key from his person to, as silently as he could, open the heavy lock on the outside. He turned around with a relieved grin, half of which flew out of his mouth as a metal pipe connected with it. He was down before he could comprehend the pain, much less yell.
Stepping over his body, a trench-coat wearing apparition pushes open the door; they creak into the belly of the warehouse, into absolute darkness. Unfazed, Rorschach walked into the belly of the beast, pipe held tight in a clenched fist, so that the hand beneath the glove knotted with pain.
He heard an echoing laugh behind him, even as the doors creak close. His head snapped back, but saw nothing; the darkness is absolute. The laughter repeats itself, now accompanied by the spark of an ignited matchstick. Looking at the pinprick of flame, Rorschach's mask-face morphed into a spread blot of fear; haloing the matchstick was a deathly pale, blood encrusted face, with knotted green hair and a red grin.
"Peek-a-boo!" cackled the apparition, and as Rorschach leapt at it, the match went out.