Hello Darkness, My Old Friend (Worm) (Patreon)

Themes: Horror, No Sex (yet), Shadowy Tentacle Monster

Word Count: 2,740

Summary: Sophia is out on an unsanctioned patrol as Shadow Stalker when she comes across a group of E88 preparing to rape an Asian woman. Pausing for a moment, the parahuman pauses to see if the victim will fight back and live up to Sophia's predator and prey philosophy. What happens next, no one sees coming.

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend 

Sophia never felt freer than in these moments, as she glided across the rooftops of Brockton Bay in her shadow state without a voice in her ear or a nagging peer at her side. There was something to be said about these off the books patrols. And that something was pretty much that they kept her sane. If she’d had to go through life being Sophia Hess the track star and Shadow Stalker the probationary Ward, without any way to let off steam in the meantime, she would have snapped by now.

As it was, the dark skinned parahuman got plenty of chances to relieve stress. A vicious grin spread across Sophia’s face as a woman’s cry split the air and one such example of stress relief made itself known to her senses. Moving quickly, Shadow Stalker bounded from roof to roof, making her way towards the source of the cries for help emanating from a nearby alley.

Looking over the edge of the roof, Sophia set her eyes upon the site below, taking in what was happening in just seconds with the ease of a natural predator. There were four skinheads below, all with very telltale tattoos on their flesh. These were Empire Eighty-Eight thugs at their finest, the lowest of the low when it came to Nazi scum in Brockton Bay. These were the kind of guys who would never be anything BUT trash. Hell, one of them even had a swastika on his forehead.

They had an Asian woman in their grasp, but from the looks of things she wasn’t ABB. Looked to just be a random civilian, though that wasn’t stopping the white supremacists from hurling vitriol and racist epithets at the terrified lady near constantly. Sophia watched all of this in silence. She already knew she was going to go down there and beat the crap out of the lot of them, but she wanted to see what the woman would do first. 

Would she fight? Was she predator or prey? Sophia had a very clear world view, and as far as the dark skinned girl knew, everyone could be fit into it. Quite suddenly, the biggest skinhead, probably the leader of the group, stepped forward and grabbed hold of the Asian woman’s blouse. She cried out as he pulled and tore her shirt off of her body to the laughing catcalls of his compatriots. 

That was racism for you; Sophia couldn’t help thinking a bit sardonically. The men had no reason thinking the woman less than them because of her skin color or her ethnicity or whatever, but they still lusted after her body. In short order, the woman’s tits were naked, her bra cut from her body. They were going to rape her, yet still Sophia leaned in, hoping to see a spark of fight, of defiance in the victim’s eyes or stance.

There was nothing there though. Instead of struggling or crying out, the Asian woman clammed up as soon as the musclebound skinhead leader backhanded her across the face and told her to shut up. She curled in on herself and simply whimpered uselessly as he roughly mauled her tits with his mammoth sized hands right then and there. 

It made Sophia sick, both the Nazi trash and their weak willed victim. But that said, it was about time for her to step in and teach the civilian what a true credit to their gender looked like. Straightening up, Sophia tensed in preparation for jumping off of the roof when suddenly, it happened. A crash, deeper in heavily shadowed dead end alley, attracts the attention of everyone.

Sophia’s head turns at the same time as the skinheads’ and their victim. All of them peer into the darkness for a brief moment, trying but failing to make out anything that could have made the noise. With a growl, the boss skinhead points at one of his subordinates and jerks his head towards the shadowed part of the alley. Slowly, the lower ranking skinhead moves off to check out the sound, while the large fuck he answered to went back to molesting the woman in his grasp.

The dark skinned parahuman wasn’t so easily distracted though, she kept her eyes on the darkened end of the alley as the thug almost seemed to disappear into it. A moment later her vigilance is rewarded as a loud scream splits the night.

“HOLY SHI-!”

The scream is immediately cut off and a loud gurgling sound follows it as Sophia can hear the sound of bones snapping and cartilage crunching. The skinheads react immediately, shining flash lights down the alley and illuminating the darkened part of it, however briefly. Thanks to this, Sophia is able to see the same thing the Empire thugs do. The arm of their friend, right before it’s dragged out of their sight behind a dumpster with the rest of his limp body.

“Damn it! What the hell is going on over there?! Go on you idiots, check it out, there’s three of you ain’t there!”

It’s clear that the thugs are more afraid of the known quantity that is their giant musclebound leader, rather than the unknown that’s just taken their friend and done fuck knows what with. Sophia finds herself worrying her bottom lip with her teeth as she watches the three men slowly approach the end of the alley and look around the corner of the dumpster.

“F-fucking CHRIST!”

“What the hell happened to Brandon? His body, fuck I’m going to be sick!”

The third guy was sick, any words he might have said completely nullified by his sudden intense need to upchuck at whatever it was that they’d witnessed behind that dumpster. Sophia glanced away in disgust at the sight of the scum throwing up, and that’s the only reason her eyes caught what happened next. The skinhead leader was holding the Asian woman in front of him like a shield now, brow furrowed and a gun in his hand as he peered at his men down the alley.

“What is it?! What the fuck are you seeing?”

But what caught Sophia’s eye, what made her tense up in anticipation and just the smallest bit of fear, was the shadow slowly and carefully detaching itself from the wall behind the big broad shouldered skin head. Her first thought was that someone was stealing her shtick, and she didn’t know whether to be upset or curious. That thought was quickly replaced by a tendril of fear as the shadow coalesced into a humanoid but altogether unnatural shape and then suddenly lashed out with something that was the approximation of an arm.

It slammed into the back of the skinhead leader and he screamed as his arms were suddenly forced out from his body on either side, his back arching and his chest pushed forward. Looking down the slope of said chest, the white supremacist found a black tendril of darkness punched straight through his chest. And impaled on it, still beating, still twitching, was the racist’s heart.

Sophia watched all of this, her heart rate rising rapidly and her eyes wide beneath her mask as her hands clutched at the grips of her dual crossbows. The skinheads at the end of the alley had turned back as well, and the Asian woman who’d originally been their victim was against a nearby wall, staring with eyes even wider than Sophia’s. 

And in the center of it all, the monstrous shadow creature raised the skinhead’s leader off the ground and then slammed a second tendril of darkness into the man’s body. The big guy began to shake and spasm, and then almost seemed to collapse in on himself. The skinhead’s muscles vanished, shrinking into his body even as his skin turned a blackish blue. The tall broad shouldered body withered into that of a husk by the shadow monstrosity and was subsequently dropped to the street as the eyeless thing seemed to turn its attention to the three remaining thugs.

Even the Asian woman’s belated horrified scream as she beheld the mutilated corpse of the man who had been about to rape her didn’t draw the thing’s attention. It took a step towards the trio of skinheads it had trapped in the alley and past the woman, and she proceeded to faint on the spot. Sophia only noticed it now as she was managing to calm her racing heart, but the shadow creature was getting bigger as it moved towards the last three skinheads. It was bulking up.

Then its arm tentacles lashed out towards its remaining prey and Sophia was treated to front row seats as the remaining men were eviscerated and consumed in the same way that their leader had been. They tried to run this way and that, and failed utterly, horrified girlish screams emanating from more than one throat. The last one fell to his knees and begged for his life through full body sobs, and Sophia wrinkled her nose as the pungent smell of the man pissing himself reached her nostrils.

Not that begging did any better than running for any of them. The last skinhead died on his knees rather than on his feet, but he died all the same, just as gruesomely as his friends. If it wasn’t straight out of a horror movie and Sophia wasn’t frozen in place in the face of what was clearly a greater predator, the dark skinned girl might have even been excited.

But any excitement was replaced by sheer bone deep terror as the unnatural thing down in the alley took its time to begin dragging the drained husks of its victims deeper into the shadows. It left the unconscious Asian woman, passed out against a wall near the mouth of said alley, alone even as it did its grisly work, and Sophia couldn’t help wondering why the victim was being left alone.

Despite her fear, the cape found herself leaning forward slightly, peering down at the shadow monster as if squinting at it would give her all the secrets of the horrifying thing. Instead, all she did was manage to scrape her boot against the surface of the roof, and Sophia’s eyes widened in fear as the shadow turned sharply, seemingly looking up towards her location without eyes.

The instant she saw it moving Sophia ducked out of sight as best she could, huddling against the wall and shivering as she instinctively tried to hide from the creature. What a sight she made, the great predator dressed in the imposing black of her Shadow Stalker costume, her mask that of a stern woman’s face even as her body shook in fear beneath her voluminous cloak.

It was this realization that led to Sophia forcing herself to calm down once more. Breathing in and out slowly, the dark skinned girl got ahold of herself and slowly, ever so slowly, straightened up and peeked back over the edge of the roof down into the alley below. There was nothing there anymore besides the passed out victim, not even the bodies of the skinheads were visible. Getting to her feet, Sophia placed her gloved hands on the roof ledge and leaned forward, brow furrowed as she looked for any sign at all of the monstrosity or his prey.

It was in the moment that Sophia began to wonder if she’d imagined it all that something curled around her ankles. The young woman had only a second to look down and see the shadowy tendrils of the creature wrapped around her ankles, coming up through the roof of the building she was on before she was pulled under.

“FU-!”

Her word was cut off as she was forced into a form of her shadow state, dragged through the roof and then floor after floor until she was pulled straight through the wall of the alley she’d just been peering into and thrown straight into the wall across the way. Sophia slammed into that wall instead of going through it and the breath was knocked straight out of her as she was left slumped against the surface, trying to get her bearings.

Before she could, something curled around her neck and lifted her off the ground. Sophia struggled as best she could as she found herself face to… shadow with what should have been eye level with the horrifying monstrosity. What acted as an approximation for the thing cocked to one side and Sophia got the distinct impression that she was being studied. 

This hypothesis was further supported by the almost inquisitive manner in which it was treating her. Its free arm moved through her body without harming her and Sophia shuddered as it slid up and down her spine. Then, tentacles sprouted off of the shadow creature and lashed out at her as well, to no effect. Well, no harmful effect. Sophia was certainly feeling something, like ice cold water drenched down her back over and over again as the creature explored her shadowy form with its own.

Sophia wished with all her heart that she could phase out, but her powers weren’t working against it, evidenced by the shadows holding her by the throat as her struggles weakened and her body slowly went limp in the creature’s grasp. The dark skinned parahuman had never been more terrified, feeling like prey for the first time in a long time, and not knowing what she could possibly do about it.

Slowly, the young woman closed her eyes, whimpering in much the same way the Asian woman she’d mentally derided earlier as she prepared herself for death. She was terrified, petrified, and absolutely sure that at any moment she was going to die, scooped out and consumed in the same way those racist fucks had been.

Then there was a sound from the shadow monster for the first time. It said something, a deep guttural sound emanating from a thing that had no mouth and had no right making anything approximating intelligent noises. Yet despite herself she felt a shiver going down her spine as it made a chuffing noise that Sophia realized was laughter.

Then it dropped the dark skinned Ward to the ground and turned away, leaving her sitting there on her ass, wide eyed and jaw dropped open behind her mask as she watched it walk into the darkness at the end of the alley. The shadow creature melded into the shadows there, disappearing completely and utterly. It was several minutes before Shadow Stalker quieted her racing heart.

After she’d managed to stamp down at least partially on her fear, the young woman was left with anger and rage. The damn thing… it had laughed at her! It had made a fool of her! Gritting her teeth, Sophia got to her feet, picking up her crossbows from where she’d dropped them as the thing choked her out and looking down the alley at the darkness.

Then, spinning around she ran in the other direction. This wasn’t running away, Sophia told herself. It was a tactical move. She had to tell the Protectorate after all, she had to let the PRT know abo-. The probationary ward stuttered to a stop, eyes wide.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t report this to anyone. It would be a violation of her probation, and the bolts in her crossbows were the lethal steel-tipped kind that would get her in even more trouble, her nonlethal ammunition left behind.

Sophia would not be telling anyone what had happened here tonight. After a moment, she realized she wouldn’t even tell Emma. The girl wouldn’t understand why Sophia had frozen up, why the dark skinned girl had stopped being a predator for a moment and become that thing’s prey. The red head would just judge her, and Sophia didn’t need that right now, even from a survivor like Emma.

Resolved to keep what had happened in that alley a secret, Sophia continued on her way. Maybe the Asian woman would wake up and alert the proper authorities. Maybe she wouldn’t. It wasn’t Sophia’s problem anymore. Surprisingly, that thought made the young woman feel better as she got back to the rooftops and began gliding through the air across the city back towards her home.

The shadow creature didn’t want her, surely. It’d even confirmed it by scanning her over and then releasing her. She wasn’t its prey. She wasn’t…