Chapter Text
“You ready for another night of kicking ass and slitting throats?”
“Of fucking course, Dad! Why on Earth would I put so much effort into prepping for our nocturnal patrols if I wasn’t?!”
“Hahahaha, I know son, just making sure.”
Night time has fallen over the city of Musutafu. While most citizens would already be in bed or at the least getting ready to turn in to their beds, two specific individuals, father and son, had an important job to do.
Well...multiple jobs, given how they have been doing vigilante and contractual work for years, ever since the young boy was five. Counting this year, this would have been the seventh.
By now, virtually everyone knows them as the vigilante duo known as Nightshade and Onyx, known for operating only in the dead of night, stopping crime, torturing and killing heinous villains, and basically being the scourge of both pro-heroes and law enforcement. At this point, it had become almost expected for police stations across the city to receive nightly deliveries of unconscious, tied-up villains sporting serious injuries or dropped off locations of dead ones with their throats slit and various body parts burnt to charcoal.
Not much is known about the vigilante duo, other than that they appeared to be father-and-son, and that Nightshade had a fire-breathing quirk which he could bend to his will, while Onyx had inherited his father’s quirk among several others at his disposal, since the few witnesses who have seen the smaller vigilante in action have claimed that Onyx utilises multiple quirks (including strength-enhancement, electricity and wind currents alongside fire-bending) during his fights against criminals and villains.
So far, police had an estimated over a thousand injuries caused by the vigilante duo, and around eight-hundred fatalities within the Greater Tokyo region. A bounty skyrocketing into the trillions of yen had been placed on their capture or death ever since their kill count surpassed that of some of the most murderous villains to have ever rained down destruction and terror upon the country.
Yet despite the best efforts of the heroes and law enforcement, Nightshade and Onyx remained elusive, never seen for more than a few seconds and seemingly always ten steps ahead of everyone.
Tonight’s patrol would ultimately be pretty much standard like all the others preceding it, but it would end on a slightly different note that would change the game forever.
So far, it has been a productive night for Nightshade and Onyx.
They have stopped five muggings, two purse-snatchers, a gang-fight, three break-in attempts that resulted in one of the would-be robbers falling to their death, and four vehicle-thefts. And it wasn’t even midnight yet.
“Why don’t we stop to take a break for a moment?”
“Sure thing, Dad.”
Both vigilantes hopped onto the roof of a building somewhere in Musutafu’s industrial area. While the manufacturing and heavy industries still functioned in the era of quirks, industrial sites like the one they were in also became a hotbed for villain and criminal activity. All kinds of shady deals, acts of violence and all-round villany took place under the cover of darkness when the machines and factory were silent and no workers around to stop them.
It also didn’t help that industrial estates were not high on the priority list in the patrol-routes of pro-heroes, allowing crime to blossom and spread to pandemic levels once the sun set.
Our vigilante duo could not reconcile with that, so industrial estates became one of their favourite places to prowl, taking advantage of heroes’ flaws to deal out their own version of justice where it was sorely needed.
Father and son sat down against a low wall, unzipping their bags to pull out some snacks and energy-drinks of their own concoction to replenish their fuel reserves. The night was still young, after all, and they couldn’t afford to lose their strength against the criminal underworld.
As they consumed their fill and laughed about the house-breaker who fell to their death, the sound of fighting from the street below twitched Onyx’s black rabbit ears.
“Do you hear that?”
“Loud and clear, Dad.”
They peered over the building’s edge, thinking it was another gang fight.
It was even better.
It was a gang of ten low-level thugs, each brandishing a crude weapon of sorts, against one pro-hero, more specifically the underground hero known as Eraserhead. The eternally-tired hero seemed to be holding his own against the thugs, who seemed to come after him one after another, but from Onyx’s observation, exhaustion seemed to be taking its toll, especially since it appeared that one of the thugs had a lower-powered revival quirk, and was quite good at dodging Eraserhead’s attacks. Plus, it seemed that the pro-hero was bleeding in a number of places.
Nightshade turned to his son, “Ready to give our favourite underground hero some back-up?”
“Oh fuck yeah.”
Stowing away their empty canisters and packets, the vigilante duo leapt off from the roof, using air pressure from their modified boots to slow their fall. Stopping a foot over the street, they dashed straight into the fracas.
Eraserhead was just about to deliver a knockout punch to a thug caught in his capture weapon, when said thug was taken out by a flying kick from Nightshade.
“Heeyyy! How’s our favourite eternally-tired hero doing this quiet night?” the older vigilante cheekily waved hello, elbowing the nose of an incoming thug.
Eraserhead didn’t say anything as he went to deal with another thug, leaving Nightshade to knock out his target with well-aimed kicks throughout the body and finishing with a burst of fire to the groin.
Onyx applied a more mechanical approach to two advancing thugs. He electrocuted both with a modified taser set to just below lethal voltage, followed by several quick cuts to the tendons around the knees to fully incapacitate them with a surgical blade. Then, without even turning around, Onyx blocked a punch from behind. Grabbing the thug’s arm and putting it into an armlock, the young vigilante spun around and stabbed the man in the chest just shy of the heart. One quick slash of the blade across the chest was more than enough to send the thug to the ground into his last life throes before he bled out.
Within ten minutes, the entire battle was over. Only the two vigilantes and Eraserhead remained standing, with all ten thugs on the ground either severely injured and close to death, or already shuffled off the mortal coil and moved on to the next great adventure.
“Up top, son! That was a great workout!”
Eraserhead wearily watched the two vigilantes high-five one another, trying to battle the exhaustion to stay awake enough to capture them.
Onyx turned to the hero, “No need to thank us for helping you, Eraserhead. Though quick advice, you might want to get yourself checked out before you slide away into the darkness, you look ready to keel over at any moment.”
“We won’t hold you back any longer,” Nightshade continued, “we do have a reputation to uphold after all. See you around!”
Before Eraserhead could unfurl his capture weapon, both vigilantes had already dashed off into the night, leaving him behind with dead and dying thugs. Growling to himself, he activated his police communicator, “Dispatch to my current coordinates to round up ten thugs. Bring the medics because some are dead and the rest dying. Yes, this is the work of Nightshade and Onyx. I’m going after them.”
While permanently incapacitating ten thugs might seem like a good night’s job done, Nightshade and Onyx were not quite ready to hit the hay just yet.
They had another reason to be in this particular industrial estate tonight. They had a quarry waiting for them.
On the other end of the estate was an abandoned warehouse its former purpose for was unknown. Sliding down the corrugated metal roof and to the ground, Nightshade unlocked the doors and slid them open, letting his son enter before he did.
Closing the doors behind them, Nightshade turned on the power. A single lamp flickered on, casting a spotlight over a particular spot in the middle of the warehouse. That spot was occupied by an overweight, balding man with grease-stained clothes, tied to a rickety, rusty chair with rope.
Both vigilantes approached the man, who appeared to be out cold.
“You know what to do, son.”
Onyx gave a squeal of delight, taking out the taser he had used previously and delivered a painful shock to the man, yanking him back into consciousness immediately.
“W-What happened? W-What’s going on?” he realised that there were two individuals staring him down, “Who are you?!”
Nightshade replied coldly, “I’m not surprised that you don’t know us, Tsuru Abunura…”
“Quirk: Whole-body grease, serial child rapist, kidnapper, murderer, and paedophile,” Onyx ticked off.
“...but just so you know, we are Nightshade and Onyx,” Nightshade finished off ominously.
Tsuru’s eyes widened, “No...no please! Have mercy! Please spare me! I promise I’ll never do it again! Please, just let me go!”
Nightshade laughed mirthlessly, “Seriously? Let you go? After everything you have done to those poor innocent little children? You have a seriously fucked up mind to believe that we’d be so stupid to listen to your pitiful pleas for mercy.”
“I’m getting hives just from looking at him, Dad,” Onyx shuddered, “If I didn’t enjoy punishing these bastards as much as I do, I’d just put him down straight away.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Nightshade countered behind his mask, before turning back to the paedophile before them, “Now, I think we’ve chatted enough. You, Tsuru Abunura, have slipped away from justice long enough. It is time to face the music. Do you have the tools ready, son?”
Onyx opened his bag, “Right here, Dad.”
“Excellent,” the older vigilante nodded, “Now, brace yourself, you greasy bastard, for you’re in a for a world of pain.”
Ignoring the frantic cries for mercy, both vigilantes got to work.
Eraserhead knew something was not quite right when he heard screams coming from the distance.
Ignoring his exhausted body and bleeding wounds, he pushed himself forward in the direction of the screams, eventually coming to a warehouse that had honestly seen better days. Eraserhead swore under his breath when he realised the screams had faded away into nothing, and stumbled towards the door. Sliding it open, he quickly assessed the situation.
The warehouse was empty and dark, save for one single light acting like a spotlight over three individuals in the middle of the warehouse. He immediately recognised the two standing figures as Nightshade and Onyx, though it was the seated individual that was the main focus of the hero’s attention.
And also the reason Eraserhead almost threw up his stomach contents.
The man was slumped forward, covered in jagged surgical cuts that were either crudely cauterised with electricity or cooked from the outside in by fire. His entire body was slack, and his chest wasn’t moving.
Fuck...the man was dead. He was too late.
Nightshade turned around, “Eraserhead! What are you doing here?”
“You...killed that man…” the hero growled.
“Uh...Eraserhead, you’re forgetting that this is Tsuru Abunura, wanted child rapist, kidnapper, murderer and paedophile,” Onyx replied, “He’s already headed for the death penalty regardless if he was put into police custody and tried by the law. Seeing how he has evaded the heroes and law enforcement for more than a year, you clearly haven’t been doing your jobs that well. So we thought we’d do everyone a favour and dealt with the bastard ourselves.”
Eraserhead had to admit that the vigilante had a point. Tsuru Abunura had been giving everyone the slip (pardon the pun) for the longest time, since his quirk often ensured he evaded capture. And Onyx was right that the rape of a minor or child that results in the victim’s murder is an immediate sentence of death under the country’s penal code.
Still, that did not justify the use of brutal torture to punish the villain to death.
“You may be right, Onyx, but you and your father still took the law into your own hands. Therefore, I have no choice but to arrest you both-”
Eraserhead was unable to say anymore, as both exhaustion and blood loss finally pushed him over the edge. He crumpled to the ground in a dead faint, and remained motionless in a heap by the doorway.
Nightshade and Onyx turned to one another, the former speaking, “For such an effective hero, Eraserhead really doesn’t know his limits or when to call it a night.”
“I don’t think he cares about self-care or limiting himself, to be honest Dad,” Onyx replied, before shrugging, “Oh well, I suppose we should help him get back home and nurse him back to health. People in his life are going to start talking if he disappears.”
To Be Continued.