The Crow (Retired Vigilante)

———————————————————————Character Sheet!

Name: Madison Seagraves (AKA The Crow)

Location: Detroit, Michigan

Alignment: Anti-Hero

Appearance: 63 year old caucasian woman, graying black hair, slim build.

Abilities: Shadow Manipulation

Weakness: Old Age

———————————————————————

“Good evening, my name is Stephan Chase; the crime wave that has swept the streets of Detroit the last few weeks appears to be coming to a bloody conclusion as several known members of The Harrow Boys have been found strung up by street lamps, each of them having been confirmed dead”

“The metro hero chief released an announcement earlier today confirming that each **** was committed by ‘The Crow’ a sort of boogeyman among the cities criminal element”

“Details on this individual are slim and the department has opened a hotline for anyone with information on the whereabouts of this individual”

“Yeh, I saw it once! It was small and wavy like a living shadow! that thing gutted my boy Fish from tits to taint; where the hell are the capes now?!”

“Uh, yeah I saw it once… well… it was more like a her, I had gotten attacked by some thug and she just… materialized! Slit his throat and handed me back my purse before vanishing!”

“Ain’t no way that thing is human, I’ve seen them fling parahumans around that were double, triple its size!”

Consciousness doesn’t arrive politely today, you aren’t gently pulled from your dreams and into reality, you’re dragged, kicking and screaming before being thrown back into your body.

The radio blares next to your ear, telling more tales of woe, an entire congregation butchered in their own church during Sunday mass, over 600 discarded firearms found in the sewers, each of them likely a **** weapon, their previous wielders will never be identified, there’s too many people hurting today.

You sit up, your back already pleading for mercy as you rise to your feet with gritted teeth, the pain you may abide but with each ache and crack from your joints, you are reminded of just how far you’ve fallen.

You can’t help but chuckle as you look out the window, garbage littering the road as green clouds hover in the morning sky, threatening to soak the streets with their foul contents, seems the city itself is going through it too.

Few people understand quite why the rain in Detroit is so toxic, most don’t care, they brush it off.

“it’s a shitty place with shitty rain”

No one can solve it, not with any measurable scientific method, because the cause isn’t scientific.

You remember that night well, on the rooftop of Latham Tower, the tallest building in old Detroit, a ritual took place.

From what you gathered, a disgruntled mage by the name of Elias Hulgrin had a beef with Latham Corp going back generations, he sought to plunge the entire district with a miasma that would roll through the streets like a phantom, **** any who come into contact.

You were so close to stopping him, you were mere feet from him, you could practically feel him when he cried out those last words, the ones that sealed the cities fate all those years ago.

“May you **** on your lies! May mothers look upon there babes and ask god why?!” The words acted like a final turn of a key in a lock, forever entombing the city in a sickly green overcast.

You always imagined he intended the spell to be more harmful then acid rain and an uptick in birth defects, you always imagined he wanted to bathe the entire city in foul smog, **** the life from the city and her citizens. You’ll never know now, because he’s dead. And you killed him.

You were moving so fast, you couldn’t stop yourself, you barely wanted to after all, he was scum, and he intended to hurt the city a whole lot more. But as you lopped his head off, the secret to the spell died with him. Sure others tried to research it, plenty of mayoral candidates promised that they’d be the ones to banish the foul magic or science run amok. All have failed.

Time went on and people adapted, the news tracks the weather, tells folk when it will be safe to walk, plastic tarps covered parked cars and line the rooftops of every building in the city. The cities people are resilient, but everyone has their limits.

Each spring carry’s with it the silent threat of ****, a corrosive burning that melts a man down to the bones, sometimes not even those are spared on particularly bad days, sometimes all that’s left of someone is a red stain.

You flick on the television, sitting on the edge of your bed as the news continues on with a story of a young woman and her baby girl, both went to play at the park one day and… poof… gone.

No indication of what went on that day, no left behind belongings, no bodies, no red stains. Nothing.

The husband is clearly innocent, the look of terror on his face is one you’ve seen on a thousand victims, innocent people who were only trying to live and had something unspeakable happen to them.

You grip the sheets, you don’t even notice as your knuckles turn white, all you can do is stare at the picture of the mother and her young daughter, their smiles wide and happy as they pose for the camera.

You hear a whisper in the back of your head, one you’re all too familiar with, a bitter, jaded voice, each word holding more then its share of venom as it speaks.

“They’ll never find them, the capes are too busy giving speeches and the cops are less then useless” this is something you can’t even argue against, you know the voice is right, those two will NEVER be found.

“This never should have happened, you could have stopped this, you could have saved them, but no, you want to hide in this apartment, you want to fade into nothing while the world burns” again the voice is right, it’s been almost 3 decades since you last took to the streets. Since you last made a difference.

“This city has no place for me anymore… they need to move on from the nightmare, they capes could ignore me while they were busy with alien invasions and incursions from demons, they won’t stand for me anymore…” you fire back, you hate every word, but it’s true, it’s what she would have told you if she were here.

“Fucking pathetic, so scared of the consequences that you’ll let the city tear itself apart, you’ll let family’s be destroyed and children go missing” the voice is viscous, every word steeped in barely contained rage, a poison that could be more powerful then that which resides in the clouds above.

The segment ends, moving onto the hourly weather report, clearing you for transport, sure she would understand if the weather kept you, but you tried not to disappoint.

With a sigh you climb into an outfit, pulling your coat tight over your body before heading out the door, you only have so long before the rain opens up again, and you have no wish to become one of those not so mysterious red stains that occasionally dot the streets.