[Bulging Biceps] With your own two hands.

Daniel Cross climbs up the stairs, panting, soaked in sweat and cursing under his breath. She wasn't at that nosy neighbor's apartment, she wasn't at the grocery store, or the nearby clothing shop she always asked to visit. That exhausted the short list he had to work with, leaving him without a clue as to where she could've gone... and panic was quickly settling in. What would she do without him? Was his son in danger? He has to be protected... no, more than that...

She has to be protected, or such was Daniel's perception: she is ****, weak, and she completes him. Her absence is a void that fills him, and now more than ever did he feel the absence of allies. But he can't rely on anyone else: he didn't flee to this metropolis of sin on a whim, after all. People knew what he did in Buffalo, or they would've known if he stayed visible... and there was nowhere better to vanish in the state of New York than the bowels of Hell itself.

Their marriage, her location, their child: none of it was known or made official by the State, and that's how Daniel wanted it. Only God would judge him, and he knew that her delivery unto him was nothing short of a gift for his faithfulness. He sinned of course, and as he unlocks his apartment door he contemplates those early, heinous crimes, his sexual acts with a foster child he all but tortured into "marrying" him... but long has his mind's eye been twisted into a lens through which his crimes seem like a matter of providence.

But you've only a glimpse into this world of the paranoid criminal named Daniel Cross. You press the "UP" button on the elevator when you spot him coming out from the stairwell, and you remain silent until you hear the jingle of keys. You think you saw a brief flash of recognition, if only from when he threatened you all those weeks ago. The elevator doors opens as Daniel begins to unlock his apartment, and only then do you speak. "I know about your daughter, Daniel." The man-ape freezes. You step backwards into the elevator, and let the doors close... until they gently close on the thick, massive hand of a furious Mr. Cross.

The sensors do their job and open the doors once more to let him in, and he rushes at you with outstretched hands. "What the Hell did you say-?!"

You meet him halfway, your elbow rising to clip him under the chin. Your bones aren't much stronger, yet, but the **** of your muscles behind the upward swing means you may as well have swung a bat at his skull: he collapses to the floor, spitting blood and teeth as his words become unintelligible, angry noise. The elevator door closes, and heads to your destination: the roof.

You look down at the scum that ruined Ophelia's life. He seems pitiful now, even with all that muscle mass, but that haughty take is almost fatal when the man raises onto his knees and tries to hook right into your crotch. You swing your hips to avoid it and, keeping the momentum up, raise your knee to crash into the side of his head. Blood explodes from his ear as he reels back and away from you, his back quickly finding the elevator doors.

Cussing through spit and blood, he uses the doors as a wall to push himself up, leaning against them with both hands up in some semblance of a boxing stance. "WHERE IS SHE?!" he roars.

"She's safe... for once." A low growl bubbles from his throat... until the elevator stops. The doors open just as he uses them as a launch pad, his arms up to guard his head. You do the same with the opposite end of the elevator, tensing your legs as you prepare to launch. Newly shaped, compact muscles coil and expand, filling with blood and invigorating until, in an audible explosion as they kick the back of the elevator, they fire you at the bastard at a speed of twenty-eight miles per hour, blasting his forearms with your left shoulder. Your whole body rings with the impact, and his guard is split as he takes most of the **** in the sternum with a sickening CRACK that sends him ass-over-teakettle out and onto the roof. Your own body nearly loses balance once outside, and your senses are shocked by the sudden, powerful rainfall that coats you both.

"I'll kill you," he sputters as he tries to stand, only to fall again in the inch of water trapped on the roof of the project. From this height, the glittering lights of Manhattan set aglow the horizon made from the tops of other apartment buildings. Overheard, a half-moon observes as the only eyewitness to this scene. You slowly walk towards him, squinting through the rain at his massive form. "Where is she?" He puts his hands up in that same, simple stance, wavering as he does so.

"Far away, and safe," you half-lie, "where you can't hurt her anymore."

"You dun... you don't know me, you pervert," he spits. He begins to stagger into sidesteps, trying to circle around you. You, in turn, keep facing him, never letting your eyes leave your enemy. Seeing your resolve unshaken, he inches closer. "Whatever she told you... she's just confused, or LYING-!"

He lunges with a jab and then a cross in rapid succession, meeting your open palm the first time and, out of automatic reaction, the edge of the other hand. His right wrist breaks under the strike, and he howls in anguish as he holds his broken hand. Undeterred, you rush in with a gut punch that sends his eyes almost bulging from their socket, and then another punch to his sternum, fracturing more ribs as his skeleton tries to hold together under your ****. He staggers back... and towards the edge, where the railing is naught but a cement wall some two-feet tall. Puke streams from his mouth as he doubles over, vomiting and coughing and cursing you... and you see, for the first time, a weak, pitiful man. A victim in his own right, most likely. Pitiable, ****...

Ophelia's words, about losing her virginity in middle school to the aging man before you, drives out all other considerations. You walk up to the man and kick a field goal through his ribs as he pukes, lifting him from the ground with the **** as bones collapse under your merciless strike. His body comes down hard on the cement railing... and falls over.

You take a few steps closer... and see fingers. Fingertips, attached to the hand and wrist that you didn't break. There in the dripping rain, his face a mask of terror, reduced to a base creature... is Mr. Daniel Cross. Your enemy. Ophelia's enemy. "Please..." he shrieks over the rain, his eyes wide. You stare down at him, the rain framing the stone relief that has become your face under the muted moonlight. He looks down, gasping as he sees the fall, and his eyes squint as he falls into crying. He doesn't even meet your gaze as he pleads. "Please, save me... please, spare me... have mercy-"

"You gave her no mercy." He falls silent, save for his sobbing. His pinky threatens to slide off the edge of the rain-slick precipice. "You took everything from her... why shouldn't I take everything from you?"

"Puh...please," he weeps.

"Pray to your God." He looks up, wide-eyed. Your blood cools from the brief fight, but the original anger is there to spit poison. "Ophelia... Hell, your apartment alone told me you're a religious man... but you still did that to her, so I have to imagine you've... excused yourself, somehow." You pause to spit rain and disgust to the side. "Pray to be spared... After all, He forgave you, didn't He? Or did you think He WANTED you to **** a middle school orphan?!" Daniel looks up at you, slack-jawed. A bolt of thunder lights the scene: below him, you spot a dumpster that might catch him on its edge, though it was merely a different form of the inevitable: Mr. Cross would not survive this fall.

"You don't know what it was like!" he screams, his anger overcoming the imminence of ****. That confident strongman is gone, and the worm is revealed in the desperation of his voice. "I was alone for all my life, never knowing a woman's love... and she needed me..." He grits his teeth. "But of course I felt guilty, it was a crime... but... but it was what God..." He hesitates, even as his grip continues to fail. You kneel down over the ledge, waiting for him to dare to say it. "... it was what God..." But he cannot. Staring up into your hateful eyes, unable to muscle past his enemy, the truth itself, he cannot say aloud the excuse that was so exonerating in the vacuum of his thoughts.

For the first time in over a decade, Daniel Cross could not ignore his shame. You watch, in his twisting expression, the fragile walls in his mind coming down: the justifications, the violations, the long record of sins. Unbeknownst to you, however, Mr. Cross is normally far more sturdy in his delusions; it is only being in your presence that has pushed him this far.

This was another side-effect, one you don't quite understand yet, of what you are becoming.

But in your eyes, your conviction is simply being verified in the deterioration of the man, the monster, named Daniel Cross.

His fingers begin to shiver and slide. The reflective period vanishes as human fear grips him. "Please, I'm falling-!"

You don't move; you do nothing but watch. "No, nononono-!"