by Chewy Walrus
The EPS:
Chicago:
Dr. Walt Curie had always been queasy at the sight of blood, which is probably the reason he became a geneticist as opposed to a surgeon. Still, Walt had never seen so much blood.
His hands were clamped to the neck of an injured man whose jugular vein had been slashed by a passing metahuman ruffian with large claws. Now, with blood soaking his hands, his lab coat, and most of his orange EPS-issue jumpsuit, Curie looked down at the man, whose eyes were almost bulging as tears rolled down his face, and told the man that there was nothing more that he could do.
He was going to die. The man slowly reached into his pocket, trembling, and pulled out his wallet. He opened it up to a picture of his family, a beautiful wife and two darling children. Feebly, his voice wavering, he uttered to Curie his last words.
"Tell 'em... that I l-loved 'em... and why I-I... I won't be... coming... home..."
The man's head drooped numbly as the wallet slipped from his hand and landed with a soft THUD on his chest. The scientist, tears welling up in his own eyes, picked up the wallet, looking for an address. Finding one, he stood up, wiped his bloody hands on his lab coat, although it did no real good, and began to wander the streets of Chicago, his right hand plunged deep into his right pocket.
About a half-hour later, Curie walked up the front steps of what had once been a neat little house in the middle of Chicago. The house now looked like a tornado had hit it. Curtains lay strewn around the house in tatters. Pillars had been cracked and every window was shattered. However, the sight that horrified Curie the most was that of three forms, obviously the man's two children, hanging by their necks from the top of the house. All three were dead, their wrists cut, and bodies covered in blood and semen.
A noise from within the house got Curie's attention. Bringing his red-stained right hand out of his lab coat, Curie produced a small box with three buttons on its exterior. The man bit back tears as he peeked into the house. The noise was coming from the kitchen, Curie decided, which was located next to the entrance hall.
Creeping inside, Curie paid close attention to the noises: a slurping sound, a satified sigh, followed by a loud chewing and more slurping.
What on earth? Curie thought as he turned the corner, confronted by the most gruesome sight he had ever witnessed.
A large metahuman -- large claws adorning his hands, huge fangs resting in his mouth, and a black glint in his eye -- sat hunched over the dead bodies of an old man and a young girl. Cups and mugs, obviously gotten from the kitchen's open cupboards, were filled with their blood. In his hands were big chunks of flesh, which he gnawed on grotesquely as he chased each bite with a messy gulp of blood.
The creature looked up, smiling in a sinister way at Curie's astonished, dumbfounded look.
"Welcome, hew-man! You are just in time for..." The metahuman paused to take a slurp of more blood. "...dessert!"
"Screw you..." Curie whispered, raising his small box in the monster's direction and pressing the first button. A large flash of fluorescent energy leapt from the box, wrapping itself around the metahuman, shaking him violently. The chunk of human flesh fell from his hands, and blood that was not his own trickled down his lips. Still, through the obviously searing pain, he maintained his sadistic (or was it masochistic?) grin.
"You murdering bastard!" Curie yelled, kicking the metahuman as he fell, foaming slightly at the mouth, to the ground. "You kill people! Without another thought! You eat their remains! What is wrong with you?! Is nothing sacred? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"
"Would you believe," the meta began weakly, "that I had a bad childhood?"
Curie, pure hatred and rage filling his emotions, placed the box right between the large meta's eyes. "Go ahead," the normally timid scientist groaned through gritted teeth. "Make another joke... and, so help me, I will kill you here and now."
"Go ahead, hew-man," the meta spat. "Nothing could make me happier."
Curie tightened his grip on the third button, the most powerful setting. "You sick fuck!"
"Dr. Curie, cease your action!"
Curie turned his head to see an I.G.O.R. spherical drone immediately behind him.
"Why?" Curie demanded.
"Dr. Walker has ordered that this man be returned alive. He is called Rothman. He is the leader of the metahuman rebellion."
"And to think..." Curie whispered, looking back at the smiling meta, "...that I took pity on these people. They're beasts. Monsters. I hate them all."
Dropping his arm to his side, Curie turned and began to walk away. As he approached the door, he looked upon the man's dead family, hanging in front of the porch.
He whipped around, just as Rothman was pulling himself from the ground. "Screw this, I.G.O.R."
A blast of energy sent Rothman reeling, his black eyes rolling back into his head. He fell to the ground, alive... but barely.
Curie breathed heavily as the I.G.O.R. drone hovered over next to him. "You did the right thing, Doctor," the machine began in an artificial tone meant to sound comforting.
Quickly, Curie grabbed the drone like a softball and hurled it like a shot put across the street, where it was trampled underfoot of the rabid mob.
Looking up into the sky, Curie yelled a curse. "DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL! YOU'VE MADE AN ENEMY TODAY! SO HELP ME GOD! YOU'VE MADE AN ENEMY!"