Tower Of Terror

A New Villain

This continued for another month. Every couple nights April would go out and attempt to make the city a better place. She would stop robberies, save citizens, even stop the occasional vandal. But even with her carefulness to stay in the shadows, her sprees were noticed. She earned a nickname.

Little Red Riding Hood.

Yeah, April wasn't too chuffed with it either. She thought it was the worst vigilante name on could possibly get. Thankfully only the newspapers used the full name. Most of the citizens just used "Red". Which wasn't too bad, in April's opinion.

She hadn't had anything too bad happen. Whenever someone would defy her she'd put shot through their leg and they'd obey pretty quickly. She had also only had to deal with the spineless crooks of New York City. So no one too bad.

Until he showed up.

Grant Willith. A famed murderer from Seattle. Why he came to NYC was a question never answered. He was famous for only using knives to complete his messy work. An assassin for hire, that's what Willith was. He may have been a cutthroat menace but he wasn't stupid. He was clever. In a demonic, terrible sense. He loved the game he played with the cops, and he was very good at it. Wherever he went, death followed.

April had finally mastered the bow she had been so drawn to. She practiced with it every spare moment she got and finally was able to get a handle on it. Soon after she build a bow of her own. She engineered it to fold so she could run without being hampered by it.

She also had put up monitors all over the city, during her first weeks as a vigilante. She programmed the monitors to a feed in her room that only she could access. After doing this she had managed to connect the feed to a wrist device that she kept on her at all times while on her "missions".

So that was how she found Grant Wilith.

The alert sent her over towards the fouler part of the city and she went without hesitation. The dark alleys attempted to scare her but she forced herself deeper in. Gloom hung like a mist over the area. She could feel her stomach churn as she crept down the alley way. Her red boots gently splashed in the puddles of grime that coated the roads. A pot hole caught her on unaware and she grimaced as she fell sideways and stretched a hand out to catch herself. Her hand rested on a slimy wall and she mentally groaned. It would take her forever to decontaminate her hand.

Slowly she pulled it off the wall and kept walking.

A flickering lamp post greeted her at the end of the alley. Something lay directed away from her against the black post.

A foul odor assaulted her nostrils and she clapped her clean hand against her mouth trying to breathe in fresh air from around her hand.

The yellow light bathed her in its glow as she stepped forward out of the grimy alley. But what she saw next made her wish she had stayed in the alley.

It was a corpse lying against the lamppost. Blood clung to the fresh body like water to glass. A thick puddle lay under the body as a sickening reminder.

April stared at the body, feeling her throat contract.

The cadaver had once been a man. He had been stabbed multiple times. There was a particularly deep slash across his throat which led to the blood that coated his midsection. A stiff hand lay outstretched across his lap, obviously from where he had attempted to fend off his attacker. His eyes were wide and empty.

April looked away.

"Now what do we have here?" a low voice said.

In one swift motion, April had her bow over her head, drawn and aimed directly at the speaker's heart.