The best thing about being a vigilante was the freedom.

  Heroes had rules they had to follow, lines they had to walk. You couldn’t expect a hero to do whatever they wanted. They were governed by the Union and their actions had consequences.

  “Quit squirming,” I said to the frightened and screaming man grasped between my talons.

  He didn’t listen.

  “Stop, or I’ll drop you.”

  The man stopped squirming and held still. He was greasy, literally. His hair, face, and skin seemed to have an unwashed sheen to them, and my talons had to interlock just a little bit tighter to get a good grip on him.

  Or at least that’s what I would tell Mike if I dropped him to his death.

  I avoided killing people. It was too much of a hassle, too much legal fuss and fury. But I would question what constituted people and if this guy even fit the bill.

  “So, pedo, can I call you pedo? Why were you stalking a kid in the middle of the night?”

  “I- I wasn’t man. You hero-fucks got nothing man, I didn’t do anything wro-”

  I loosened my talons and the oily man screamed like a little girl.

  “Please don’t lie to me, pedo. I only get paid if you’re alive, you know.”

  The man who ran away from washing machines and shivered at the mention of a shower started crying.

  I had found him, squirming, smelly and walking after a highschool girl. I’d guess the girl was a freshman, only about fourteen or so, barely out of middle school really. You could see it on her clothes and fashion sense. She had that air of childishness and insecurity all growing teenagers tended to have. They always dressed like what they thought adults would dress like, while simultaneously trying to create their own look.

  My point was that the girl wasn’t anywhere close to an adult, not that it would excuse stalking if she were.

  But it did make it worse that he was actively chasing after a child.

  “Fuck you demon!”

  Demon, a slur for wishers. It was a simple and clean slur. If you could do something supernatural you were possessed by demons.

  But here was the perks of being a vigilante, I let him go.

  He screamed for a few seconds, before I caught up- or rather caught down to him and dug my talons rather deeply into his skin.

  “Whoops!”

  “I’ll fucking sue you bastard! I’ll sue you and your stupid fucking Union!”

  “Not a hero, pedo- hey that rhymed. Kind of ironic.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a vigilante,” I replied. “No one’s watching me, and I have reason to suspect that you were stalking and planning on kidnapping a young girl. If you slip and die the Union might kick me out of the paid program, and that’s a big might. But I’m a tinker and I can just come back with a new suit and a new name. Might be the Owl next, or maybe the Bat. Nah. That sounds a little too emo even for me.”

  The man beneath my talons started shivering. Maybe he had noticed how high we’d flown up, or maybe it was occuring to him that his threats and small legal knowledge was entirely useless.

  He had panicked at first, but he still had some fight in him. Threats, refusing to talk, all the good stuff that would work on heroes. But vigilantes? Poor old smelly knew nothing of the legal restrictions of vigilantes.

  “Fuck man, fuck!”

  I looked down at him and then quickly looked up. Even now, while I was flying up and away from him, the stench still came at me.

  Then it hit me.

  “You’re a wisher,” I breathed out. “Something to do with pheromones?”

  The man was short, fat, balding, and had a face that a mother could look past with some squinting. But that smell was getting worse. I almost wanted to drop him.

  “Fuck you!” He yelled.

  “Alright buddy, we’re going down.”

  I dived, my talons dragging him down with me. In a matter of seconds we were right above the pier. We flew past that and I hovered about fifty feet above the water, then I kept on flying straight out to sea.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “I don’t know, up and over the horizon maybe. Heard there were some sharks over in this part of the sea.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “I’m above the age of consent buddy, so I’m not sure I’m your type.”

  “Fucking bastard-”

  I didn’t hear what he had to say because I dropped him into the open ocean before he could finish his sentence. There was a scream, a cry, maybe a growing wet spot between his pants. I’d have to slow down the footage and zoom into his crotch to determine that, and honestly, the man wasn’t worth the bother.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  There was a noticeably large splash and a small bubbling noise before the man dived right back up from the water.

  He was keeping himself afloat and staring around in search of me, though in pitch black darkness all he could see was the black of the ocean and the distant lights of the city.

  “Fuck!” He screamed.

  His voice cracked as he kept looking up, trying to see me in the dark. But my suit’s color changing function was more than enough to hide me from most cameras in the nighttime, much less his waterlogged eyes. I flew away, marking his location on my personal map.

  “Are you just going to leave him?” Mochi asked me.

  “Maybe.”

  “Burt!”

  I sighed and picked up a buoy and headed over to the man. I tried not to aim for him, but my crueler instincts dropped the floating thing extremely close. It didn’t hit him, unfortunately, but he was scared shitless and flailing around for half a minute.

  “Fuck you!” He screamed. “I’m going to sue your ass!”

  “You’re a wisher, buddy. You’re no longer protected under regular laws. The Heroes Union will deal with you, not me or the law.”

  “I’m not a wisher!”

  “Don’t lie to me man. That stench of yours is unnatural and it almost made me drop you a couple of times. There’s no way you’re just that stinky and out in public. You’re a controller right? Able to manipulate emotions with some sort of scent or pheromones?”

  The man said nothing a clung tightly to the buoy, and the buoy fought to stay above the water.

  “Fuck you!” He screamed.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Look man, I’m guessing you've been using your new power to get laid? Maybe exclusively with kids?”

  I had been tracking him for a while before I’d swooped in. I couldn't just take someone on suspicion of criminality after all. That would be harassment and the Heroes Union took that very seriously. So, I had waited and watched.

  He had followed the girl all over the store, out of it, into a coffee shop, and even by car to her house.

  I had scooped him up when he was trying to climb up her wall.

  I could have called the cops then and let the girl know what happened, but honestly, the girl did nothing wrong. She hadn’t taken candy from a stranger or talked with grown men. She hadn’t put herself at risk in any way and there was no lesson to be learned here.

  She was just living her life and she would have gotten attacked for it.

  It’d be one thing if she was in a shady neighborhood by herself, or if she was out drinking illegally, though even the dumbest bartender would have pinned her age. But the girl hadn’t done that. She had just shopped around a little late, and I didn’t think a lifetime of trauma was worth any of that.

  I had recorded his stalking and compiled that into a neat little video I would send off to Mike. I was going to send him off to the cops for questioning, but now that I knew he was a wisher, the rules had changed significantly.

  And he was a controller. A Minor rank one, maybe a Middle rank, but controllers always got the full force of the Heroes Union. Anyone who attempted to control minds, even with something as simple as scents would face the angrier side of the Union.

  Especially if you used it to try and solicit sex.

  “But how can you be sure he’s a controller?” Mochi asked.

  “Because I wanted to kill him.”

  “What?”

  “Remember that time we found that crazy organ dealer hopped up on EJ?”

  “Oh,” Mochi shuddered. “Yeah.”

  “Did I kill him?”

  “No, you never kill.”

  “Exactly, its too much of a problem to kill. If I have no options, sure. But I’m a vig, I can’t go around killing people without facing the possibility of being considered a villain, but I wanted to kill him.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m guessing its sort of like a skunk or something. He feels threatened and he releases a smell to try and manipulate me into dropping him or letting him go.”

  “But you didn’t drop him or let him go.”

  “He’s a rapist. I’d rather die than let him go. Also, the smell isn’t directly controlling or manipulative. Its more emotional. It caused me to be irritated with him and want him to be as far away from me as possible. In my angry disgusted mind, that meant killing. But he thought it would mean letting him go. Plus he thought I was a hero, so there’s a certain code of conduct he’s expecting. No killing, no violence, no being tossed into the freezing cold ocean.”

  “Oh. You got all that from your feelings and his smell?”

  “His smell was powerful. I was flying above him and I was upwind and it still managed to hit me. Also he was confident with his stalking. He was trying to climb into the girls room with no equipment, just himself. He’d probably cause a deep sleep or something sick like that.”

  “Wow,” Mochi muttered. “You contacted Mike?”

  “I sent a text and a boat is on the way,” I replied. “But I’ll stick around, just to make sure he doesn’t sink.”

  There was silence for about ten minutes, with the occasional sob coming from the man below.

  I hated it when they cried.

  It made them seem human.

  It made them be human.

  Some people were evil and this man was one of them.

  But I couldn’t forget that this man, for all his failings, was still a man. He was still a person.

  And I don’t mean that in some noble redeeming way. I meant that as a disgusting truthful thing. Whatever that man wanted to do, whatever he had done, it was human.

  Humanity wasn’t just the joys and the kind good things of life, it was the nasty black thing inside of this man’s heart as well. It was the untethered hatred and lust, the greed and disregard for his fellow people.

  That existed in every person’s heart, and power would feed it full.

  And I had to remember that.

  I would kill if it was necessary. I would kill if and when I needed to. But having power meant that darkness in your heart would scream out to you all that much louder.

  Maybe now I’d be fine with drowning him or shooting him, and maybe later it would be the same with similar people.

  But the more you killed the easier it would become. My moral compass might shift. Maybe it would be a bout of anger or a taxing day, and boom, there would be a corpse.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve to die, but that I couldn’t risk myself making that choice.

  I could judge him, but I certainly couldn’t execute him.

  I kept watching and listening to the dark waves of the sea. The man shivered, but I kept an eye on his body temperature.

  He’d live.

  Picking him up might mean dealing with his scent again and that was something I didn’t want to deal with.

  Eventually, the boat came. I guided them and a mix of wishers and cops with gas masks picked him up and took off with him. They would contact the girl and her family in the morning. The girl would be freaked out and worried. But being told you could have experienced something awful, versus being interrupted in the moment of experiencing something awful were two different things. And she would be introduced to the threat knowing it was already taken care of.

  I hoped she’d take it as well.

  And then I went home.

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