Disassociation

Looking upon the carnage made him want to join in, to give in to the bloodlust and rip and tear and destroy, but he held himself back. He was a hero, dammit, and he was not going to be like these monsters. He leaped down from where he was perched, and delivered a solid punch to the jaw of the first rioter he saw. He felt it break beneath his hand, and he smiled. The man went down, and several more replaced him. Lashing out with punches and kicks, he dropped them, enough damage to incapacitate them, but not enough to kill. That was the one line he could not cross.

The rioters swarmed him, with pipes and knives and bottles and even, at one point, a cat. He made sure the person wielding the innocent feline had a nice and mangled face, and hoped the animal was smart enough to flee to safety. The rest, he broke limbs and cracked ribs, but was careful not to use lethal force. When about thirty of them were on the ground, bleeding, the rest began to flee and disperse. He grappled back to the rooftop where his airship was parked, and departed for his lair.

Arriving in the top-floor base he typically lived in, he began his suit’s diagnostics, making sure nothing had been damaged in the night’s events. While he had no powers, his armor was equipped with advanced technology, experimental military stuff, to increase his strength to where lifting 200 pounds with a single hand was possible, and he could walk upon and crawl up walls and ceilings. His various gadgets allowed him to scale buildings, do forensics within minutes, use echolocation and even blast his way through walls. All in all, it was everything a crime fighter would ever need.

As his computer removed his armor, he checked the time. It was 7 am. There was no time for sleep, and so, he quickly ordered it to also lay out a suit for him. He had a meeting with the board at 10 am, a lunch date with some model at 1 pm, a meeting with some government officials at 3 pm and a dinner date with an actress at 5 pm. It was going to be a busy day.

He sat down at his seat as chairman of the board, and someone, Jenkins, if he was recalling correctly, began to present. Tired, he yawned and sat back, pretending to pay attention while resting. He hated meetings, especially corporate ones. The politics and greed disgusted him, and he could, he’d gladly toss the entire boardroom off of the building to the streets below. Lost in his thoughts, he began to feel someone shaking his arm. “How do you vote?” They asked him.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” He replied, yawning. He didn’t really care what they did, and he was amazed they hadn’t noticed that yet. When everything was finished, he left for his office, and upon arriving, collapsed into his chair and napped. Hopefully, he’d be too tired to have any nightmares.

He awoke to his secretary shaking him. “Mr. Warner, it’s 12:30, you need to go to your date.” She said, doing her best not to just slap him, although she knew that she’d get away with it. The fact that, if she really wanted, she could have sued him for the many times he had drunkenly hit on her made that certain.

“Thanks, Ms. Salt. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He replied, shaking off the sleep and rushing. He couldn’t decide between the limo and the Lamborghini, so he went with a third option and took the Harley.

Arriving, he rushed into the restaurant, where he found himself quickly checking his hair in the over-polished windows. He didn’t care about the date, but keeping up appearances was important. And so, he walked in like he owned the place, sat down where the woman he loosely could call a date was waiting, and began to make small talk while reading the menu.

An hour later, he was leaving, and was glad to be gone. The only possible way she had ever made it out of high school was her looks and doing “favors” for the teachers, and he wasn’t too sure if she made it to high school without doing the same. He figured he needed to be awake for his meeting with the government, and so downed his typical “wake-up” solution: one can of Monster Energy with two Five Hour Energy shots and just a dash of cocaine mixed into the solution. He would be wide awake for at least the next twelve hours.

The meeting with the government was about defense contracts, and even with the videos of his companies’ destructive weapons of war at work, he was still bored out of his mind. All he could think about was leaping down from the rooftops and smashing some punk’s face in before breaking some asshole’s kneecaps. That was what he lived for.

After sitting through the criminally boring meeting with the nation’s top military officers, and selling them bombs that made Fat Man and Little Boy look like firecrackers without the little problem of radiation, he decided to blow off his dinner date. After all, it would look suspicious if he was always where he was supposed to be. And so, he, Jeordie Warner, accessed the secret passage from his office into his top-floor base, from which he carried out his one-man war on crime.

He checked his computer for any signs of any of the men and women he was currently hunting being reported to any branch of the military, the police, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, INTERPOL or anyone else who could possibly hear about them. Sadly, there was nothing, so he began to work. He decided to modify several smoke bombs to instead disperse mustard gas mixed with Agent Orange, just for fun. It was unlikely he would ever use them. He wished he could, but he couldn’t let himself.

Finishing his work as the sun went down, he ordered his computer to put him in his armor, arming himself for the night. He slipped his death grenades on his utility belt and climbed into his airship. During the day, he wore the mask of Jeordie Warner, but at night he was himself, he was Tourniquet, and he was a hero.

He quickly found himself fresh prey, a group of drunken men chasing a girl. He set his airship to “hover” and leaped out, landing in front of them. They swore in fright, but, due to the alcohol flowing through their veins and the stupidity in their brains, they thought they could take him.

The girl was cowering behind him, and within a few seconds, all but one of them was down. He heard a shot, and turned. The last man standing had shot her dead, and was now firing at him. Bullets pinged off of his armor, and he walked forward slowly. This little bastard murdered the girl he had leaped into action to protect, and now was trying to kill him. This egotistical, moronic little punk murdered a person because he couldn’t have his way with her, and now had the balls to try to kill him. He punched the criminal scum in the face, shattering his nose, before stomping the pathetic waste of oxygen’s legs into dust. The man begged him for life, and Tourniquet treated the man’s pleas with the same respect he treated the girl’s. With the punk dead, he grappled back into his airship, and flew off.

Coming upon yet another riot, he made a decision. No matter how much crime he stopped, it always kept happening. Criminals knew they were safe with him around. With him around, they might get concussions, broken limbs and occasional brain damage, but they knew he would not kill them. Tonight, that was going to change. Popping the pins on his poison grenades, he tossed them into the crowd, and let them go off, flying into the carnage to watch. His armor’s systems would clean the air, and make it easy for him to breathe, and the thermal vision would allow him to see. He saw the rioter choking and gasping for air, and he smiled. Their deaths would be the start of a new era for this city, an era without crime, and without evil. His wishes had been granted. He was not, as he once dreamed, a hero, but a savior.

Heroes and villains
Well, that was a more realistic take on heroes like Batman and Iron Man that I wrote a year ago. It might be shit. I'm not the best judge of my own writing, so feel free to tell me if it's awful.