Catwalk: Mercy Killing
an excerpt

“Holy Chit! Holy Shockin’ Chit! Did you see that, my young bloodlings? Tell me you saw that!” The high-pitched voice of Zodiac Lopez tore threw the gore and destruction before the shaky camera ever found its way to his face. When it did, the reporter’s brown eyes were wide and his face was as pale as it had ever been. “Boom….shock me, kids….can you say BOOM?”

Lopez gestured behind him at the debris, human and Meta-Human alike, which had so recently been Joseph Shawcross and the psychotic MH gone bezerk in Nitro City. When the camera found his face again, his grin was inhumanly broad. “Save your opinions for yourselves, viewers, this reporter scores that as an indisputable victory for the VRR!”

Lopez referred to the Violence Reform Revolution, a non-profit organization determined to use capital punishment as a means of preventing cybernetic enhancement abuse. In essence, the organization existed only to prevent cybersurgery from those deemed ineligible by its standards. There was some validity to its claims. In the past four years, the number of cases where a MetaHuman had effectively gone insane had tripled.

“Score this one sound victory for Quinten Fish and the VRR, indeed!” Lopez barked aloud, clipping the input levels of the video feed. From where he exercised, Leon “Catwalk” Caliber, killer with a conscience, sneered at the video screen. Lopez may as well have a sweater and pom pons at this point. His head was so far up the ass of the local politician, he would take any opportunity he could to praise Fish.

Catwalk didn’t have much of a stomach for the political world. He’d taken pride in a world-changing politician back east, only to find that the man had whored and drugged his way to the top. Since then, the suits meant less to him than the tackling dummies in his gym. He’d take his chance with a rubber target over a sly-tongued devil in an expensive set of threads. He watched the screen, continuing his routine of pull-ups, “Twenty-four, Twenty-five.”

As he wished karmic fate upon the screen, it was served.

From the right of the frame, a scream came, the words scarcely audible. It was something like “you’ll never succeed…or you kill those in need”, he couldn’t digest the exact vocabulary. Within another second, Zodiac Lopez and his mystery assailant erupted into flame, forcing the camera to static.

Cat stared at the dead video screen for five full seconds, with no resolution. With a silent grin, he continued his routine. “Twenty-six, Twenty-seven…”