Name:A Subtle Knife
Author:industrious
Link:
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-subtle-knife-worm-yj-si.342043/
Words:340k
[I dropped this when the mc wanted to be a superhero and I don't like mc's personality/character.Some may like this so I recommend it]
Ps: MC got Jack Slash's powerset
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter-1
July 3rd, 2011, Early AM:
Hangovers are a special kind of hell.
It's more than the constant feeling like your stomach is six inches too high, more than the steady throb at the temples, a regular beat of dizziness and pain, more than the limbs which just don't shake. It's also the knowledge that the next one (and there will be a next one, you know, even as you mumble that it'll *never happen again*) will be even worse - you aren't getting any younger, after all.
What was I even thinking, trying to go drink for drink with Chris? We weren't in college anymore, and he had eight inches and a like a hundred pounds on me.
I kept my eyes clenched shut against the blinding light, tried to think calming thoughts. My skull decided to play percussion anyway.
In the end, though, I had to get up. I had been lying on what felt like a lumpy beanbag chair; one of my nails or something must have slipped, because a foul, redolent smell the likes of which I had only encountered when I accidentally left some potatoes out to rot metaphorically grabbed my nostrils and began to beat me across the face with them.
"Oh, fuck me…"
...and there went this set of clothes. Five minutes into consciousness and you're already making the greatest life choices.
Shut up, me. Only way to go from here is up. Positive thoughts, my friend. Positive thoughts.
Step One: Get off the ripped bag of garbage you've been lying on since last night's bender.
My feet and legs felt like the jelly stuck to the sides of a jar - I was upright, seemingly in defiance of all laws of physics. At least, until they started to quiver, and I had to lean against what felt like a nearby brick wall to steady myself.
Step Two: Open eyes.
It was hard to do, given the sheer amount of muta crusting them shut, but I wasn't about to rub my dirty, garbage-touched hands on my eyes, no sir. But with an effort of what felt like supreme will at the time, I got them open, bleary, probably red-rimmed, unfocused.
...Yup, it was an alley. Probably the most stereotypical, straight-from-the-pictures alley you could find. The sort of alley that you wouldn't want to meet people you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley in. And yes, that was a trash bag, how wonderful to find out.
"Thanks, Chris," I mumble to myself, walking towards the nearest street. "Ditch me in the sketchiest alley in New Orleans you can find when I come down to visit."
I blink, and keep blinking to get my vision restored, before I remember that I don't have my contacts in. I fumble around in my pockets for my glasses before putting them on - they're filthy grimy what with the barhopping and sleeping in an alley, but I can at least start to have some detail in my vision…
This isn't New Orleans.
My heart pounds in my chest as I take in the skyscrapers around me. Even the business district of the Big Easy is modern; these look ancient. Weathered old turn-of-the 20th century buildings with Art Deco facades, with tier upon tier of gargoyles gasp downward at the city below. The streetlights look like hangman's nooses, and I stand there, mouth open like an idiot as I see the license plate of a parked car.
No way.
This can't be happening. How could this be happening?
Gotham isn't real.
No way. This has to be a dream or something, except my head still feels like someone's stuffed it full of brain and its beating at the door trying to get out and that was a mixed metaphor, wasn't it?
The people on the street are deliberately moving around me, and I realize how I must look. What had been a dressy tan shirt and jeans was smeared with garbage juice and vomit; still hungover, I had been swaying and staggering from side to side, and...I had been mumbling this can't be real to myself over and over.
I'd like to say that that realization let me snap to more attention. Honestly, though, what did it was the call of nature; I forced back the pounding and fuzz of the previous night's revelry, and ducked into another nearby alley, shaking my head in a vague attempt to clear it.
"I'm...in Gotham," I said to the empty alley.
"I'm Gotham! With the crime, and the..everything, and...wow."
I was a grown man, and I was not going to squee like some fangirl.
Nervous, yet somehow jubilant fanboyish giggling, however seemed completely appropriate. Or at least, uncontrollable. I must have looked like a ridiculous sight, my fly down, facing the alley wall.
And because someone up there seemed to have it in for me, just as I'm about to zip back up, someone grabs the back of my head and slams it against the alley wall.
"This is my alley! Mine!"
My ears are ringing, and I'm dazed and holycrapi'mingothami'mgettingmugged.
Can't get killed by a mugger. That would just be embarrassing.
I reach out with my right arm, try to drag myself away, but a boot stomps on my hand and my vision goes all white for a second and I hear the sound of tongue smacking against lips above me.
My other hand fumbles for something, anything to hit him with, to get free, to daze him, to run. I feel the cold glass of a longneck, grab it.
A hand forces its way into my back pocket, scrabbling for my wallet, and I rock myself onto my side, shouting something loud and incomprehensible, and slashing with the oddly light beer bottle and…
Oh my.
My attacker was the sort of bearded, filthy, coat-held-together-by-grime, fingerless-gloves-worn-unironically sort of homeless man that you see in the bad parts of cities, but don't ever look directly in the eye. Was, because there was a long, angry red jagged road across his chest, and his eyes were wide and unfocused and as he collapses I scrabble back as he hits the pavement and the red begins to pool beneath him and and…
The longneck in my hand wasn't a whole bottle, just the jagged remains of one - I hadn't come anywhere near his flesh, hadn't felt any resistance as I slashed.
My eyes wide but not nearly as wide as the dying man in front of me, I throw the broken bottle against the side of the alley and turn around to flee…
He is there. Of course he is. It's Gotham.
He looks like a giant, a shadow, a creature of the night. I would recognize him anywhere, and somewhere, I dimly appreciate the fear in my veins at his appearance. At the grey body armor, and the black symbol every boy dreams of donning at least once in his life. At that expressionless, pitiless expression on his face; the white lenses (they don't look like lenses in person, they look like inhuman, glowing eyes) that stare through you. I stop short, mouth open in wordless horror.
I don't see how he knocks me out. I just feel pain, and then blackness.