To Light up the Dark

The night is young, dark, chilling. Every raindrop that falls upon the green question mark upon my hood is a tear that is shed by a child as their lives fall apart around them with a cacophony of screams. One night I will make the rain stop, then the children will be able to play and dance once more. For now, I come into the night like a fallen angel on a mission of redemption.

-Excerpt from the journal of Mysterion.

I close my journal and slip it into a pocket in my cape. Perching on the edge of a rooftop I looked down into the abyss of South Park. South Park had always been cold, even when it was ninety in all the towns surrounding it, causing the rain to smack me with an icy sting.

"Mysterion," the Human Kite/Kyle crackled over my headset. I pressed the button on the side of the headgear. "Mysterion in. What's your status?" I asked.

"We have the west side scoped out. The Shadows of the Sunken City seem to be trying a new ritual. Should we proceed?"

I sighed for a moment and rubbed my aching temples. Even though this group was probably harmless all it would take was one lone cult to raise the Dark God Clhulhu again, and this time when he rose there would be no putting him back.

"Is Toolshed in position?" I asked as I grabbed the grapple gun from my belt.

"Yeah, both Toolshed and me are ready on your order."

"Let's do it. Wait until you hear the crash and then follow me." I told him as I fired my grapple to a point just above the window I would be smashing through. Before I swung I grabbed a loose brick and gripped it in one hand as I jumped off the side of the building I was standing on.

Just before I broke through the window I chucked the brick at it to weaken the glass. I can go for scary but it's not terrifying when I'm lying on the ground moaning Jesus Christ with thousands of glass shards digging into me.

The brick smashed the window and I swung in seconds later. The black hooded freaks never saw us coming. Standing around a table filled with arcane books were six people, one was holding a knife the other was holding what I hoped was a pig intestine.

"Mysterion!" one gasped as he recoiled in horror.

"You morons never learn." I said as I kicked and got one of them in stomach. He keeled over in pain, which allowed me to smash his head against a wall.

From behind me there were two more crashes that signaled that Toolshed and the Human Kite were backing me up. I pulled back and let one of the cult members charge me, I sidestepped and heard the stratifying crunch of Toolshed's hammer cracking the cultist square in the face.

Two were down, four more to go. The one with the knife charged me swinging widely. I tried to get out of the way of the knife but couldn't, leaving me with one option: I reached out and grabbed the knife as it came down to plunge into my chest. I felt the knife slice into my fingers causing pain to go shooting up my hand and down my arm.

I had to get this guy off of me, every second I wasted the knife was digging further and further into my fingers. If I wanted to not have to shoot myself in the head in order to have a fully functioning body I would have to get out of the way of the knife.

"Toolshed!" I grunted as I looked around the room for him or the Human Kite to help me.

"Hang on Mysterion, I'm coming," he told me as he swung his hammer down on the head of a cultist.

"I'm going to be the one that kills Mysterion!" the cultist with the knife laughed in maniacal glee.

"Many have tried and succeeded." I told him as I kneed him and rolled out of the way to let Toolshed crush him in the temple with his hammer.

My left hand was fucked up; if I punched anything it would just fuck it up more. I dropped back and let the Human Kite take care of the second to last cultist with a blast from the laser from his goggles eyepieces that left the cultist smoking.

The last cultist was trying to sprint for the door. I knew that he had to be taken in for questioning if at all possible. Grabbing my grapple gun I aimed it at the cultist and shot it at him. The piece that gripped places so I could swing embedded itself into his calf, causing a nasty wound. He had to be taken in alive, not unhurt. I yanked on the grapple and swept his feet out from underneath him.

Running over to the cultist I kicked him over to make sure he was still alive. I heard him gagging on something. Yanking his hood back I saw him foaming at the mouth, cyanide pill. Should have thought of it.

"Fuck you!" I screamed as I punched him in the face with my right fist.

"Dude, Kenny. Calm down." Human Kite told me.

"I'm not Kenny out here, its Mysterion."

"Whatever." Human Kite, or Kyle as I should call him now, responded. "Dude, look at how that assblower fucked up your hand up."

"It's a flesh wound."

"No. We're getting you back to HQ."

I knew now that they wouldn't let me get away with just winging it, besides I didn't feel like dying today and I had the luck of letting little things like this kill me. I relented and let Kyle and Toolshed, or Stan as he liked to be called when we weren't out on missions, pick me up.

"Toolshed, go meet up with Tupperware, Mosquito, and that new kid at Tom's Rhinoplasty. I got this asshole." Kyle told him as he spread his glider to get ready to glide to base. See while Kyle couldn't actually fly he could glide using a modified version of those flying squirrel looking things that the army used that he had made from some fabric and duct tape.

"You sure?" Stan asked as he readied his ice picks that he had modified to scale buildings and helped him in the parkour tactics he used to get around quicker.

"Just get over there. We're going to have to double up because Kenny's down. Make sure that Clyde keeps Fatass in line; if he finds out that Kenny is taking it easy he might try another one of his power coups."

"Alright." Stan said before jumping out and climbing up the side of a building with his ice picks.

"Let's get you back now Kenny." Kyle told me as he spread his wings and I shot my grapple gun both of us jumping out of the building and into the cold night.