Charlie Stocks pulled up into a parking space at his apartment complex after a long day at work. As he tried to open his car door, he found that it was stuck. It happened every once in a while in his old Saturn. He threw his weight against the door and it promptly sprung open. He stepped out of the car with a bag in his hand that held the CD he had purchased at work.

As Charlie put the key in the door to his apartment, he was surprised to find that the door was already unlocked. He shrugged it off. He had forgotten to lock up from time to time. The best that he could do was hope that nothing had been stolen. The door swung open cleanly to reveal a dark room.

Charlie turned on the lights and searched his apartment for missing things. He was relieved to find that nothing was missing from his kitchen or living room. He made his way to the bedroom to check on the state of his computer.

Charlie was relieved to find that his computer was still there and turned on with a screen saver showing footage of fish swimming through the ocean. He doubled back to check his medicine cabinet for missing items, only to come face to face with a man that he had never seen in his life.

The man looked pretty slick. He wore a perfectly clean black suit with a white shirt and black neck tie. His jet black hair was slicked back and made shiny by all the gel holding it in place. Lastly, the man was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, despite the dim light of Charlie's lamps. This man was a Night Owl. He could see perfectly in no matter how dark out it was, but without his sunglasses, random sources of lights would bother him. All and all, this was a man that Charlie would have expected to see at a casino, and at the moment he was showing off one hell of a poker face.

Charlie froze. He knew the reason that this man was here, and it wasn't to play a few rounds of hold 'em. He tried to say something... Anything to the hit man, but all that came out of his mouth was a various assortment of strange noises.

"I'm taking this." The hit man said in a cool, controlled tone. He held up a small vial full of morphine. "But this doesn't even come close to making up how much money you owe us, Charlie. You said you had the perfect plan. That if we just loaned you a bit of money, you would pay us back with interest, within a month. It's been three months, Charlie, where is all this money that you should have made? You blew it all on morphine, didn't you?"

"I-I..."

"Didn't you?"

Charlie's head hung low. "Yes," he admitted.

"Between your gambling problem and your drug addiction, you're in deep, Charlie. It wasn't the Delcaris It would be someone else. It was only a matter of time before someone got you, Charlie."

"But I-" Charlie was cut off by a brass-knuckled fist to his jaw. His head exploded in pain and his mouth quickly filled with blood and dislodged teeth. When he tried to open his mouth to talk, it was all he could do not to scream in agony.

"So, Charlie," The Night Owl hissed, his poker face still unbroken. "Pay up now. It's your last chance."

Charlie fumbled with his walled before tossing it to the man. The hit man picked the wallet up and looked inside. "This it?" Charlie nodded. "Well, then Charlie. I'm sorry, but that's not enough."

The hit man took of his brass knuckles and wiped the blood from them with a handkerchief. He hen placed them in his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a large, perfectly polished, silver revolver. Charlie started to make a series of pitiful noises, but any audible words were blocked out by blood and a broken jaw.

The man pulled back the hammer of the revolver. "Good bye, Charlie." He pulled the trigger and blood splattered the bedroom. The bullet hole in the center of Charlie's head was dwarfed by the orange-sized exit wound in the back of his head.

Travis Parsont put on his khaki trench coat and wide-brimmed hat of a similar hue. Up his sleeves lay a pair of desert eagle pistols, each in their own spring-loaded holster. He felt like he was strait out of an old Bogart classic and he loved it.

He lit a cigarette and headed out the door of his apartment. It was night time - his time; he ruled the streets. He made sure that no crime went unpunished. Just thinking about it made his adrenaline level rise.

It was raining. Rain made for a good night. It added to his image. He could already feel the desert eagles at home in his hands, roaring an blazing.

Travis found his way to a local bar. "Beer." He said in a deep, monotone voice while slamming a hand full of money on the bar. It wouldn't be long now.

Travis sipped his beer and observed. When his cigarette went out, he lit a new one. The night went on with its occasional bar fights, but nothing special. Nothing worth Travis' time.

A man sat down two chairs from Travis and started talking to the woman next to him. "Bingo." Travis whispered into his beer. He finished the mug with one big gulp and made his way to the pool table to get a better listen to their interaction.

The bathroom door swung open and a man stepped out. Travis' attention was immediately caught. Nothing was happening with the two at the bar. It was probably just going to be the makings of a one night stand. The man coming out of the bathroom held true promise, though.

The man had the look of a Mafia man. Gray suit, black slicked back hair, the works. But the kicker was that there was a small dark smudge tainting the perfect cleanliness of the man's gray suit jacket. It could have been nothing, but in that particular corner of the world, things were rarely nothing.

Travis handed off his cue and entered the bathroom. He kicked open the first stall door and saw an empty toilet. The second stall contained a toilet that was clogged and filled to the brim with waste. If anything it made the rest room smell better. In the third stall, Travis found a man sitting on the toilet with his throat slit ear to ear. Travis bolted out of the bathroom, only to find that the Mafia man had gone.

This was the best part- the chase. Travis ran out the bar into the parking lot. There he saw the man stepping into a black sedan. With a jerk of his arms, Travis' desert eagles were in his hands. It wasn't long before they roared to life and shot out the car's tires.

Travis replaced the guns in their respective holsters while sprinting to the car and yanked the door open. He pulled the Mafia man out by the collar. The man tried to slash at Travis with a knife, but Travis managed to restrain the attacking arm. "You're coming with me." Travis growled into the man's ear.

He dragged the man out back behind the bar by the dumpsters. He slammed the Mafia man against the rusty trash receptacle. "Now." Travis said. "It's time you answered for your crimes." He heard the bar door open. Someone had heard his first gunshots and had come to investigate.

The Mafia man tried to use the distraction to escape. Travis shot him in the back of both knees, effectively blowing off both kneecaps when the bullets passed through. The Mafia man howled in pain. Travis planted one last bullet at the base of the man's neck as the barkeep turned the corner wielding a sawed-off shotgun. By the time that the barkeep saw the dead Mafia man, Travis had already stolen away into the night.

Seth Preston rested on his back on the bottom bunk of his cell. The springs in the bunk above his own were offset by his cell mate. "It's almost time." He stated.

"Yes." Came a deep, throaty voice from above Seth.

A bell rang to state that it was time for count. Seth and his cell mate got off their backs and on their feet by the caged cell door. Guards walked by, checking to make sure that everyone was where they were supposed to be. When they were done, the lights went out.

Seth fell asleep quickly after that, with a smile on his face. In the morning, he would have his riot.

Quentin Dent sat at his desk at the police station. He was looking at old court documents and case files on Seth Preston. He had a single ultimate goal to have Seth spend the rest of his life sentence in the prison's psych ward.

Seth had made his way creating personal vendettas. He got different groups of people mad enough at one another to get into bloody feuds while he sat back and watched. Seth Preston was a sick, sick man.

He had been caught when he tried to get the police involved in one of his little games. One day Quentin had come back from work to find Seth there, holding a knife in his wife's chest. Quentin had wounded Seth with a gunshot to the right shoulder to detain him.

When Seth saw court, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Quentin had tried to prove the man insane. HE actually felt kind of bad for Seth. Seth seemed to get some sort of sick pleasure or high from watching people fighting and killing each other. It was like a drug to him, and it was Quentin's belief that Seth should be admitted into a sort of rehab like any other junkie. Leave it to Seth to pick the only man on the force with a soul to try and start a fight with.

A file suddenly dropped onto Quentin's desk. "Quit wasting your time." Ordered the chief of police. "Get on this case. We've got a vigilante on our hands, and he's leaving quite a trail of bodies."

Quentin nodded. "Yes Sir." The chief walked away. "You're just mad that you didn't kill them yourself." Quentin mumbled as he looked through the file. He found a picture of a Mafia hit man. "Or maybe you're just mad that this guy killed your friend."

What really bothered Quentin was that the chief had given him the case strictly because he knew that it would be carried out. He knew that Quentin would never be able to live with himself knowing that he did nothing to stop a series of murders that he knew was going on hand had leads for. It was why he had joined the force originally, back when it was actually less corrupt than a drug ring.

Quentin looked at the profiles of the people that the vigilante had killed already. Murderers, rapists, dealers and pimps. People who by all means should be arrested. People that this police force had covered for on many occasions.

The vigilante wasn't too careful about hiding his work. The bodies were all found around the same time within the same general vicinity of the same bar. Quentin would be waiting for this man the next time that he struck.