The lights flickered off and I instantly changed into my super outfit. Two projectors cut on over the auction area and showed the dark visage of the Black Hands supposed leader. The man was a sickly crossover of Arkham Knight's Scarecrow and Jack the Ripper and hissed with a smile,

"Citizens of Seattle, the Black Hand greets you. In forty-eight hours, your wills shall break and darkness shall compass you until you know nothing but darkness. What shall you see? Darknesses and nothing more. What language shall we speak? Darkness. Who or what shall we worship? Darkness and nothing more. Consider this display an..." he bobbed his head in mock thought, "example of what is to come."

The lights cut back on, shadow spawn elites at the exits, and Black Hand soldiers here and there in the crowd. Just as the cacophony of screams started, I half-heartedly debated leaving. I had no reason to be here and I didn't identify as a hero so there was no moral code being dangled over my head. It wasn't two seconds and my intrinsic instincts decided for me.

With a cuss I grappled an enemy and flicked the line in a way that the whiplash snapped the soldier's arm. Then I pulled him in, dragging him on the ground before I leapt into the air and landed fatally on his back. Glancing up, I saw a soldier taking aim at a family with an MP7. Before I could lift my grapple, a black mass landed in front of the family and the mass made the bullets ricochet harmlessly into me. Instinctively covering my face, when the bullets stopped I saw that the black mass of feathers was actually Allabastian. Turns out the huge backpack he had on earlier was a front to hide his flippin' angel wings. He casually reached to a pump action on the gun-show table and it hissed with holy power at his touch.

"If you acknowledge any gods, you're about to have eight to ten minutes of brain activity to make amends."

The man mumbled a cuss before being blasted into the air with holy buckshot. You know the sound the Auto-Bots make when they transform? I heard that and turned to Aly, her appendages were now guns, saws, thrusters and a panoply of mechanized death incarnate. Why didn't she do this when we first met? Was she sleepy?

I watched the both amazing and uncomfortable spectacle of baddie insides being mulched by chainsaws. Bullets pinged off my armor and drew my attention to the large group of soldiers at the auction area... and the number of bodies. Quick stupid!

I leapt into the air and wall-ran towards the soldiers. Boost-jumping from the wall I glided and drop kicked a goon with an audible crunch from his chest. Aly and Allabastian weren't that far behind but then I heard the Shadow Spawn. One second, they all were at the exits and the next I was being picked up into the air by three of them. Before they could Attila the Hun me into shreds I launched my grapple and wrapped it around two of the three baddie's heads. Kicking the other away Allabastian came with a twirl of his wings and sliced the upper third of its body away.

His chicken wings are like katanas, I noted as I used my grapple as a garrote. Then with a fwoosh of air he was launching himself towards another enemy and impaling the sod on his glowing sword. Then he evaded peppering gunfire with a twirl and you know what I was thinking? Christ, I wish I could kill people like that.

Before Aly rolled in with aimbots, I pulled my makeshift garrote back and forth until I had sawn off the two Shadow Elite's heads. Almost all the enemies had been dispatched and I spat out, my voice distorted by my helmet,

"Aly, take one alive."

With a professional nod she picked a Black Hand soldier by the collar before he started foaming out the mouth. Turns out he had a cyanide tooth. I approached the last of the Black Hand on the floor and tried to shove my fingers into his mouth so he couldn't pop the tooth. As I wrestled with him I wasn't watching as he stuck something into my gut. After a click, and a muffed boom I had felt like I had been stabbed.

Without thinking I swatted the personal defense 50. Cal double barrel pistol from him and coldly gouged out his eyes, plopped them in his mouth and broke his face with a punch, activating the cyanide in his mouth as well. I collapsed back, gritting my teeth in pain. Before I went unconscious, I thought I heard Aly scream my name...