Watching the news, one would think the life of a hero was one filled with action and adventure. Surely, there was always something for them to do. “Evil never rests” after all. Thing is, even heroes can’t be all places at all times. At least none that I know. Many crimes take only a few seconds, and to stop such, you have to be in the right place at the right time. The world is a large place, even a city is a large place, and the attention heroes can only be in so many places at once.

The same goes for myself, though few would label me a “hero”. I don’t mind, as it’s not really the reputation I’m trying to cultivate, even if I see myself as such. Just the…unconventional kind. I’m not the shining paragon of truth and justice, the glorious idol the weak aspire to be, the one people in need instinctively call for help. In fact, there’s been many a time when people called for help because they saw me.

I can’t blame them really. To many, I’m a villain, and it’s not a mindset I seek to counter. You see, the justice system, while noble in principal, is flawed in places. If I knew a way to actively improve it, I’ll admit, I’d be doing that instead of my current activities. But that’s a problem I will admit is beyond me. At its heart, the problem is that criminals do not fear the justice system. It’s little more than an inconvenience to most, so that the risk of getting caught is more than outweighed by the gains to be had breaking the law. The don’t really fear the police, they don’t feat jail, they don’t even really fear the heroes that do their best to protect this city.
They do, however, fear me.

It was as I was once again mulling over such thoughts on a quiet night’s patrol that I heard the quickly cut off cry. It wasn’t quite a scream, but there was a note of fear, so I edged to the side of the roof to look into the alley. A feline had a bat roughly pressed against the wall. A light gleam caught my eye, the reflection of moonlight against metal. The woman held a knife to the young man’s throat.
I watched, hesitant. Small stuff like this, while unfortunate, was not the normal things I get involved in. I needed to choose my moments carefully. But as I watched, I couldn’t leave. The bat was looking terrified, the feline impatient and agitated. I watched as he kept fumbling for his pocket, his shaking hands unable to complete the simple task. The feline’s voice was rising with her demands, far higher than should be in a theft. Her muscles tensed, and I knew things were about to escalate. Something in her posture told me she would kill him, or at the very least stab him, if he took much longer.

There are reasons I don’t like civilian’s seeing me in action, but I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing news of a body found in an alley, knowing I had watched his last moments. I leapt from my perch, bounding from wall to wall until I hit the pavement. Though I can move in complete, or at least near, silence, I made sure my impact could be heard. It got the mugger’s attention as I had hoped, and for a moment, it didn’t seem she understood what she was seeing. My suspicions on that were confirmed when she pushed her target away and took a defensive posture as I ran forward. She seemed to think a well meaning citizen was trying to intervene. How wrong she was.

She realized her mistake as I entered the light cast into the alley from streetlamp. Her mouth dropped open in a silent scream, her pupils dilating, her muscles slacking. To her credit, she did not drop her knife, but it would do her no good even if she could recover from her shock. I leapt forward the moment I was in range, slamming into her chest in a diving tackle. Had I impacted with her traditionally, I would have slammed her to the ground, but as such may have caused her injury, I took a different approach.
The moment I contacted her skin, I spread, my fluid body flowing around her. This dispersal of kinetic energy kept her upright and instead accelerated my covering of her body. My head lost its shape as it impacted and flowed around her back and up between her shoulder blades. It’s always an odd sensation when I loose the formation of my head with this body, so that I avoid doing so when I can. I couldn’t here, but in a mere moment I had the top of my head formed once again as my mass flowed up over the back of her head, making me surely look like some kind of novelty hat.

It likely took less than a second for me to flow over the top of her head, enveloping her torso and sending tendrils around arms and legs to keep her from flailing. I was able to watch my back end complete the lunge, and interesting view, though it was hardly more than a blur of motion. My lower jaw formed below her own, meeting the upper half at her nose, enveloping her head in a strange facsimile of a swallow. My tail reemerged at the small of her back, and as my mass reached the and of her limbs, my paw reformed over her hands and shoes, until as far as anyone could tell, I stood there on two legs, instead of the feline.

The whole thing took two, maybe three seconds. Her knife, which I had not brought into myself, clattered against the pavement. She tried to struggle, tried to scream, but I held her tight within me. Her attempts to scream only made it easier for me to work my mass into her, as well as through her ears, nose, and even her anus. I avoided the hole next to it, however, as though it would make the process a touch faster, I couldn’t help but feeling like I was raping the person when I did.

I supplied her air as I filled her lungs, was careful of the pressure when I filled her stomach, and quickly made my way through her intestines. From there I worked my way into her blood stream, and then into her muscles and bones, changing them, transforming her body into something akin to my own. As her body lost its rigidity, I fell forward to the ground, my body tacking on its usual quadruped form, all trace of the feline I had engulfed no longer visible in my form. In a few more moments, her body was one with mine, her mind calm in a state similar to a deep sleep, and her clothing falling from the bottom of my torso.

The near victim, to my mild surprise, was still there, huddled next to some trash can in a near fetal position, though still upright. He was shaking near violently, staring at me. Of course, I knew why. He thought he had just witness someone being consumed by a demonic entity of darkness, likely fearing he would be next but too terrified by the whole situation for his body to obey his brain, if his brain could even make the thought through his fear. Admittedly, he is perhaps partially right, for in this state I am no natural being. But he was wrong as to the fate of himself and his mugger. She was still very much alive, and I had no intent to change that. What I intended was for everyone to believe she was.

I gave him a few moments to stare before I turned around and left. The potential psychological scarring I likely just gave him was unfortunate, but compared to the potential death I feared he faced, it was acceptable. He would help spread the tales of my deeds, of both hunting evil and leaving the innocent. It would all help my cause of making people believe there were real, terrible consequences to certain actions. Even with these thoughts though, my mind was heavy with knowledge of what I’d done to the boy to save him. There was nothing I could do for him. I could only hope he could recover.

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Art by  Libra-11
Original http://www.furaffinity.net/view/21022904/