Chapter 3: Seeing Death

First thing Jack did, was remember something he had thought of while beating up the goliath, and forgot during the rest of the fight. Quickly, he doubled back into the warehouse, noting that High Flier had already bailed, not even waiting for the police to arrive.

Still feeling like he had personally failed the woman for not arriving to save her in time, the least he felt he could do is make an important call. Namely, he opened her phone to the lock screen, and went into the emergency contacts page which you didn't need to unlock the phone to see.

There, a contact named "Asshole" was listed. Assuming it was her father by what the thugs said earlier, and taking advantage of his altered voice, Jack decided to be the one to personally inform her father of his daughter's passing.

He made the call, and almost instantly it was picked up. "Vanessa? Listen Vanessa, I'm so so sorry. I know it's never been fair to you, being trapped on I-Island your whole life so I could work towards my own dreams-"

Not wanting to hear a sad sob story for too long, Jack steeled himself. "Hello sir. I regret to inform you, that the owner of this phone was killed today by villains." The old man immediately shut up.

Silence took over the phone, and Jack almost got scared he killed the man via heart attack, till he screamed at him enraged. "Who the hell is this?! How dare you prank call me with her phone! Give it back to Vanessa this instant."

Jack wasn't even frustrated by this, he knew exactly how this was gonna feel, which is why he felt he needed to do this. "I saw her body with my own two eyes sir. I just wanted you to know as soon as possible, without waiting a day or two for the police to make the call themselves."

Heck, legal tape aside, the police were so busy in this city processing so many crimes, and the hospitals too, that contacting the next of kin was quite low on their list. Only the kindest of officers would think to contact them the second they found the phone, and even then that would be a while from now.

Clearly the message had gone through this time, as sobbing could be heard from the other end of the phone. The old man had probably believe it the first time, but stubbornly hoped that it would have been a prank.

"You, are you a hero? What's your name?" Not having thought of a good name just yet, he kept that information confidential.

"My name isn't important. I was just a man who tried to save her too late. So I just did the next best thing. I'm the man who killed her killers." Murder was bad in normal worlds, but killing villains in this one was even more unheard of.

With the respect and reliance on heroes, self defense kills really weren't a thing, and civilians weren't allowed to really use their quirks anyways, so murdering villains was something that was a very rare occurrence, and the common man frowned upon it.

"Thank you, sir. Thank you." The old man could barely choke that out, before he hung up to grieve. Of course only common people who wouldn't understand this feeling would frown upon killing killers. Actual victims, even if they thought morally against it, would still feel a burden removed.

In an era where everyone wants to be the righteous one, they ignore the actual feelings of the victims and focus on the one sided morals of it all. With his job done properly now, Jack put the phone back in the purse and walked home for real this time.

He lived alone in an apartment, luckily he was on the top floor so he could just go in from the top. But first, he forced himself to calm down, and it worked like a charm, returning him to his normal state.

With that, he walked inside and went into his house. Since he was both legally capable, and situationally required to, he lived on his own. As he took a shower, thoughts on what he had just done that night surfaced.

Three men were killed, by his own hands. Scum, yes but men nonetheless. As the water flowed down his back and off his body, he decided to let his own regrets do the same. He wasn't some mentally unstable, traumatized child.

Drawing the line between who does and doesn't deserve to be killed, is something he could trust himself to do, with this ability to feels sins in his hands. The fact that he had let High Flier go is proof of this, in his eyes.

With that out of the way, he went to sleep peacefully.

--------

By the time High Flier had returned with the police, it was nearly half a day later and it was already light out. The sight of the demolished building was horrific to see, and the forensics team was silently glad a slightly strong wind didn't just blow and bring the entire building down.

They looked the building up and down, but they couldn't find any evidence of who did this whatsoever. Fingerprints, sweat, fallen hair. Their only lead on the culprit was High Flier's description of him, with a flaming skull.

Today was a horrible day to have such a weird case, as standing behind them was a woman nobody wanted to disappoint. Every time they heard the click of her heels walking behind them, the men flinched.

The lead forensics man felt her standing behind him, and looked back at her. She was quite beautiful, with long red hair and striking emerald eyes. But she was also quite terrifying, as when they asked the chief who she was, he simply said "Your boss' boss' boss."

After her own analysis of the scene, she removed her glove, reached down and touched one of the bodies with her bare hand. One of the scientists tried to stop her but halted when he saw her eyes glow.

She immediately whipped her hand back. Her quirk allowed her to trace the history of objects, or in a deceased person's case, see the last thing they saw before they died. And she was unlucky enough to see Jack while he was giving the goliath a Penance Stare.

She only felt a limited amount of the emotions they did, which saved her from suffering the same fate. But this also meant, she knew exactly what that ability had done to the man and it terrified her.

'If the public knew of such an ability, the more radical factions might vote him the new death penalty.' It was to note that not everyone was satisfied with the new hero society, especially not the countries that didn't have All Might.

Sweat poured down her face, and she still had goosebumps as she tried to compose herself. Normally vigilantes were a joke, but when they weren't, they were considered more dangerous than normal villains due to the high risk of stirring up the country's political climate.

Regaining her commanding aura, her voice rose over the whole site. "From here on, no one speaks of this case. No one works on cases pertaining to this villain, until directly assigned to them by myself and no one else. Understood?"

"Yes Ma'am!"

With that out of the way, she left the site, not wanting to check anything else if it meant having to see that terrifying visage again.

While her day was busy getting ruined by his own past actions, Jack's day was going quite swell. He wasn't doing anything special, just working as a painter, the house kind not the art kind. Due to how often houses get damaged in villain attacks, his business was quite useful, alongside the other construction workers he worked with.

Generally they'd fix the houses, and then call him up to come and paint them once they were done with that part of the house. It's not bad work all things considered, and since most people have some kind of anti-villain insurance, at least in New York, he gets paid pretty well too.

'Back in the days of the mafia, painting houses was code for killing people. Kinda ironic now that I think about it.' But after last night, seemingly getting a quirk and killing bad people, he had a pep in his step.

One of the construction dudes that was working elsewhere in the house noticed this. "What'd you do, get a hot girlfriend?"

"No but that's step two on the list, trust me." Jack had reached that age where he definitely wanted one, but he wasn't desperate for a girlfriend quite just yet. Once he reaches his 20s then he'll start worrying about it. Besides, with a secret like this now he really can't rush in.

Of course, he didn't know he now had a woman obsessed with him, but even if he did it certainly wasn't in a good way.

And like that, he passed a week peacefully. Not that he didn't transform again, he did every night that week. He just hunted a few easy villains each night, made sure they had big sins, and it all went smoothly.

Meanwhile, the lady who had basically tasked herself solely to finding him was tearing her hair out, as each time there were no living witnesses, so in order to see if it was really him, she had to check their last sight.

She was really getting tired of seeing that Penance Stare, the name her small personal team had given it after much analysis over it's specifics and conditions. Between that and his seemingly daily activity of murder, she was being driven crazy by this man.

And sure, everything she saw in those stares, all the crimes those men had committed, were pretty terrible stuff, but he was breaking the law, and a very dangerous outlier in a very unstable society.

Of course, she had no idea her headache was about to get a whole lot worse the following night.