When I was a kid, I didn't really believe in superheroes. The spectacular Spiderman and the maestro of technology, Iron Man, were my best-loved characters to watch on TV, but they weren't the ones I adhered to.
Perhaps because the novella about how one average Joe removed half of the world's corrupt practises without being discovered piqued my interest more.
It finally culminated when I was 9, as I realised that the story I had always heard was not a concocted tale but a true account of someone's life in our world.
The protagonist of the story was the shadowy assassin "Lizard", who simply vanished seven years prior to my birth after wrapping up a ninety-kill streak.
The victims were all unscrupulous officials, and their guilt was conclusively demonstrated by the content of the USB stick strapped to the underside of dead lizards on the scene of the crime.
Though the real cause that grabbed the globe by storm was not the lizard's staggering number of murders but the absence of evidence to interpret how the victims succumbed to blood loss.
"Yet another victim down to a bloodless death." – SN GLOBAL
"There is no indication of internal or external bleeding... Dr Carston alludes to the events as divine judgement." – TIME LOCAL
"Several countries have seen an upsurge in their safety index; are vigilantes really the need of the hour?" – Daily 24
To prevent any new vigilantes or criminals from appearing by exploiting the then-ongoing chaos and commotion, police departments across the country developed and deployed a substantial number of their defence forces and investigators to prowl various areas on a constant basis.
As a result, 12 vigilantes and 62 criminals were apprehended, while the lizard managed to remain uncaught and on the front of every media outlet.
However, the lizard faded away from the spotlight soon after as authorities confirmed that no new killings even vaguely resembled his regular pattern of behaviour.
That said, it took 17 years for the safety index to fall to where it was prior to the appearance of the lizard.
Meanwhile, three infamous entities—Scythe, Shadows, and Chevalier—slowly consolidated power and waged constant turf wars over the following years.
It was during their penultimate turf battle, which they dubbed "Red Day," that I lost both of my parents.
But it wasn't their fault; they were probably merely the strings from the start.
On October 9, xx19, the lizard finally returned only to firebomb the entire city of Mageville, resulting in 937 deaths and 2087 casualties.
The only thing keeping us awake was the excruciating, piercing pain of our wound.
We longed to cease doing all we were doing to alleviate the ache, but we knew that if we did, the situation would only have become worse.
