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SM/DC Chapter 82 : Crime Syndicate
🕑 Added 2025-04-07 20:42:45 +0000 UTC[Blüdhaven – Earth 3 – ]
A thin layer of fog clung to the cracked concrete streets, seeping through the alleys like a living thing. Neon signs flickered like dying stars overhead, casting warped reflections in puddles of oil-stained water. The scent of rust, smoke, and despair polluted the air.
A lone figure walked through it all hood drawn low, shadow clinging unnaturally to his frame.
Arthur Blackwynd.
Now cloaked beneath a simple black hood, his eyes scanned the ruined world beneath the folds of dusk.
"It's even more gloomy in here than I expected," he muttered under his breath, voice low and cold. "Like the city itself gave up... and no one even cares."
His boots crunched against broken glass, each step measured, patient. Around him, buildings sagged under the weight of decay. Entire blocks seemed abandoned, yet the few who walked them looked worse off, sunken eyes, bruises, malnourished, dressed in rags. But they weren’t just poor.
They looked owned.
Arthur turned a corner and froze, not out of fear, but fury. Ahead, two armored enforcers, faces hidden behind sleek, metallic visors, were dragging a scrawny man by the hair. The man cried out in pain, blood dripping from his temple.
“This’ll teach you to miss your work quota,” one of the guards sneered, smashing the butt of his rifle into the man’s ribs.
The people nearby watched, but no one intervened. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. Not here.
Arthur’s eyes burned beneath the hood. His fists clenched, but he didn’t move.
Not yet.
He stalked past like any other civilian, seemingly uninterested. But when the guards turned their backs, it happened.
A flicker of shadow.
A whisper of movement.
CRACK.
One guard’s neck twisted violently in an unnatural angle, his body crumpling to the pavement without a sound. The other turned, confused, only to feel the shadow behind him. Arthur’s hand reached from the darkness, wrapping around his face
SLAM.
The enforcer’s skull cracked against the brick wall. Once. Twice. Gone.
They never saw their killer. No one did.
Arthur kept walking, blending into the flow of the broken city, shadows closing the gap where the bodies once lay.
"They piss me off," he murmured to himself, voice a razor. "Bullying the weak like that. It's pathetic."
He passed another alley, this time, children were huddled near a burning barrel, eyes vacant, skin marked with bruises. One of them glanced up toward him, trembling. Arthur said nothing. He only nodded once, slowly, and the shadows flickered.
He moved on. this was a world with monsters that wore uniforms and strength was law, Arthur didn’t need anymore examples to understand what he might be up against.
And this broken Earth
It had just awakened something far worse than the Syndicate.
****
Arthur stood upon the rooftop of a broken skyscraper, his hood pulled low as he surveyed the corrupted heart of the city.
Suddenly
A loud hum.
A flicker of static.
Across every street, every alley, every crumbling corner of the city screens came to life.
Massive digital billboards buzzed on above buildings, drones hovered midair projecting hard-light displays. Even the sound systems crackled, spreading the message like poison through the veins of a dying world.
Then his face appeared
Owlman.
Cloaked in black, a cold intellect radiating from every syllable. The city fell silent, as if even the air refused to move.
“People of this crumbling world,” Owlman’s voice echoed through the streets, precise and commanding, “it is time to stop this delusion. Time to pull the veil off your naïve ideals and see the truth laid bare.”
“You call him a hero, Alexander Luthor. The last flicker of rebellion in a world long claimed. You cling to him like a dying flame. But make no mistake…”
He leans forward, gaze cutting through the screen like a blade.
“This resistance is not noble. It is futile. A tantrum against the inevitable. Every action he takes only delays the collapse you fear, and we, the Syndicate, are more than ready to accelerate it.”
A pause.
“Surrender, Alexander. Turn yourself in and stop condemning these people to more suffering in your name. You are not a savior. You are not a hero.”
His voice turned venomous.
“You are a ghost, haunting a world already ours.”
“So make the right choice… or watch the rest of your so-called ‘hope’ burn.”
The screen faded into static, then black. Silence swept the streets again.
Arthur said nothing for a moment, eyes narrowing beneath his hood, hands clenched into his cloak.
The wind blew.
He exhaled slowly. Then smirked.
“Well… that confirms it.”
He turned from the edge of the rooftop, shadows curling at his feet as his cloak fluttered behind him.
“Luthor’s alive.”
“Which means I can find him.”
But as he glanced back down toward the city, toward the black-suited enforcers patrolling the streets, toward the drones scanning every corner, and toward the giant obsidian towers branded with the mark of the Syndicate, his smile faded into a cold stare.
“...before they do.”
The shadows behind him writhed in anticipation.
****
Arthur’s eyes scanned the horizon, the same sickly moon hanging ominously in the sky, casting its cold light over the wreckage of Blüdhaven. He hadn’t seen the sun since he arrived, no matter how long he’d been here. It was a constant night, an eerie, unyielding darkness. The moon remained in place, unmoving, as if frozen in time.
He pulled the hood of his cloak tighter, his boots softly tapping the cracked pavement as he moved through the desolate streets, avoiding the oppressive eyes of the floating surveillance drones. His thoughts echoed in his head, a growing realization gnawing at him.
“I have to say something,” he muttered to himself, barely audible over the sound of distant sirens and the hum of the drones above. “I know I’m not crazy, but it’s been night ever since I opened my eyes in this world...”
His gaze turned upward, the moon’s light harsh and unblinking. “The moon,” he continued, more to himself than anything, “it’s just there... the entire time. Never moves. Never changes. This means it’s Ultraman’s doing, covering the yellow sun radiation...”
Arthur stopped in his tracks, his sharp eyes narrowing. The pieces were starting to fall into place. It wasn’t just the moon. It was everything. This wasn’t just Blüdhaven; this was a place suffocated by the Syndicate’s control. Everything about it screamed their influence, their reign of terror. The crime. The corruption. The chaos.
He clenched his fists, a low growl in his throat. "And this place has to be withing the Crime Syndicate’s section if he did that." he muttered. "Or at least very close to where they operate."
A shadow flickered behind him, and from it emerged Galatea, kneeling before him, her shadow figure sharp and unwavering.
Arthur’s eyes glowed his mind calculating. He didn’t look down as he spoke, but his voice was cold, purposeful.
“Galatea,” he began, his tone carrying the weight of command, “I need you to find out Alexander Luthor’s whereabouts. Listen for whispers. Look for any resistance movements, there has to be something. Stay undetected. Don’t make a scene. The last thing we want is to draw attention before we’re ready.”
Her gaze was unwavering, her voice low but filled with determination. “Very well, my king.”
Arthur’s lips curved slightly, though it was far from a smile. “There’s a plan forming in my mind… a risky one. But it’s only worth it if we find Luthor first. We’ll see how far the Syndicate’s reach truly goes.”
Galatea rose fluidly, her body a blur of shadow and light as she stood tall before him. Her eyes locked with his for a brief moment, and she gave a single nod, the weight of his command clear in her posture.
“I will not fail you, my king,” she said with quiet conviction, her voice carrying the power of unspoken promise.
Arthur’s gaze sharpened. He didn’t need to tell her more. She understood the stakes. In this corrupted, lawless world, Luthor was a key piece. If they could find him before the Syndicate did, it would be the first blow in a war that would shake this earth to its core, and naturally his way out as well.
With that, she vanished into the sky, her form melting into the night like a wraith. The only evidence of her departure was the brief ripple in the air, a faint shimmer in the darkness.
now, it was his turn to move. His eyes narrowed as the weight of the situation pressed against his mind like a storm cloud ready to break.
“I need to do my part,” he thought. And as he spoke those words to himself, a calm determination settled over him.
With a thought, the Promethium Sword materialized in his hand, the blade shimmering faintly under the dull city lights, a deadly promise of the chaos he would soon bring.
his voice cut through the air. “I’ll cause as much chaos as possible… without being detected.”
His lips curled into a small, vicious smile. “It will certainly alert the Syndicate that someone or something is causing chaos. But, hopefully... that will attract the attention of the resistance as well.” His voice was laced with an almost predatory calmness, the same air of a hunter preparing to strike.
his body was already in motion. The air seemed to part around him as he vanished into the night, his form a blur of shadow and speed, a phantom in the darkness.
Arthur’s speed was remarkable, unnatural even. Each step was calculated, swift, and deadly. The shadows bent around him as he moved, slipping between the cracks of the city's surveillance, avoiding detection with uncanny precision.
He darted through alleys, scaled buildings with a fluidity that made him seem like an extension of the very night itself. His thoughts were a sharp contrast to the seamless flow of his movements, there was purpose behind every action, every swing of his sword.
The first wave of his chaos came swiftly a swift strike against a patrol, a brutal, calculated move that left them incapacitated, but not dead. Just enough damage to send shockwaves through the Syndicate's ranks, to make them question what was happening. His presence was merely a whisper, a shadow in the midst of their surveillance, too fast to be caught, too deadly to be ignored.
He smiled to himself as he dashed toward the heart of the city, “They'll come for me, but they’ll never catch me. Not until I want them to.”
