“Killshot…that monster.”

 

–Deadbeat

 

“He’s a total sadist. He put one in my leg, and I waited for him to put one in my head…and he didn’t. I moved, and he took my other leg. Then he took my shoulder, and then my other shoulder. I think he liked watching me writhe on the ground like a slug. God only knows when he would have finished me off if Carolyn didn’t nab him.”

 

–Urban Ranger

 

“Through the hyper-sensors, I could hear his breathing and heartbeat. His agitation wasn’t the agitation of a man locked in battle. He was deriving disgusting pleasure from our combat. I wanted to kill him very much.”

 

–The Dove

 

Super-Sociopaths

 

Hyperstasis doesn’t discriminate. The truly evil are just as likely to be empowered as the truly good. When a sociopath develops superpowers, the result is a menace that goes well beyond the normal supercriminal. The very concept of the “super-sociopath” terrorized early 20th century mirabolists. Before the early 20th century, it was assumed that hyperstatics had some sort of special quality that allowed them to be empowered. Only those who had developed their humanity, be it either through occult meditation or a guiding inner light, could develop superpowers. Hyperstatics could be evil. The Shadow War was fought to prevent theosophist hyperstatics united under Charles Leadbeater from forcibly “evolving” humanity into immortal but intangible beings. But they were evil in the way the common man could be evil. They committed evil in the service of a perceived greater good. The idea that a sadist or sociopath could become a superhuman was dismissed out of hand.

 

Then in 1901, the “superhuman idiot” Vincent Morden put holes in the theory. Vincent could make things melt by staring at them. Vincent was mentally retarded. He was a thirty year old man still cared for by his parents like a child. In 1905, Alfred Binet found that he had the mental age of an 8 year old.

 

Vincent was a gentle man all his life. When his parents died, he was cared for by relatives, and spent the days of his life melting rocks in his backyard. But his existence disturbed mirabolists. It proved that an abnormal human could be empowered.

 

The news sent shockwaves throughout the world. Hyperstasis already had an awe-derived aura of terror, but it was assumed that hyperstatics could be reasonable. Unreasonable actors necessitate unreasonable response, and the specter of superpowers sociopaths led many to support superpower control legislation.

 

And when superpowered sociopaths actually did develop, support swelled. It wasn’t super sociopaths alone that caused the early 20th century trend for kybernetic systems of superpower control, several factors influenced the trend, but superpowered sociopaths hit people emotionally in a way no other factor could. The fears of unfair competition between superhumans and basics and the rise of a neo-feudal culture with superhuman lords and basic serfs were downright cerebral compared to the fear of a monster with unimaginable power working his desires upon the planet.

 

The Sphinx, who first revealed himself to the world in 1925, is often considered the first super-sociopath, likely due to his notoriety. He was often viewed as the archfoe of Gold Star. A telepathic cult leader, he desired for nothing less than the complete subjugation of mankind under his will, and sacrificed hundreds in his pursuit of that goal. He was an extreme narcissist. He felt no empathy with his fellow human beings. Everyone and everything from animals to gods existed only for his use.

 

But there was one earlier known to students of history and superpower law–Albert Vargas, the Gorgon. He is the reason telepathic and telekinetic serial offenders are known as gorgons.

 

Albert Vargas was a weak, timid man. He worked on an assembly line in New York City in 1912. He spoke very little but always tried to be polite. He hated people because they were able to navigate through a social landscape he could not and hated women in particular because they made other men happy while bringing him only self-conscious shame. He would dream about hurting people just like how he used to hurt animals until his mother caught him torturing a small bird and beat him for it. 

 

One day, while working on the line, he found that he could make the mechanisms of the line start and stop just by thinking about them. He used this strike back at the life he hated under “mechanical failure.” The factory struggled. His boss was upset. Everyone was yelling all the time but not him, never him. He was as polite and as mild as he ever was and people told him “Thank you Albert, I’m glad someone around her is keeping spirits up.”

 

He felt powerful in a way he hadn’t felt since he was a boy.

 

Then one night after a few beers he crushed the factory. Lives were ruined, but lives weren’t lost. He wasn’t that bold. Not yet. That came later.

 

He was out of a job along with everyone he knew, but it didn’t bother him. Whenever he wanted something, he broke a wall and made it come to him. He became wealthy–wealthy enough, he thought, to take a wife. He targeted a woman who spoke a few words to him, once, which he mistook for interest. When she spurned his advances, he arranged for her to have an accidental fall. He paid for her hospital bill and offered to let her stay at his home. When she refused, she stopped her heart.

 

That was when he realized how much he liked to hurt people. Killing animals, breaking machines, ruining lives, controlling lives, none of it had the thrill of causing pain.

 

Albert terrorized New York City. He owned a collection of stolen telescopes and binoculars and used them to spy across the city. He told people that he was an artist studying the city for his latest masterpiece. What he actually was studying were the people. He studied where they walked, what they did, how they lived. He looked at the city like a doll house and readied himself for play time.

 

He pushed people over railings into the ocean. He jerked cars so that they crashed. He snapped femurs just to watch people scream in agony. He pinched blood vessels to create embolisms so he could watch people drop dead.

 

Eventually, Albert was tracked down and captured by Caliban of the Monster League. Caliban used an Astral tracking device combined with diligent detective work to corner Albert. Caliban liked to play up his persona as an unsophisticated brute, but he was actually quite intelligent. He analyzed hospital records to find where people were being hurt and on a hunch checked possible vantage points–he knew about vantage points from his years stalking through London and Paris. On top of a tenement, he found a tiny broken wheel and determined that it came from a telescope. He then collected reports of stolen telescopes and found that they were mostly concentrated around a certain neighborhood. From there, it was only a matter of watching and waiting until he could wave right back at Albert.

 

There was nothing Albert could do to stop Caliban. He was too strong for his telekinesis. Even squeezing his eyes and pinching his brain did nothing. Finding, for the first time in his life, a person he couldn’t hurt, Albert fled screaming. He propelled himself across the New York City skyline with his power, but Caliban was used to vaulting across the rooftops of Paris and quickly caught him.

 

Albert recorded every person he ever killed in a journal, which came in use during his trial. He didn’t record their names. He didn’t know their names. But he recorded everything he did to them and knew them as “old man with top hat” or “little girl with blue skirt.”

 

“Your book reveals you for who you really are.” Judge Seabury told him. “You couldn’t stand to know their names. You couldn’t stand for them to know you. Their very gaze would have wilted you, so you struck from a distance. That is who you are–a weakling who abuses powers meant for better men.”

 

The papers called Albert the Gorgon because he “killed with a glance.” The name caught fire with the media and today the term gorgon is used to refer to telepathic and telekinetic serial offenders specifically and broadly to any offender that uses subtle and discreet powers to harm others. Michael Colton, better known as the Gremlin, used electro-magnetic powers, not telepathic, but the pattern of his behavior classifies him as a gorgon nonetheless.

 

Successive gorgons follow the pattern set down by Albert. They develop a subtle power in secret and use it to harm people. Whether or not gorgons are less likely to strike when their powers are known has been a controversial issue. In the 1930’s, some sociological studies concluded that a registry would act as a deterrent, which gave support to FDR’s superpower control legislation, but later studies would run against this conclusion. Lorna Molder, the Siren of Chicago, lured several coworkers to their deaths with telepathy in 1934. She was on Illinois’ telepath registry. When people suspected her, she used her registry status as a shield–it couldn’t be her, it had to be another telepath looking to frame her.

 

Regardless of whether or not they are known to have powers, false harmlessness is the ultimate weapon of gorgons. They are the shy, nice guy who offers comfort to their friends as the bodies stack up around them–or nice girl. While traditional serial killers are predominantly male, gorgons are split nearly 50/50. Criminologists theorize that this is due to the ease and safety of attacking with a subtle power. The gorgon thinks about someone they don’t like, and their heart stops, or the blood vessels in their brain explode.

 

Many gorgons start small. They use telekinesis to tap people on the shoulder. They use telepathy to whisper in their brains. They often get off on pretending to be supportive and understanding to their victims.

 

But they grow bolder. 

 

They push people. Telepaths push the emotion centers of the brain in the hopes of provoking a response. They want their victims to embarass themselves in public or question their own sanity. Telekinetics physically push their victims–into traffic, down stairs, off buildings. Then when pain becomes boring, they try death.

 

Telekinetic gorgons are often divided into two sub-categories: telekinetic bombers and telekinetic snipers. Bombers apply their telekinesis over large areas. They typically delight in property destruction over human casualties. They like to watch a city block reduced to rubble at their command. Snipers apply their telekinesis with precision. They break bones and shred tissues. Some of the sickest gorgons are physicians and physical therapists who use their powers to ensure that their patients never fully recover. Snipers tend to be harder to catch than bombers. A telekinetic bombing is always obvious. But a telekinetic sniper can be dismissed as an accident. Did a victim fall, or were they pushed? Every year, the Statesmen receive hundreds of “I tumbled down the stairs, please make sure I don’t have a telekinetic sniper” requests. If bombers seek to cultivate fear through overwhelming power, snipers seek to cultivate fear through uncertainty.

 

Some gorgons combine elements of snipers and bombers–and perhaps the most infamous man to do so was Killshot, a sociopathic supervillain who first appeared in 1992.

 

Killshot was the boogeyman of the 90’s. Other supervillains had larger bodycounts and better powers, but Killshot struck a chord they didn’t. While just as cowardly and as elusive as other gorgons, he left recordings that built up his image as the ultimate telekinetic menace. He wore a costume with a round helmet displaying a stylized cross image reminiscent of a target, a gravemarker, or an eye. He never talked in his recordings. He only demonstrated what he could do, sometimes on people.

 

His armor was a state-of-the-art sensory capable of feeding him information over miles. It was a marked improvement over Albert Vargas’ collection of telescopes. His armor implied he was highly resourceful. People speculated over whether or not he was a well-to-do telekinetic. Journalists fingered every telekinetic with even a modicum of celebrity, which tanked public trust in telekinetics–something which was likely one of Killshot’s goals.

 

Though it is not completely confirmed, it is now widely believed that Killshot was an agent of the terrorist organization Granfalloon. Granfalloon specializes in using chaos as a cover for calculated operations. It will kill hundreds to cover the death of a single target. It will plant gunmen on both sides of a protest and have them open fire at each other. Their primary agents are known as Blanks. Blanks serve Granfalloon with a cultish fervor. Blanks don’t hold convictions. They hold nothing to be true. They don’t believe in philosophy, or politics, or people. They believe only in this–that force and cunning ultimately determine what reality is, and that nothing is as violently cunning as Granfalloon.

 

Blanks know they are tools of shadowy powers. They delight in being tools. In being tools, they are being useful, and that is more than the useless masses that think themselves free. Blanks know they aren’t free, and to them, acknowledgement of that fact makes them superior to other people.

 

Blanks gladly mold themselves into whoever Granfalloon wishes. They will be a supervillain bombing Earth State buildings to drum up anti-superhuman hysteria. They will go through extensive body modification to look like a Chromian so that when they attack a human politician, Chromians take the fall. Blanks are black propaganda. Blanks are false flags. Blanks are plausible deniability. Blanks are, perhaps, the final evolution of psychological warfare–at once willing victims and willing actors. 

 

The theory goes that Killshot was another Blank and that Granfalloon was the organization that supplied him with his armor.  What political purpose could an indiscriminate killer of hundreds possibly have served? Anti-superhuman sentiment is an obvious answer, but it probably runs deeper than that. He killed a lot of people. His bodycount might have been a cover for a particular hit. Who it could possibly have been and for what reason is unknown, but Granfalloon is the type of organization to kill hundreds just to carry out a contract hit.

 

Another theory goes that Killshot is a Granfalloon pilot program for the multiverse. While nowhere near the mightiest threats our universe has faced, he would make quite the boogeyman if placed on an Earth with fewer superheroes. A monster that kills remotely, for no reason, targeting everyone–that’s quite a boogeyman, and even the most incompetent politician could easily accrue power by promising a way to kill the boogeyman–say, a killswitch device purchased from Granfalloon.

 

If there’s a silver lining to Killshot’s twisted existence, it’s that he was as hollow and purposeless as a man could possibly be. One can’t help but smirk looking over the trial records of “Thomas Lighter.” He worked hard to present himself as this great and terrible monster, this silent, unstoppable juggernaut who made his own sensor suit, a man who fulfilled every twisted pleasure against all the world’s wishes. But that wasn’t who he was. He was a tool. He was given his suit. He was given his training. He was manufactured. He was a bomb in human form with as little agency as that implied.

 

In the end, the man who pretended to be a god among gorgons was less than even Albert Vargas. Both were snakes, both weren’t brave enough to look the people they killed in the eye, but Killshot needed help even to crawl on the ground.

 

Killshot’s History

 

Killshot first appeared in 1992 terrorizing Arden City. Always thinking of his image he left KILLSHOT on the side of buildings to show his strength and on the bodies of victims to show his precision. One of his victims was a young Carolyn Bosharova whose quasimorph powers activated as a telekinetic blast evaporated her. Carolyn would go on to join a superteam called Limitless and participate in the 2019 battle that finally captured Killshot.

 

Killshot became a media darling overnight owing to the taunting records he uploaded to the noosphere. One magazine cover featured his mask with the caption IS THIS THE FACE OF EVIL? Edgy high school boys wore shirts with his mask on them. Talking heads debated whether or not Killshot represented a change in the culture, because the media always conflates violence with significance.

 

Superhuman serial killer and self-styled “executioner of evil” the Dove moved Killshot to the top of his list. “I must kill this man.” he wrote in his dead-drop diaries. “I must kill this man for my life to have any purpose at all.” When Killshot struck Nedor City in 1993, superteam Legacy pinpointed Killshot’s location through the telepathic skills of their member Radior. They were about to capture Killshot when the Dove appeared, distracting them. Killshot escaped in the confusion.

 

The Dove blamed himself for all the hundreds of deaths to follow Killshot’s escape. “In Nedor, I became something unthinkable–a shield for murderers.” he wrote, “I must atone.”

 

Killshot is today imprisoned at the Sandcastle. The Dove has yet to take his selfish revenge, but it’s likely he will try. The Dove is nothing if not patient.

Killshot would strike throughout America for three decades, becoming one of the longest active serial killers. He was finally captured by the superteam Limitless, Vapor Riser’s team, in 2019. He tried to kill himself to avoid the humiliation of capture and trial but was stopped by Vapor Riser herself. As of 2021, his trial is still ongoing due to the number of offenses he’s been charged with, several of which involve the slaying of tourists from Earth State and the Chromian Empire, which means their legal systems also want a piece of him. He will likely be extradited to either Earth State or the Empire and executed once his trial concludes. Until then, he’s kept between court appearances in the Sandcastle where his telekinetic power is neutralized by Thule guards.

 

His trial has been a source of relief to friends and relatives of his victims. Without his mask, he is revealed as what he is–a sick, twisted man, all alone in the world with his evil. He looks old. He hasn’t taken a rejuvenation treatment. He’s not so scary in a prison uniform. He looks like any other low-life, because he is any other low-life.

 

Telepathic probes of Killshot’s mind have revealed his past and his name, and when these things were revealed in the public Killshot couldn’t help but visually react in court.

 

His name was Thomas Lighter. He was 80 years old. He was a gorgon for thirty years of his life hurting people from a distance. Men in masks and coats told him to step up his game and gave him the means to do so.

 

That was it. That was all. There was no great mystery to the silent assassin. He could have been any cowardly sadist. He was not a self-made killer. He was picked.

 

And that killed Killshot more thoroughly than any execution could.

 

Telepathic scans couldn’t reveal the identity of the men who gave Killshot his gear. But the complete destruction of his ego more than made up for it.

 

The Second Killshot

 

Recently, there have been sightings of another Killshot, another man taking up his armor, gear and weapons. This Killshot terrorized Tarpe City until the Dove chased him off, winging him but not killing him. This incident showed the superhero community two things–that their data on the Dove was sorely lacking and that the Dove knew things they didn’t.

 

That another Killshot has taken the place of the previous supports the theory that Killshot is a Granfalloon agent sewing chaos towards unknown ends. 

 

Sadistic Sniper

 

The following information applies to both the first and second Killshot. While the second Killshot has only attacked once, his patterns mirror the first enough that Crime Web feels the information is interchangable. If Killshot is a Granfalloon “franchise terrorist” as many believe, then it makes sense that the second wouldn’t deviate much from the original.

 

Killshot has been called a “terrorist sniper” for how he fights. He doesn’t just fight from an extreme range, he incorporates terror tactics. He doesn’t start off by firing full-power telekinetic bolts. He gently shoves targets. He trips them. He makes them question whether or not he’s hitting them or if their own anxiety is getting to them. He likes to use the environment like a child playing with toys. If there’s a building nearby, he’ll try to drop it on the heads of his targets. If there’s a car, he’s going to shoot the tires to make it crash. If there’s a plane, he’ll shoot the engine to make it drop out of the sky. Direct shots, while more tactically sound than these theatrics, are boring and easy. He will only use them when he’s pressed.

 

Killshot sets himself up in a sniper nest defended by trip-wire traps and drones and carefully studies the area before ever firing a shot. He can study an area for a long, long time. Computers seized at one of his hideouts show that he sometimes spends weeks just watching. He watches people walk by on their daily routines and feels a sense of power for letting them live. He feeds off the anticipation until he feels compelled to act–but he will always act. He is incapable of abandoning an area once he sets his sights on it and the Limitless used this to trap him. After discovering his plan to shoot up downtown Mainline City, they worked with the city to secretly switch its inhabitants with combat MS’s. Killshot was surprised, to say the least, when his targets didn’t go down.

 

Killshot’s armor is a state-of-the-art sensor feeding him data over 100 miles. It scans vibrations, heat, dimensional oscillations, anything and everything. The armor seems to be reverse engineered from ARGO technology and is similar to what ARGO explorers use to map uncharted realities. It is exceedingly powerful, and virtually nothing can sneak up on Killshot. Medical examination has revealed that Killshot’s nervous system has been extensively modified. About 70% has been replaced with artificial tissue designed to sync the armor with his mental control.

 

If he can sense a place, he can effect a place, which means that with his armor he can assert his telekinesis over 100 miles. Because of this, he can be extremely hard to pin down. Complicating matters is that his armor is equipped with a teleporter. He can vanish in an instant and set himself up over another 100 mile range.

 

In the rare occasion where Killshot fights hand-to-hand, he uses a rhecite rapier. He likes the shallow, precise cuts it makes.

 

His inhumanity is at once his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. His willpower is fueled by his bloodlust and it is immense. Superheroes have only been able to take him down by nearly killing him. On the other hand, his sadism makes him a sloppy killer. He failed to kill several superheroes he should have been able to simply because he likes to play with his prey.