Officer Danny Wilks walked along the edge of the crime scene vigilantly, trying to ensure that none of the bystanders were able to contaminate anything. He and his fellow officers had to make sure the civilians stayed on their side of the perimeter that the police had established. Things were peaceful for now; the local news hadn't gotten here yet. Right as he was about to speak to Officer Ramirez, the crowd pointed upwards with index fingers and smart devices. A figure had gracefully landed between him and the crowd.
A beautiful woman strode towards him with the poise of a supermodel, which she very well could have been. Her athletic frame was clad in a costume composed of a red women's one-piece tracksuit, matching colored combat boots, and leather gloves. Her flowing ebony locks gleamed with the lights emitted by the police vehicles. Officer Wilks had seen her countless times in person and on television, but her beauty still awed him. The other officers came to full attention as she approached, for the crowd was cheering her arrival.
"SCARLET WARRIOR!"
"WE LOVE YOU, SCARLET WARRIOR!"
"MARRY ME, SCARLET WARRIOR!"
The superheroine looked back and gave a small smile as she politely waved to the throng behind her. She'd been on this planet since the late 19th Century and people still lauded her in the same way. But now was not the time to get distracted, for she had work to do.
"It's good to see you again, Danny," Scarlet Warrior greeted.
"You too," the officer replied, his eyes bulging.
"May I enter?"
"Of course!" The policeman quickly stepped aside to admit her.
She was still amused at how flustered the police got around her, both male and female. Though her garb wasn't the skintight, body-hugging getups that the other superheroines wore, she still boasted a heart-shaped backside that swayed with every step that she took, as well as full breasts that were barely contained by the superior sports bra she wore. Her lucrative endorsement deal with Under Armour kept her well-stocked with the gear she needed for her duties, even though they had been trying for years to get her to wear more revealing and sleek clothing.
That's what irked her the most: the indecent proposals. She was proud of her body and the fact that people found her attractive but hated the attempts to make her into a sex symbol. Just recently, she turned down Sports Illustrated's offer to be included in their Swimsuit Issue for the 20th time.
She strode through the crime scene with relative ease; her notoriety was such that most law enforcement agencies instantly gave her admission into places. She was entering a warehouse, walking carefully through a swarm of officers and forensic experts. She saw a familiar face, an older man with two chins and black hair flecked with streaks of grey. The man noticed her right away and walked towards her, a cup of coffee in his hand. He looked weary, yet relieved to see her.
"Thanks for coming, Scarlet Warrior," the man said.
"Of course, Detective McNally."
"Follow me," he said. "I'll warn you now, it's not pretty. Follow me."
Maybe it wasn't good to play favorites, but Detective McNally was definitely one of her favorite people to work with. All of the other men in the Castle City Police Department constantly ogled and mentally undressed her, but Detective McNally was the only one who treated her with respect. His eyes never lingered on curves, he never hit on her, and he never pestered her for selfies or favors. Though she was over 3400 years old, she saw him as sort of a paternal figure on the force. Despite the seriousness of the atmosphere, she was glad to see him.
"Who is it this time?" Scarlet Warrior asked as they came to a large, shrouded corpse lying on the ground.
McNally heaved a sigh and gave her one last look of warning before he ordered one of the staff to lift the shroud. Scarlet Warrior easily recognized the face. It was a robust man with a shaggy mane of hair and a bristly beard. Memories flashed back to the numerous times she'd encountered him, where his face was full of either lust or mirthful laughter. Now his face was pale, and his eyes closed.
"Bree-Dor," Scarlet Warrior said, ruefully.
"Dead as a doornail," said McNally.
In life, Bree-Dor had claimed to be a mutant from another dimension. Standing at 8 feet, he had made it his life's mission to impregnate as many women as possible in order to raise an army of hybrids to help him regain control of his home world. For years, he had been one of Scarlet Warrior's fiercest enemies. Every encounter with him was a struggle to save the women he'd captured and impregnated while trying to keep herself from being one of his conquests. It looked as though he'd never achieve his goal now.
"He was like the others," McNally explained. "Sprawled out on the floor, beaten to a pulp...with his manhood ripped off."
The others McNally was referring to were other villains with the same motif of sexual assaults. First had been Dr. Horsecock, a living centaur who made a habit of capturing women and subjecting them to treatment like the rumored activities of Catherine the Great. He'd been found in an alley with his favorite appendage lying a few feet away.
A few weeks later had seen the murder of Mighty Mormon. With his chiseled jaw, blonde hair, and blue eyes, he looked like every woman's ideal man. Secretly, he was running one of the most despicable Fundamentalist Mormon compounds, thanks to a special aphrodisiac that filled women with the uncontrollable urge to obey him. He'd been a slippery foe, hiding his illicit deeds behind his lawyers and cult followers. Scarlet Warrior never forgot the sight of his corpse splayed on the altar of his church, with his reproductive organs lying neatly on the keyboard of the pipe organ.
Then there had been Doctor Cocktapus, a former urologist who, thanks to a freak experiment to perfect a male enhancement drug, had been cursed with eight penises. The experiment had turned him from a respectable physician into a sex-hungry maniac who captured women to sate his enormous libido. His suffering had ended when the police found him stuffed in the trunk of an SUV with his severed members kept in a toolbox.
Scarlet Warrior should have been relieved that such despicable foes had been neutralized, but their deaths were too brutal for her tastes. Granted, every time they had been captured, they would always escape imprisonment. Nevertheless, these serial killings were getting out of hand.
"Still don't know who could have done this," McNally admitted. "I still think it's some kind of revenge killing, maybe a female victim of his from the past."
"I shudder to think of what kind of person who could defeat Bree-Dor," Scarlet Warrior said.
"Everyone knows that there are only three people on this planet who could go toe-to-toe with a guy like him: Captain Kinetic, Zagros the Mighty..."
"And me."
"Precisely. Now, we've got the time of death at around 7 PM. Captain Kinetic was doing an event on a Navy aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Zagros is doing charity work in Bosnia. Do you have an alibi?"