Call Me Cassius
is a Web Original Fiction by Idea Dump.
The story takes place in Vertigo City, where the titular Cassius, a downtrodden businessman with repressed violent thoughts, lives. On his way home from another horrible day at work, Cassius trips and falls down a steep slope. He manages to survive the fall, and ends up landing next to a white statue of a masked, robed woman. Picking up the statue and bringing it home, the statue begins to speak to Cassius. As thanks for bring it home with him, the statue zaps Cassius, which kills him... but then he comes back to like, imbued with supernatural powers.
Deciding to call the statue "Andromeda", Cassius spends the next several months using his powers to hunt down and kill anyone and everyone he hates, from his racist coworkers, to his Jerkass neighbors, to even a kid who accidentally broke his car window.
Five years later, Cassius becomes the deranged ringleader of Nocturne, a criminal organization of his own making, which has managed to be at the top of Vertigo City's criminal underworld. It turns out, however, that many other people have also found "Andromeda" statues, and they've been granted powers far greater than Cassius's.
Seeing them as a threat to his rule, Cassius aims to take down the "heretics", all while attempting to unravel the mystery behind the Andromeda statues and the reality behind his powers.
Originally hosted on FanFicton.Net's sister site, Fiction Press, it's long since been deleted.
The story contained examples of the following tropes:
- Artifacts of Doom: The Andromeda statues.
- Asshole Victim: A good deal of Cassius' enemies prior to him forming Nocturne, especially his racist coworkers. However, Cassius' ways of dealing with them are so monstrous that, even though they may have had it coming, you can't help but feel sorry for them.
- The Corruption: The powers the statues endow their finders with will inevitably corrupt them, no matter how good their intentions are.
- Cosmic Horror Story: It turns out that Andromeda is real, after all.
- Curbstomp Battle: Those who've been "blessed" by Andromeda deliver these all the time.
- Disproportionate Retribution: A good deal of people get killed for some horribly petty reasons.
- Evil vs. Evil: Practically everyone in the setting's a villain. The only exception is Perseus, an All-Powerful Bystander who only takes action at the very end of the story, and Aldrich, who's aware of the true nature of the statues and is trying to destroy them.
- No Man Should Have This Power: The reason Aldrich wants to destroy the statues and kill Cassius.
- Oddly Small Organization: Most of Nocturne's competitors have very few members, yet they still manage to be huge threats.
