-

Ready or Not:
Pt. IV

Then
Kenya

Both Bruce Wayne and his mentor Sergi Kravinoff, better known as the legendary Kraven the Hunter, were walking through the knee high brush of the Savanna. Both men carried opposite ends of a large wooden stake. The carcass of a boar swayed gently back and forth from the pole by its feet. They carried the dead pig towards the hut they had called home for the last few months.

"Our time here is ending," Kraven said nonchalantly. "I have taught you almost all that I can teach. You can track, stalk, and hunt masterfully."

"You've been a good teacher, Kraven," Bruce said.

"You have been a good pupil. Not too bad for a rich boy."

Bruce chuckled softly. No compliment from Kraven ever came without some small way to undercut the praise. "I can make arrangements and be on my way by the end of the week."

"Good. Because tonight, we will have our final lesson. One last hunt."

"What will we be after?"

"Tonight," Kraven said with a twinkle in his eyes, "we hunt the most dangerous animal,"

---

Now
Old Gotham
12:05 AM

I shot out a grapnel line into the night and waited for it to catch on the nearby building. The party was barely over, and I was out looking for trouble in a city that had it by the handful. This is where I belonged. Give me the stash houses over the penthouses. And, besides, Billy Russo was in need of a talking to.

Alfred found out rather quickly that Kraven was at the party on Russo's invitation. I normally made it a habit of not inviting mobster trash to my parties, but the people at the foundation were responsible for sending out invites. They would also need a talking to. The line went taught and I swung into the air. I released the line and activated my cape's glide flight function. I flew over the courthouse that I shared a name with and glided over the rooftops of the oldest part of the city like the winged creature some criminals believed I was.

KRAK!

Rifle fire broke the stillness of the night. I grunted in shock as my grapnel line went slack, the rifle's bullet severing the line. I began to free-fall towards the street, tumbling and twirling through the air. I struggled with my belt and pulled out an emergency line. Desperate I wildly aimed at a stone gargoyle on the building above me. The line caught and I jerked with the sudden stop. My body swung to the right and crashing through the office building's window. I fell hard to the floor and rolled to the stop, dazed and in pain.

That's when I heard the footsteps.

"This is what you have become?" A voice said from above. I felt strong powerful hands on my neck. I was picked up and shoved into the face of my former teacher. "You were a great hunter once," Kraven said with a sigh.

"And you used to be sane," I growled as I swung my arm at Kraven's head. He had his hand out and waiting, dropping me to the floor with swift counterstrike. He twisted my arm behind my back until I felt a sharp pain. Kraven growled and kept twisting my arm. I could feel tendons twisting, the arm in danger of popping out of the shoulder socket.

"I could kill you now, it would be easy. For a week, I watch and wait. I see you in action. And I am disgusted by what I see?"

"Someone who can kill, but doesn't?" I gasped.

"No. I see a once great hunter reduced to being a fool in a costume, a fool who relies on toys and not the hunters instincts."

With his free hand Kraven reached down and ripped my utility belt from my waist. "I am going to kill you. I was paid to kill Bat, and I will kill Bat. But not before I shame you to the point where you will be begging for death."

Kraven brought down the butt of his palm on my head, knocking me unconscious in one fluid motion.

---

I came to groggy and dazed. I ran my hands across the ground and felt gravel. Through my half shut eyes I looked up and saw my bare hands. Kraven had stripped me of my gloves and gauntlets. Standing up, I saw what else he had done. In addition to my belt and gloves, my boots and cape were gone. Just my suit and cowl remained. I was on a rooftop somewhere in the industrial area of town. Factories, plants, and smokestacks cluttered up the skyline.

"Your toys are gone," Kraven's voice said from somewhere close, somewhere I couldn't see. "All there is now is the hunter and the hunted. It is time for you to die, richboy. The hunt begins now."

Ready or Not:
Pt. V

Industrial Pak
12:50 AM

I ran barefoot across the factory rooftop, gravel biting into the soles of my feet. With my running start I hurled myself into the air over a gap between buildings. I hit the roof of the adjacent building hard and landed with a hard thump. Recovering from my fall, I stayed low to the ground and hugged the shadows. Even in the dark I could feel his eyes upon me. It had been years since he had taught me the hunt, and I had learned well. But laying in the dark, with the a crushing sense of foreboding creeping in, I knew who the real master was. I took a deep breath in an attempt to clear my mind. Kraven was the better hunter. On that fact there was never any doubt. But he didn't know this city like I do. He's the master of the jungle, but the urban jungle is a different story.

Gathering myself, I began to creep across the rooftop. I prepared for an ambush after the crunch of gravel that accompanied each footfall. I made my way to the fire escape and climbed down towards the street. As I started down I heard a sound. A new noise amidst all the sirens, hoking horns, and sounds of industry. A gentle sound. Like rope tearing through the air.

Letting go of the fire escape I fell back towards the ground as a bola struck the ladder and wrapped around the rungs. Falling towards the ground, I straightened my body and dove from two stories up into a trash dumpster. I may have hit trash but it was all glass bottles and plastic trays. Cut, bleeding, and in pain, I climbed out the trash and hurried into the shadows.

"That was my warm-up," Kraven's voice echoed through the alley I was seeking refuge in. Although his voice was close, there was no sign of the man. "So far, so easy. You are predictable, richboy. What will you do, now?"

The courthouse clock four blocks over chimed one in the morning. That's when inspiration hit me like a bolt of lighting. Standing I darted from the shadows and ran down the alley. Kraven chuckled and the sounds of his laughter followed me out the alley. Leaving the alley, I ran across the street to another building's side. Once there I jumped on the building's fire escape and climbed up to the rooftop. A moment later I was running as fast as I could and leaping across the gaps between buildings.

Footsteps crunched behind me, distant at first they were rapidly approaching.

"I have tracked down cheetahs, gazelles," Kraven yelled. "Do you think you can outrun me?!"

"No," I hollered back. I could feel the gentle vibrations getting stronger as I approached the edge of the rooftop. "But I know the 1:05 can outrun you!"

Jumping from the roof I landed on the last car of a passing subway train as it tore past the building. Struggling to find a foothold, I managed to stand up and look back at Kraven as the train carried me off into the distance.

---

The Bowery
1:35 AM

I jumped off the subway while it was stopped at the station and melted into the shadows. The stunt with the train had bought me some time, but I needed to go on the offensive. A few blocks away I came across a closed hardware store. The doors and windows were barred, but it wasn't entirely impregnable. I kept a running total and I went in and took the items I needed. I made a note to send the money to the store the next morning.

If I lived to see the morning.

---

​

2:45 AM

Kraven could tell Wayne was nearby. He could smell him. Even through the repugnant stenches of this city, Bruce Wayne had a unique scent. He smelled like silk suits and money, like all people of wealth. Despite the year he spent at Kraven's side, Wayne had showed his true colors at the end. He was not a hunter, just a rich boy playing hunter.

Kraven jumped from a rooftop and landed in an alleyway. Bruce's scent was close now. Creeping, Kraven approached a trashcan. The smell was coming from the can. Looking inside, Kraven saw a pile of dark clothing and mask. On the shirt was the symbol of the Batman.

"Ha!" He scoffed aloud. "This is how richboy beats me? He gets naked and tries to hide his scent? It is a valiant effort, but it will fail!"

To show his rage Kraven kicked over the trashcan. A wire attached to the can's underside snapped. The spring loaded trap underneath the trashcan sprung, shooting a half dozen nails out at Kraven. While most of the nails missed, one lodged into his left shoulder, another nail struck his right forearm with a glancing blow.

"Ah," he grunted, holding his shoulder. "Clever, richboy... very clever. You fooled me. You will not do it again!"

Kraven yanked the nail from his shoulder. Holding it up, he noticed there was a balm slathered on the tip, mingling with his blood. "What..." His knees buckled as an intense burning sensation hit him. His shoulder irradiated in white hot pain. Kraven ground his teeth in pain and roared out into the night.

"DEAD! YOU ARE DEAD!"

Fighting his pain, Kraven saw a fire escape and jumped at the ladder. He grabbed a rung and fell back to the ground. Holding his hands up, he saw the grease covering his palms. The hunter yelled out in frustration again.

From a distance, a figure in work boots, jeans, and a hooded poncho watched Kraven from the shadows. The shoe was now on the other foot. For all his skill and ability in the jungle. Kraven was out of his element. In this concrete jungle, in his domain, Bruce Wayne was the hunter. And now Kraven had become the hunted.

As the clock crept closer to the witching hour, the Oblivion Bar found itself a hub of activity. The small dingy room was alive for the first time in years, with its patrons - demons, monsters, magicians, and fairies, all dressed in an assortment of varying styles of clothing – bunched up towards the bar or sat at scattered tables, laughing away into the night. The light of various candles, or the odd burst of sorcery, illuminated their faces in a range of colours. The barkeep, Jim Rook, was keeping busy; one second he was pouring out glasses of bourbon for a rowdy group of cultists, the next he was laughing away with some visitors from Otherworld.

One thing he kept coming back to was a discussion being held at the very middle of the bar.

Bobo T. Chimpanzee let out a chuckle as his paw moved his drinks towards his mouth. He was wearing his best blazer tonight; perfectly tailored to the primate’s slender body. It was the grand reopening after all.

Opposite him sat someone dressed significantly more worse for wear; Rory Regan, the Ragman. A mass of green draped over his body, made up of a combination of tattered fabrics and patches. A rag for every soul that the suit held.

The duo laughed together, fondly reminiscing over better days. Such a duo would garner frequent stares in most establishments, yet the Oblivion Bar was different. Here everyone was welcome.

Mostly everyone, anyway.

The door to the bar exploded into light as a figure stepped into the room. Eyes all around turned to stare widely at the source of the commotion, as a deep silence swept through the bar’s patrons. Dressed in robes of brilliant blue, the Sorcerer Supreme cast an imposing presence, only amplified by the scarlet cloak that billowed behind him, as if alive with a mind of its own. His stern eyes narrowed as they scanned the room, taking in the scared faces of everyone before him.

It was not that they disliked the man. It was more that his presence here meant something was wrong.

“Doctor Strange!” Jim announced from behind the bar, finally breaking the silence. “Can I… get you a drink?”

The Sorcerer Supreme simply ignored him, turning slightly on his heel, finally spotting what he was after. He marched forwards, his leather boots heavy on the old wooden floorboards beneath him, directly towards the oddly duo sat before the bar.

“Where is she?” His voice was demanding as his eyes pierced the ragged suit of souls before him.

Rory, sweat already forming underneath his mask, tried to hold strong.

“Where’s who?” He asked, if only to delay the inevitable.

“Don’t play dumb with me, you spineless oath.” Strange commanded, anger swelling within him now. As his brow furrowed, his face began to turn a similar shade to his cloak. “You know exactly who I mean.”

Fearing his bar was about to become an arcane battleground, Jim leant towards over the bar towards them slightly.

“Maybe it’s best if you guys dealt with this...” Jim spoke cautiously, as he motioned his head back towards the door, before being cut off as his friend raised a paw in his direction.

The chimp gave a short laugh before adjusting himself in his seat, bringing his glass towards his lips. “No way Jim, I’m not missing this one.”

Ignoring the commotion to his left, Rory began to relent to his interrogation.

“I’ve not seen her in weeks, okay? Not since you forbade her from contacting me.”

Strange simply scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Ballcrap.” He grew closed as he spoke, a fury in his eyes, and the slight spec of spittle in his teeth. “I know the two have been running around with this half-assed idea to reform Shadowpact and take on the forces of Limbo, but as of right now I'm declaring that that plan is dead”.

Rory sunk into his seat, his eyes moving down to his feet, not wishing to look Strange in the eye at this moment. All he had wanted to do was help.

Sighing, he finally gave in.

"Look, I don't know where she is now, but when I last heard from her, she was looking for answers on what to do next. So, I…” He shuffled nervously as he spoke, finally bringing himself to look back up at the Doctor. “I pointed her towards Madame Xanadu.”

The group around him reacted in unison at those words. While both Strange and Jim let out a large groan, Bobo began to laugh once more.

“That old bag?” Detective Chimp asked, still struggling to keep a straight face. “What on earth for?”

Rory shrugged hesitantly. “Thought she’d tell her something insightful about moving on.”

Doctor Strange simply frowned, running his hand through his salt and peppered hair in annoyance. Taking a deep, he seemed to become calm once again, the red of his face vanishing.

“Well, that’s a start at the very least.” He declared.

With that, he was on the move once more, stretching his arms out before him in irregular positions. He moved his right arm around clockwise, causing the air before him to spark into life as a doorway of energy carved into shape. He was about to step through and disappear before a voice stopped him.

"You know..." Rory was standing now, his confidence having finally grown. "I wasn't actually going to go to Limbo for her. The girl didn't need a war, she needed a friend. Clearly when it came down to it, that wasn't you”.

The air grew cold once more, as Doctor Stephen Strange lowered his head down in shame. Stepping through the doorway in silence, he vanished from sight.


Waves crashed dangerously against the rocks at her feet, as Illyana Rasputin materialised on the stone outlet of the island. Rain fell around her, as the winds immediately began to attack from all directions. Avoiding the splashes of cold salt spray from the sea, she clutched her jacket around her body to shield from the rain. Fighting against the storm, she pushed her way up off the beach and onwards. The land around her as he moved was bleak; barren of any kind of vegetation bar the odd patch of grass or dying tree.

For a while, her only source of light was the odd flash of lightning in the sky above, which temporarily illuminated the greys of the island, before returning it once more to darkness. She had almost given up hope, when her eyes spotted the faint shape of a building in the distance, and a dim orange glow radiating from one of its windows.

Her hand moved to the protective charm around her neck. It was the only reason she had made it this far without began dragged back to the Sanctum. She finally allowed herself to smile, as it finally dawned on her that this trip may not have been made in vain.

The rain grew heavier as she moved onwards towards the building, the light guiding her. It was not long until Ilyana found herself stepping onto a path heading straight towards her destination. The opposite end seemed to slope back down towards the beach, where she imagined a small dock probably lay hidden amongst the rocks. Maybe even more buildings or settlements. She had no idea what to expect from this place.
She was so deep in thought that she missed the sounds of movement to her left.

Within seconds it was upon her. Leaping out of the darkness, the great beast snarled rabidly as it tackled her to the ground. She collided hard with the wet gravel, her arm beginning to trickle with specs of blood almost immediately as she scraped against it. She knew immediately that it was some kind of wolf. Yet the more she looked as she found herself trapped beneath it, the more she realised that wasn’t the whole story.

No natural wolf was this large. No natural wolf would look at her as this one did. This had to be a werewolf.

Ready or Not:
Finale

Then
Kenya

Bruce Wayne stood over the frightened man with a large knife in his hands. The beaten and bruised man was on his knees in the tall grass. Tears rolled down his face and mixed with the blood dripping from his mouth. He sobbed and begged for mercy in Swahili. Kraven stood behind Bruce and watched his protegee with crossed arms.

"Do it," Kraven said. "This is the last lesson, richboy. You have successfully captured your quarry. Now, finish your kill."

"No," Bruce said, looking at his master. "He's a poacher. He needs to be brought to justice."

"You have hunted down this cheater and made him feel like the beasts he hunts. Now like those animals, he will have his throat slit. You want justice? This is justice, richboy. This is not man's law. This is the law of the wild. Fair and cruel, richboy, this is justice."

"No," Bruce said again. He let the knife fall to the ground. "Not like this. We may hunt animals, but we are not animals. I'm sorry, Sergi. I made a mistake."

Bruce turned around and walked through the grasslands while Kraven watched. "YOU THINK YOU ARE BETTER THAN ME?!" He yelled as Bruce walked away. "YOU ARE NOT! NOBODY IS BETTER THAN ME! I AM KRAVEN THE HUNTER! RUN AWAY, RICHBOY! RUN AWAY!"

---

Now
The Bowery
3:00 AM

Kraven the Hunter carefully crept down the alley. Each step was careful and precise. His shoulder was bloody and burning from the trap Wayne had sprung on him earlier. Since then Kraven had made sure not to make any move without carefully weighing the consequences of it. Wayne was trying to make him his prey, but Kraven knew better. He could not be snared and he could not be defeated. He was the best and no one would ever come close to him.

"Run away, richboy," Kraven muttered under his breath as he spotted an object on the ground. "Run away."

Kraven approached the object and squatted down beside it. A metal cable lay on the ground, knotted together like a noose. It was a hastily made snare trap, Kraven observed, but it had been made rather well considering the circumstances. Kraven eyed the trap and found the trigger in the middle of the noose. He stood and walked a safe distance away from the trap. Taking a dart from his belt, Kraven tossed it at the snare and hit the trigger. The noose closed and zipped upwards towards a fire escape ladder.

"You see?" He shouted in joy. "Nobody is better than me! I am Kraven the Hunter. Who are you, compared to me?!"

Kraven watched the cable go up and smiled at his cleverness... but then stopped when he noticed the trap's counterweight, a large tool chest, was falling down to the ground towards him. He rolled to his right just as the heavy box crashed into the ground. The heavy chest exploded in a shower of metal and tools.

Kraven rolled to his right and looked up just as a large steel toed work boot crashed into his face and knocked him hard onto his back. Kraven felt blood in his mouth and at least two teeth rattling around free from the gum. He dribbled out blood and enamel as he looked up.

"Who am I?" Bruce Wayne asked as he stood over Kraven. He was dressed in the clothes he had found at the hardware store. "I'm Batman."

---

Both Kraven and Bruce crashed through a brick wall as brick dust and concrete power flew through the air. The two men tumbled across the floor of the rundown building. They came to a stop just feet apart from each other. Both men started to pick themselves up. Kraven moved for the large knife on his hip but Bruce's powerful leg swooped in and kicked the knife from Kraven's hand. The blade clattered away and Bruce drove his shoulder into Kraven's body. He picked the Russian up off his feet and slammed him into the wall of the building. The Russian desperately tried to find any opening to get leverage on the other man, but was unable to find any purchase. Bruce punched Kraven hard in the sternum while the hunter wrapped his hands around Wayne's head.

"I will not be defeated," Kraven said through a bloody mouth. He worked his thumbs into Bruce's eye sockets and started to create pressure. "You want to be bat? Now, you will be blind as one."

Bruce yelled in pain as Kraven drove his thumbs into Bruce's eyes. Bruce reached out blindly and slammed the back of Kraven's head into the wall. The attack caused the hunter to pull back from his eye-gouge. With his free hand, Bruce punched Kraven hard in the jaw and jumped back. Kraven fell to the ground as Bruce wiped trickling blood from his tear duct.

"Surrender," Bruce spat.

"Never," Kraven countered. "A hunter never gives up. To give up is to die. For the hunter, there is only the hunt and death. This, you never understood. You could be a great hunter. Instead you would rather dress up like fool and cry for mommy and daddy. You are useless."

"And you're vain," Bruce said with a hint of a smile as he breathed heavily. "That's what made this so easy. For years they've called you the world's greatest hunter. You've believed in your own legend, Kraven. You've become complacent - cocky. I threw you off your game so much tonight it's pathetic."

"Lies! I am the greatest!"

"Really? Look around. You're here in a unfamiliar environment with a foe you underestimated. He's taken the upper hand, stripped you of all your weapons. He did this because he knows you better than you know yourself. Tell me, what's the first rule of the hunt?"

Kraven roared and charged towards Bruce. Wayne crouched, ready for Kraven's strike. The hunter slashed wide from up top a move Bruce was ready for and easily countered. He grabbed Kraven's wrist and twisted it until he heard a loud pop issue from the arm. The twisted wrist hurt, but Kraven fought on. He kicked his leg up, Bruce dropped low and swept his leg at Kraven's one standing leg.

The hunter fell backwards and landed hard against the floor. Bruce pounced and landed on Kraven with a strike. He broke two of Kraven's ribs with one punch, his left collar bone with another. Kraven fought off the pain and tried to throw his pupil off of him. Bruce responded with a punch to Kraven's right kneecap. The knee buckled and made a crunching sound and Kraven screamed in pain.

"You're beaten," Bruce said as he loomed over Kraven with a fist at the ready to inflict more punishment.

"This... cannot be," he said, his voice filled with frustration as well as pain. "I am Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven the Hunter. The world's best."

"There's this saying a man told me once. It's something to say when things don't go your way. It goes, ,'Иногда вы едите медведя, а иногда медведь ест вас.'" he said in perfect Russian.

"'Sometimes, you eat bear,'" Kraven mumbled under his breath, the ghost of a smile on his face.

Bruce reared back for a final knockout blow to the beaten Hunter.

"'Sometimes, the bear eats you.'"
​

Gotham City
Diamond District
11:20 PM

Got a joke for you.

A lock is like a woman.

It's expensive?

No, that's not it.

A lock is like a woman.

It's what stands between you and money?

No, still not it.

A lock is like a woman.

It requires just the right touch.

--CLICK!--

There it is. And there it goes. The deadbolt lock was free. With it gone there was just a single lock on the doorknob that I could have opened with a strong look. I popped it free quicker than a high school boy pops off his girl's bra. And just like the proverbial teen necking in the backseat of a car I was in the promised land.

Through the door and down a dark corridor was Zinkman & Sons Diamond Exchange, one of the top diamond emporiums in Gotham and by extension the entire east coast. I am Ahab and this is my white whale, I am Javert and this is my Jean Valjean, I am the Trix Rabbit and these are my Trix. I'm at the finish line after sixteen months of prep, recon, and manipulation. I bribed bureaucrats at City Hall for copies of the building's blueprints. A hacker I know who owes me more than a few favors broke into the security company's mainframe to pull out their security schematics on the place. I dated Issac Zinkman's youngest daughter for six months just to get a feel for the family and learn any trade secrets. We broke up two weeks ago. Oh, Cinnamon. You had the face of a horse, but the body... of a horse. And now that I think about it, was Cinnamon your real name? I thought it was your nickname... and there was that strange way you laughed at my jokes, like a neigh or something...

....

Did... did I date a horse for six months?

Before any more thoughts of my potential bestiality could fill my head something hard and firm found itself resting on the back of my neck.

"Don't move," a voice said from beside my ear. "You're coming with me."

"Or what?" I whispered back.

"Or--"

Something sharp and painful coursed through my body. My feet fell out from under me and I slammed to the floor writhing in pain. The electricity was still working its way through me when a black sack was pulled over my head. Just for good measure a sharp kick to the face bloomed more pain through my body and knocked me unconscious.

---

Gotham Heights
1:12 AM

When the bag came off my face I was relieved to see that I was not in a police station. That relief quickly vanished when I saw where I was. It was a large, open-ended room with high ceilings and ivory furniture that matched the ivory carpet, that matched the ivory walls. Pretty much me in my black burglar outfit now stained with my own blood stood out in the room like a sore thumb. Even the two muscular thugs flanking both my sides were dressed in ivory shirts, slacks, and shoes.

"Did I die and wake up in the 70's?" I mumbled to myself.

"If only kid."

In the middle of the room, in a big chintz chair the color of -- what other color but Ivory -- was Rupert Roth. I didn't know Roth personally -- I wasn't big time enough to -- but I knew him based on the stories I'd heard about his underworld exploits. He looked like an extra from a bad disco movie. He wore an ivory shirt with half of it unbuttoned, a large gold necklace and medallion caught in the steely gray fur on his chest. He had on a pair of ivory pants that would have looked embarrassing on a man half his age, but made Roth look clownish.

Rupert Roth was the last great Jewish gangster in America. Now days most people associate the mob with the Italians, and it is a fair association to make given the sheer numbers involved. But back in the day Jews were the top dogs in the underworld. Guys like Arnold Rothstein, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lanksy handled their business like CEOs and quietly made millions. Murder and violence were involved, sure, but not like it was with the Italians. More importantly, they got out of crime and went legit. Roth had followed that model very well. A gambling empire amassed in the late 60's went major league in the 70's and he removed himself from crime altogether by the time the FBI started hitting the Gotham mobs hard. Now the only organizations Roth belong to were the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. But there was still that edge. He still had the juice that made him very dangerous, and had me scared shitless to be dragged into his living room in the middle of the night.

"Johnny Lamonica," he said after a moment of silence. "I've heard of you."

"Good things, I hope."

Roth waved his hand in a so-so manner.

"I hear that you're smart, I hear that you're a good thief, I hear that outside of some trouble as a kid, you ain't never been pinched."

"And that I like long walks in the moonlight and a good '62 Bordeaux?"

"I'm questioning your smarts, Johnny," Roth said, ignoring my joke. "First off I've had a tail on you for a solid week and you didn't see him, and then your here with me making stupid jokes."

"Sorry," I said with a shrug. "It's a defense mechanism, I guess. Why have you been following me?"

"Issac Zinkman is a close and personal friend of mine. We go to the same temple, we sit on the same charity boards. He knows who I am and about my past. So, he comes to me asking about this guy dating his little girl Cindy--"

"Cindy," I said with a sigh of relief. "That's right, Cinnamon was her nickname... thank god."

Roth looked at me with contempt and with a slight nod of his head the muscled gorillas on my right slapped me across the face. My face which was already operating at a dull painful throb exploded in pain. My ears rang and I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out. Roth stared at me long enough to make sure he'd gotten his point across before starting back.

"So Issac has this funny feeling about the guy his little girl is dating, especially after they broke up two weeks ago. So he comes to me and says 'Rothy, this putz made my little girl cry. Find out what he's got to hide and then fucking burn him.' And what do I find out, but the fact that this son of a bitch is an ace burglar, a burglar with a rep across town as reliable and smart, two things that are almost impossible to find when it comes to crooks. Not only is this guy a burglar, but he's planning on robbing my dear friend blind. You, my friend, are in for a world of hurt."

"Unless," I said cautiously, mindful of the two looming thugs on either side of me. "If you were going to hurt me, you would have done it right away with no spiel, or you would have turned me in to the cops. You did neither, so I'm waiting for the part where you give me options."

Something passed across Roth's face. It could have been a smile. It may have been a snarl, or it may have been gas. It was probably something of a mix between the three.

"Smart," he said. "Just like they said. Option 1. I inform Issac that you not only broke his little girl's heart, but also that you were in the middle of stealing his entire life's work when I caught you. Knowing my friend like I do he will kindly ask me to feed your own balls."

"A cannibalistic eunuch. Not the way I wanna go out."

"Option 2. You're a thief. Steal something for me and we will call it quits."

"Steal what, and from where?"

That look again. I was now certain that pained grimace had to be Roth's version of a smile.

"The where is easy. GCPD headquarters. The what? Now, that's gonna take some explaining..."

---

ACCESSING GOLDEN STATE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS (GSBI) CASE FOLDER #050520551321

......

ACCESSING ADDENDUM FILE #090220550025: AUDIO, VISUAL, AND MEMORY INFORMATION AUDIT (MIA) OF DI KIMBERLY MORGAN GATES, BADGE #1988

WRITTEN TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS:

......

ASA Tompkins: It is currently September 2nd, 2055 at 12:25 AM. Speaking is Assistant State's Attorney Paul Tompkins. Present are myself, GSBI SAC Gilberto Hernandez, and our interview subject. Kim, state your full name and rank for the record, please.

DI Gates: Kimberly Morgan Gates, Inspector Detective with the GSBI.

Tompkins: And you affirm you give this statement to us on your own freewill?

Gates: I do.

Tompkins: And you consent to undergo MIA readings concurrent to your statement?

Gates: Do I have a choice?

SAC Hernandez: *clears throat*

*Five seconds of silence follow*

Gates: Guess that answers that. So, yes I consent to undergo MIA readings concurrent to my statement. Furthermore, I swear the following statement I give is the truth as I believe it to be, as any MIA readings will confirm. There. Everyone’s asses are now covered.

Hernandez: I'll fire up the MIA.

Tompkins: Alright, Kim. Just walk us through the whole case from start to finish.

---

Los Angeles
May 5th, 2055
3:45 AM

The chirping of my terminal woke me up. My eyes fluttered in the darkness and I groaned as I rolled over to the screen resting on my nightstand. The display flashed an incoming call from a number I didn’t recognize and one not in my contacts. The area code was a Simi Valley address. Simi Valley was an LAPD stronghold dating back to the days of Darryl Gates. Back in my time in the LAPD I was among the small minority that actually lived in the city I was sworn to protect. The lateness of the call and the area code gave me enough confidence to accept the call.

“This is Gates,” I mumbled.

“Inspector Gates, this is Detective Rick Jackson with LAPD's OCU.”

I was glad that Jackson didn’t opt for video calling me since I rolled my eyes at the mention of the Organized Crime Unit. At least three of four times a week I received requests for further info from half of the OC squads across Golden State. Everyone knew cybercrime was a huge part of how these guys operated these days, but more often than not their requests were just shots in the dark that often lead to little or no information on the suspected criminals they were chasing. Just another way these guys could use me to make it look like they were doing work.

“You realize cybercrime is really a nine to five type job, yes? No need to call in the middle of the night about someone phishing for credit card---”

“It’s about a murder,” said Jackson. I watched the soundwaves of Jackson's voice flow up and down across the terminal as he spoke. “Gangland style execution tonight in Los Feliz. Biometrics list the victim as one Spencer Duckworth. He’s got a rapsheet a mile long.”

The news took me back. It was a name I hadn’t heard in years. That was the real surprise, not the murder part. I knew eventually I'd get a call from some other cop about Duck's incarceration or untimely demise.

“I know Duckworth,” I said softly. “He is -- was, I guess -- my CI.”

“We know. He also had you listed as his next of kin of all things. I figured with you being a fellow cop I don’t actually have to worry about doing the notification in person. Saves me a trip and--”

“Are you still at the crime scene?” I asked. I was already throwing back the covers and wide awake.

“Yeah, and I see where you’re going but that’s not necessary, Inspector. I’ll send you all the information we get from the scene if you want to take a look.”

“I wanna see it with my own two eyes,” I said. I padded across the carpet of my bedroom towards my closet.

“Murder is LAPD business, Inspector.” I could hear the agitation in Jackson’s voice. I half expected him to call me lady instead of inspector. “If we find something related to your field we’ll ask. Not a lot we can gain by having a Statie computer cop take a look at the crime scene.”

“How about a Statie computer cop who was former Robbery Homicide?” I asked with just a hint of humor in my voice. “Now please send me the address of the crime scene or I may be forced to call Captain Bala at home. I know he also works nine to five, wonder how he’d feel about a Statie calling him in the middle of the night requesting access to his crime scene because his detective wouldn’t allow it?”

---

I used the commandeer function on my app to get a Ryde from my apartment in Crenshaw up to Los Feliz. My status as non-emergency law enforcement meant I had to abide by Executive Order 28 and use ride shares and public transportation wherever I needed to go. But thankfully the state picked up the tab for me.

The car buzzed up Western Avenue in the light early morning traffic. I sat alone in the backseat and absent-mindedly watched the car pilot itself into the right lane before taking a right turn at the next intersection. The monitor mounted to the backseat ran ads and news updates. The commandeer function meant you get the basic package from Ryde. I could have paid out of pocket to have an ad-free trip, but at this point it was all white noise to me. As was the news. More updates on the ongoing Belt famine, Nevada’s formal request of annexation into the GS, and lighter news on some new content coming to YouSee. Everything had happened, but yet nothing had happened.

My thoughts were on Duck and the last time I saw him. One of my first cases with the GSBI. San Francisco PD needed help tracking down a group of Onionheads working for some human traffickers. We’d met at an 80’s themed diner in Silver Lake for breakfast. He’d given me the information I needed to track their routing and I’d given him one get out of jail free card, good to cash in on anything up to a Class C Felony. We chatted a little after the transaction was done. His birthday was coming up at that point. About to be twenty-two and still living on the wrong side of the law.

“You were just a kid when I first busted you,” I said as I put my handheld against the payment terminal on the table.

“Something like that,” he said with a chuckle. “I knew I’d fucked up when I saw that GSBI badge. It wasn’t some LAPD redneck that had busted my ass.”

“A sixteen year old with enough stolen credit card money to ride around South LA in a custom Model 10? You’re lucky I got you before the LAPD did,” I said with a wry smile. “You’d be in LSP until 2100 if anyone other than me had gotten you.”

“Guess you got an eye for talent,” Duck laughed. "Know a good snitch when you see one."

I took a sip of my coffee. Duck, never a coffee drinker, had a glass of retro New Coke with breakfast.

“You know I have connections with a lot of cybersecurity people,” I said after a short silence. “They’re always on the lookout for someone smart they can make into a white hat. There’s a lot of money to be made doing work for these tech companies. And it’s all legal.”

“Then I wouldn’t be your snitch anymore,” he said. “You’d lose one of your best assets.”

I nodded and shrugged. “It’s a sacrifice I’d be willing to make.”

He smiled and looked down at the table, settling into something like a deep thought. He looked back up at me after a few long moments.

“What they do is legal,” he said, “but I’m not sure how much more moral it is than what I do. At least I’m honest about my shit. Yes, I scam people out of their information, but I’m not using that for anything other than to make my pockets fat. What do they do? They take all that information -- credit card, bio readings, data history -- and make money off of it. We’re both criminals, Detective, the only difference is nobody’s gonna pass legislation making my shit legal.”

“I respect the principal,” I said before adding. “But you know your luck can’t run forever, right? Eventually you’re going to get arrested for something I can’t help with… or worse.”

“Tell you what,” he said with a smirk. “We’ll make a deal. If I make it to thirty without getting arrested or washed, I’ll hang up my black hat and put on my tie and collared shirt for you. I’ll become some corporate motherfucker at a cubicle all day.”

---

Los Feliz
4:30 AM

I stepped out of the Ryde and completed the transaction on my handheld before the automated car disappeared into the night. The address was the site of a public housing zone. Low-rise apartments that stretched out across the entire five block radius. Everyone living here were either on UBI or some form of GSER. Los Feliz had once been a “bad neighborhood” at the end of the 20th century, but gentrification had turned it into a clean, crime-free, and expensive neighborhood in the early 2000’s. But the cycle had revolved back around so that the affluent, wealthier, and by and large whiter citizens of Los Feliz moved on to the next hotspot twenty years ago. What was left behind here were the people who couldn’t afford to move, or simply didn’t want to.

A trio of LAPD squadcars down the block were parked in a semi-circle in an open space that served as the neighborhoods courtyard. The blue LED lights of the cars cast the entire courtyard in a bright blue glow. A drone with LAPD markings flew overhead, hovering slightly to monitor me before moving on. A uniformed officer keeping watch in front of the cars eyeballed me as I approached. I held my badge up in my right hand, my left hand up in the air for a bioscan.

“Who called the Staties?” He asked as he scanned my palm with a handheld.

“Detective Jackson apparently needs some help.”

I walked past the cop and on to the crime scene. Smaller drones hovered over the area, taking photos and video of the activity onsite. A few crime scene techs were directing the drones with their handhelds. A blue tarp rested over something in the middle of it all. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the tarp. This was far from the first time I’d visited a crime scene where someone I knew was the victim. And like in the past, the body held a strange gravity over me. Maybe it was the old murder cop inside of me yearning to break free?

“You must be Gates,” a gruff voice said from my left.

Rick Jackson looked every bit like the caveman cop I assumed he was. Graying hair with a ruddy face, fat body, and a gun on his hip like the Santos Bill had never existed. He wore a polo shirt with the LAPD logo on the left breast pocket. His khaki pants were too baggy and drooped down around his hips, a side effect of Jackson not realizing his stomach had expanded. He was still buying pants with a smaller waistline, forced to wear them beneath his natural waistline underneath the gut. The heavy gun meant he had to constantly keep pulling up his pants.

“Inspector Gates,” I corrected. “I’d like to see the body.”

Jackson led me towards the tarp. The ground we walked on was muddy. This being LA, I couldn’t remember the last time it had actually rained naturally.

“We think it was a pretty straight forward execution,” said Jackson. “Victim’s listed address was at this apartment complex. Despite his criminal history, he was on UBI.”

“He made his money as a scammer,” I said. “But you can still get UBI with a criminal record. I’m sure people argue they need it more than most.”

Jackson grunted in response, his way of avoiding a political debate in the middle of an active crime scene. He pulled a pair of black vinyl gloves from his back pocket and slipped them on. I stood back and let him pull back the tarp.

Duck’s body was on its stomach, his head turned to the right. I could see the blank, lifeless eyes looking at nothing in particular. Under his left eye was the exit wound, a bloody hole that still had traces of gore and brain matter around the edge. His face was frozen in a look of mild inconvenience, like getting killed was just a bother more than anything.

“Stippling on the entry wound indicates the barrel of the gun was right against his head. We found a .45 casing, but no bullet yet.”

“Check the ground,” I said after looking away from Duck’s body. “The muddy ground? Bullet probably went through Duckworth, into the ground, and nicked an irrigation pipe buried down there.”

Jackson’s face flashed with confusion, until he looked at the mud and something clicked.

“Someone do a scan,” he ordered one of the techs. “Metalurgic, within a ten foot radius of the body and no deeper than two feet.”

“I assume his brain was too shredded for a MIA reading?” I asked Jackson as he stepped away.

“Even if it wasn’t we were too late,” said Jackson. “Patrol didn’t arrive until forty-five minutes after the call. The brain was long dead at that point.”

Jackson continued on about the chain of events after the discovery, the process of how patrol calls the Hollywood Homicide and how homicide, seeing Duck was a figure with organized crime ties, gladly called OCU and their one man on-call tonight, Jackson to handle the case. LAPD is at its most efficient when it comes to passing the buck. While Jackson went on about this, I was barely listening. Instead my eyes looked around the courtyard for some sign of a camera. There were very few places you could go in Golden State that weren’t being surveilled. Something or someone was always watching.
“No cameras?” I asked Jackson.

“Used to be,” he said. “Entire courtyard was wired up by the security company who protects the place. But someone cut the cords about four months ago and the company never fixed them. According to them the courtyard was a low-risk environment. Not worth the extra money to fix it up.”

“Everyone has handhelds, Detective,” I said. “It’s the law. Someone somewhere in the apartment complex has to have some sort of video around the time of the shooting.”

Jackson bristled and hitched his sagging pants up. “Are you telling me how to do my job?”

“No,” I said. “Just suggesting it.”

Jackson whistled at the patrol officer keeping guard at the front of the crime scene.

“Start knocking on doors,” he said. “Get everyone’s device and see what you find. You take the apartments on the top floor, I'll take the ones on the ground.”

I looked back at Duck’s body and thought back to our last conversation a few years ago and his promise to get out by thirty. I knew then it was probably the closest Duck would ever come to retiring from the life voluntarily, and even then it was some half-assed measure to placate me. I’d know plenty of criminals like Duck over the years. Be it hackers, stick-up men, or drug dealers. They never get out of the criminal life until they’re forced.

“Twenty-seven,” I said softly to myself. “You almost made it.”

His voice was tired, his throat dry and sore. He had not been given a drink for several days, forced to lick rainwater from the ground to survive for the two weeks he had been in prison. His hair was a mess, the ginger bangs falling over his face. He was tired. His lips were cracked, his skin was bruised and he had small cuts and wounds all over his body, his bare torso had the barely healing marks from blades and whips. He had been tortured, a lot. He was tied to the iron pipes of the chair, the wooden seat pained his backside and if he could speak, he would've. He would've told them he could taste the chair with his ass. And he wanted to speak to the manager. But given how the six men in the room were all strapped with Kevlar vests, C4 strapped to the vest, balaclavas on their head and decked out in tactical gear while armed with AK-47's, it didn't seem like the kind of 5-star resort Harper had expected. They were serving the local Warlord,
Al-Muhalim of Qurac. Al-Muhalim wasn't a fan of Harper...

My name is Roy Harper... The, uh, first. Yeah. That makes sense. See, it's not that I have a son who's also got my name, no, that'd be far too believable. Let's just say that while I was born 1989, I am not breaching my thirties. Not really. I missed seven years of my life while someone else took my place. It's a hard thing to get a grip on. But during my abs cense it seems the Quraqi warlords have gotten a lot tougher on Americans... Which leads me to why I am in this situation to begin with...

That was what Harper wanted to say, but, well, his throat wouldn't let him get out anything but dry gasps. The man standing in front of him was Al-Muhalim's right-hand man, and the only one not wearing a face mask. His face had been hit with a chemical attack, the left side covered in chemical scar-tissue. He was really, really, ugly. He said something in Arabic that Roy couldn't understand. Then he said it again, this time far more angrily. Roy still couldn't understand him. His head pounded and it was hard to focus.

The man hit Roy with the back of his hand, making the chair tip over. One of the goons lifted the chair back up, the leader dusted his hand off, blood seeping from Roy's newly re-burst lip. He groaned in pain, while the interrogator rolled up his sleeves.
"I know who you are, Mister Harper. Red Arrow they call you, huh. I thought you were taller. And had two arms." The man spoke and Roy groaned. It wasn't his fault that they had cut off his arm 9 years ago, and that his prosthetic arm had been destroyed when his former teammates betrayed him.
His throat groaned as he tried to speak again, begging for water. The boss nodded to one of his guys to bring out a jug of clear, clean spring water. Holding it above Roy's face, the man smirked. "Talk and I will let you drink your fill, boy."

"Be.... Be..." Roy got out, but couldn't form words beyond that. The man rolled his eyes. "Fine, a sip, then." And poured half a cup of water into Roy's mouth who greedily drank it, letting out a satisfied groan as he did, to him, that was the greatest taste he had ever felt. Well, he probably would've rather it had been a sip of whiskey.

After he collected himself, his tormenter grabbed his chin. "Now, tell me. What are you doing in my Qurac?"

"Beh... Behind you." Roy told him, smirking as the leader raised an eyebrow, only for Roy to be met with a spray of warm blood from the Quraci's face bursting open, a bullet from a sniper rifle up above him on the roof of the building, looking in through the makeshift skylight. The body fell limp beside Roy as the thugs all aimed their guns and fired at where the sniper was perched.
Tried to warn you.

See. I am a man who's thrown just about everything away. And what I didn't willingly give up, the world took from me. I don't get along with people, I'm uh, not exactly a people person. But that man up there? The one who's currently kicking the asses of these goons? I can recognize his patterns anywhere. His vantage points and his choice of weaponry. That was a .50 cal hollow point with a diamond tip. Only the Russian Bratva has access to those bullets in this hemisphere. And Oliver Queen doesn't use sniper rifles. That leaves only one guy who would have the means to get these. The unprodigal son of Gotham.

Explosives detonated around the room, filling the room with smoke as their guns ran out of ammo, while they were reloading, a shape landed, armed with a curved short sword, a kukri and a .45 he domed and sliced every last one of the goons he could get his hands on, the only thing Roy could see was the blasting of gunfire lighting up the room in the smoke and the brief reflection of the ruby quartz material making up is would be saviors helm.

See. He was murdered and came back from the dead. He made death his bride and then kicked her out of the bed and onto the curb. He's got the stuff of heroes - true heroes in him if he wanted to. He's the Red Hood, the most dangerous man in the world. And he hates to admit it even more than I do, but he's my best friend and maybe the only person in the world who gets me. He knows what it’s like to disappear and to have someone else carry on your name in your place, the world not knowing who you are.

Roy’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a rocket launcher getting readied behind him, trained on the Red Hood in front of him. Roy yelped out a ‘oh shit’ and ‘watch out’ at once, combined with his still sore and dry throat, all he let out was a “Which shiii” as he nudged his chair onto the floor, dodging the rocket being sent. Red Hood had rolled to the other side, the rocket careening through the room, destroying one of the pillars in the far end, rumbling the already damaged roof. Jason let out a bullet and the man who carried the launcher was laying in a pool of his own blood.

Jason grabbed the chair and with one hand pulled Roy back up, producing a knife from his boot and slicing Roy free from his bondage.

People say Jason’s many things. A murderer, a criminal, a maniac. Lately, people have been calling him a mercenary, but he’s more than that. He’s not a mercenary- His internal monologuing was interrupted by Jason handing him a handgun and speaking through the voice distortion in his helmet.

“Get up, Harper. Cover my ass. I need your help for a job. Big payout.”

All right. So maybe he’s a little bit of a mercenary.

Roy checked the gun in his hand, while being disarmed like this a handgun was honestly kind of a sick joke – he could barely reload the gun. The two former sidekicks fought their way out of the compound, watching eachother’s backs. Jason was doing most of the fighting, Roy mostly watching the flanks as he was in no shape to really be fighting paramilitary separatists today. He had had a very long week.

One of the soldiers snuck up on them and had Jason dead to rights, but a swift bullet from Roy’s gun into his neck countered any plans he had of ending the reign of the Red Hood. Finally, they reached the last roadblock before they were out. But, much to their dismay, the Quracis had setup a 50-caliber machinegun on the barricade in front of the door. Jason pulled Roy to the floor and they both slid behind cover as the gunfire. Each shooting to their own flank, keeping the enemies from getting around them till Roy’s pistol made the sound no gunman ever wants to hear. Out of bullets.

He let out an aggressive ‘HMM’ to Jason, able to produce a single word
“GUN”

Jason firing off a salvo looked at Roy and swiftly pulled a new mag from his jacket, sliding it across the floor to Roy.
“Yeah yeah, quit bitchin’.” He groaned at his friend. Whom let out another angry sound. Gesturing to his left arm, ending shortly after his shoulder.

“Hey man, you’re the genius inventor. Get inventive, stumpy.” Roy rolled his eyes and produced a sound that was the closest he could get to a ‘fuck you’. Nudging the mag with the grip of his pistol, he made the mag stand up, he swiftly ejected the old clip and slammed the gun down onto the new one, pulling the slider back with his teeth. A shard of glass on his side from a shot-to-pieces mirror revealed that the machinegunner was focusing on Jason’s side, as Roy had stopped firing for a few seconds. He rolled out of cover and Jason shouted at him to get back here but had to return to shooting on his flank. Roy stood hunched, fired one bullet, and then rolled back behind the pillar on the other side of the cover. His sole bullet careened through a small opened in the barricade and swiftly embedded itself in the skull of the man firing the machinegun.

Jason threw out a flashbang and while everyone was blinded, Roy including, his helmet protected him from the flash. He ran to Roy, pulled him up and pushed the blinded foes, easily getting past their now neutered defenses and shooting anyone who got too close. Dashing out into the courtyard, they ran past three jeeps that Roy got unamused by, Jason tossing Roy into the backseat of a far shittier looking jeep than the ones in the compound as he got into the drivers’ seat, putting the pedal to the metal. Jason threw a four pack of sunwarm water bottles at Roy from the passenger seat, who immediately tore the cap off one and downed the entire thing and then another one, and then poured the third one onto himself.

“All right, Jason. What the fuck?! I appreciate the water. But why did you take this piece of junk and not those pristine sand racers?!”
Roy’s tone got more annoyed as he peered behind them, seeing the jeeps behind, gaining on them. Each jeep packed to the brim with angry gunmen.
“See, those jeeps have a disadvantage.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that? More weight because they don’t have as many rust holes?!”
Jason’s helmet pulled back into it’s collar-mode, his black and white-striped hair blowing in the wind as he turned to Roy and smiled, pulling up a detonator in his hand.
“I planted explosives in them.” Pressing the button and the pursuers exploded.
Roy’s expression was blank with shock and surprise. Then he cracked into a laugh and after just a few short moments Roy began coughing which was when Jason started laughing.

“Shut your cakehole and drink water. We’ve gotta get over the border. I’ve got a safehouse in Bialya.” Roy was downing another bottle of water and as soon as the bottle was dry, the asymmetrical archer was asleep.

After much speculation the Gotham City District Attorney's office announced today that it will be launching a sweeping investigation into the city's boxing and prizefighting scene. Their explicit target: Connections between organized crime and the boxing community. District Attorney Joseph Porter held a press conference for reporters today, laying out the details of the upcoming investigation.

"For far too long the professional fighting scene in this city has been controlled by bookmakers," said Porter. "Fans of the sport, people who pay to see honest and fair fights, are instead often treated to fixed contests that the gamblers control. This inquiry is the first step in a battle to wrestle control of the sport from the criminal elements of this city."

Porter himself will serve as the lead counsel on the investigation. Heading up the team of investigators will be the always colorful GCPD Captain John "Two-Gun Jack" Grogan, commanding officer of the GCPD's Major Case Squad. Captain Grogan's six man task force will provide the brunt of the investigative force as their operational mandate lies within organized crime.

"Ain't nobody [sic] better at policing organized hoods than me and my boys," Grogan said during the press conference. "If there's anything worth finding, we'll find it."

While forthcoming with details of the probe, District Attorney Porter remained mum on his political future. He is among a small handful of candidates who have been rumored to seek the US Senate seat recently opened by the sudden death of long-time senator Charles Henderson. When asked if this is a stepping stone to a possible campaign run, Porter discouraged any such talk and only offered a “no comment” on the subject.



06/19/1946
West Gotham
1:13 AM

Slam Bradley rode shotgun in the car. Captain Grogan sped through the city at "Fuck-Traffic-Laws-I'm-A-Cop" speed. Slam smoked and saw the sights. Winos blasted on cut-rate hooch wagged their wieners at the passing car. Hookers peddled their stuff by the curb. Slam cracked the window and blew smoke.

He smiled. He felt alive. He felt jazzed. Grogan's squad worked the streets. They ran the streets. They were the landlords out here, and everybody paid their rent. The cost for not paying up was a quick and brutal eviction from this world. Two-Gun Jack was a hick from somewhere out west -- Oklahoma or Texas or something -- and he had that southern twang prairie accent. The hump wore two six-shooters on both hips. The hump wore shit-kicker boots and a white stetson with a goddamn bolo tie. He chewed tobacco and thought he was Jonah Hex reincarnated. He looked like a clown on the surface. Beneath it he was all killer.

Grogan spat tobacco juice in a coffee cup. He wiped his mouth and said, "Samuel, how you been liking these past few months."

Slam beamed. "Fantastic. Anything to get me out of Vice."

Vice straight bored him. It was either hooker rousts or gambling busts. He was too well known around Gotham to work undercover, so it was roust duty. Pop prosties and bust bookies. It was straight shit-work. His brain was wired for the street. He needed to be out here in the thick of it. This was his element. Grogan picked him because he was big and intimidating. The captain promised muscle work and he made good on the promise. Anybody he wanted worked over, Slam worked over. Fist work, brass knuckles work, rubber hose work, followed by dental and surgical work.

Slam flicked his cigarette out a window. The butt hit a passing wino in the forehead. The wino flipped it away and shook his fist at the car. Slam laughed. Gorgan roared.

Grogan wiped his eyes and said, "And what do you make of our current assignment?"

Slam made the jack-off sign. "Prizefighting has been corrupt since the days of gladiators. And now they want to get a hard-on for it?”

Slam knew firsthand how corrupt the shit was. Corruption got him a pass on the war. He threw a fight back in ‘40 and got a judge paid a few grand. Said judge remembered the favor when Slam’s draft number came up. Said judge helped him get a job on the PD and deemed “essential personnel.” No war for Shirker Slam. He parlayed his status as a local celebrity to get plum patrol beats. Southpaw Slam volunteered to box in late-night smokers for the GCPD brass and city hall bigwigs. The fights got him political clout. Smart Slam leverages clout for internal juice in the PD. He went from harness bull to gold shield detective rápidamente.

They had two ex-boxers under lock and key who weren’t as slick as Shrewd Slam. Said pugilists were working with the DA to present testimony to the county grand jury. They were, to wit: heavyweight Robert "Scotty" Lees and light heavyweight Manuel "Goodnight" Garcia. Slam went six rounds with Lees back in ‘38. Even back then he was a fucking stumblebum. Years of too many pops to the dome meant Scotty couldn't remember who he was half the time. Goodnight Garcia played up a faux swish persona, but he had a taste for young stuff. Said taste had gotten him in the jackpot. Testifying would quash a 'stach rape beef.

Grogan said, "The good District Attorney wants his pound of flesh, more so for a launchpad than anything else. So we do our job and give it to him. But I suspect the investigation will be coming to an abrupt end shortly."

They hit county territory. Upper-middle class homes became the main view. Slam chained three cigs while Grogan spat tobacco and the radio squawked Bing Crosby. The radio crackled as Jack Benny pitched toothpaste. Grogan pulled up to a three-story home sprawled over four lots. It ate up half a block. Feature: A bronze R.T. plaque on the mailbox.

They got out. Grogan led, Slam followed. They walked around the house and to the backyard. Floodlights on: A pool, patio, pool house. A fat man with gray hair did laps in the water. Slam checked his watch. Two in the morning. The fat man flopped out the pool. Butt ass naked. He dried his hair on a towel and walked over to them. Still sans clothing.

Grogan shook hands with the man and said, "Congressman."

"Captain Grogan."

Grogan looked to Slam. "Congressman, this is Detective Samuel Bradley. Samuel, this is Congressman Rupert Thorne."

They shook hands. Slam kept his eyes from drifting downward. Thorne guided them to the patio. He flopped on a chair. They followed suit. Thorne sprawled and smiled at Slam.

"I need no introduction, Slam,” said Thorne. “I saw you fight Mike Moldando years ago. I think you won that one.”

“TKO, sir,” said Slam.

Thorne smiled. “A win is a win, right? Captain Grogan has been telling me an awful lot about you, son. He says you have potential."

Two-Gun Jack spat juice in his coffee cup. He winked at Slam, "Slam here was originally recruited because he looked every bit the part of the mean sum bitch he actually is. Turns out he's smarter than he looks. I think he's ready."

Thorne reached for a wooden box on the table. He pulled out a fat cigar and lit it. A look passed between the two older men. Grogan nodded. His nod meant GO.

Thorne said, "Slam, do you believe that certain aspects of crime, vices like gambling and prostitution and drugs, are unavoidable and should be allowed to exist in a contained form?"

Slam shrugged. "Yeah. We can't stop people from doing what they want to do. As long as nobody gets hurt, it's fine with me."

Thorne and Two-Gun Jack traded looks. Grogan took off his stetson and placed it on the table. He leaned forward. Slam caught whiffs of tobacco. Grogan's tie was tobacco spritzed. His teeth were brown with tobacco juice.

Grogan said, "The three of us are riding the same wavelength. People like the DA see it like we do, but they're worse. They act like they want to change things but what they really want to do is make just enough change to fuck over the rest of us and get themselves elected to a higher office."

"Crabs in a bucket," said Thorne. "Nobody wins."

Slam picked up brainwaves. He rode a hunch into speculation. DA Porter, "higher office." He implied: The boxing probe. His implication confirmed by the congressman.

Thorne looked straight at Slam and said, "This little fact finding mission Porter is carrying out has the potential to damage a lot of important people who share our common outlook on this city. These people are your gateway to a whole new world, son. If you hitch yourself up to the captain and I, you'll be police commissioner within ten or fifteen years. After that? Who knows. But before that destination can manifest, the journey must begin. If you share our common interest, Slam, then we expect you to step up and see that this investigation ends before it can go before a grand jury. Do this, Slam, and you'll be one of us."

Slam scratched his neck. "How?"

Thorne opened up the wooden box. He laid a stack of bills down on the table. C-notes tied together in two thousand dollar bundles. Ten thousand dollars in cold, hard cash.

Grogan spat tobacco into his cup and said, "Be creative."



06/22/46
The Gotham Arms

Scotty Lees dug into his nose and stared up at the ceiling. He sat on the bed while the radio played late night big band music. Slam sat on the other bed and chained-smoked. Night work, guarding Scotty from anybody who would do him harm. Ten grand stashed in the truck of his car assured he would be the one doing the harm. Thorne laid out the details. Goodnight Garcia would play ball once Scotty was dealt with. He'd spout qué? No hablo inglés to the DA until he was blue in the face. Slam's eyes fell on Scotty. Robert "Scotty" Lees: a pale as fuck heavyweight with bright red hair. The Glasgow Gouger had a record of 22-5-32. He had mush for brains and brayed like a donkey.

A radio commercial featured a talking rabbit shilling cars. Scotty hee-hawed and ate boogers. Slam stubbed his fifth cigarette out and stood. He peaked into the room next door. There's Goodbye Garcia sleeping his ass off. His bodyguard Officer Tommy Burke was ditto. They snored in sync. Slam closed the door softly and turned off the radio.

Lees said, "Aww... why'd you stop it?"

"We need to talk, Scotty. Answer a few questions for me."

"I can try, Slammy."

"What year is it, Scotty?"

Scotty made a face. It looked like somebody asked him to do advanced trig.

"I... 1943?"

"What did you have for dinner tonight?"

"I... I don't remember."

"Who won when you boxed Chili Rodriguez?"

His eyes lit up. He said, "I did. It was by majority decision. Chili had a hell of a left cross, but I got underneath it and managed to go the distance with him. Nobody can beat me when I get my jabs working."

"Quick, Scotty, what's twenty-four times twelve?"

His eyes stayed bright. "Two hundred and eighty-eighty. See, some stuff I don't know good... but I can ‘member names and numbers. It's why I used to run bets for Frankie Momo and Mr. Thorne."

Slam cursed. He shook his head and adjusted his necktie. He sighed and cracked his knuckles.

"Come here, Scotty. I need to show you something."

Scotty stood and walked over. Slam guided him to the window. Sixth story looking down. Slam pushed him hard against the wall. He banged Scotty's forehead into the plaster. His eyes went cross. He went loopy. He babbled incoherently. Slam shoved him hard into the window. Scotty broke glass. He fell out the window screaming. Two seconds and then a loud crash. Slam looked out. Scotty's broken body resting on top of a parked car.



Max polished off a bottle of gin on the way to the crime scene. He swilled Listerine to help cover up the smell. He chewed gum to hide his booze breath. Rolling to the southside of the city in an unmarked. His notebook resting in the passenger seat.

Second straight month working the graveyard shift. Nights tapped him out. The work tapped him out. His career was tapped out at sergeant. Five straight lieutenant's exams, five straight times scoring at the top of the list, five straight times he was passed over. He had a reputation as a lush and someone with a hard-on for the rules. They could handle promoting a drunk to LT, but not a tight ass. So here he was. He worked the midnight to eight shift and paid a sitter to watch Mary while she slept. The late nights meant grief from his ex-wife. She'd left him before the war and never looked back. She was talking through a lawyer conduit, threatening to challenge him for full custody of Mary. Just one more problem on the pile.

The current call he was on came into the homicide pen twenty minutes earlier. He and Fields played rock paper scissors to decide who went. Max pulled scissors, Fields pulled rock. Max flipped him off and got his gear. He drove at a steady pace and no lights. It was a code 7, probable jumper. No rush on a suicide. He hit the brakes when he saw police lights.

Three prowl cars parked in a semi-circle around the Gotham Arms. Lights and crime scene rope. Max got his notebook and walked towards the tape. He flashed his badge to the uniform on sentry duty and identified himself: Sergeant Eckhardt, Homicide.

Max stepped on the scene and went to work with the layout and details. The DB: sprawled out on top of a car. A broken window six stories up. The body a white man, his pale skin cut up and bloody from the impact with the car. Someone loomed close by. Max turned. A big man with black hair eye-balled him. He had a good five inches on Max.

"You the homicide dick?"

Max said, "Yeah." They shook hands. "Sergeant Max Eckhardt."

"Detective Sam Bradley. I'm with Major Cases."

“I thought you looked familiar. I think--”

Bradley shook his head and looked down at Max.

"I did this..."

Max looked at Bradley and raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"

Bradley's hands shook. He swallowed loudly. "I was supposed to be protecting him and... I... he... just jumped."

Max frowned. He opened his notebook and got out a pencil.

"So tell me what happened."

---

---

Jameson’s article had come out faster than Peter expected it would, pumped into the heart of the city and then outward to its fringes. “Man-Spider Attacks Bugle Office, Assaults NYPD”. A sterling review of his first real endeavor, and they couldn’t even get his name right. At least paintbrush-head nailed the hyphen. Still, he had to spend the last God knows how many hours swinging through the streets and making double sure people knew what his real name was. If Jameson wouldn’t speak to him, maybe the city would.

Peter swung and released, switching hands and trying to cram the rest of his egg and cheese sandwich into his mouth, tracking it with half-lidded eyes. He tasted the wax of deli paper and hacked out a cough, wrenching a turn around the Manhattan Municipal Building. The tendrils of his mask snaked back around his mouth and he dropped a dozen feet, pulling a saliva-stained strand of paper from his mouth and letting it catch on the New York Wind. Gross. Another webline dragged him back into the sky and he was flying again.

He landed on a rooftop and pushed off of it, sailing clean past the flagpole he aimed for. Nuts. A web shot back out from his wrists and he hung there like a limp fish, listing in the gentle breeze. His sigh turned into a yawn and he pulled himself up, hand over hand, back to the top. Get it together, Parker. You’ve still got all of Harlem to look through. Joy, joy, joy… The neighborhood spread before him in a grey-brown haze, struggling out of the swirling miasma of the cracked streets below. Every building slumped into the next, devoid of any definition but for the inky blackness that swirled between them, crackling and bubbling and...

Peter shook his head and rubbed his temples, willing the sleep out of his system. The hard edges and definition came back to the place, solidifying out of the darkness. He let his breath go and focused on the rhythms of his costume. Tendrils of black fiber interlaced with one another, infinitely dense yet impossibly fine, all prehensile. They stood up all across his body, quivering in the biting wind. Through their vibrations, he began to feel it all coming in. The brickwork of the building behind him, lacing down and outward to the painted concrete a hundred feet below him. This was his web, spreading in and around him as he waited, focused, waiting for anything to trip his Spider-Sense. Somewhere at the edge, he felt the fringe of some grander presence, with a kind of gravity to it, dragging on his fibers, pulling him closer. It felt cool and metal and warm and fleshy all it once. It was legs and arms and a grand throne suspended in some network of webs, and -- Peter’s senses flinched all at once. Two blocks away, due north, brush of gunmetal against elastic waistband. Screams. There.

The twang of the flagpole echoed through the neighborhood as Peter threw himself into the air, firing two webs and slingshotting himself a half block ahead. He was a spider, skittering ahead and squeaking across dirty windows as he closed on his prey. He was silhouetted against the black concrete, a deep blue hoodie pressing a gun into the back of a passerby. He hadn’t heard Spider-Man yet. Good.

The suit sprang across the concrete as he landed, cushioning the fall and sending spikes of force deep into the earth. Before the mugger had time to turn around, Peter was upon him, throwing him into the air and following, dragging him on a webline; higher, higher. Peter put his whole body into it, flinging the crook up ahead and stumbling, but running up the building all the same. Spider-Man was on the edge of the rooftop and the gunman hung in the air, a dark stain against the shining beauty of the moon.

Then he was falling. Peter snatched him from the precipice of death, hand snapping on the man’s collar. The fabric ripped and he fell further inches, and then he dropped again, his scream blasting Peter’s eardrums. Goddamnit. He forced his eyes open and webline snapped to the man’s back.

“Oh God, oh Jesus, I--” The gunman stumbled over his words and pinwheeled in the sky, kicking at nothing.

“Shhhhh.” Peter said, again rubbing his temples. It felt good to close his eyes, just for a moment. “People are sleeping, man.” He pulled the thug up, bit by bit, as he swung and grasped wildly at the hair of webbing between him and death.

“Are-are you that, that...?” He was breathless, straining, eyes locked on the stark ground beneath him.

”Yeah, Amazing Spider-Man, jazz hands, blah blah.” Peter mumbled. He the webline to the edge of the building, crawling down to get a good look at the man. Huge, white, featureless bug eyes met his pair of dull browns and he squirmed, trying to wedge his way further back into the window. His piece had been lost in the climb, now probably shattered somewhere down through a hundred yards of freefall. Peter found himself staring into the cheap fabrics of the man’s coat, mesmerized by the simple patterns of the man’s coat, deeper and deeper and darker and -- his eyes shot open, and he sucked in a breath.

”I probably need to get through a lot of these tonight, so, yeah. Don’t make me, I don’t know, drop you or something. That’s what that Bat-dude from Gotham does, right?” Spider-Man stifled a yawn and tapped the man on his forehead and he jerked back, slamming his head against the glass.

“Don’t kill me!” He screamed. Peter blinked slowly, tuning out the screams and focusing on the weight in his eyelids. A response fought out of his consciousness.

”Just… Just keep your pants on. Guy robs a wrestling tournament a few days ago, shoots an old man on his way out. Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious, I just want to send him a postcard.” Peter groaned.

The robber shook his head back and forth, “No no man! No! That’s Tombstone’s racket, I don’t fuck with that!”

“Tombstone, I keep hearing that name. Spooky. Am I gonna have to fight Boris Karloff in a graveyard or something?”

The man looked at Spider-Man, as if for the first time. His skin was clouded, somehow darker than black, with impossibly long thin lips twisting into a smile that curled beyond the edge of his face and up into the very back of his jaw, rippling open to a mouth of jagged teeth that poked out at every angle. Eyes the color of curdled milk pierced through the lenses of Spider-Man’s mask, staring back at the boy beneath.

“Pe-ter Parr-ker.” Fluid the color of death drained from the man’s mouth and Peter jerked backward, stumbling down the wall, fighting to keep his grip and yet staggering, falling. He slammed a boot through the plate glass as he tried to regain his footing, scraping at the wall with his hands.

The thug flinched and closed his eyes as the sound of breaking glass erupted, trying to hide his head in his chest and throwing up his arms to cover himself. Everything was normal again. The thug was curled into a ball, backed as far against the window as he could be.

The suit vibrated around Peter, gradually coming to a halt as Peter fought to uncurl the balls his fists had wounded themselves into, going back up the sheer glass of the wall. One foot at a time. What was that? He was dimly aware of a buzz against his skin, his phone pressed tight against him in the fabric of his suit.

“I uh… I gotta take this. Take five.” A web sealed the thug’s mouth shut and Peter crossed onto the rooftop from the side, pulling his phone out from a web of cascading fibers. He answered.

”Peter?” May’s voice shook and crackled over the receiver.

“Uh, hey, Aunt May. Sorry I--”

“Oh thank God! Peter Benjamin Parker, where have you been?”

“Just uh… Just catching some air, May, I--”

“I’ve been worried sick!”

“May, it’s just a little--”

“It’s been three days Peter! I’ve been calling Anna Watson and Captain Stacy and I’ve been fighting like hell to get on the phone with Norman Osborn!”

May’s voice faded into the background of his thoughts. Three days? Impossible. He’d only been out… How many criminals had he shaken down? How long had it been since…?

”--and with that Spider-Man character on the loose! You’re coming home this instant, young man! Where have you been!?”

”I -- I’m sorry, I... Uh. It’s uh… It’s a long story, Aunt May, I--”

“No excuses, Peter! And with your Uncle in the hospital, I--” Peter could hear her shaking her head over the line. “We’re going to have a long talk when you get home. Right away.”

“Okay… I’m almost home. I’ll see you soon. I love you.” Peter couldn’t feel the words coming out of his mouth as he ended the call, not waiting for a response. Three days. Three days. It felt like hours. He thought back on it, crawling through the docks, swinging low through Hell’s Kitchen as the sun crested over the horizon. Three days, gone. Three days less for Ben. And nothing to show for it but a name. Tombstone.

Seventy-two hours of Spider-Man… Where does the time go?

Pickett County, South Carolina

Scott Andrews rolled through the deserted streets of Pickett in his unmarked car. Scott had left the sheriff's department a little past three after shift change came in for relief. It'd been a quiet shift during a quiet day. Hell even the night was quiet, but that was normal for the small town this time of night. Even the Grab N' Go, open twenty-four hours a day, only had just the cashier's lone car in its parking lot. He followed the highway through the heart of town, pulling off and cruising through Nelson.

He saw cars rolling through the neighborhood's narrow streets, people standing on porches and in frontyards still partying on a Saturday night. Of course they were still up in the Jungle. Their kind seemed to be nocturnal. There was a bit of a stiffening among the black citizens of Pickett when they made Scott's car as a cop. He smiled in the dark. Goddamn right. You may not respect much, but you will fucking respect that badge.

Scott pulled into the gravel parking lot of Club 65 at fifteen minutes after three. He saw Wendell and Lisa's cars in the parking lot along with that familiar old red pick-up truck. Club 65 closed at midnight on Saturdays because of the sabbath. That day still had power over the people here even if they were a lawless and godless sort. Pickett may be Pickett, but the South was still the South. And in the South, Sunday was sacred.

He spat tobacco juice on the ground as he got out and sauntered towards the club. It wasn't much to look at. A concrete building with a plain roof and a cheap sign that announced what it was. He walked through the door into the bar. Wendell stood behind the bar, cleaning glasses while Lisa wiped down tables and put overturned chairs on them. The one table she did not touch was the one Billy sat at.

The sight of Billy made Scott smile. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt with workboots. A pair of reading glasses rested on a crooked nose that had been broken a long time ago. In his lap was a biography on Napoleon. He was on the heavy side and had snowy white hair. To anyone not in the know, Billy Brown looked like just another Southern cracker. With the reading glasses he looked like an old Southern cracker.

"Take a seat," Billy said with a broad smile.

Scott gave Wendell and Lisa polite nods before he sat across the table from Billy. Billy closed his book and placed it on the table. He carefully took his reading glasses off and folded them before tucking them into a breast pocket on his shirt.

"Just getting to the good part," Billy said with a soft chuckle. "Peace between Napoleon and Alexander I has broken down and Napoleon is marching into Russia."

"Oh, yeah?" John asked to be polite.

"Yep."

The soft smile from Billy started to fade away. He leaned back in his chair and considered Scott for a moment. His small, brown eyes had a way to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of a man's soul. He had an eye for human weakness that Scott had only seen matched by cops in the interrogation room.

"That guy I told you to pop last week. That traffic stop bullshit."

Scott raised an eyebrow at that. While on the outside he looked curious, inside he was a bundle of nerves. He'd botched the thing up to hell and back. It was supposed to be simple. He'd been following the guy all day and he was moving in and... fucking Sherry had come up on him as backup before he had a chance to--

"Yeah," Scott said softly. "I remember."

"I know you did," Billy said with his face of stone. "You are goddamn right you remember fucking up. This guy, this Howard Beggs guy is in the fucking wind and I can't find no hide nor hair of 'em. So, Major, I want you to use all the power of your sheriff's department to find him. Find him and take care of him."

Billy didn't say what he meant. He did not have to. He also didn't mention pay. Scott also knew why. He still owed Billy for the last job. The old man laughed again, his harsh mood seemingly gone as quickly as it had arrived.

"I been reading history for nearly fifty years, Scott. You know what I find the most interesting? Kings, emperors, monarchs. What is it that makes an entire country of people fear one man, believe that that one man has been declared by God to be the ruler of these people? What keeps them in line?"

Billy's hard little eyes cut through Scott again. Unblinking and unyielding.

"Fear. One man can make an entire population fear him just by reputation alone. It's a hell of a thing. It's so powerful that the best rulers, they don't even need to make a threat. The implications are more than enough."

Scott swallowed hard as he and Billy sat in silence. Wendell and Lisa had stopped their cleaning up and instead looked on. And Scott knew the looks on their faces, that look of being unsure of what to say and afraid to say something less you drew the old man's ire, he knew he had to have that look on his face.

"Have a good night, Scott," Billy said warmly. "And good luck out there."

---

At five in the morning they came for John.

A loud pounding from somewhere across the trailer woke John up from his slumber. He looked around his small bedroom for its source. Another round of pounding. John reached down underneath his mattress and pulled a .40 Smith & Wesson from between the mattress and the box spring. He got out of bed clad in only his boxers and shuffled out of the bedroom.

“Open up,” a voice said from outside. “Pickett County Sheriff’s!”

John grunted. Fucking cops. They always pulled chicken shit like this, thinking they were clever to after you this late at night. He tucked the gun into a cabinet in his kitchenette before padding through the small trailer towards the front door. Clint Land stood on the porch with a pump-action shotgun in his hands. Behind him was sheriff Gene Parker in a suit and tie and chewing a toothpick and looking as smug as hell. His fat, ruddy face was coronary red even in the dim porch lighting. Somewhere nearby a dog barked in the night.

Land said, “Against the wall, shirtbird. Spread ‘em.”

John quietly complied. He leaned against the sheet metal of the trailer’s exterior and let Land pat him down. Fucking fool, trying to pat down a naked man. But that was Land in a nutshell. He used to be a big deal back when he was in school and thought that meant he could do anything. He left home for a few years and saw the world for what it was and came running back home with his tail between his legs. His pride wounded, he took the authority that came with a badge and gun and tried to overcompensate for the fact that he would never be anything but a hasbeen.

“He’s clean.”

“Goddamn right,” said John. "Frisking a man in his boxers, the fuck is wrong with you?"

Parker spat. “Clint, go sit in the car while John and I talk.”

Land slowly acknowledge and went towards the sheriff's car that had boxed in John's beat up pickup truck. Parker wiped sweat from his head. Even though it was still the middle of the night it was still plenty humid enough to make a man work up a sweat simply by just being outside.

"For the past month I've had Danny and Mark looking into you. They've tailed you to that property out on Trask Road where you're growing that pot. They took photos of you coming and going, photos of what's on the land, and got you meeting with Jeff Silvers and at least two more known drug dealers from Pickett, and one from down around Columbia. Intercounty trafficking sounds like a SLED crime to me."

"So why ain't I already in county lock-up," John spat. "If you're gonna arrest me arrest me, you cocksucker."

Parker laughed. He grinned. He moved quickly, far quicker than John thought a man his size could move. He sucker punched John hard in the chest. He fell to the ground and gasped for breath. Parker patiently waited for him to recover. A few minutes later, John was back on his feet and rubbing his sore chest.

"You and I should meet up when you don't have a man with a shotgun watching your back."

"I'd still wipe the floor with you, son," said Parker. "You may be a Norman, but you ain't nothing like your daddy."

John was about to hurl off another insult when Parker held a hand up. The sheriff reached into his suit coat and brought something out. It was a mugshot of a man with long, stringy blond hair that was either dirty blonde hair, or blonde with actual dirt in it. John couldn't tell. The man also had a blond goatee. His face, which was bony and looked emaciated, was marked by sores on the cheeks and around the mouth. His blue eyes were set back in the sockets and looked out at the camera with a wide stare that bordered on insane. Accompanying the photo was a three-page arrest record with Pickett County Sheriff's Department letterhead on it.

"Tweaker," John said with a rasp. "Don't fucking know who he is."

"Howard Beggs," Parker grunted. "He got run in last week for possession of meth. Made bail and then disappeared off the face of the earth. Find him and call me, I'll get some of my deputies to pick him up."

"I ain't a fucking bounty hunter."

"I know, Johnny," Parker said with a wide smile. "But you can find him or you can go to jail."

"Why me?" asked John. Parker handed him the mugshot and rapsheet. He looked down at it before looking back up at Parker. "You got deputies, you got detectives who can knock on doors and beat bushes. Tax dollars don't go as far as they used to, Gene?"

"He's important," Parker said petulantly. "And because I fucking say so. And you need to stop asking questions before I change my mind and have Clint bash in the fucking head with his shotgun. Is that reason enough?"

John shrugged. He was getting annoyed and tired of Parker's schitck, but what the hell could he do?

"I had Mark and Danny going through his usual haunts and friends. Nothing. Plus, where Beggs is concerned, I can't use my men." Parker lowered his voice and leaned forward. "People tend to clam up when a man with a badge starts asking questions. But you're a Norman..."

"Well well well. The plot thins."

Parker furrowed his brow before shaking his head. "Call it whatever you want, son. I just need a man with a certain reputation. All I am offering is a simple choice: Do this, or you can go to jail."

John looked at the file Parker had given him and sighed. The fat man grinned wide. John tucked the folder under his arm and shook his head.

"Fuck it. I'll see what I can do."

The Pickett County War
Part II

John Norman smoked a cigarette and sat on his couch. His stomach still ached from Parker's suckerpunch. Just like the goddamn police to throw a cheapshot. He blew smoke and flipped through the PCSD's file on Howard Beggs. His one listed known associate was Jeff Silvers. Of course, if this guy was a tweaker he'd know Jeff pretty well. Jeff ran a cookhouse near the McCormick County line. He and John were cousins in some farback way, one of John's great-uncles fucked one of Jeff's grandmas or something. He couldn't remember. Bloodlines in this county ran deep and ran confusing.

Bloodlines...

The Norman Family was once royal blood in this town. His great-grandaddy and his four brothers were legendary hellrasiers. They were a bunch of bad apples sired by an apple ten times as rotten as they could ever be. His name was Elijah or something. John didn't know for sure, he'd never asked and never really cared. He came to Pickett County around the turn of the twentieth century NS Nobody knew where he came from or why he'd moved to the middle of nowhere South Carolina. Talk over the years had him as everything from just a half-wit day laborer to a serial killer who roamed from town to town killing women. Whatever he was, he decided to put roots down in this tiny county just on the South Carolina/Georgia line. He was supposed to have been a real asshole, a drunk who beat on his wife and would start fights any chance he got. As bad as he was, though, it was the five kids he and his wife had that would put the stamp on the Norman name.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Peter Norman. Apostles who worshiped at the altar of violence and crime. In the twenties they ran all the liquor and 'shine through this part of the state. They partied, they fucked, they drank, and anybody who got in their way got killed. They married local women, bloodlines diffused. Subsequent generations were tough, but never as tough as the old breed. He shared his name with one of the old men. The first John Norman was a cop. He was a mean sumbitch that ran the Pickett town police with an iron fist. He killed three black men in the line of duty. He died of a massive coronary in the early seventies. It soon came out he'd sent six innocent black men to death row, those three other men he killed in the line of duty weren't so much of a threat as he made out like. Pickett town PD got shut down soon after.

Norman Family lore held that Billy Brown was the cost for their sinful ways. Divine retribution in the form of a sociopathic former millworker. In truth, it was the same story that had been told over and over since time immemorial. Empires rise and fall in both micro and macro. The Normans got sloppy and they got complacent. By the 80's they'd been running things in Pickett County for three generations and close to sixty years. A hungry new rival challenged them and they lost, inch by inch and bit by bit. The Pickett County War, they called it. Daniel Norman was one of the casualties. John was just a baby when he died in 1987. Officially, the case remains unsolved but everybody sure as shit knew who did him in.

And he was working for the son of a bitch that killed his daddy.

John sighed, stubbed his cigarette out. Those thoughts always brought him back to a bad place, a place where he just wanted to kill Billy and burn all that he had and all that he stood for. Instead of focusing on them he went back to the file. It said Beggs had been bailed out by Carol Johnson. Of fucking course Carol would be involved in this shit. It was just too perfect.

Thoughts of Carol only made John angrier. He sighed and looked out his window. Light was beginning to peak through the trees. Overcast skies meant for a gray and rainy day. It was just after six on a Sunday. Way too damn early to start, especially on a Sunday here in Pickett. John left the file on his coffee table and padded back to his bedroom to get some sleep.

---

DJ popped a Jolly Rancher. The clock on his dash said just after nine. Jim Brown dozed in the passenger seat. Or at least he seemed to be dozing. DJ knew that at a moment's notice he'd spring awake as if he'd never been sleeping at all. That little ability was just one of the many reasons DJ thought of Jim Brown as one of the scariest white men he knew. Yeah Billy could be mean, but he at least had human emotions. He could get mad or get happy. Jim Brown was always the same. He was bored and detached regardless of the situation. It didn't matter if he was asking about the weather or shoving a gun in a man's face, he always acted like he'd rather be somewhere else.

A slow drizzle came down through the clouds and scattered drops of rain on the windshield of DJ's car. They were parked down a narrow street in the Nelson part of Pickett. The house they were watching sat in the middle of the block. Like the rest of the homes here, it was small and block concrete on the outside. A black escalade sat parked in the driveway. DJ stifled a yawn and shook his head. He'd been up late last night. There was the basketball game in the afternoon then a few late night parties. For once everyone was talking up the basketball team instead of football and only football. That little Antwan could ball. He might have a shot. But then again, they said the exact same shit about him and here he was doing strongarm work on a Sunday morning.

Shitwork for Roland Spencer. Billy told both of them last night they'd be doing some collections for Spencer all day Sunday and into Monday. Fucking Roland, always talking that bullshit like he was doing the two of them a favor by letting them work collections. Like he had a choice in the matter, like he wouldn't have to start barking if Billy said speak. His business with Billy was loaning out money at insanely high interest rates, just one of the many community services they provided to the good black people of Pickett.

"There he is," Jim Brown said very suddenly.

Like DJ had figured, he was awake and sitting upright and watching Rayray Tatum waddle out of his house in his finest Sunday suit. DJ started up the car and sped down the block, skidding to a stop in front of his driveway and blocking his car. He and Jim Brown jumped out as Rayray came off the steps.

"Shit."

"Morning," Jim Brown said. "See you headed for church."

Rayray started to back up towards his porch. Before he could get too far DJ was on him and had his hands on the lapel of his suit. Rayray was big, but it was all mushy and soft. DJ got in close and played the bad cop.

"I always like the story of Saul and Paul," DJ said with a smirk. "Saul, that motherfucker was greedy. Like how you is greedy, taking and taking and taking from Mr. Spencer without paying him back."

"I can get the money," Rayray stammered. "It's just my momma's sick, and Wendell's Friday night game at the club I--"

DJ slapped him in the face with an open hand. Hard but not hard enough to draw blood. It was just hard enough to shut him up and make him worry.

"You know what happened to Saul?"

DJ shoved hard. Rayray tottered backwards and slipped on the soggy grass, falling down flat on the ground with a loud umph.

"Motherfucker fell off his ass and saw the light. You hear me, Rayray? Do you see the light?"

"I'll get him his money," Rayray mumbled. He wouldn't make eye contact with either man.

"See that you do," said Jim Brown. "If you ain't paid back what you owe plus interest, some two thousand dollars, we'll be back and we'll make sure the last fucking light you see is the flash of our guns."

DJ winked at Rayray and smiled. "God bless you, Brother Tatum. Enjoy the preaching."

They walked back to DJ's car and left a dirty and stammering Rayray in the dirt that was quickly becoming mud in the steadily increasing rain.

---

"Personally, I think it's the world's fault."

Scott Andrews watched through a two-way glass as Sergeants Mark Echols and Danny Johnson interrogated a skinny white boy with cuts and sores on his face. The boy sat at a bolted down table, smoking cigarettes, while Echols sat across from him. Danny stood by the door with his arms crossed and scowling. When it was a white suspect Mark played the nice guy, Danny the angry black man. When they had a black man Danny was their brotha and Mark played up his accent, the racist redneck peckerwood sheriff stereotype.

Echols shuffled paper and scanned over the boy's file before looking up. "Says here you never knew your daddy. Alcoholic mamma, it was your grandmamma that raised you. You didn't ask to be brought into this world, Pat. You inherited this shitty place and time from your shitty parents. You were given a raw deal the second you started breathing, son. How else were you supposed to respond but with anger?"

Scott smiled. Fucking Echols. He was an asshole for sure, but goddamn could he work a suspect over. Within a few minutes of talking to a man he could take their measure and figure out exactly what motivated them. He could employ just the right amount of hate and affection to get someone to tell their deepest, darkest secrets. The only other person even close to being like that was Billy. There was only one man Scott could ever remember not being broken by Echols, and that was Chew Lewis. The unstoppable force could beaten to shit by that immovable object.

Echols said, "We're all trapped by forces that we don't understand, son. You think I want to be in this room, talking to you about beating up an old lady for her welfare money? No. Fuck no. But here we are. You know DJ, right? Big DJ, runs around town getting into all kinds of shady shit? That's Sergeant Johnson's son."

Scott saw Danny bristle slightly. DJ went to work for Billy right after he dropped out of high school six years ago. Six years on and it still drove Danny crazy that his own son listened to Billy Brown more than he listened to his father.

"You're not the only one trapped by circumstance, Vincent. But you have a chance to break the cycle you are trapped in. Tell me about what you did. Confess and we can get you off drugs and get your life back on a right path, a path that will be of your choosing."

Scott shook his head and left just as the boy started to talk to Echols all about the shit he'd done. He walked through the halls of the sheriff's department. It's concrete walls painted pink and hard linoleum floor looked like so much school because it was. Old Pickett County High closed ten years ago and the PCSD took over the building. It was cheaper than having to renovate their old headquarters or build a brand new one. Scott's office was the classroom where he took Mrs. Chase taught him English in the 11th grade. He remembered Scooter Redman broke into the school one night and took a shit on Mrs. Chase's desk. Thankfully it was a different desk now.

He plopped behind it and logged into his computer. He found Howard Beggs' file. His listed address was somewhere across the state in Florence County. Said Carol Johnson picked up his bail. He knew Carol, she was one of Jed's women. There was a start there. Scott expanded the search to the state, see what kind of shit Beggs got up to outside of Pickett. He got nothing. He went wider. He got nothing in Georgia and North Carolina. Howard Beggs' arrest last week was his first stop. That bothered Scott a whole hell of a lot. The way he remembered Beggs, there was no way in hell that was his first pop.

Scott drummed on his desk for a few minutes before he stood up and headed towards the parking lot. He passed by the interrogation room on his way out. The boy was crying as he wrote a confession, Echols with a hand on his shoulder and saying comforting words as the boy condemned himself to at least five years in a state pen.

---

John Norman turned his pick-up truck down the dirt road that ran off Anderson Street near the outskirts of town. The truck bounced down the bumpy road road towards an empty, weed-filled lot that sat by train tracks. He knew there were eyes on him, watching his approach the tracks from more than one hidden vantage point. He pulled to a stop just twenty feet from the tracks and parked the truck.

A bird whistle sounded somewhere off in the distance as he got out and walked over the train tracks and towards the clump of woods on the other side. They'd know he was coming. Good, thought John, that'd make it easier. After a short walk through the woods he came out to a large, open field. A ratty old camper sat parked in the field without a truck hitched to it. The original white paint on the side of the trailer had faded so much it was now a bright gray and dents and dings ran up the side of the camper. The entire field had the faint smell of cat piss that often accompanies methamphetamine. The door to the camper opened with a rusty squeak and a fat man wearing faded blue jeans and a stained red t-shirt came out. He had the same dark brown almost black hair as John's, just a whole hell of a lot thinner on top. It was so thin you could see his scalp underneath the wisps of hair. John hid a smile. He'd been going bald since he was twenty. In another five years, he'd completely hairless up top. He scowled as John approached. His scowl faded some as soon as he recognized him.

"John," George Silvers said with a suspicious look. "The hell you doing here?"

"Guy can't drop in and see his kin without having a motive?"

"Not when he's working," he said with a thumb pointed back at the trailer. "C'mon, John, I got shit to do, man."

"Just want you to help me find someone."

"C'mon, John." George held his hands up. "I know you ain't law, but if it gets around that I'm helping snitch on my customers, it ain't gonna look good on me."

"George," John said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the photo of Beggs. "All you gotta do is tell me if this guy comes around to buy from you. If he does, that means he'll be back. All you gotta do is call me when he shows up. I'll stay back on Anderson and wait until he's far away from here before I make my move, okay? You do this and I'll owe you one. Here, look at the photo. Fella named Howard Beggs. Looks like he may be one of your patrons."

George scrutinized John for a few long seconds, looking at his face to try and see what he was thinking or if he was bullshitting him. Finally he gave up and started studying the photo. George hadn't asked why John wanted to find Beggs, and John didn't plan on tell him. George probably assumed it was a debt and left it at that. John figured that while Parker was an asshole and a dumb shit, he may be right about most people being open to talking to him over any of his deputies.

"Looks familiar," said George. He scratched the patchy stubble under his chin. "Can't place him right off, but I have seen him around. What'd he do?"

"He bout a quarter pound of weed from me" John lied. "Fucker said he'd pay half now and half later and that was a week ago."

"Fuck, John," George cackled. "You the dumbass then. Thinking this tweaker motherfucker is gonna pay anybody back."

John popped his knuckles and scowled. That shut George right the hell up. He clammed up and went back to the photo. George nodded and kept rubbing his chin. John let him stand there in silence, thinking of what to say next. He figured George was either coming up with a lie, which John would be able to call bullshit on right away, or actually trying to remember something.

"When he did come up to the camper," George finally said. "He had someone with him. Shit, what was her name? Uhh, damn. I used to know it... Carol something..."

"Johnson?"

"Fuck yeah," George said, snapping his fingers. "Yep, he was with Carol Johnson! She paid for it. See, unlike you Johnny I get the full amount up front. It's just good business."

John scowled. "Know whereabouts Carol is staying?"

"Can't say that I do," he said with a shrug. "I just make and sell the shit to 'em, I don't socialize with 'em."

John lit a cigarette. George asked for one and he told him to go fuck himself.

"If him or Carol come back here, you call me. You got my phone, right?"

"Sure do."

John nodded and waved to George.

"Later, cousin."

Spanish Harlem
10:58 PM

"Up against the wall, fuck faces."

Detective Sergeant Vincent Abbott walked up and down the sidewalk with the exaggerated swagger that came with a badge and a gun. On the wall to his left were over a dozen teenage drug dealers with their hands against the wall with their pants down around their ankles. A pile of small pile of drugs, money, and weapons sat on the sidewalk. The rest of Abbott's five-man narcotics crew looked on with guns in their hands and amused looks on their faces. The big man Malone had a sawed-off shotgun cradled in his beefy hands while the stub of a cigar sat wedged in the corner of one mouth.

"We rolled through last night but it seemed like you didn't get the message. So, let me be clear."

Abbott pulled a telescopic nightstick out and popped it open. He walked down the line, hitting each of the boys in the back of their kneecaps. One by one, they all went down to their knees in pain. Abbott spoke as he struck.

"If. We. Don't. Eat. Nobody. Fuckin'. Eats."

Abbott twirled the nightstick in his long, slender fingers as he looked down at the hurting kids.

"Either your boss bumps up our monthly envelope by twenty percent, or every fucking corner he has in Spanish Harlem and nigger Harlem gets raided and indicted every night."

"It's a small price to pay for peace of mind," Malone said before laughing and adding, "Peace of mind and intact kneecaps."

Abbott laughed and bent down over the pile of contraband. He pocketed the cash and drugs before standing to look at the injured kids.

"Look at all these weapons," he said to his men. "Seems like enough probable cause to run these fuckers in."

---

Harlem
1:21 AM

Mood Music

Hip-hop blasted from the bluetooth speaker set up on the table. Naked women moved to the beat as they cut and packaged drugs into little baggies. They weren't completely naked. Topless and bottomless, yes, but they all wore rubber gloves and surgical masks. At one large table, six women packaged cocaine while six more packaged heroin at an adjacent table. They were naked to prevent any stealing. Though in truth each of them were illegal immigrants and had too much to lose by skimming any of the top. Raymond Jones still made them strip because... well, he got off on the power trip. Raymond watched the girls working from the catwalk landing above the floor.

He grunted and cracked his knuckles. He always cracked his knuckles when he contemplated shit. One of his partners had just called with bad news. They'd lost a lot of product tonight. That wasn't the main problem though. Product that they could eventually replace. Shit, the girls on the floor were busy doing that. But they had also lost respect. Respect couldn't be replaced as easily. Jones knew that the hard way from his days on the street. He'd been scrawny with a mouthful of rotting teeth.

He'd been an easy target growing up, they called him Shitmouth and made him eat dog shit. But he got big, he got mean, and he got a new set of teeth. He fought back with his fists and his teeth. He showed them by force to put respect on his name. But the motherfuckers disrespecting him now? That was a different case. They had no respect for the streets or the game. All they cared about was paper. But they were cops. And even thieving ass cops were still cops.

Jones pulled his phone out and dialed his partner back.

"Yo, it's me. How much you got in your rainy day fund?"

He smiled, showing two rows of razor-sharp, metal teeth that shinned in the trap house light.

"Why? Because I got an idea."

---

Bushwick, Brooklyn
1:46 AM

"Language like muttering pant smells running silver scanning

Passed down the Arab Street in the gutter patterns

Translucent medium from its like i talky you of a place

the vacuum of silent panic forgotten red mud flats

sharp fish syllables where is he now? he moved as sharp as water

assassins smile and drink--"

Bullseye left the coffee shop, fighting an urge to kill the guy reading poetry on the stage. Bushwick was a different beast than he remembered it being. He'd moved here in hopes that it was still the crime-ridden hellhole from his youth. The neighborhood that clocked in almost eighty murders and two thousand robberies a year. He was looking forward to being accosted by some crackhead with a dull rusty knife, someone he could kill with a quick move before carrying on with his day.

But what he had found was far worse than crackheads. Bullseye had found hipsters. Crack had given way to kale, whores to gluten-free wheat germ. Property values were through the roof and it was artisanal bakeries as far as the eye could see. He passed a group of young men and women wearing skinny jeans, flannel, and those stupid as fuck eyeglasses without any lenses in them. Bullseye reached into his jacket pocket and touched the razor-sharp playing cards he kept there. It would be the easiest thing in the world, a quick flick of the wrist, and they would all drop to the ground.

That was when his phone rang. He stopped short and watched the hipsters pass by. The phone ringing meant there was a job offer. Nobody else had his phone number. He pulled it out and looked at the number with the Jersey area code before answering.

"Yeah?"

"It's me." The man on the other end was a lawyer and a go-between that fancied himself as a kind of criminal broker. "I got a job offer but it's risky."

"How so?"

"It involves cops. But money wise it's worth the trouble."

Bullseye paused for a moment and thought back to the poetry of the coffeehouse.

"To get out of Bushwick I'd do it for free."

It was Uncle Hotch's Hootchshack, the dodgiest establishment to get your beak wet in all of the state of Californa far from the buzz of the cities. There were no movies made and no stars born here. It resided in the city of Grainesville - population 4006. A small town where dreams go to die. And frankly, that was exactly what had happened to the man in the black leather jacket sitting at the bar, ordering his fourth glass of whiskey in the 20 minutes he had been seated here. The Hootchshack had sprung up during prohibition, a place to sell illegal moonshine under the radar - the original owner, Uncle Hotch, was the brother of the Sheriff, as well as father to four of the small town's deputies. No federal agent would be let anywhere near it, so it had a long history of operating under the table.

But once the World War swept in and Prohibition ended, the shack became more of a bar instead - much like it was now. Just that it had gotten a lot shittier in the past 80 years. The air was stale and a scent of sand and sweat lingered. It would've stung the eyes of the man, if he hadn't gotten here by riding his motorcycle without any goggles on. Sand bothered him extremely little these days. Nothing really bothered him. His name was Johnny Blaze. The undead stuntrider - bounty hunter from hell and number one on Heaven's Hit List. He was a lot of things to a lot of people. He was a son, husband, father and brother. And he had failed everyone who called him those things. That was why he was here, perhaps.

He had rode here from the battle. It was still on the news. Casualties in the hundreds of thousands, and many, many more were still missing. The battle of Detroit. The sorcerer with the fancy cape was dead - so was the Billionaire man in the metal suit. Banner's mind is in greater fractures than when he was green. The short, angry mutant with the pointy bones had been burnt all the way down to his imbued bones, and regrown from those. There were more examples of Johnny's failure, 406 thousand and forty seven, was the confirmed number. He hadn't even changed his clothes. He still wore the shirt under his zipped up jacket that was covered in the blood of the 9 year old girl who had gotten torn to shreds by the demons that crawled out of the hole created by Zarathos. The demon had brought hell to earth. Johnny thought he could deal with it.

But he was wrong.
God, why did he have to be wrong. He had stopped Lucifer, he had outwitter Mephisto. Yet, the demon that beats him is the same one that had been riding shotgun with him for the past 20 years. The demon he summoned to his aid when his father was killed. Zarathos gave him the power of the Ghost Rider. Helped him kill the wicked and create justice in the world. All Johnny had brought to the world was chaos and destruction.

He slammed the glass down, ordering another double of scotch. The bartender walked over and poured, not speaking a word to the dirty biker with the empty eyes. Behind them, Johnny could hear two other, younger, dumber bikers - part of the 'California Devils' band of bikers, arguing. The bartender had a concerened look at both of the gentlemen, each had a pistol in their waistband and knives in their boots. Johnny didn't care, he needed to drink. the TV continued to play the footage from the scene in Detroit. The destruction, the remnants of Demons and people alike.

He felt it boil inside of him, his left hand was tucked inside of his jacket, resting. The bartender asked noticed it, and spoke up.

"Uh, so, what's with your arm?" Johnny looked at him and scoffed.

"Fell on my bike, hurt it kinda bad."

"Oh, I understand. Partaking in the oldest form of pain medicine, I see." As he finished the pour, Johnny's free hand grabbed the bottle, he wasn't done.

"You sure you can pay for that?"

Johnny produced a 200 bill from the inside of his pocket and the bartender shrugged, keeping an eye on the argument behind Johnny. They were getting loud.

"Fuck you Bill you stupid son of a bitch. You really think Poker's played with six cards?!"

"Oh yeah, ask your rocket scientist wife if I was so dumb last night, then Teddy. This is how poker's meant to be played."

Johnny looked up at the TV, took a big swig from his bottle and shook his head. Teddy reached for the knife in his boot to punish William for what he had just said. They were friends and brothers in the gang for the past 15 years, but he was angry and willing to throw it all away. A sentiment shared across the room.

Johnny stood up, his left hand still inside of his jacket as he swaggered towards the men.
"You're loud. Show some respect."

Bill and Teddy stopped, each at the other's throat.
"And who the fuck are you?" Bill asked, Johnny shrugged.

"Just a drifter. In need of a drink and some peace and quiet."

"Well, you better get your peace and quiet somewhere else. This bar belongs to the California Devils, and I don't see no patch on your jacket."

"The bartender seems to dislike you two being here, so I think you're full of shit. But, if you insist, I'd be more than happy to have you two escort me out of here." Johnny said, slurring his words slightly.

Bill looked at Ted, and then back at Johnny, getting up, he pulled his knife and attacked Johnny. A stab in the air, Johnny had taken a step to the side, twisted his body to make himself a smaller target and found the bottle swining down at the side of Bill's face, hitting him with the broader side of the rectangular orange glass. The bottle held together as Bill hit the floor, crawliong back up onto his feet as Johnny took another swig, Bill lead with the knife, Johnny spun on his heels, hitting Bill with the bottle straight in the face, shattering the bottle and breaking his nose as well as the lip of the other biker. The scent of blood filled the air. Johnny, still only using one arm, threw the broken bottle aside, waiting to see what Teddy would do. He threw a chair at Johnny, who got hit and braced for it with his shoulder, getting knocked off balanced, Teddy swung at him, hitting him in the jaw, Johnny winced.

"So fuckin' tough, huh?!" Teddy readied his guard and Johnny took a step back, the pool cue was on the floor, knocked over from the stand on the wall. He flung it at Teddy who caught it and intended to use it as a weapon, only to be met with the one-armed biker's fist breaking through the wood and hitting him in the face. Knocking him out over the table.

Johnny returned to the Bartender with his eyes, whom was looking both scared and excited that someone came and kicked the assholes behinds, but was afraid of the consequences of this. The Devils weren't nice people, and didn't take kindly to someone roughing up their boys - even if they were low lives like William and Theodore Barkly - the idiot cousins.

"Sorry about the mess." Johnny apologized, as the Bartender was getting ready to shout at him to get out of this place, a bullet rang out through the air. Piercing Johnny's stomach - from the downward angle, and hitting the bartender in the head, killing him instantly on the ricochet.

On the floor, the bleeding, bordering on unconscious heap of a man - William laid. His .45 in his hand. Shaking.

"You're toasted, you drunk motherfucker..." As Johnny winced from his bullet wound.

Fire burned in his right eye for a second. He stood back up as the flames grew in power from his eye.

"I'm drunk today, William Barkley..." Johnny's voice had a gravitas the hollow-biker hadn't had before. Something spoke from inside of him, using his voice simply as a vessel, as he slowly turned around.

"But, tomorrow I'll be sober. And you'll still be roasted." Pulling his hand from inside of his jacket, the hand was nothing but bones, grpping the handle of a sawed off double barreled shotgun. Fire burning in his face, as his skin was peeling around his right eye. Johnny pulled the trigger, and a pillar of hellfire erupted from the gun, searing William and Theodore to nothing, burning away their very soul. No heaven, no hell. Nothing. Leaving behind nothing but the Bill's hand that was holding the gun that hit the floor with a cold, metallic sound as the fire spread across the Hotchshack.

Johnny had one shell left. Zarathos was still alive, and he had to change that.

He walked away from the inferno of his own creation, and soon the roar of his engine the only noise he would hear.

.

Harlem
2:14 AM

Mood Music

Detective Thomas "Red" Malone limped down the hallway of his brownstone, gasping for breath with one hand against the wall while the other hand gripped his service glock. He was too afraid to put weight on his left leg. He knew it was broken in at least in two places. Blood dripped down the open wound on his forehead and the gashes on his chest had made the floor slick as he tried to walk across it barefooted.

Red had been getting ready for bed when the bedroom door flew open and a man came in. The son of a bitch had a knife in one hand and used it like he knew what the fuck he was doing. Malone managed to get to his gun but not before taking at least a half dozen stab wounds to the torso, neck, and face. The sight of the gun made the fucker retreat, but not before delivering a crushing kick to Malone's leg. He heard the bone snap, felt the pain so intense he almost vomited right then and there. Malone fell back on the bed screaming while the attacker disappeared further into the house.

He looked through his nightstand for his cellphone but couldn't find it. He still had a landline down the hall that he could use to call 911 and then Abbott and the rest of the crew. If he could get to the phone then he would be safe. Malone slipped against his own blood and managed to catch himself before he put any more weight on his broken leg. When he was sure he was steady, he looked up and saw the attacker in the hallway. It was dim, but he could see the glint of a giant hunting knife in the man's hand. Malone raised his glock at the same time the man flicked his wrist. Suddenly a great searing pain shot through Malone's chest. He looked down and saw the knife embedded in his chest, all the way to the hilt. The shock of it made him put weight on his bad leg and slip on the blood.

The pain and lack of traction sent Malone down the ground flat on his back. The fall knocked his breath from him and he gasped before coughing phlegm and blood from his mouth. Malone could feel the knife in his chest bob up and down with every breath. The attacker stood over him and looked down. There was no look of sadness, anger, or joy on the man's face. To Malone he looked like a landscaper in the middle of mowing a lawn. The man yanked the knife from Malone's chest, causing pain to shoot through his body as blood poured from the wound.

"The only comfort I have to offer," the man said softly. "Is in a few minutes, you'll never feel anything again."

Malone let out a hoarse scream as the man came at his face with the knife.

---

Forty-Five Minutes Earlier

Bullseye sat in his car parked down at the end of the block from Detective Malone's house. Soul and classic R&B played on the car radio while he flipped through Malone's NYPD service jacket. Whoever hired him for the job had deep connections within the NYPD. Along with Malone's jacket, he had the jackets of the rest of the five-man squad, and a separate folder from Internal Affairs on the unit.

The Uptown Narcotics Task Force operated autonomously from any one NYPD precinct and their mandate was to stomp out major drug traffickers in Harlem, Spanish Harlem, and Washington Heights. So far they had arrested a few, but the IA folder made a compelling case that the task force ended up replacing the dealers with themselves. They were accused to skimming drug money and extorting drug dealers. They would sell confiscated narcotics back to the dealers at marked up prices. IA's case was just speculation and innuendo. Nothing concrete had ever emerged. The one thing apparent was that Detective Sergeant Vincent Abbott ran the show for both the legal and illegal activities the task force engaged in.

The Crystals played "And Then He Kissed Me" on the radio by the time Bullseye started on Malone's service jacket. Abbott would have been the easy choice for a first target. He was the brains of the operation and taking him out made sound tactical sense. Like in the military, kill the officers first to create confusion among the men in battle. But Bullseye had learned another way to operate during black ops. Malone wasn't the brains, far from it, but he was the heart of the team. The Big Man, they called him in the IA file. He was big and had a temper on him. He was suspended once when another black officer called him a "redboned nigger" and he beat him to a pulp. Malone acted as Abbott's enforcer when needed and he kept the other men in line if he smelled even a whiff of insubordination. He was lovable and well liked by everyone on the team. Killing him first would sew fear and dissent in the team. Not the same as taking Abbott out, but maybe more effective. And more fun for Bullseye.

Wilson Pickett started singing about Mustang Sally when Bullseye killed the engine of his car and stepped out into the night. He carried no guns, just the hunting knife holstered on his hip. That's all he would need. He took a deep breath and crossed the street towards Malone's brownstone.

---

Harlem
4:43 AM

Vince Abbott looked at the crime scene and tried his best not to throw up. The body of Malone -- The goddamn Big Man himself -- sat slumped against the wall with a pool of blood around him. His white undershirt and underwear was stained in blood and shredded from cuts. A giant gash in his chest still dripped blood. Abbott had begged for them to throw a tarp over his body, cover it in some way, but they refused. They needed to take pictures and collect evidence.

Abbott's eyes shifted upward. On the wall above Malone's head were words written in blood, Malone's blood.

"1 Down 4 to Go"

Abbott turned away from the scene and hurried out. The rest of the guys were out there, waiting for him to give the bad news. He pulled out a cigarette with shaking hands and tried four times to light it before it finally caught.

"Nobody goes home and nobody sleeps until this is over," Abbott announced. "Now mount up. We're about to fucking remind Uptown New York who the fuck we are."

I am Batman’s arch nemesis.

Me -- Mitchell Mayo. Don’t let the clowns or the birds or owls tell you any different. There’s only one game in Gotham that isn’t a crock of tartar sauce, and I’m through waiting for the rest of the city’s pest-o’s to ketchup.

Criminals in this city will a-salt the Bat with everything they got: pepper him with bullets, try to barbecue that pointy-eared head; someone even mustard the courage to get in there and break his back. But the Bat always ends up on top. These galooks are in a jam, if you ask me. New guy thinks he has a big dill plan and gets his goons into the same pickle, and then they get to spend the next few months chili-ing out in Arkham.

Not me. Now, you’re a-dressing The Condiment King, the man that knows Batman’s true weakness! Superman has kryptonite. Martian Manhunter can’t soy-vive a fire -- and Batman? Really, it’s as simple as yum yum sauce.

He’s weak to sauce. They tell me I’m crazy -- too much honey in my mustard, or something -- but I’ve seen it. Bat leaves the mask open at the bottom so you can’t miso what he’s feeling. He wants you to see that grim, square, serious jaw right before he sends you to the hospital with all manner of aioli-ments.

I can tell from the way he mayo-ntains focus on my condiment applicators. The horrible way his mouth curls, like he’s just taken a spoonful of vegemite. He knows I’m getting close, that soon I will unlock the special sauce that he fears most. The corners of his mouth struggle as I bring out the curry-worst weapons in my delectable depot of destruction. The tang of tabasco and the cutting chutney, as soon as I reach the right combination he’ll be sleeping with the fish sauces. Each time we have done battle, I see it on his face:

A haunting smile -- syrup-titiously trying to hide his fear, the emotion bubbling up inside... I relish it.

Mood Music

Washington Heights
5:12 AM

Morrissey crooned out of Bullseye's wiresless earbuds. In his honest opinion, no assassin's playlist could be considered complete without The Smiths. Morrissey's angsty and playful lyrics, accompanied Johnny Marr's great guitar riffs, provided the perfect soundtrack for murder. He could see the entire city block from his vantage point on the roof of a thirty story apartment complex. Through the scope of his sniper rifle he watched an unmarked police car skid to a stop outside the five story walk-up building halfway down the block. Detectives Jimmy Burke and Mikey Thompson jumped out the car and rushed into the building as "Barbarism Begins at Home" reach its chorus.

Unruly boys who will not grow up
Must be taken in hand.

After killing Malone Bullseye tossed the apartment and found a stack of documents hidden behind a baseboard in the kitchen. He wasn't sure if Malone was the group's record keeper or if he had the stash for insurance, but Bullseye found it regardless of the dead cop's intent. Records of money laundering and off-shore bank accounts, proof that the bulk of the dirty money the squad received got passed on to lawyers, judges, and politicians. A whole spider-web of corruption with Abbott and his men at the center. Interesting stuff that could do some damage in the right hands, Bullseye figured.

Among the documentation had been information about the Washington Heights apartment that was in Malone's ex-wife's name. The apartment hadn't been listed in any IA financial audit of Malone or the rest of the squad. They'd worked hard to keep it off the books for a reason. Bullseye knew enough about the art of hiding to know it was either a safehouse or a stash house, or maybe both. The two cops showing up so soon after Malone's death was proof that the apartment had some use for the group for sure. It would have been much easier for him to break into the apartment and wait to ambush Burke and Thompson from there. But he'd killed Malone up close and didn't want to repeat himself. After all wasn't variety the spice of life?

A light came on in the apartment a few minutes after the cops went inside the building. He saw them rushing through a room in search of something. He saw Burke shoot upright and laugh before letting his breath out. Whatever it was, they found it. Bullseye put Burke's smiling face in the middle of his crosshair.

A crack on the head is what you get for not asking
And a crack on the head is what you get for asking

He let his breath out slowly and squeezed the rifle's trigger.

---

Harlem
5:13 AM

Raymond Jones stared down the barrel of a gun. Sergeant Vince Abbott stood in front of him with his service glock inches away from Jones' face. Jones was completely naked, having just bedded down for the night with two of his women when Abbott and one of his boys came through the door. The two girls were still in the bed beside him, sheets pulled up around their breasts and looking bored. Dealing with crazy white men was something they were used to.

"Call it off, Jones," Abbott screamed.

"Call what off?"

The barrel of the gun struck him across the side of his head. He swayed and stumbled back a few feet, but he stayed upright and felt blood starting to drip from his temple.

"You motherfuc--"

Abbott pushed him backwards until he was pressed against the wall.

"Don't play dumb with me! I start squeezing you for more money, and the next thing I know Malone is killed. Not only is he killed, there are promises to kill the rest of us. Tell me now or I will paint the back of this fucking wall with your brains."

Jones chuckled. His head hurt so bad that even that small allowance shot red hot pain through his skull.

"You kill me and there's no way to call anything off."

Abbott didn't miss a beat. He stepped back and aimed his gun at the two women on the bed while maintaining eye contact with Jones.

"You think I care about them hoes?" Jones laughed, showing off his rows of metallic teeth. "Bitches like that are a dime a dozen. C'mon, Mr. Police. Got any more threats? Gonna threaten to run me in? On what grounds, motherfucker?"

Abbott started to answer when his phone began to ring. He answered it without looking away from Jones.

"Yeah?"

His mad look disappeared. One of worry replaced it.

"Wait, what the fuck? Say that again."

---

Washington Heights
5:15 AM

"Jimmy's dead," Mike Thompson cried into the phone. "I got a fucking sniper over at the apartment. Got me pinned down."

Mikey gripped the phone with one hand, his service weapon with the other hand. He was crouched against a wall. The place had no furniture so the small bit of wall beneath the window sill were the only places to hide. Jimmy Burke's body lay just a few feet away, a huge chuck of the side of his face gone.

"Have you called the cops?" Abbott asked over the phone.

"I called you first, Vinny. Dispatch is the second call."

"Don't call them."

"What?"

"Think about what we got in that apartment, Mikey. We're on our way. Just get out of sight and be calm. We're on the fucking way."

The call ended and Thompson swore loudly. He sat there for a few minutes, breathing heavily and sweating. It was easy for Vinny to say that shit from wherever the fuck he was. He wasn't here. He hadn't heard the shot, so loud it was still ringing in Mike's ears. He didn't have to look at Jimmy's dead body, still oozing blood out in the hardwood floor.

"Fuck this," he said and started to dial 911.

"I got shots fired, and an officer down here at--"

He stopped speaking when he heard the door fly open. Could it be Vinny and backup. He peaked around the corner of the wall towards the door. A... man in a costume stood in the doorway, white earbuds stuck in his ear and something metallic and sharp in his hand. Was that... a fucking throwing star?

"Hi."

Thompson turned the corner and raised his gun. He got a shot off just as the costumed man threw whatever it was from his hand. The door frame above the man exploded in a chunk of wood chips. A microsecond later he felt something hard hit him in the forehead. The force of it dropped him to the ground, a sharp pain accompanying the blow. He suddenly realized he couldn't see, but he could feel pain and blood and something solid and sharp in his forehead.

Thompson let out a gasp when he realized what it was. That realization would be one of the last conscious thoughts he would have as his brain began to shut down from the blunt force trauma and destruction from the throwing star.

---

Bullseye stepped over the two dead bodies and found what it was they had come to the apartment to find. A ripped up floorboard panel revealed two gymbags resting in a hidden crawlspace beneath the floor. He reached down and zipped them open. One was stuffed to the brim with cash, the other with three neatly packed kilos of heroin. For Abbott and the cops the cash and dope was worth dying for, and especially worth killing for.

With a smile Bullseye grabbed both bags and slung them over his shoulder. He stopped by Thompson's body and grabbed his cell phone. He'd need it later for his final play. The Smiths faded and the O'Jays started to sing "For the Love of Money." Maybe a little on the nose? Perhaps, but his phone was on shuffle so what could he do? With the O'Jays still singing, Bullseye walked out the door with the dirty cops' stash as police sirens started to sound from somewhere close by.