I am not one of the Great Heroes of the Twencen. I am a dark threat, which rose not as myth but as urban legend. I am no prophet, I am a demon feared only by those who have heard the name. A story told to criminals, no matter the crop. A name unknown to the Good and Just, as it should be. But every man who picks pockets, who runs rackets, that fixes numbers and robs banks. They know the legend. I prey on the wicked. On the Kingpins. I am the threat to the moral weakness of our nation.
I am
DAREDEVIL.
***
{DAREDAREVIL 2099 - EYES WIDE OPEN, part 2: Back to Basics}
{written by Bowie Sessions ([email protected])}
***
It is a dark, stale night. The wind hardly even blows. I find that fury addles my mind, and I look down from these high apartments, perching amongst the gleaming steel towers, to the shadows far below. We live so high up here that you can't even see the suffering. I am disgusted with it. It pains me and fills me with rage. I have been distracted from my dream and from my cause. These people need my help and I can not offer it from this lofty height. That bitch Arcadia corrupts my dreams. I find that her Re-Activ-8's purposes are at ends with mine, now. That innocence is lost. I remember only hours ago. She was asking Lena Russell, CEO of JR BioTech, to tell her the very information that some mysterious unaffiliated men were trying to beat out of her. Did she have me save the woman only to damn her? Take her from the wolves and throw her to the lions? I fear I am amongst a nest of vipers. Am I up to playing the mongoose? What the hell IS a mongoose? I try to wrack my brain. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen real nature. Is it a kind of goose?
I really just need to clear my head. I need to detach myself from this. My body needs to act, so that my mind can rest. So I seek purpose in the pain that awaits me. I stand, and leap from my perch. Really, its more of a fall. My arms extend, and I drop, the wind rushing past me. Head spinning as I plummet - the oxygen is so much thinner up high, where steel meets cloud. Through my insulated suit, I feel the cold air bite against me, tearing into my nerves. I welcome it. It awakens me.
***
[past the Thirteenth Street Line]
"THOR has forsaken you! Having chained his brother inside the Earth, the noble and deceived Loki, Thor and his Gods have returned to the skies above, never to return! The times of this era's pain, this day's suffering, are conditions of STASIS - of CALCIFICATION! Jormunggand is no visible thing; the Serpent of Midgard encroaches us all, circles the Earth, as it is the spirit of liberation and of dissent. In Loki's children do we infest this Earth, readying it for the cycle to be turned again."
High upon a pedestal is a man dressed in his new styles of teutonic tribute, neo-Scandinavian complemented with the a small helm engraved into it the upper jaw of a terrible beast.
"The cycle MUST be turned, if we are to save this Damned world!"
I can't help but agree with him. Well, I would if he wasn’t lying. He speaks with the fervor of a preacher, but he is tainted. No truer could he be that he says he's a child of Loki. The preacher calls on rebellion, on the tumbling of some dark government. But he peddles to them, to the masses, a drug given to him by those same powers. Now his speech tells us of the Rainbow Bridge, tells us of how our eyes are sealed.
"You must broaden your vision -- they tell you this is SIN, this is CRIME -- but this is LIBERATION! They fabricate such ancient spiritual journey with CyberNet, trick us with holograms -- they COMPUTE our dreams! Fight this -- it is only our minds we must overcome!" The masses are responsive. His tongue is silvered. I can't help but sneer as people begin to take from his men's hands, his gang that scatters through the crowd. I watch as a teenaged girl takes a small capsule, and I know anger. It is pure, and clears my mind. Things seem so much simpler when you’re righteous.
I count them. There are twelve, with at least fifty innocents nodding along to them, so easily swaying to this man with his smooth voice. My mask tightens around my scowl, but a smile soon serenely replaces it. I surrender to action, and welcome it.
I leap free the wall at the far end of the courtyard. My feet find hard stone below me. It's a firm kick-off sending me skyward again, a forward flip which flies me over the heads of seven listeners. Again I land, and again I leap, this time a reverse hand-spring to toss me into a tall aerial that ends in my landing upright and standing balanced on the rail cornering this former bus-stop. He uses it as his pedestal upon which he preaches. This preacher begins stumbling back quickly. No one’s responded just yet, but that’s why we call it the Element of Surprise.
"I'm sure Loki will protect his loyal followers, his Grandchildren, the so Blessed of Fenris," I offer, sarcastically, as he runs away. I send an energy cable flying straight for his back, which spears through his stomach from behind before it extends its three grappling hook legs. It catches him that way, making him scream as it tears his organs inside. I reel him back in like a caught fish and the energy dissipates, leaving the wound to seep as I catch him by his wrist. I pull it back, twist it around and shove him chest first into to the rail. Collapsing against it, he screams as I torque his arm in a threat to remove it from the socket. Really, it is kind of a hobby lately.
"Huh, that’s weird. I kinda expected smiting." At that, I place a foot in the small of his back and crank his arm up and over. I wasn’t just threatening a second ago. His arm circles the entirety of its orbit and pops free from its socket like a stubborn bottle cap. He hasn't stop screaming yet. I twist and slam his face into the concrete below twice and he finally stops struggling. No extraneous amounts of blood so I doubt his brain hemorrhages, but he’s at least suffering a concussion and is very unconscious. Good man, stay down.
Standing up, I look around for the first time. I see his gaggle of Fenris quickly approaching, and I speak loudly to the crowd before his compatriots get to me. "Go home, you idiots. Their 'sight' has not saved them. It will only ruin you. They lie for profit. Go read a book. Get your own damn opinions. Read The Bible or Danielle Steel. Go nuts." The people are retreating in obvious fear while the gaudily dressed crowd of Fenris’ believers rushes me.
The energy baton extends into a staff, and I spin it with a quick, fanciful and unnecessary flourish. Behind my mask, my lip crease into a broad smile.
"Afternoon, gents."
They try to talk with their fists, like savages. That’s fine with me. So it is with action that I reply. I do not bother to put too much attention to it - I operate mostly on instinct, letting my mind wander even as I hear their pained cries. What is Arc doing right now? What could she be doing? When she gets that information - and I'm sure she will - what's she doing with it? Who, what, where, when, why and how. Six questions to be asked to divine any answer. I wonder if I will need to beat it out of her. I wonder if I would like to.
Who is she really working for? What does she want Lena for? Blood splatters across the black of my uniform as a hard right cross meets the face of a Fenrir, and I grip his shoulders to leap-frog over him and send my feet crashing into the chests of those rushing up behind him.
Where did she even get my uniform? Questions race that I blindly never thought to ask. When will it be too late – when Lena gives her the information she wants? Why is it so important that two groups want this company? How did she know to send me – hell, how did she ever find me...?
I catch a Fenrir by his arm, and use him to make me stable as I over-extend to hurl a kick high into a Fenrir’s adam's apple and then yank on his arm to pull me into him. With a kick, this sends me flying up over him in a mid-air cartwheel. Landing on his other side, I drop to a knee and pull him down with me. I send him crashing into cement and then stand up carelessly. I look around, dusting myself off.
Am I paranoid? Is she possibly pure? A voice in my mind whispers to stop her, to kill her. Is it possible that I presume too much - that Lena really is innocently being saved, and contacts within the grassroots Re-Activ-8 organization have somehow pieced together the location she was at? Anything's possible. But does that mean I'm wrong?
I wipe up their blood from my uniform that is thankfully stain-free, with one of their ratty t-shirts I took the liberty to remove. I took their drugs, which I balled up in a cloth I tore from one’s head and loosely dangle it in my other hand. Sirens break the din of silence I had created with their broken bodies.
I drop the drugs to the ground, and open a lighter I'd lifted from one of the criminals. Flicking its archaic flint, I light the shirt on fire. Cracking open the lighter, I release its fill of gas all along the cloth. The flames rise, and I know it will burn well. And maybe the idiots laying next to it will too, if they're not lucky.
I extend my hand, from which forms the small baton of light, and erupts its cable which snares a ledge high above and pull myself into the air with it, swinging quickly skyward. The sirens call to me – I’ve got a job to do.
***
[The Baxter Building, HQ of Stark-Fujikawa]
This is the office of Hikaru Takeshi. He admires his own small note sketched upon his desk. The letters ‘DD’ joined and scribbled on his notepad. The same sigil which was found carved into his employee’s forehead only last night. Looking to the far end of the room, this powerful man can not help but smile ruefully, eliciting no response from the shadowy figure. “This is clearly the man,” he suggests, quietly and bitterly, his face a grizzled expression of regimented frustration. It bleeds through his eyes, through the wrinkling of his cheeks… but his face does not twitch, lips do not forgive.
“This is a man who has taken the flag and face of a man known to our histories: a blind samurai, a gaijin samurai. It… would seem he continues a legacy. And, it would be appear he has become … disapproving of us in some manner. However, we are righteous and we are wronged; which would mean that he has begun a blood feud in the shaming of our family. This must be resolved.”
His long rhetoric is finally nodded to by the figure in the thick, resilient cowl resting around his neck. Long hair hangs forward in his face from beneath the hood, his head bowed and hands crossed before him subserviently as he listens to Hikaru’s spiteful words.
Hikaru looks to this figure quietly and thoughtfully before he speaks at length once more. “He has embarrassed us. Shamed us in such a way as can not be repaid for with our blood alone. We will avenge Takiwara. Eagle, my most able of prospects for this task, I would care to see this man suffer so he would face us with honor. It is the respect I will extend him for his predecessor. I would like it if he were forced to be honorable enough to speak to me as a man. I would like it if I could be allowed the chance to make reparations to Mr. Takiwara’s family.”
The long-haired figure washed in shadow bows, and pulls forward his cowl so his eyes meet Hikaru’s. His hair is tucked into the concealing headpiece, and eyes open beneath the slits in the tight hood, one eye brown and one an inverted dot of white on an orb of black. He manages to smile. “I believe I know just what must be done, Hikaru-sama.”
“I know nothing of your plans, and this will be the truth forever. I speak only of wishes and desires, not plans. Not intentions.”
“The Project named Eagle works for your interests alone, Hikaru-sama,” the smiling figure named Eagle assures. His smile never fades.
***
[past the Thirteenth Street Line]
This place used to be a fairground. It was a mecca of entertainment and industry. There were musical concerts, social events, and boardroom excursions to the sunny skies above. As this city grew upon its shoulders time and again, it sank what was formed below them under their freshest skylines … what was once splendor and greatness became desperate and irrelevant. There is now a gaggle of underprivileged gathered and staring at the destruction before them, as seven Public Eye officers have arrived to brutalize a small group of dissidents whose voices differed from the tripe of corporate head-lines.
Now again a man calls to a crowd. Before, the speaker sold lies in drugs. This crowd now has their conviction strengthened with each blow against the corruption of the Corporations – and simultaneously weakened by the impassibility of their imposed order. The man preaching has little effect, unlike the last; the Eye speaks, and his words fall on the deaf ears of poor that won’t ever afford their service.
It didn’t take long for me to follow those sirens or discover where they going. I just follow the sirens to the sudden silence. I found them already bloodying a broken-apart gazebo with the faces of citizens they have long since labeled as refuse.
One of the Public Eye hoverbikes suddenly makes itself known to the gathering as it sails viciously through the wreckage loosely called a gazebo and rams most of the Public Eye in it, flying high enough to avoid the crumpled victims below. It carries them through the structure, slamming them violently into the opposite wall, crushing their ribs and breaking limbs as it goes. They’re vainly struggling to their feet and their weapons when I walk up the gazebo’s half-broken steps, onto the ruined floor.
And so I speak, anger quivering in my voice. “I believe I can define the word ‘hate’. It is the emotion one feels when they or those for whom they care are abused. Hate is never empty or invalid – it is always pure and true. Hate forms in men for those whom have wronged them or their loved ones.”
I am shot at. It is almost dismissively that I whip out my baton, which somehow draws the energy from the blaster into itself like a vacuum. Again they fire and again the energy coalesces into the weapon in my grip as if fed by it. I bear down on them in my rage.
“I hate you all. You abuse innocent men for your pleasure without culpability. Well, I’m here to tell you – you’re all culpable before these same men you abuse. A simple law of nature: We. Have. Nothing. To. Lose.” One of the men stands up, and rushes me with a shock-stick in hand. I dismiss it with my baton, and punch him in the face before I grab him by his neck and slam him into the wall, hitting him into it until the wall gives way and I let him go. He doesn’t get back up.
The crowd below has never paid more rapt attention. “THESE MEN are not the law! Our Constitution, the one for which your first ancestors lived and died – it was not in failing. Written in those pages is the very right to dissent – no, the implication that one must. We have the right to choose our own government. These aren’t Gods, not implacable beings of power – these are some schmucks who signed up for cheap abusive power to the first dime that bought them, these are some schmucks I just BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF in front of you. They fell down. They’re fallible. Every person who employs them is fallible. To the last man, these bastards will fall if you just fight back. You can only take so much from a man until there is nothing left to take – then they are free again. Your life is empty because of them! This isn’t a curse – this is liberation! FIGHT BACK!”
There is fervent nodding as a man dressed all in black stands at the precipice of this derelict structure looking into the fields to the gathered wave of protestors that listen with dedication, nodding and whispering complicity.
“There is a sickness, and we must cure it. This life is only theirs if you let them take it. Do not go gently into that good night! Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!” I think I lose them with that poetry excerpt, but the point is made, and they throw their fists up defiantly into the air. I like how that feels to see.
But their cheer masks something in the noise. I see it in the distance. Specks form against the sunset, first … but then it becomes very clear. There is a wing of men riding through the air, uniformly astride mounts that would’ve once resembled motorcycles. I can hear strains of Ride of the Valkyries sing through my mind and a dark voice laughs inside of me. The Public Eye has returned in force. I count at the very least thirty of them. Apparently they do not take well to ‘Officer Down’.
“Everyone needs to leave. Bring this fight to them, but on your terms, in both public and shadow. But not today."
“Rage,” I bid them last.
The staff forms into a cord with its head a legged tripod. I swing it back and cast it forward.
I. Do. Not. Run.
***
[On the Net-stream, private chatroom of Re-Activ-8]
The screen reads clearly, /Entering Channel – iRace TV-8/ as Arcadia sails through cyberspace under her avatar of a sleek, silver-clad surfer-girl. She arrives into what appears to be a small park, with benches all surrounding a miniature lake filled with ducks. Thrown into the pixellated waters are small breadcrumbs of the Users’ make. The tension in the bandwidth is palpable – as it always is. Terrorism is launched across thousands of fronts with constant secret meetings in arenas that are wordplay or a jumble of their nomenclature.
“Thank you for joining us, Hierophant. Thank you for deeming us worthy of your interest,” speaks a man with his lower body that of a spider and covered in illuminated trails of binary along all ten of his limbs.
She bites back any disagreeable feelings, looking upon the alternately abstract or precise digital avatars of her co-conspirators. Most of them don’t know each others names; many of the inner circle even keep their identities secret. The faith in each other must be absolute.
“I had difficulty with some of my update content, Protograde,” she answers sharply, kicking up her gleaming silver surfboard, catching it quickly and standing beside it at a lean.
“All present now. Begin the minutes.”
***
[past the Thirteenth Street Line]
The count is thirty-five, it turns out. That’s thirty-five Public Eye forces astride their vehicles. I heard the cry, “Move on the LT, flank his sides.” I saw the grizzled face of a Public Eye officer in his sparkling-clean uniform leading the pack – clearly this ‘LT’, or ‘Lieutenant’. I launch myself into the air and cast the cable. It catches against his vehicle’s airfoil, giving me traction and him descent. I use the leverage and the baton’s recoiling to fling myself higher off the now-spinning vehicle, navigation compromised by my momentum, the cable still attached to its air-foil. Its spinning too fast to pull out. I hear already, “Lt. Puglisi – fix trajectory!” over his radio as I pass.
When gravity pulls me back down, a foot extends to slam into a passing PE’s helmet and sends him driving wildly while I pull roughly on my baton only to release its grip on Puglisi’s bike. Too late. Already the once-hooked vehicle sails into this one while I leap free. I hear the cry – “Puglisi, VEER! VEER!” before the Lieutenant named Puglisi, who obviously wasn’t able to comply, goes careening headfirst into his coworker. Their fall doesn’t look pleasant, either.
I don’t say anything. No clever retorts. No cute affectations or rants. Performing a beautiful double-axle in mid-air, I release the cord again to send it catching onto another free bike, as blasts are fired in every direction through the air after me. I swing through the mass of them as best I can, friendly fire sent back and forth to them with frustrated and pained cries under their own assaults. I even lead two into crashing together as I perform my aerial bounds.
I am caught, though. For thirty five of them, I cripple half a dozen of their bikes. A blast wings me in the shoulder just as I cling onto another bike and causes me to drop through the air to the end of my cable, hanging on by a prayer and striving to convince my shoulder to overcome the pain. I think I saw this in Blade Runner.
Then there’s another voice. A flying car screeches up to the fracas of police action, bearing in it a massive black suit-clad man with massive gauntlets and armored pads along his body, creating a juxtaposition of formalwear and battle. His ponytail is pulled back tight, and the police barely become aware of him before he stands up with a bizarrely barreled weapon affixed to the bottom of his arm. It looks like an old-fashioned gatling gun is suspended from his forearm. Crap.
He opens fire… and it slices through the Officers, who scream in agony, riddling their newly-minted corpses with lead, just as it gives crippling damage to the hoverbikes they ride. I can only hang there watching until the bike I am suspended from no longer has a rider and it starts rapidly losing altitude. I don’t have time to act before I come crashing into the ground below. It hurts considerably and I feel broken, slack loosening on my cable.
Struggling to move, I look up. I wish I hadn’t. “Oh, %$#@.”
The bike plummets into me. This hurts more. But I don’t feel it for very long.
I black out and am dimly aware of being lifted. The first awareness I have is looking into his eyes, while he suspends me by my skull like I was a basketball. He’s easily six foot eight. Easily three hundred pounds and none of it fat. I am lifted as if I weigh nothing. The prospect that I might be out of my league occurs to me.
“The name’s Graveyard. You made my bosses very—“
I don’t give him the time to finish. Never let bad-guys orate to you. If they get to the end, they will kill you. I grab his huge wrist and pull myself upward by it, slamming a foot into his crotch and the other catching his chest as I kind of run up him. I kick myself free from him, his pain releasing my head just in time to flip backwards free of him and land with a flourish.
I spin kick him in his side, as all around me I see crashed remains of Public Eye forces, I see bodies and vehicle wreckage through the fairground. Most are either barely moving or dead. I obviously was out long enough for him to finish every last one of them off. Wrecks are still smoking – so minutes at most. He eliminated every last one of them. I should thank him. But strangely I feel more compelled to disgust.
“SHOCKING IDIOT! Now I just ‘splain to them, you didn’t go quietly – I hadda kill you—“
He seems not dazed at all. I duck a swing of his fist and leap into the air, striking my foot into his face. Don’t even budge him. “I got the impression you already were planning that,” I mention.
“Yeh. Just, now, I ain’t gotta lie ‘bout it,” he smiles and grasps my foot as I come in for another kick and just stops me dead. I hang there, leaping on one foot and trying to get free. Well, I get that wish – when I’m thrown backwards at an unbelievable velocity with a simple toss of his hand. Explains how he carried me so easily, super-strength. I crash instantly into the same gazebo from which I spoke my agenda to have its ruins crumble around me.
Groaning, I work to free myself only to see his imposing figure casting deep shadows over me.
“This won’t stop me. This won’t stop the revolution. You’re wasting your time and energy.” He lifts me easily from the rubble and I see clearly. He’s wearing a Body Chassis. I’m screwed. He looks to me with amusement before he throws me into the nearest building, right through the window and into the coffee shop level of the abandoned apartment rise. It takes a few minutes to find my feet when he comes in, ignoring my own blood dripping to the ground below.
“They don’t care what you think—“ I try to begin, and groggily dodge his fist as its sent into a support wall of this crumbling place. It surrenders to his strength, the ceiling above wobbling. I leap behind a desk, trying to think up a plan. It is not coming to me.
“They just—“ Doesn’t even give me a chance. He lifts a desk up and slams it into me twice, reducing it to splinters as I am crumbled to the ground. His fist destroys the support wall just for emphasis as I hack up my own blood, gurgling beneath my mask.
“They pay you into slavish obedience…” I argue desperately as he walks up to me with his grin, business suit in tatters from destruction and our one-sided fight. The ceiling starts to give.
All I remember after that is his massive fist coming for my skull.
“They pay well,” I hear as it comes.
***
[private channel, iRace TV-8]
“…which brings us to you, Hierophant,” the pleasant voice of Isotopia suggests, implying it her turn to talk.
“My Agent… he … is off the grid. Not answering comms. Data black-out. It is still unclear if we’ve been compromised.”
There is much silence around the still and pixellated pond. Many eyes study Hierophant carefully, while many mutter frustrations beneath their breaths and more curse silently to themselves.
“What of his last project? What were the finds of his most recent acquisition?”
At this, Hierophant smiles pleasantly to them and bows her head in submission. “It has failed. The Agent killed her to prevent her from saying more – she was compromised at the extraction point. I’m sorry.”
There is a forgiving nod that surrounds the circle. “We don’t approve of his actions.”
“Oh, Thor, neither do I!” she protests, trying so hard not to smile.
***
[sometime later, past the Thirteenth Street Line]
There is a shift in the debris of the building's foundation, pebbles trickle down their hill of destruction like the smallest hints of avalanche, appropriately enough. A massive slab of warped metal is hurled free from its top a moment later and skids down the side of the decimation, taking chunks of wall and furniture with it as it topples. A single black hand emerges from the newly-made pit and pulls me free from my tomb. I drag myself out inch by inch until my arm is far enough that the baton forms in my right hand. Its tip turned into the hook and releases its long cable. Blindly it catches something and reels me in. I am torn out of the debris, over rock and over land. My body is limply and painfully dragged across what remains of the ground.
Coming to a stop, the baton forms together again and dissipates in a quiet hum, leaving me to lay there. I groan for several moments and just lay there. I soak up the pain quietly and finally rise, kneeling and then standing. Graveyard is long gone, left me for dead. I know I have been in more pain before, but I am having trouble remembering when. Jesus.
I look to the skyline above me and once more the baton forms to my hand. I grip my side to test my injuries… and decide against swinging, letting the baton dissipate. I hobble over to the unconscious body of Lt. Puglisi and give his hoverbike a shot. It revs, engine roars, and begins to float. As I straddle it with a wince, I think that maybe I should get my own ride. I don’t know, the DareDunebuggy… DareDirtbike… something.
I know just where I'm going. I need information. And as much as it pains me, there's one person with that knowledge - Re-Activ-8, more particularly its contact to me. I plot the course and start driving. I'm going to go see Arcadia. And then we're going to have a few words.
***
[apartment high-rise, Tormen Towers, eighty-fourth floor]
Arcadia, the true face of Hierophant, signs off of the Cybernet and places the helmet quietly on its stand on her desk before relaxing in her lush leather chair. She breathes quietly and stressfully, before she stands and turns, sipping at a glass of water prepared and placed on the corner of her desk.
“Where’s Lena?” I ask and she is shocked at my appearance. She drops the glass and seems more aware that it doesn’t shatter than she is of my catching it. I watch her ruefully, my eyes glowing with their apparent crimson hellfire.
She stutters, struggling to find her confidence to speak before managing her angry protest. “She’s … in a protected home, she’s being watched—“
My eyes darken in my reply, “Imprisoned.”
“Guarded!” she rebukes me fiercely, pointing at me in accusation.
“From what?” I contest, voice snapping, not moving an inch.
She slaps me as her response. My face turns to exaggerate the strike. I’m surprised by her action and I gather my conviction.
Fists tighten and relax furiously, rage coursing through my blood. My vision would turn red, if it could. I’d like to kill her, right now and dark desires in my mind scream for me to. That sensation has filled me several times lately. As always, sin exists not in the appetite but how you wet it.
“Don’t ever strike me again, Arcadia. My service here is for your aid, not your employ. I have … had … a really bad night and I need to know. I need to know that I am not your fool. I need to know that you aren’t the crazy bitch I think you are.”
Again I find her hand races to me, but this time I anticipate it. This time I catch it before it lands, and pull her to me, viciously kneeing her in the stomach and hurling her against the wall. She groans at the impact and I step forward.
She once more cries in her defense, “I’m just trying to protect her, you slag! You helped her, I helped her – I’m protecting her! She’s safe!”
“Tell me where. I’ll ask her about it.”
She lunges for me. With a kick to her stomach, she goes flying back to the wall and I pursue it with a quick jab to her face. She buckles under the impact, collapsing into the drywall behind her. “Shock you, you analog retread! I gave you this! This second chance! I made you a man again! I made you! And this is it? You treat me like this? My trust? My faith in you?” I punch her in the face again. It feels good.
She slaps me across the face again. We’re full of repetition. I deserve it. Then she pries up the mask half-way before I slap her hand away and bloody her lip. I don’t really answer her rhetoric so much as assault her to prove my point. I’m punched in the face again. Good. She’s getting some guts. I knee her in the stomach once more, making her gasp. She launches forward and kisses me. I find myself returning it. Once more, she’s returned to the wall. This time knocks less breath out of her.
…
I awaken hours later, moving through the darkness of this room into the shower. The water baptizes me. Water is religiously seen to wash away all manners of sin, and I pray for it now.
In the shadows of this room I slowly pull on my black uniform and walk to the balcony. I step onto it, and finish pulling the mask on over my face, red eyes beginning their glow as I stare into the night.
The darkness takes me. I stare into the abyss which is swallowed by the neon lights of the city. Am I going mad? Applied to tasks for which I believe… only to find doubt in my mind? Preaching of words of action and purpose… only to see my faithful run like rabbits? Am I damned to see demons everywhere, and to see angels nowhere? Is there purity, justice and nobility still? Or do I truly rage against the night?
…I remember the first time. There were angels.
There will be again.
END
I am
DAREDEVIL.
***
{DAREDAREVIL 2099 - EYES WIDE OPEN, part 2: Back to Basics}
{written by Bowie Sessions ([email protected])}
***
It is a dark, stale night. The wind hardly even blows. I find that fury addles my mind, and I look down from these high apartments, perching amongst the gleaming steel towers, to the shadows far below. We live so high up here that you can't even see the suffering. I am disgusted with it. It pains me and fills me with rage. I have been distracted from my dream and from my cause. These people need my help and I can not offer it from this lofty height. That bitch Arcadia corrupts my dreams. I find that her Re-Activ-8's purposes are at ends with mine, now. That innocence is lost. I remember only hours ago. She was asking Lena Russell, CEO of JR BioTech, to tell her the very information that some mysterious unaffiliated men were trying to beat out of her. Did she have me save the woman only to damn her? Take her from the wolves and throw her to the lions? I fear I am amongst a nest of vipers. Am I up to playing the mongoose? What the hell IS a mongoose? I try to wrack my brain. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen real nature. Is it a kind of goose?
I really just need to clear my head. I need to detach myself from this. My body needs to act, so that my mind can rest. So I seek purpose in the pain that awaits me. I stand, and leap from my perch. Really, its more of a fall. My arms extend, and I drop, the wind rushing past me. Head spinning as I plummet - the oxygen is so much thinner up high, where steel meets cloud. Through my insulated suit, I feel the cold air bite against me, tearing into my nerves. I welcome it. It awakens me.
***
[past the Thirteenth Street Line]
"THOR has forsaken you! Having chained his brother inside the Earth, the noble and deceived Loki, Thor and his Gods have returned to the skies above, never to return! The times of this era's pain, this day's suffering, are conditions of STASIS - of CALCIFICATION! Jormunggand is no visible thing; the Serpent of Midgard encroaches us all, circles the Earth, as it is the spirit of liberation and of dissent. In Loki's children do we infest this Earth, readying it for the cycle to be turned again."
High upon a pedestal is a man dressed in his new styles of teutonic tribute, neo-Scandinavian complemented with the a small helm engraved into it the upper jaw of a terrible beast.
"The cycle MUST be turned, if we are to save this Damned world!"
I can't help but agree with him. Well, I would if he wasn’t lying. He speaks with the fervor of a preacher, but he is tainted. No truer could he be that he says he's a child of Loki. The preacher calls on rebellion, on the tumbling of some dark government. But he peddles to them, to the masses, a drug given to him by those same powers. Now his speech tells us of the Rainbow Bridge, tells us of how our eyes are sealed.
"You must broaden your vision -- they tell you this is SIN, this is CRIME -- but this is LIBERATION! They fabricate such ancient spiritual journey with CyberNet, trick us with holograms -- they COMPUTE our dreams! Fight this -- it is only our minds we must overcome!" The masses are responsive. His tongue is silvered. I can't help but sneer as people begin to take from his men's hands, his gang that scatters through the crowd. I watch as a teenaged girl takes a small capsule, and I know anger. It is pure, and clears my mind. Things seem so much simpler when you’re righteous.
I count them. There are twelve, with at least fifty innocents nodding along to them, so easily swaying to this man with his smooth voice. My mask tightens around my scowl, but a smile soon serenely replaces it. I surrender to action, and welcome it.
I leap free the wall at the far end of the courtyard. My feet find hard stone below me. It's a firm kick-off sending me skyward again, a forward flip which flies me over the heads of seven listeners. Again I land, and again I leap, this time a reverse hand-spring to toss me into a tall aerial that ends in my landing upright and standing balanced on the rail cornering this former bus-stop. He uses it as his pedestal upon which he preaches. This preacher begins stumbling back quickly. No one’s responded just yet, but that’s why we call it the Element of Surprise.
"I'm sure Loki will protect his loyal followers, his Grandchildren, the so Blessed of Fenris," I offer, sarcastically, as he runs away. I send an energy cable flying straight for his back, which spears through his stomach from behind before it extends its three grappling hook legs. It catches him that way, making him scream as it tears his organs inside. I reel him back in like a caught fish and the energy dissipates, leaving the wound to seep as I catch him by his wrist. I pull it back, twist it around and shove him chest first into to the rail. Collapsing against it, he screams as I torque his arm in a threat to remove it from the socket. Really, it is kind of a hobby lately.
"Huh, that’s weird. I kinda expected smiting." At that, I place a foot in the small of his back and crank his arm up and over. I wasn’t just threatening a second ago. His arm circles the entirety of its orbit and pops free from its socket like a stubborn bottle cap. He hasn't stop screaming yet. I twist and slam his face into the concrete below twice and he finally stops struggling. No extraneous amounts of blood so I doubt his brain hemorrhages, but he’s at least suffering a concussion and is very unconscious. Good man, stay down.
Standing up, I look around for the first time. I see his gaggle of Fenris quickly approaching, and I speak loudly to the crowd before his compatriots get to me. "Go home, you idiots. Their 'sight' has not saved them. It will only ruin you. They lie for profit. Go read a book. Get your own damn opinions. Read The Bible or Danielle Steel. Go nuts." The people are retreating in obvious fear while the gaudily dressed crowd of Fenris’ believers rushes me.
The energy baton extends into a staff, and I spin it with a quick, fanciful and unnecessary flourish. Behind my mask, my lip crease into a broad smile.
"Afternoon, gents."
They try to talk with their fists, like savages. That’s fine with me. So it is with action that I reply. I do not bother to put too much attention to it - I operate mostly on instinct, letting my mind wander even as I hear their pained cries. What is Arc doing right now? What could she be doing? When she gets that information - and I'm sure she will - what's she doing with it? Who, what, where, when, why and how. Six questions to be asked to divine any answer. I wonder if I will need to beat it out of her. I wonder if I would like to.
Who is she really working for? What does she want Lena for? Blood splatters across the black of my uniform as a hard right cross meets the face of a Fenrir, and I grip his shoulders to leap-frog over him and send my feet crashing into the chests of those rushing up behind him.
Where did she even get my uniform? Questions race that I blindly never thought to ask. When will it be too late – when Lena gives her the information she wants? Why is it so important that two groups want this company? How did she know to send me – hell, how did she ever find me...?
I catch a Fenrir by his arm, and use him to make me stable as I over-extend to hurl a kick high into a Fenrir’s adam's apple and then yank on his arm to pull me into him. With a kick, this sends me flying up over him in a mid-air cartwheel. Landing on his other side, I drop to a knee and pull him down with me. I send him crashing into cement and then stand up carelessly. I look around, dusting myself off.
Am I paranoid? Is she possibly pure? A voice in my mind whispers to stop her, to kill her. Is it possible that I presume too much - that Lena really is innocently being saved, and contacts within the grassroots Re-Activ-8 organization have somehow pieced together the location she was at? Anything's possible. But does that mean I'm wrong?
I wipe up their blood from my uniform that is thankfully stain-free, with one of their ratty t-shirts I took the liberty to remove. I took their drugs, which I balled up in a cloth I tore from one’s head and loosely dangle it in my other hand. Sirens break the din of silence I had created with their broken bodies.
I drop the drugs to the ground, and open a lighter I'd lifted from one of the criminals. Flicking its archaic flint, I light the shirt on fire. Cracking open the lighter, I release its fill of gas all along the cloth. The flames rise, and I know it will burn well. And maybe the idiots laying next to it will too, if they're not lucky.
I extend my hand, from which forms the small baton of light, and erupts its cable which snares a ledge high above and pull myself into the air with it, swinging quickly skyward. The sirens call to me – I’ve got a job to do.
***
[The Baxter Building, HQ of Stark-Fujikawa]
This is the office of Hikaru Takeshi. He admires his own small note sketched upon his desk. The letters ‘DD’ joined and scribbled on his notepad. The same sigil which was found carved into his employee’s forehead only last night. Looking to the far end of the room, this powerful man can not help but smile ruefully, eliciting no response from the shadowy figure. “This is clearly the man,” he suggests, quietly and bitterly, his face a grizzled expression of regimented frustration. It bleeds through his eyes, through the wrinkling of his cheeks… but his face does not twitch, lips do not forgive.
“This is a man who has taken the flag and face of a man known to our histories: a blind samurai, a gaijin samurai. It… would seem he continues a legacy. And, it would be appear he has become … disapproving of us in some manner. However, we are righteous and we are wronged; which would mean that he has begun a blood feud in the shaming of our family. This must be resolved.”
His long rhetoric is finally nodded to by the figure in the thick, resilient cowl resting around his neck. Long hair hangs forward in his face from beneath the hood, his head bowed and hands crossed before him subserviently as he listens to Hikaru’s spiteful words.
Hikaru looks to this figure quietly and thoughtfully before he speaks at length once more. “He has embarrassed us. Shamed us in such a way as can not be repaid for with our blood alone. We will avenge Takiwara. Eagle, my most able of prospects for this task, I would care to see this man suffer so he would face us with honor. It is the respect I will extend him for his predecessor. I would like it if he were forced to be honorable enough to speak to me as a man. I would like it if I could be allowed the chance to make reparations to Mr. Takiwara’s family.”
The long-haired figure washed in shadow bows, and pulls forward his cowl so his eyes meet Hikaru’s. His hair is tucked into the concealing headpiece, and eyes open beneath the slits in the tight hood, one eye brown and one an inverted dot of white on an orb of black. He manages to smile. “I believe I know just what must be done, Hikaru-sama.”
“I know nothing of your plans, and this will be the truth forever. I speak only of wishes and desires, not plans. Not intentions.”
“The Project named Eagle works for your interests alone, Hikaru-sama,” the smiling figure named Eagle assures. His smile never fades.
***
[past the Thirteenth Street Line]
This place used to be a fairground. It was a mecca of entertainment and industry. There were musical concerts, social events, and boardroom excursions to the sunny skies above. As this city grew upon its shoulders time and again, it sank what was formed below them under their freshest skylines … what was once splendor and greatness became desperate and irrelevant. There is now a gaggle of underprivileged gathered and staring at the destruction before them, as seven Public Eye officers have arrived to brutalize a small group of dissidents whose voices differed from the tripe of corporate head-lines.
Now again a man calls to a crowd. Before, the speaker sold lies in drugs. This crowd now has their conviction strengthened with each blow against the corruption of the Corporations – and simultaneously weakened by the impassibility of their imposed order. The man preaching has little effect, unlike the last; the Eye speaks, and his words fall on the deaf ears of poor that won’t ever afford their service.
It didn’t take long for me to follow those sirens or discover where they going. I just follow the sirens to the sudden silence. I found them already bloodying a broken-apart gazebo with the faces of citizens they have long since labeled as refuse.
One of the Public Eye hoverbikes suddenly makes itself known to the gathering as it sails viciously through the wreckage loosely called a gazebo and rams most of the Public Eye in it, flying high enough to avoid the crumpled victims below. It carries them through the structure, slamming them violently into the opposite wall, crushing their ribs and breaking limbs as it goes. They’re vainly struggling to their feet and their weapons when I walk up the gazebo’s half-broken steps, onto the ruined floor.
And so I speak, anger quivering in my voice. “I believe I can define the word ‘hate’. It is the emotion one feels when they or those for whom they care are abused. Hate is never empty or invalid – it is always pure and true. Hate forms in men for those whom have wronged them or their loved ones.”
I am shot at. It is almost dismissively that I whip out my baton, which somehow draws the energy from the blaster into itself like a vacuum. Again they fire and again the energy coalesces into the weapon in my grip as if fed by it. I bear down on them in my rage.
“I hate you all. You abuse innocent men for your pleasure without culpability. Well, I’m here to tell you – you’re all culpable before these same men you abuse. A simple law of nature: We. Have. Nothing. To. Lose.” One of the men stands up, and rushes me with a shock-stick in hand. I dismiss it with my baton, and punch him in the face before I grab him by his neck and slam him into the wall, hitting him into it until the wall gives way and I let him go. He doesn’t get back up.
The crowd below has never paid more rapt attention. “THESE MEN are not the law! Our Constitution, the one for which your first ancestors lived and died – it was not in failing. Written in those pages is the very right to dissent – no, the implication that one must. We have the right to choose our own government. These aren’t Gods, not implacable beings of power – these are some schmucks who signed up for cheap abusive power to the first dime that bought them, these are some schmucks I just BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF in front of you. They fell down. They’re fallible. Every person who employs them is fallible. To the last man, these bastards will fall if you just fight back. You can only take so much from a man until there is nothing left to take – then they are free again. Your life is empty because of them! This isn’t a curse – this is liberation! FIGHT BACK!”
There is fervent nodding as a man dressed all in black stands at the precipice of this derelict structure looking into the fields to the gathered wave of protestors that listen with dedication, nodding and whispering complicity.
“There is a sickness, and we must cure it. This life is only theirs if you let them take it. Do not go gently into that good night! Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!” I think I lose them with that poetry excerpt, but the point is made, and they throw their fists up defiantly into the air. I like how that feels to see.
But their cheer masks something in the noise. I see it in the distance. Specks form against the sunset, first … but then it becomes very clear. There is a wing of men riding through the air, uniformly astride mounts that would’ve once resembled motorcycles. I can hear strains of Ride of the Valkyries sing through my mind and a dark voice laughs inside of me. The Public Eye has returned in force. I count at the very least thirty of them. Apparently they do not take well to ‘Officer Down’.
“Everyone needs to leave. Bring this fight to them, but on your terms, in both public and shadow. But not today."
“Rage,” I bid them last.
The staff forms into a cord with its head a legged tripod. I swing it back and cast it forward.
I. Do. Not. Run.
***
[On the Net-stream, private chatroom of Re-Activ-8]
The screen reads clearly, /Entering Channel – iRace TV-8/ as Arcadia sails through cyberspace under her avatar of a sleek, silver-clad surfer-girl. She arrives into what appears to be a small park, with benches all surrounding a miniature lake filled with ducks. Thrown into the pixellated waters are small breadcrumbs of the Users’ make. The tension in the bandwidth is palpable – as it always is. Terrorism is launched across thousands of fronts with constant secret meetings in arenas that are wordplay or a jumble of their nomenclature.
“Thank you for joining us, Hierophant. Thank you for deeming us worthy of your interest,” speaks a man with his lower body that of a spider and covered in illuminated trails of binary along all ten of his limbs.
She bites back any disagreeable feelings, looking upon the alternately abstract or precise digital avatars of her co-conspirators. Most of them don’t know each others names; many of the inner circle even keep their identities secret. The faith in each other must be absolute.
“I had difficulty with some of my update content, Protograde,” she answers sharply, kicking up her gleaming silver surfboard, catching it quickly and standing beside it at a lean.
“All present now. Begin the minutes.”
***
[past the Thirteenth Street Line]
The count is thirty-five, it turns out. That’s thirty-five Public Eye forces astride their vehicles. I heard the cry, “Move on the LT, flank his sides.” I saw the grizzled face of a Public Eye officer in his sparkling-clean uniform leading the pack – clearly this ‘LT’, or ‘Lieutenant’. I launch myself into the air and cast the cable. It catches against his vehicle’s airfoil, giving me traction and him descent. I use the leverage and the baton’s recoiling to fling myself higher off the now-spinning vehicle, navigation compromised by my momentum, the cable still attached to its air-foil. Its spinning too fast to pull out. I hear already, “Lt. Puglisi – fix trajectory!” over his radio as I pass.
When gravity pulls me back down, a foot extends to slam into a passing PE’s helmet and sends him driving wildly while I pull roughly on my baton only to release its grip on Puglisi’s bike. Too late. Already the once-hooked vehicle sails into this one while I leap free. I hear the cry – “Puglisi, VEER! VEER!” before the Lieutenant named Puglisi, who obviously wasn’t able to comply, goes careening headfirst into his coworker. Their fall doesn’t look pleasant, either.
I don’t say anything. No clever retorts. No cute affectations or rants. Performing a beautiful double-axle in mid-air, I release the cord again to send it catching onto another free bike, as blasts are fired in every direction through the air after me. I swing through the mass of them as best I can, friendly fire sent back and forth to them with frustrated and pained cries under their own assaults. I even lead two into crashing together as I perform my aerial bounds.
I am caught, though. For thirty five of them, I cripple half a dozen of their bikes. A blast wings me in the shoulder just as I cling onto another bike and causes me to drop through the air to the end of my cable, hanging on by a prayer and striving to convince my shoulder to overcome the pain. I think I saw this in Blade Runner.
Then there’s another voice. A flying car screeches up to the fracas of police action, bearing in it a massive black suit-clad man with massive gauntlets and armored pads along his body, creating a juxtaposition of formalwear and battle. His ponytail is pulled back tight, and the police barely become aware of him before he stands up with a bizarrely barreled weapon affixed to the bottom of his arm. It looks like an old-fashioned gatling gun is suspended from his forearm. Crap.
He opens fire… and it slices through the Officers, who scream in agony, riddling their newly-minted corpses with lead, just as it gives crippling damage to the hoverbikes they ride. I can only hang there watching until the bike I am suspended from no longer has a rider and it starts rapidly losing altitude. I don’t have time to act before I come crashing into the ground below. It hurts considerably and I feel broken, slack loosening on my cable.
Struggling to move, I look up. I wish I hadn’t. “Oh, %$#@.”
The bike plummets into me. This hurts more. But I don’t feel it for very long.
I black out and am dimly aware of being lifted. The first awareness I have is looking into his eyes, while he suspends me by my skull like I was a basketball. He’s easily six foot eight. Easily three hundred pounds and none of it fat. I am lifted as if I weigh nothing. The prospect that I might be out of my league occurs to me.
“The name’s Graveyard. You made my bosses very—“
I don’t give him the time to finish. Never let bad-guys orate to you. If they get to the end, they will kill you. I grab his huge wrist and pull myself upward by it, slamming a foot into his crotch and the other catching his chest as I kind of run up him. I kick myself free from him, his pain releasing my head just in time to flip backwards free of him and land with a flourish.
I spin kick him in his side, as all around me I see crashed remains of Public Eye forces, I see bodies and vehicle wreckage through the fairground. Most are either barely moving or dead. I obviously was out long enough for him to finish every last one of them off. Wrecks are still smoking – so minutes at most. He eliminated every last one of them. I should thank him. But strangely I feel more compelled to disgust.
“SHOCKING IDIOT! Now I just ‘splain to them, you didn’t go quietly – I hadda kill you—“
He seems not dazed at all. I duck a swing of his fist and leap into the air, striking my foot into his face. Don’t even budge him. “I got the impression you already were planning that,” I mention.
“Yeh. Just, now, I ain’t gotta lie ‘bout it,” he smiles and grasps my foot as I come in for another kick and just stops me dead. I hang there, leaping on one foot and trying to get free. Well, I get that wish – when I’m thrown backwards at an unbelievable velocity with a simple toss of his hand. Explains how he carried me so easily, super-strength. I crash instantly into the same gazebo from which I spoke my agenda to have its ruins crumble around me.
Groaning, I work to free myself only to see his imposing figure casting deep shadows over me.
“This won’t stop me. This won’t stop the revolution. You’re wasting your time and energy.” He lifts me easily from the rubble and I see clearly. He’s wearing a Body Chassis. I’m screwed. He looks to me with amusement before he throws me into the nearest building, right through the window and into the coffee shop level of the abandoned apartment rise. It takes a few minutes to find my feet when he comes in, ignoring my own blood dripping to the ground below.
“They don’t care what you think—“ I try to begin, and groggily dodge his fist as its sent into a support wall of this crumbling place. It surrenders to his strength, the ceiling above wobbling. I leap behind a desk, trying to think up a plan. It is not coming to me.
“They just—“ Doesn’t even give me a chance. He lifts a desk up and slams it into me twice, reducing it to splinters as I am crumbled to the ground. His fist destroys the support wall just for emphasis as I hack up my own blood, gurgling beneath my mask.
“They pay you into slavish obedience…” I argue desperately as he walks up to me with his grin, business suit in tatters from destruction and our one-sided fight. The ceiling starts to give.
All I remember after that is his massive fist coming for my skull.
“They pay well,” I hear as it comes.
***
[private channel, iRace TV-8]
“…which brings us to you, Hierophant,” the pleasant voice of Isotopia suggests, implying it her turn to talk.
“My Agent… he … is off the grid. Not answering comms. Data black-out. It is still unclear if we’ve been compromised.”
There is much silence around the still and pixellated pond. Many eyes study Hierophant carefully, while many mutter frustrations beneath their breaths and more curse silently to themselves.
“What of his last project? What were the finds of his most recent acquisition?”
At this, Hierophant smiles pleasantly to them and bows her head in submission. “It has failed. The Agent killed her to prevent her from saying more – she was compromised at the extraction point. I’m sorry.”
There is a forgiving nod that surrounds the circle. “We don’t approve of his actions.”
“Oh, Thor, neither do I!” she protests, trying so hard not to smile.
***
[sometime later, past the Thirteenth Street Line]
There is a shift in the debris of the building's foundation, pebbles trickle down their hill of destruction like the smallest hints of avalanche, appropriately enough. A massive slab of warped metal is hurled free from its top a moment later and skids down the side of the decimation, taking chunks of wall and furniture with it as it topples. A single black hand emerges from the newly-made pit and pulls me free from my tomb. I drag myself out inch by inch until my arm is far enough that the baton forms in my right hand. Its tip turned into the hook and releases its long cable. Blindly it catches something and reels me in. I am torn out of the debris, over rock and over land. My body is limply and painfully dragged across what remains of the ground.
Coming to a stop, the baton forms together again and dissipates in a quiet hum, leaving me to lay there. I groan for several moments and just lay there. I soak up the pain quietly and finally rise, kneeling and then standing. Graveyard is long gone, left me for dead. I know I have been in more pain before, but I am having trouble remembering when. Jesus.
I look to the skyline above me and once more the baton forms to my hand. I grip my side to test my injuries… and decide against swinging, letting the baton dissipate. I hobble over to the unconscious body of Lt. Puglisi and give his hoverbike a shot. It revs, engine roars, and begins to float. As I straddle it with a wince, I think that maybe I should get my own ride. I don’t know, the DareDunebuggy… DareDirtbike… something.
I know just where I'm going. I need information. And as much as it pains me, there's one person with that knowledge - Re-Activ-8, more particularly its contact to me. I plot the course and start driving. I'm going to go see Arcadia. And then we're going to have a few words.
***
[apartment high-rise, Tormen Towers, eighty-fourth floor]
Arcadia, the true face of Hierophant, signs off of the Cybernet and places the helmet quietly on its stand on her desk before relaxing in her lush leather chair. She breathes quietly and stressfully, before she stands and turns, sipping at a glass of water prepared and placed on the corner of her desk.
“Where’s Lena?” I ask and she is shocked at my appearance. She drops the glass and seems more aware that it doesn’t shatter than she is of my catching it. I watch her ruefully, my eyes glowing with their apparent crimson hellfire.
She stutters, struggling to find her confidence to speak before managing her angry protest. “She’s … in a protected home, she’s being watched—“
My eyes darken in my reply, “Imprisoned.”
“Guarded!” she rebukes me fiercely, pointing at me in accusation.
“From what?” I contest, voice snapping, not moving an inch.
She slaps me as her response. My face turns to exaggerate the strike. I’m surprised by her action and I gather my conviction.
Fists tighten and relax furiously, rage coursing through my blood. My vision would turn red, if it could. I’d like to kill her, right now and dark desires in my mind scream for me to. That sensation has filled me several times lately. As always, sin exists not in the appetite but how you wet it.
“Don’t ever strike me again, Arcadia. My service here is for your aid, not your employ. I have … had … a really bad night and I need to know. I need to know that I am not your fool. I need to know that you aren’t the crazy bitch I think you are.”
Again I find her hand races to me, but this time I anticipate it. This time I catch it before it lands, and pull her to me, viciously kneeing her in the stomach and hurling her against the wall. She groans at the impact and I step forward.
She once more cries in her defense, “I’m just trying to protect her, you slag! You helped her, I helped her – I’m protecting her! She’s safe!”
“Tell me where. I’ll ask her about it.”
She lunges for me. With a kick to her stomach, she goes flying back to the wall and I pursue it with a quick jab to her face. She buckles under the impact, collapsing into the drywall behind her. “Shock you, you analog retread! I gave you this! This second chance! I made you a man again! I made you! And this is it? You treat me like this? My trust? My faith in you?” I punch her in the face again. It feels good.
She slaps me across the face again. We’re full of repetition. I deserve it. Then she pries up the mask half-way before I slap her hand away and bloody her lip. I don’t really answer her rhetoric so much as assault her to prove my point. I’m punched in the face again. Good. She’s getting some guts. I knee her in the stomach once more, making her gasp. She launches forward and kisses me. I find myself returning it. Once more, she’s returned to the wall. This time knocks less breath out of her.
…
I awaken hours later, moving through the darkness of this room into the shower. The water baptizes me. Water is religiously seen to wash away all manners of sin, and I pray for it now.
In the shadows of this room I slowly pull on my black uniform and walk to the balcony. I step onto it, and finish pulling the mask on over my face, red eyes beginning their glow as I stare into the night.
The darkness takes me. I stare into the abyss which is swallowed by the neon lights of the city. Am I going mad? Applied to tasks for which I believe… only to find doubt in my mind? Preaching of words of action and purpose… only to see my faithful run like rabbits? Am I damned to see demons everywhere, and to see angels nowhere? Is there purity, justice and nobility still? Or do I truly rage against the night?
…I remember the first time. There were angels.
There will be again.
END