And it goes on, and on, and on, and ooh-oh-oon! Strangers, waiting. No.Also, 5 new Brawlers. So huzzah for that.
Chapter 5: Destruction's Desires
A small figure entered into the back of a taxi cab. The city was never all that busy on a Tuesday in the mid-afternoon. As opposed to the typical early-evenings and on, the taxi was able to bustle through traffic with only a handful of stops. The figure refused to look up at the driver, constantly looking at his feet. With the help of the hoodie he wore, this was able to hide his entire face from anyone who didn’t pay close attention to him (which was pretty much everyone).
Theo told the driver where he was going. After a few cracks about him not being in school, the driver reluctantly moved the vehicle down the road. Theo looked out the window from the back of the taxi, examining the delinquent and oblivious townspeople as they shuffled off to their unfulfilling lives. It grew boring, the only thing to see being other cars, the men in suits, and the buildings rolling in the background. The only real intervention was in a park, where he spied a huddled mass of cattle soaking in the idiotic spewing of some Catholic preacher and a geezer with the most oddly-shaped silver hair he had ever seen. From then on, it was the same combination of people, cars, and buildings.
The taxi stopped at a line of apartment buildings, each one looking musty and cracked from all of their years of standing there. Theo rustled a wad of money from the pocket of his hoodie and handed it to the cab driver. He stepped out onto a bare spot in the sidewalk and the driver drove away. It all went off without a hitch.
Theo walked on, his hood covering his face and his eyes avoiding a direct look at anyone else’s. He occasionally glanced at the buildings that slowly passed him by next to the sidewalk. They all looked very similar: towers of limestone and brick with only colors and the shapes of windows the differences between them. Every now and then, he would notice a broken window or some sort of markings on the walls or something else that gave the building a story of its own. Of course, Theo didn’t really care what those stories were. They aren’t anything he hasn’t heard before, that’s for sure. He didn’t stop to contemplate what could be, but bee-lined straight to his destination.
There came a small set of concrete steps in front of a member of that line of apartment buildings. It showed its seniority, rittled with cracks and chips that come naturally as people constantly abuse the steps. On the steps was a small, hunched over figure. His hands curled up and wrapped around themselves constantly as his gaze darted back and forth like a feeding rabbit searching desperately for a sure predator. Theo couldn’t gain a good look at him until he stepped closer. Upon closer inspection, the figure appeared to only be in his teenage years, not much older than himself. Much of his body was composed severely unnatural colors. Most notably, he had a face blushed to the shade a chili pepper, his pinkish bloodshot eyes lifted heavy dark bags below them, and his abundant and bushy hair carried a foul-looking blue tint. He didn’t notice Theo walk up next to him.
“I take it you’re Jacob?” Theo asked as he looked around. The figure jolted up straight as an arrow in less than a second, panting as if he had swam across the Nile.
“Oh... yeah,yeah,yeah,yeah... that’smealright.” Jacob stammered very nervously.
“FollowmeandI’lltakeyoutohim.”
Jacob leapt from the stairs and circled around the building to walk into an alley, his hands and gaze quivering the entire way. Theo calmly followed the wrecked individual as the brick walls of the buildings grew darker, colder, and more cluttered with litter. Soon, the two found a section of brick wall that was destroyed by some unknown means, individual bricks scattered across the entrance into the gap. Rather than repair the brick layer, someone built a 3-story shack of a building there instead, hastily and sloppily put together with what looked like spare lumber from projects that actually mattered. Both of them stepped inside.
What Theo saw inside of the building would best be described as a “clusterfuck”. In rooms decorated with old, but still usable furniture, people stammered nonsense and rocked back-and-forth in motions that accomplished absolutely nothing in the real world. Theo noted an older man with a dirtied suit and large sideburns mumbling something about his “magic top hat”. He jumped slightly as some younger man in a fleece jacket screamed about “the red ice that burned his hands”. There were only two men on the entire floor that seemed sober, both armed with small machine guns; they conversed with themselves and paid no attention to the crazies.
Jacob escorted Theo up the creaking steps, muttering about “what a good job he was doing” under his breath the entire way. More people were on the second floor, mirroring the first level in almost every aspect. Not willing to investigate, the two continued up to the third floor of the shack. Up there was a wide hallway that was lined with a few doors and a couple more armed men. At the end of the hallway was a single door, closed with a slight crack left in the doorframe. Theo could hear someone talking inside, but couldn’t make out the words. This was the room to which Jacob led him.
Jacob pushed the door open with a single shaking arm.
“Mr.Buletishereto-”
The lean figure inside, who sat at a table that was cluttered with baggies and various powders, held a finger up to silence Jacob and could thus continue his telephone conversation. Jacob, in response, cringed back and his bottom lip began to pout. Theo snarled condescendingly.
Not much was left of the figure’s conversation on his telephone. He almost immediately hung up, and then his large eyes glared up at Jacob. Again, the flushed teen cringed back.
“Jacob, now what the FUCK did I tell you about knocking???” he scolded.
Jacob sank his head down towards the floor, too ashamed to look back.
“I’msorry,I’msorry,I’msorry... I,I,I,I, justwantedtodo...”
As Jacob stammered away, the figure at the table screeched his chair back and paced up towards Jacob. In a very smooth and casual manner, the figure pressed Jacob back towards the wall with the business end of a handgun. The cold barrel pressed against Jacob’s flushed cheeks to make a circle of natural skin color. Jacob squealed in helplessness, his eyes beginning to pitifully water.
Jacob’s pleading crescendoed.
“I’msorry,I’msorry,I’MSORRY,I’MSORRY,I’MSORRY...”
The figure left his weapon against Jacob for a time and watched him squirm. Theo watched patiently as if this were an everyday occurrence (which, more or less, it was).
“No one else came witcha, right?” the figure asked, refusing to release his gun.
“Nononononononnononono...” Jacob cried, his face beginning to wet.
A pause. The figure released Jacob from the mercy of his weapon. And let Jacob shake nervously in an attempt to calm himself, clutching himself as tightly as he could.
“Oh,thankyou Thankyousososososososomuchsir ”
The figure sat back down at the aforementioned table. From a drawer that lay underneath, he reached inside and pulled out a small baggie filled with a white, crystalline substance. It flew threw the air from the figure’s grasp to Jacob’s, who embarrassingly stumbled to catch the 4-gram bag. Jacob’s face lit up even more so than usual, his large, yellow grin chuckling happily as he ripped the bag open. He took the contents and shoved them into his face as a baby would do with a spaghetti dinner, emitting loud crunching and sniffing sounds as he laughed madly throughout. Theo cocked up an eyebrow as he watched, almost pitying the nightmarish disaster before him.
Finally finished, his face now decorated with the glisten of tiny crystals embedded into his face, Jacob looked up proudly towards the figure.
“Idogoodthen? DidIdogoodthen?!”
“Shut up,” the figure responded from his mat of jet-black hair.
“You’re done. Go back ta doin’ whatever you were doin’.”
Jacob nodded and bowed excessively as he backed out of the door.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou Ifyouneedmeanymorejustask ”
Theo shut the door behind him, a look of disbelief still on his face.
“Go on,” the figure waved at Theo. “Take a seat there, Mr. Bulet.”
Theo pulled up another chair in the room, which squealed loudly as it slid to where Theo wanted it. Theo sat obediently and started the conversation.
“So, you’re The Element, then?” Theo asked.
“You are right, mah man,” The Element responded. “What ca-”
“I-I’m sorry,” Theo interrupted quickly. “Is everyone that messed up around here?”
The Element’s brow lowered in an apparent annoyance. Regardless, he responded.
“What I sell is pretty powerful stuff. Lotta people can’t handle it. Makes a killin’, though. ‘Specially from people like Mr. Retyluoligki... Anyways, to the point: what do you want?”
“Yeah, that,” Theo began. “I want to join forces, pretty much. How’d you like to see the Blood out of the picture?”
The Element pulled back an arm and leaned back to relax in his chair. He wore a cocky grin as he did so, which became a huffed laugh.
“Are you serious? The Blood? That’s a pretty damn tall order, pal.”
“Yeah, I know,” Theo said hostilely. “That’s why I’ve been going around trying to get as much help as I can.”
The Element leaned forward slightly.
“Oh yeah? Who’d ya get, then?”
Theo began counting on his hand.
“I got the Grandkades and the Sheepshifters helping with combat and the Chip family agreed to help with funds.”
The Element’s already-large eyes widened at the mention of the Chip family.
“Reeeallly??? You got them to help you out?”
“Yup. Because I’m boss like that,” Theo said smugly. “Now, if the Element decided to send guys our way... I think we could do something with this.”
The Element leaned back in his chair once more, audibly pondering the idea. Over the course of this, he grabbed a crystal from his desk and popped it in his mouth, which made a loud crunching noise as chewed it. The Element’s eyes and cheeks twitched slightly, but he was back to normal immediately afterwards.
“The Blood is taking a lot of business from me... what do I have’ta do?”
Theo smirked and leaned in closer to The Element.
“All you gotta do,” Theo said in a hushed tone. “Is tell us what happens around this part of the city, and send some of your connections my way. That’s all you gotta do. I’ll take care of all the planning and shit myself!”
Again, the Element wore his pondering face, nodding in what appeared to be approval at the idea. Theo crossed his arms in his seat, smirking to bathe in a small victory for his crusade.
“Just send guys your way, and we’ll help you beat the Blood?”
“That’s right,” Theo nodded.
“BUT,” the Element burst out. “Are you gonna do somethin’ for me?”
Theo’s eyes squinted.
“Do something for you? We’re going to get rid of the biggest crime syndicate in the whole fuckin’ city! That isn’t enough for you?!”
“Help me sell my product.”
“...what?”
“If you help me sell my stuff as all of this is going on, then I’ll do it.”
Theo’s gaze disappeared under the wrinkles of his brow, only tiny slit for his evil eye showing (the eye on the damaged side of his face couldn’t really squint anymore). His lips snarled and his teeth were bared out in the open. If one were to listen close enough, it almost sounded like he were growling.
“You ungrateful little nigger...” Theo hissed.
“I help you prosper by getting rid of the city’s biggest superpower, let you in on the profit, make you rich, and you fucking still want more?!”
The Element snatched up another rock of the substance on the table. After a quick twitch and a shake of his head, he shrugged at Theo.
“I’m already rich, pal,” the Element said to him. He stretched over the contents on the table, picking up an unused syringe filled with liquid and held it up to Theo so he could take a good look at the needle and its content. Theo looked into the vial and noted how there were tiny black specks floating aimlessly inside of the lime-green fluid and the very subtle haze of a darker green that swirled around like the spiral inside of a marble.
“This stuff here,” the Element began. “Opens up an insane realm of possibilities. Anything that anyone could ever want is all in here. Whatever you want, just think it and *poof* There it is. All you gotta do is put this stuff in ya, and enjoy the trip. Whatever you want This little needle here is like a gun that can shoot anything ‘Cept bullets, of course. A lot of people want in on that and I. Mean. A. Lot. Even rich bastards buy out boat loads of the stuff And I’ve been selling this mojo juice for a good three years now I’m swimmin’ There’s no need for you to make me rich.”
Theo looked around the room, a skeptic look and a raised eyebrow on his face.
“Yet you still live in a shithole.”
“This pile of garbage isn’t where I live ” the Element chuckled. “I just like to stay close to my clientele. I get rich people, but most of them are just poor suckers that don’t wanna remember that they have five kids to feed or somethin’ like that.”
The Element reached over and snacked on another crystal rock, making the same twitching face.
“Plus, crack cocaine is selling for a pretty high price nowadays.”
Theo grunted judgmentally in response.
“So,” the Element continued. “If the whole purpose of this is to get rich, then no dice. BUT if you help me get a bit richer, then maybe we could do something...”
“The Bulet family doesn’t do drugs, Element,” Theo stated. “I thought everyone knew that.”
“Yo’ gonna have to make an exception with me, pal, if you want my help,” the Element said. “I need collateral. After all, chances are that y’all are gonna bite the dust hard. Harder than your old man did...”
Theo sat perfectly still for a moment, almost like a wax sculpture. He glared at the Element with a neutral face, not showing any emotion to the smug drug dealer. Eventually, though, Theo’s mouth began to shiver, as if his teeth were quaking with either intense rage or overwhelming depression. Theo’s lips visibly pursed as he tried to control the shaking motion, though it was clear that the Element was slightly enjoying this moment. After the shaking had finally begun to slow, Theo spoke.
“Well, then,” Theo shakily said. “I guess you’re gonna have to face the music.”
After Theo said those last words, gunshots could be heard firing downstairs. Screams were heard amongst the loud zings of lead, as well as the yelps of pain from a certain crew of guards.
The Element gasped in realization and reached for the pistol that rested at his side. Theo put his hands under the table and flipped it and all its contents right into the Element, creating a heaping cloud of white dust that filled that area of the room. The Element clutched his face as the crystal cloud splashed right into his eyes, yelling in terror as he did so.
The two guards that were in the hall outside smashed open the wooden door, raising a gun up in Theo’s direction. He was too quick for the two, however. Theo’s wrist snapped back as he fired a round at a guard with a sound that boomed throughout the whole building. Then again. The two guards heaped over one another at the doorway, a dark, gushing, red pit inside each of their foreheads.
Theo’s attention was brought back to the Element as he heard him stumble through some clutter in his blind confusion. Hearing the blasts that killed his guards (though he didn’t know at whom the shots were aimed), the Element reached back to his side and pulled out his handgun. He fired it wildly in the air and around the room, having no clue which way up was at this point. Theo paid no attention to the handgun, the Element having it aimed mostly towards the ceiling as it fired. Theo casually took his time to walk towards him.
A shot rang out that wasn’t pointed at the ceiling. Theo cringed as his arm whipped towards his shoulder blade as the bullet hit him. He ripped back, however, ignoring any pain in his arm, and sprinted with a grinding snarl at the Element, who still struggled to find his direction. Theo spun the same injured arm around and smashed the Element in the cheek with the associated fist. The Element bounced back and hit the wall but was still on his feet, a fact that quickly changed after Theo smashed the other cheek with the side of his gun.
As the Element squirmed on the floor, his eyes reddened and still sealed shut, Theo dropped himself down so he shadowed over the Element’s body. He could feel his teeth starting to dull as they ground themselves so tightly against one another. As Theo breathed heavily, waving the gun over the Element’s frame, he thought as to where the bullet shout be placed.
He grabbed the belt of the Element’s pants. As hard as he could, Theo took the barrel of his Desert Eagle and smashed it against the Element’s testicles. Already the Element’s grunts of extreme discomfort (easing from the previous pains) turned into screeches of terror. With the muzzle of the Desert Eagle pressed on his groin, Theo emptied what remained of the handgun’s clip as fast as he could into the Element’s genitals.
He let out a howl that smashed against Theo’s ears more than any warzone ever could. The screech he let out as he cradled the bloody organs seemed to shake the entire room; scream that would, to many, feel as if someone stabbed them in the ear with a hot crochet needle. As Theo smiled dumbly with the Element’s screaming being below him, he lifted a foot up over his head, taking aim at the stalk that normally held it up. And then hesitated.
“No...” Theo said as he lowered his leg. “I have something better.”
Two people stood outside of the building’s entrance in the alley. They watched vigilantly as their Don performed his business inside of the crumbling drug shack. They could hear a kindling noise coming from inside, and immediately saw smoke emerge from the windows of the first story to accompany the screaming man in the third. Soon after they saw the smoke, Theo stepped outside of the shack.
“Let’s go, cousins,” he said to them, only smiling as he gazed at the smoking structure next to him. The cousins led the way out of the alley, behind them Theo was ripping off the wireless microphone that was strapped uncomfortably under his hoodie.
As the three strolled away, Theo looked back in time to see the building begin to erupt in flames. Bright glows of orange and yellow spat out of the windows from the shack’s second story. Then the third. And then, the hollering of the man inside grew even louder, stabbing into the cold night. Theo’s smile grew even wider as he strode from the burning wreck behind him.
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Johnathon awoke with a glazed vision, a fog clouding up his sight. Behind that fog, though, he could make out a variety of white-colored shapes and a box hanging up on the ceiling with someone moving inside of it. As the fog slowly began to fade, the dull roar that he heard progressed into a mess of voices yelling for one another, the wheels of machines being yanked across the tile floors and the rings of telephones and the aforementioned machines.
The hospital room finally came into a clear view. Johnathon, without thinking too much about it, sat up in his bed, the tubes and wires pulling on the machines that laid next to him. He ignored the blips that sounded as he did so, focusing more on massaging the pounding headache he had. He moaned as he rubbed his throbbing head. Looking down, Johnathon saw the white strips wrapped tightly around his torso in a diagonal direction, leaving half of his chest exposed. He also couldn’t help but notice the giant stain of blood that took up a good half of that bandage.
“Lay back down ” someone shouted. A young girl broke Johnathon’s daze as she ran into the room at him. He looked over and noticed a young nurse that tended to both him and the sounding machines. She was a tired looking individual, very light circles under her eyes. Despite this, though, her face was youthful and attractive. Perhaps it was the fact that she dyed her hair with a very bright pink, but Johnathon thought of her as one of those anime-fan types. This was slightly reinforced by the wrist bands, necklace, and ear rings that clearly came from Hot Topic.
“You’re not supposed to move yet ” she urged to him. “Not until the doc-”
“Oh, it’s quite alright.”
The nurse turned around and saw a one-eyed man in the door way, a clipboard under his arm.
“It’s been long enough,” Dr. H told her. “Go ahead and get that junk outta him.”
The nurse nodded and followed his orders as the doctor walked up next to Johnathon’s bed. He didn’t really pay attention to the doctor, though. Being the teenager that he is, Johnathon’s thoughts vaguely swept the idea of him with the hot anime chick next to him. After that brief moment was done with, he turned his gaze to the doctor.
“You’d better get going to the next patient,” Dr. H reminded the nurse, who hurriedly obliged.
“Does this mean I can sit up, now?” Johnathon asked.
“Of course it does!”
“Good. I didn’t wanna sleep all damn day,” Johnathon said as he sat up.
“How’d I get here, anyways?”
“Well,” Dr. H began. “You were brought in by a couple guys: one pretty old, but the other looked like some kind of priest or something. Anyways, they said that you got hit in a fight between the Bulets and the Blood.”
“Oh,” Johnathon said plainly. “Well of course it’s something plain-Jane as that... where’d they go, then?”
Dr. H shrugged.
“I dunno. It took about ten tries to get the priest to leave. He wanted to stay pretty badly. The only reason I didn’t keep saying you’d be alright was because Vincent Rockshire started having one of his attacks.”
Johnathon nodded solemnly, recalling the series of news stories on television about the young boy in the plastic bubble. The last report had to be almost three months ago at this point.
“Well, listen,” the doctor continued. “If you can give me a number, then I can have someone give your parents a call. You’ve healed up nicely, so we can-”
“My parents are dead,” Johnathon said coldly, looking down towards the tile and as far away from any other human being as his gaze could. He didn’t notice how his fingers dug into the bed’s mattress or how he began to shiver. He breathed out a shaky sigh to relieve some of the subconscious pressure.
Dr. H brushed his hand through his hair nervously.
“Oh. Well... I can call the orphanage. Is that alright?”
“Yeah, I guess...” Johnathon muttered miserably after a considerable amount of time.
Dr. H stayed silent for a brief moment.
“So... so where have you been living?”
Johnathon could feel his eyes begin to swell. He tried the best he could to hold it back. His voice was choked up, but he finally replied.
“In... i-in a refrigerator box...”
He hunched to let his face fall into his hands, clutching to the hair on his head as if he were readying himself to tear it all out. Dr. H could hear the soft snivels that Johnathon was trying desperately to hide. Slightly baffled, the doctor only stood still for a moment to leave Johnathon to his own devices. After regaining himself, though, Dr. H placed a hand on Johnathon’s shoulder. Johnathon stopped the noises briefly, and turned his head so that Dr. H could just barely make out a single eyeball looking at him.
“Hey, don’t you worry,” Dr. H assured him in an optimistic, yet depressed tone.
“There are people that’ll take care of you. You’ll be alright.”
Johnathon eyed Dr. H with that single eye with a type of death stare. The awkward glance continued between the two for what felt like a few minutes, until Johnathon turned his face away again. At a loss for words (as well as feeling that there wasn’t much more to be said), Dr. H stepped away from Johnathon and left the room. A few moments after Dr. H was completely gone, Johnathon lifted his body back to a seated position while exhaling a grieving sigh. One of his hands massaged the majority of his face, covering up the watery eyes and the flushed cheeks that were so very prominent.
Why the fuck did he have to say that...? Johnathon thought to himself.
I was over that before he decided to come along... stupid shit.For a time, Johnathon’s mind went blank. He sat in a ball and stared at nothing as his mind was lost in a voided trance that would overflow as soon as any word even began to form in Johnathon’s conscious.
A thought of unknown origins led Johnathon to bring his head up out of its hunch. He saw the television program being interrupted by “emergency” news. There was another skirmish taking place between the Blood and the U.S. Marine Corps. The inane chatter about the places for citizens to avoid was an inane chatter floating around aimlessly as Johnathon mindlessly watched the colors on the screen. His deep trance was broken, though, when the screen captured an image of a man on a pair of FlexRun prosthetic legs sprinting through the warzone like a clumsy jackrabbit, flailing both his existent and non-existent limbs as if he were an epileptic ballerina in a blooper of The Nutcracker. That managed to perk him up a little bit.
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Marcus stood patiently out on the side walk in front of his house, gripping the strap of his back back with his one hand. He heard the school bus rumble by houses on the other side of the neighborhood some time ago, so he knew that it had to be close to his house. As he waited in the rare stillness that often occupied his neighborhood, Marcus reviewed the plan he had in his head. He was glad that his father taught him some of what he knew before he and his mother left.
The rumbling he heard once before started to arise again. Marcus looked down the road to barely see the speck that was the giant yellow behemoth creeping its way over to his house. As he looked down the road, he could hear the creaking and closing of a door behind him. He turned to see his next-door-neighbor, dressed in wrinkled pajamas and a long black ponytail, walking out to the end of his driveway to grab the newspaper in the mailbox.. Marcus turned and waved his hand to greet his neighbor, who smiled and waved back.
The bus pulled in front of the house and opened its doors to let Marcus inside.
Mr. Yacazuma... Marcus thought as he stepped onto the bus.
He’s one of the good ones.