Danny Ketch (heavensfool) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2010-10-28 03:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | danny ketch |
WHO: Danny Ketch. Narrative. One of the OTHER ways he deals with his visions.
WHEN: Sometime around 3am.
WHERE: A not-so-great part of town.
WHAT: The reality of being a Spirit of Vengeance.
STATUS: Complete
RATING: Let’s go with PG-13 at least, for the implied crimes and the language.
Today was a long day. Then again, for people like Danny, the days were usually long and the nights were usually short or, more often, nonexistent. He remembered the days he spent trying to balance college, a job, and a Ghost Rider he wasn’t actually in the driver’s seat of. He often got no sleep, and when he did, they were restless nights plagued with horrible dreams of the things Ghost Rider, then the ghost of his ancestor Noble Kale, did. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a full five hours of sleep at one time. One of the keys to what they did, at least in Danny’s opinion, was finding moments during the day for little power naps. Oh, you’d still feel like shit, but your body would be recharged enough to deal with the kind of frenetic pace you needed for the vigilante lifestyle.
Most of the day was spent researching. He needed an address for a guy, in case his Plan A failed. Then it was off to watch Booth’s interrogation, where he got a few more mentally crippling visions to add to the mountainous pile already living in his head. Then came the karaoke, where he had in fact sang. Initially he was going to go with AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, but his better judgment kicked in just in the knick of time and he switched it up, instead going for the more melancholy Turn The Page, by Bob Seger. By the time that was all said and done, he really wanted to go back to his apartment and enjoy that comfy bed. Alternately, and more likely, he wanted to go back to his apartment and get some of the booze he’d borrowed from that liquor store and get good and trashed, until all the blood and death and failure that rattled around in his mind went away and he could actually feel something besides the chronic self-loathing and hatred for the world that he’d felt for the last ten or so years.
Instead he was on the road with his bike, the bike that he still to this day wasn’t sure really existed. Was it a real bike? Was it just a construct of his fire? He’d asked those questions once. These days he didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit why or how or what or when anymore. It’d been a long time since Danny had been able to muster up enough emotion to care about something. So why was he out here on the road, subtly tailing that clerk from the liquor store, the one he’d told Bella was bound to end up on a Chris Hansen show? Because that was his lot in life. He was a Spirit of Vengeance. People were wronged, people got hurt, it was his job to redress that. Once upon a time, even for his brief first round here in this apocalypse-ridden dimension, he’d wanted to be a superhero. Once upon a time he wanted to take this curse and try to turn it into a gift.
These days he pretty much wanted to take his curse and make the motherfuckers that drew his attention feel cursed, too. That and get drunk, which he would be doing after he was done here.
He wasn’t tailing the guy on the street, or on the sidewalk. The fun thing about the bike was that it wasn’t confined to horizontal surfaces. Walls? It can ride them. Ceilings? It can ride them. Water? He can ride that thing like it was Jesus after a trip to Orange County Choppers. So right now he was riding the rooftops, keeping a close eye on the pervert on the sidewalk. The hellfire that encased his skeleton trailed behind him like hair blowing in the breeze, and he left a trail of fading hellfire for thirty feet from the bike’s glowing, fiery wheels. It didn't spread, and the scorches from it would be gone in a day or two, tops. Despite that, it made no sound. Not when Danny didn’t want it to, and right now, he didn’t. This place wasn’t as friendly to vigilantes as his own was, and even his own world hadn’t been too fond of him. Apparently it was okay to enforce your own bullshit views on the world if you had a billion bucks, a fancy robot suit, and high powered friends in Washington, but if you actually tried to get some real, old fashioned justice you were hunted like an animal and called a monster.
That was the world for you.
He didn’t look like some overstylized biker anymore. Gone was the shiny leather biker’s jacket, tight jeans, and spiked arm implements. In their place it was a long leather coat, a simple black shirt, and pants. Sure, the shoulders of the coat still had spikes, but what kind of avenging biker angel could he be if he didn’t have spikes somewhere on his person? And okay, maybe he still had the spiked bracers. Those were fun, though. You’d think a guy like that would have drawn more attention, but it was really pathetic how often people just never thought to look up. The amount of things you missed was just astounding. It amused him, the way the rubes could have easily picked him out as a freak of nature if they’d bothered to pay attention to the world around them. Then again, if people paid attention to the world around them it would probably be a much better place.
For instance, guys like the one he was following probably wouldn’t be able to pull their crap. Danny had seen it when he’d gone into the liquor store that first night. He hadn’t intended to steal anything then, just browse, but the minute he’d seen the kids this guy had hurt on his “vacations”, he’d resolved that he wasn’t paying for a goddamn thing from that store. That, and that once he got settled in he would pay this asshole a visit and forcefeed him all the pain he’d caused, straight into his mind, all at once. Danny got much the same from his visions, but he was used to such things by now, and he had a feeling that piece of God in him that made him a Spirit also gave him some kind of extra protection against it. A normal human getting that much mental and physical pain would be lucky to end up with hideous psychological scarring that kept them locked in their own homes for the rest of their lives. It was entirely possible that this guy’s brain could shut down and he’d spend the rest of his natural life in a coma. It was no less than what he deserved. That was vengeance for you. There was no place in it for mercy or rehabilitation. The high and mighty heroes in their robot suits and stars-and-stripes liked to call that a circle of pain. Danny preferred to call it justice.
And there it was. The guy was taking a shortcut. One thing Danny had learned way back when he’d first gotten shafted with the Kale curse was to never take shortcuts. It was a shortcut through a graveyard that sent him dragging his comatose sister away from some occult mobsters and into the junkyard where the bike rested. With everything he knew now, Danny knew it wouldn’t really have changed anything if he’d been able to convince his twin sister Barb not to take the shortcut through Cypress that night, except maybe she would’ve been the one stuck with this crap instead of him. She was older, technically, by a couple minutes. Or maybe they would have both had to take it, since they could both qualify as the first Kales of the generation. Not that it was technically true, but the deal their bio-mom worked with Mephisto spared Johnny, her first child, of the family curse. Sort of, at least. Instead of being a Spirit of Vengeance, he was bound to an archdemon called Zarathos. Apparently he was still able to use the Spirit power in some way, but his Ghost Rider was powered by the other side, as far as Danny knew.
This guy’s shortcut wouldn’t turn out much better. Danny pulled the bike to a halt at the edge of the rooftop overlooking the alley the pervert was ducking into, letting him get close to the other end before dismounting and leaping from the roof. He landed with a loud thud that drew the guy’s attention, and would have drawn others if it weren’t three in the morning. Danny watched through eyeless sockets as the guy’s face twisted in disbelief, savoring those moments of rising terror. This guy was a predator that had just realized he was prey, and maybe it was sick, but Danny managed to eke out some small modicum of pleasure from that. It wasn’t so much the fear itself as the control that came with it. So often these days Danny felt so weak and out of control that in those few moments of fear in the eyes of his prey, he felt alive again. Powerful. In control.
The guy turned to run, but it was already too late for him. Danny’s flaming, skeletal right hand whipped out and from the sleeve of his coat, a huge hook soared out, trailing a chain behind it. The weapon was a hellfire construct and not entirely bound by the laws of physics, so it sailed right past the guy’s right elbow and then snapped back, burying it’s point in the guy’s lower right side. He didn’t have time to howl in pain before he was yanked back by strength no mortal could have and silenced by a leather-clad forearm slamming down over his mouth. Holding the full grown man off the ground as easily as most people would hold a bottle of water, Danny ran the man into the brick wall of the alley hard enough to leave a dent. Brick dust exploded around them and something creaked in the guy’s back.
For half a second, Danny considered spouting Noble’s old shpiel. ‘You have spilled the blood of the innocent!’ and all that jazz. Only for half a second, before he decided there was no point in wasting time. Speaking flawless English despite not having lips or a tongue in this form, Danny spat out in his unearthly voice, “Not quite the man now, are you, TedTheMan2155?” The man had only a brief moment to register shock before Danny shoved his head back against the wall and forced him to stare deep into his own eyeless sockets.
It was a good thing no one was around. Even Danny’s large forearm couldn’t muffle the frenzied howls of the waste of flesh as the Penance Stare began. As horrifying as Danny’s own personal sinaplex could be, the Penance Stare was about a million times worse. Instead of simply seeing the events as an observer, as Danny did, the Penance Stare forced you to relive all of the pain you’d ever caused anyone, except this time you were in the victim’s role. And this guy had hurt more than a few kids.
It was over fast. For a scant moment the man howled and writhed and seized under the tremendous mental and physical anguish he was being forced to feel. Like Danny expected, his mind couldn’t take it. It broke, and when it did, so too did his screams and struggles. Danny let the Stare play out anyway, giving “Ted” every last drop of pain. When it was finally over, barely a minute later, Danny dropped the sack of garbage where he was. The guy didn’t move. He wasn’t dead, and the wound to the side wouldn’t be fatal. Painful, but not fatal. After a moment, Danny unceremoniously kicked the guy over onto his back and looked into his face, using only his peripheral vision to check “Ted’s” eyes. They were moving rapidly but were completely vacant.
This one would be in a coma, replaying his crimes from his victim’s standpoint on loop for who knew how long. Danny couldn’t bring it in him to find even an ounce of sympathy. “Vengeance is served.” That done he simply hurled the hook out again, this time up to the lip of the building, and used it as a grappling hook. He got a running start, leapt, and then at the pique of his jump yanked hard on the chain with his superhuman strength to carry him the rest of the distance back to the roof. The guy would be found when people started their morning routines tomorrow, and maybe he’d make the headlines. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, Danny accomplished what he set out to do and now he could put it from his mind and finally get home to do what he wanted to do. He’d probably be found in the morning too, though more than likely passed out in the lobby, or at the bottom of a stairway, or possibly on the roof.
Such was his life, these days. Hurt the bad guys, get drunk, lather-rinse-repeat ad nauseam for however long he had left to live before he got sent home and into the waiting arms of the devil.