May 24, 2001
11:06 A.m.
El Sol Station, East Los Angeles, California
“Well, here we are Master Jack. What time did Master Fabio say this Samuel would show up?”
“Three minutes… he starts at 11:09.”
Jack and Fred sat in their cool Interceptor, blasting the air conditioning as the yellow sun continued to rise in the mostly empty skies, a plane roaring over head as the city that had some kind of peace the night prior became a bustling complex of business and exchanges once more. Even as the duo sat in a parking lot of a burger joint, Jack eating what must have been his fourth hamburger in the last week alone, they were swarmed with many a passersby and speeding car. An especially busy local, one full of many opportunities for both the good and evil.
“Credit where it’s due. Samuel certainly has an excellent location to deal. With so many people in this single section of the city, he’ll have as many clients as he can pitch his wares to. Additionally, from that platform at the station, he can make out any cops coming his way before they notice him; no wonder they didn’t bother with the arrest yet. The trains pass so often that he’d be on and long gone before the cops could even find a place to park”.
“Never thought I’d hear you praise a drug dealer, Fred.” Jack commented, to which the English Spaniard laughed.
“Praise and commendation are two entirely different things. We pay the executioner for doing his duty well, but that doesn’t mean we give him a national holiday for it.”
What role was Jack playing? True to the intel Fabio had picked up, they made their man as he emerged from a tram and stepped onto the platform of the train station, a backpack in hand full of what could be best described as his product. Sadly, he wasn’t entirely what they expected; the kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old, with facial hair he probably only bothered to shave once every three or four months. In fact, he looked like he just left his morning classes; he was still wearing a polo and khaki jeans, the typical outfit for a school that bothered to dictate a modern dress code.
Jack was unphased, but Fred was disturbed to the core. Turning the key, he looked to his master and begged “Big Boss… we can’t take him. Fred won’t do it; Fred won’t torture a kid.”
“If we don’t… someone more innocent than him will die.”
“Really? From a moral perspective, someone twenty five is still more culpable than a drug dealer who’s only sixteen. Let it go, Boss… let the kid go.”
The silent mercenary pondered the matter over for nearly a minute before he finally consented. Taking his phone from his jeans, he handed the pony tailed driver the electronic device as he opened the door and left, pausing outside as he explained
“Call Fabio and tell him we need a new name… this time someone old enough to know how to pay taxes.”
“I will, but where are you going?”
Reaching into the pocket of his gray flannel shirt, Jack tore out a black eyepatch and threw it over his missing eye. “To scare the kid straight.”
Normally, Jack had a kind of serene peace to him, a friendly sort of aurora that was akin to a friendly grandpa who worshiped his grandchildren. Loving, happy, and full of the time he needed to spoil his descendants, there wasn’t much difference between your loving relative and Jack Wallace.
Big Boss, or Damned Boss depending on your preference, was another matter entirely. Here was the cranky old vet that shot up Nazis and Vietnamese for fun back when the war was fought with Europeans and Asians rather than Arabic people. This was the one eyed monster that could cut the throat of a spy without remorse, who could break your fingers with his pinkie and took punches and hits like they were vitamins. Gone was the façade of the man who’d do you a favor when you needed it most; what remained was a phantom, one whose first language was that of violence.
A phantom on a war path. As the cross light gave the happy image of a man crossing the road, all who dared to enter the crosswalk were anything but. Everyone on the phone went silent; every baby hushed themselves and every couple broke apart as people tried to dodge the demon that stomped his way through the street, a static of bloodlust emanating from him as his working blue eye grew dark. If any man could spawn rain from will alone, it would have been Damned Boss.
In fact, no one dared to speak to him until he was strutting up the station itself, an empty stairwell as those on top waited for him to finish his ascent before they hurried past to get away from him. It wasn’t until he started to approach the teen about two inches smaller than him that someone dared to address him, the genius punk making a colossal error as he yelled at the grumpy vet
“Who the fu-”
Damned grabbed him one handed by the neck and lifted him off the ground, pulling him over to a tram currently being boarded as he smashed the kid into the Plexiglas. While the window managed to hold, it wasn’t without damage; cracks filled with the blood spilling from broken skin that came from his badly bruised head, the drug dealer seeing stars as he struggled to breathe and cough from beneath Jack’s grip.
“You speak English, parasite?”
The Latino nodded, though he looked about for help. None dared to approach, especially those of minorities; only whites dared to watch as their so called idol assaulted the punk who they knew to be a drug dealer, no matter if they had evidence or not. The rest fled for their own safety, lacking the courage and the will to intervene in a case where they didn’t know if the culprit was truly guilty or not. Samuel the dealer secretly hoped they were getting the police, but his faith was misplaced; no help was coming for him.
“Good, then listen you sack of garbage. You’ve gotten this far in life thinking you can’t get caught, that you can do whatever you want and it doesn’t matter. Guess what kid; it does. The cops know what you’ve done, as do I. The pnly thing is, you’ve been allowed to deal because they have bigger fish to fry than you.
“Not anymore. This is your last and only chance to change the course and make things right, because if you don’t than you’re going to wind up in the same Hell I’m sending your backpack to.”
Ripping the sack from the man’s back, it didn’t take long for Damned Boss to finally release all the pent up energy he’d be gathering as he uttered some ancient word, incomprehensible and unknown to man. Whatever it was, its effect was clear; the backpack exploded in a fury of blue flames, spreading from Damned Boss’s hand and consuming leather and contents completely as the plume of smoke began to fill the air.
Granted, that wasn’t the reason for the foul stench that filled the air, emanating from the fearful teen who finally recognized how far in over his head he really was in this strange world. “El… El Diablo! Mi dios, ayudame!”
“Piensa que voy a ayudarle despues sus pecados? No, Samuel. Only if you repent will you receive my mercy to even live a day more.
“Go to the police station and turn yourself in. Tell them everything you’ve done and know. You have one day to do so, or you’re going to suffer more than a broken arm.”
The dealer didn’t even get the chance to ask what he meant. Throwing him into the ground, the retired soldier took hold of an arm and snapped it with ease at the elbow, the teen screaming in pain as Damned Boss let it drop in an awkward, bad position. The point was thus made; the pains and sights would scar all those present forever, an encouragement to get their affairs in order and start fixing things before it was too late.
At least, that’s what they would take away as Big Boss faced the crowds. Looking about at the various faces, both old and young, light and dark, he had no love to spare for any as he pointed at the kid on the ground and explained “You pretentious natives think that this boy deserved this because he’s an outsider; because he wasn’t born in this country and doesn’t deserve to live here. That because of his race he was always going to turn out to be a bad egg.
“But make no mistake; his sins are just as much as yours. You all failed to raise and treat him a
s your equal. You all failed to give him the same opportunities and mercies that you so readily give your children and their friends. You all failed to demonstrate the love and affection you proclaim to give according to the tenants of your faith or opposition thereof; Atheist and Christian alike are just as responsible for the bigotry shown towards my children of these Southern Lands.
“If you don’t wish to end up like him, then get your acts together and get to work. Take him to the hospital and call for an officer to come and see him. Make sure he gets a good lawyer, a who actually cares about him getting a fair treatment and see it through so that Samuel comes out of this better than he was before. Otherwise, this child molester won’t be the only man I kill in my righteous fury.”
It would have been quicker to simply take out a gun and fire upon the lanky man in a suit who seemed to be the least capable of such a gross deed. Yet had he done so, this wicked and adulterous sign seeking generation would have written Jack off as simply a crazed pretender; one with a good point, but lacking the right and authority to make such judgements as crass and wide as he did. No, everyone present needed so called proof to make the course correction humanity so desperately needed, which meant giving them the show they needed but didn’t want.
Throwing a hand out towards the molester, a unseen force possessed only by what we believed to be the Sith came into play as the man was lifted from the ground by his neck, raised into the air higher than even the unmoving trains frozen by the actions of the man turned god. Clutching about his throat, the suited man tried to utter one last plea for mercy as he gasped a few words to deflect the pain, trying to get out that he hadn’t done anything wrong at all.
A lie. What man could cover with words, the soul could not. Jack had felt the molester’s ghastly presence from the moment he had entered the station, and where the soldier could spare mercy for dealers he had no such restraint for those who went so far as to grievously harm the precious children he so loved. It was the Divine Boss’s right to be judge, jury, and executor in such scenarios, and no one in the crowd would dare argue if they could sense the evil in the man.
Perhaps they did, because no argument was made when Big Boss flicked his wrist, ending the spectacle. The molester’s neck was snapped, his animal grunts ending in an instant as his fragile nervous system ceased its functions. It was no longer a monster in the air but a corpse, one that began to melt into ash as blue flames burst from his broken spine and consumed whatever unholy flesh covered the man, unfit for even a proper burial.
Thus was the sign given to this modern world, the crowds falling to their knees and begging for forgiveness to their gods, practically worshiping the suspended burning pyre of sins that demonstrated the fate of those in these times. Big Boss, Damned Boss, Jack Wallace or even god as some may call him had no peace to give; only a sword, to divide the just from the unjust, the righteous from the unrighteous, the broken from the abusers.
Their so called god whom they beckoned to come again had done so, and now there was a hell to pay. The worst, not the best, was yet to come.