Disclaimer: They're not mine, and I'm a little bummed about that.
Author's note: While I wouldn't say I LIKED Vicious, his character is very intriguing. I don't think that anyone is born evil, but some people slip into it more easily than others based on their circumstance.
After I watched the Jupiter Jazz episodes (Sessions 12 and 13), my mind started racing. If Spike and Vicious were ever friends, how did they become such great enemies? The following is what I came up with.
This first chapter is the beginning, with more to come soon. Feel free to let me know what you think, how it's going.
===============================================================
Losing It by Starzki
What is there to say? What am I even trying to do? Is this my rationalization for my future acts? The explanation? If so, to whom? To the world? Fellow members of the Red Dragon? To Spike and Julia? To myself? I just feel the need to put down the thoughts in my head as they sour and spoil. Maybe writing will exorcise the demons that plague my soul, if there is even one left to torment.
Now, here is the problem of where to begin. I could start with the here and now of Titan, in the middle of this war of high ideals and body counts where nothing means anything. But starting at the beginning is usually best. That way I might even discover, myself, when I lost everything I ever cared for, when I lost caring that I cared.
BeginningsLike everyone else, I have my own sob story. But as bad as my life started, it could have been redeemed. I used to struggle for that redemption. All that struggle turned into a struggle for survival. I gave in and just lived to keep living, damn the consequences of my life.
I was born to a junkie mother who, even if she recalled the face of my father, she didn't recall his name. I have vague recollections of this greasy woman who never looked at me. She disappeared when I was 2. She probably died. From what I could gather, I was born in that slum on Mars where too many children lived and died and too few adults supervised or provided any real comfort. No authorities were ever called to pick me up and deliver me out of the life of hell on the streets where I survived with the feral dogs on garbage scraps. I never even had a name. I claimed Vicious as my own when a stranger I had snapped my teeth at for coming too close sputtered that word in shocked surprise.
I learned quickly that absolutely no one could be counted on, but there did exist in me a desire to trust someone. By the age of 5, I lived pretty well on my own. I would not let anyone get close enough to take advantage of me. I learned by watching people in the crowds, to see how others lived and moved through the world. I could see everything, secret loves and fears and strengths and weaknesses that no one else took the time to see. I was skilled and smart enough to learn how to steal and swindle in earnest. I could afford to eat. I clothed myself. I found places to live. I found ways to be human, which was more than I could say for most of the adults and other children who lived on the streets around me. They kept part of themselves soft, fearing the total cold steel core required for survival alone. I pitied and envied that softness at the same time. I knew that they would never truly survive like that, but I also wondered what it would be like to see the world through eyes not turned to stone.
Meeting Spike was a fluke. I was 6; he couldn't have been 4 yet. I saw my own past when I looked at him. He was a skinny kid, alone in the street, following around one of the alley dogs that I had "adopted." He would wrestle it for food-like garbage scraps. The dog's name was Spike. Whenever I had food left to spare, I would share it with some of the bigger, meaner-looking dogs. They, in turn, would come to my aid whenever any of the older kids started in on me. I called the dog to me and the kid came with.
The boy was filthy. His dark ringlets of hair framed a face just as dark with dirt and grime. He looked at me with such hunger that I felt pity. It was actually a kind of pity for my former self. I knew that there was nothing that this little boy could do to hurt me. He was just alone, left to die a hard death.
Some of the street vendors in the area knew me well enough to just give me the food that I would steal anyway. I stole from the other vendors. That day, my pockets were bulging with beef jerky.
I took a strip and offered it to the dog, "Here you go, Spike."
The kid snatched the dried meat so quickly that the dog was two bites in before he realized he was eating air. "Excuse me," I said, suppressing a laugh, "Is your name Spike?"
"Yes," said the boy with a full mouth. A few more attempts to feed the dog ended in the same way. "Look, if you keep taking the food, the dog will bite you," I warned. The kid let me give the rest to the dog.
I turned to walk away and the boy followed me. I didn't mind. I guess I felt that it was fitting in some way, meant to be. The kid was definitely quick and my mind began to race with 2-person operations we could pull off to get more food and money than I could myself. I felt a temporary warm glow of generosity in helping someone else where no one else had helped me. I do remember feeling those types of thoughts even though I don't think I could feel them now, even if I set my whole being to try.
"Ok, you can come with me. But you have to do everything I say. Got it?"
The boy nodded, eyes still hungry and fixed on me.
"What's your name?" I asked.
The boy looked frightened, ready to cry. "I don't remember," he finally blurted.
"I'll just keep calling you Spike then," I said. "I'm Vicious. That's my name. You got any parents?" He shook his head. "Me neither. I take care of myself pretty good. And if you do everything I say, I'll help you, too." A look of naked relief melted Spike's fearful brown eyes and he shot me a toothy grin.
"I'll do everything you say," he promised.
Already having survived on the streets for years, I knew the ebb and flow of things, what the demands were and where to find certain supplies. I knew where and how to steal and where and to whom to fence my loot. I knew how to stay away from the police, how to become invisible, even when they looked right at me. I knew how to find people when others needed to see them. I knew the ins and outs of survival on the edge.
From our first meeting, Spike cleaved himself to me, became my hip attachment. He was really smart, a quick learner. He did everything I told him and knew how to improvise on his feet. He became the best pickpocket I had ever seen. Some evenings, after the rush hours crowds had thinned, his haul could feed us for a week. We worked well together, knowing one another well enough to tell what the other would think or do or say ten steps ahead of any circumstance. The police were never onto us.
From the beginning, Spike was unfailingly loyal to me. The hunger never left his eyes. He was hungry for my approval, for a kind word or gesture. He looked up to me like I was his older brother. I began to relax around him in a way I had never relaxed around anyone before. I trusted him and his loyalty. Even now, I don't regret that trust. The iron inside of me that kept me alive and fed for so long started to bend. I would never be soft, but I could feel what other people felt for the first time.
I wasn't always so cold to others. Even though I can't bring myself to regret my loss of caring, I do remember those days with a kind of nostalgia.
Spike trusted me, too. But unlike me, I found that he was also willing to trust others. I told him time after time never to trust anyone. The people we met would only hurt us. But even back then, Spike had a light, easy-going manner. 90% of what I lectured to him about trust and other human emotions rolled off of him.
Since meeting him, I envied Spike. He would never have to learn the streets like I had, the hard way. He could afford to try and make other connections to people because I would always be there for him. I would have been, too. Spike was my only human credential. No one in the world would have vouched for me, been able to prove that I'd been here, been real and alive and a person like everyone else except for Spike. He was, and will be, the only person who ever really knew me, the person in me. And I was the first person to ever know him. It was just him and me for those few years. It was the only time in my life that I would venture to call "happy." It was probably the only time in my life that I could have made something good happen.
Things would change when I was around 11 and Spike was around 8, and for me, not for the better. A new convenience store went up on our block, two doors down from the building we were squatting in. A man and his young wife, the owners of the store, were the first adults to take any interest in us. Actually, it was the wife's (her name was Annie) interest in Spike, but I was around enough that she began to know me, too. I never trusted Annie or her husband, but Spike constantly hung around the store and took to Annie like she was his long lost big sister. He confided in her. About what, I was never sure. Mere weeks after they opened shop, Spike and I had full run of the store and a place to stay whenever the vacant apartments we stayed in got rented or otherwise inhabited.
While Annie adored Spike, she was never quite sure what to make of me. I kept her at arm's length. So even though she would tsk at some of my more antisocial behavior, the fact I'd helped Spike for so long allowed me continued access to her store, which was becoming a hub of the neighborhood.
It did not take long for me to notice that Annie controlled all of the store's business and her husband, even though he was always around, seemed to control something else.
I pumped Spike for information. "Just tell me, Spike, the store's a front, right?"
"A front?" he asked.
"Yeah, whatever money Annie's husband makes in the back, they can say the store made it so the police and government don't find out."
"How do you know?" Spike asked defensively. I was mildly irked at his feelings of loyalty to these strangers, but the gears had begun to turn in my head. I was hatching a plan. "Big guys in dark suits go in and out of that store all of the time, right?"
"Yeah…"
"And never buy anything?"
"Uh-huh." A knowing realization spread over Spike's face.
"And Annie's husband never does anything in the store, just talks to people. And how much stuff have you seen actually sold?"
"Maybe they have a lot of money to start out with," Spike tried, not even believing the words as he said them. I smiled. "What are you thinking about doing?" he asked in apprehension, eyebrows knitting together.
"We can let them know we know about what's going on. We'll say we'll go to the police and tell if they don't cut us in." Spike's eyes went wide with alarm and dismay.
"That's snitching! I'm no snitch! Plus, Annie's never done anything bad to us. Plus, it sounds bad, like we might get hurt."
"Don't worry. We won't really go to the police. We'll just say we will. It will be less work and more money for us." I patted Spike's shoulder. "I promise it will work."
Eventually, Spike calmed down. He couldn't bring himself to distrust me. If I was testing him, his loyalty at that time, he passed. I don't know if I would have done it without him.
The next day I strode into Annie's store with a silent Spike on my heels. Annie's face lit up to see Spike, but then darkened when she saw our serious expressions.
"We want to talk to your husband," I demanded with a confidence that came from youth and ignorance.
"Vicious, he's a little busy now, but if you come back later this afternoon, we can see about that," answered Annie in a condescending maternal tone that set my teeth on edge. I had lived my own life so far and would not, could not let anyone who was duller and less connected to life and survival tell me what to do.
"Is he in there?" I seethed, nodding at the back door I had seen the suits entering and exiting every day.
"Now is not a good time," said Annie, rising from her seat behind the counter, slightly angry, slightly scared. "Spike?"
"We have business, Annie," Spike told her, following my lead.
We reached the door before Annie could stop us. It wasn't locked. The cold metal core that kept me strong, kept me alive so far supported me as I put one foot in front of the other and walked into the room. If I had ever been scared in my life, it was in those seconds. Annie's husband was sitting behind a dark, mahogany desk. The whole room looked like it belonged more in an office building than in a corner Git 'N Go. Another man sat in one of the leather-upholstered chairs. I ignored him and sat in the other chair across from Annie's husband. Spike stood at my side, his face betraying no fear or apprehension. I felt proud to have him with me.
The men looked at us in expectant amusement, like the interruption was going to be a kind of interesting diversion.
"We know what this is," I said with a steady voice. "We know what you're doing. You have to cut us in if you want us to stay quiet." Spike nodded in agreement.
"Oh? And what exactly is this?" asked Annie's husband with a smile.
"A front for the Syndicate," I gave my best educated guess.
The men's smiles froze on their faces. "If this were a syndicate, what's to stop us from killing you to keep you from talking?" asked Annie's husband. Spike stiffened, but I didn't even blink.
"I told my cousin I was coming here and that if anything happened to me or Spike, to tell the cops you did it," I bluffed.
Both men chuffed laughing noises. "A cousin, eh?"
"Yeah. We're not actually family, but she'll notice if I'm gone," I replied, thinking quickly, making it hard for them to find a hole in my story, even if they asked around.
"Spike, tell your friend he doesn't know the depth of trouble he's getting himself into. If he's smart, he'll stay out of this," Annie's husband said.
"Vicious isn't afraid of you and neither am I," Spike announced. He suddenly grinned his most disarming smile, the one he used to part matronly tourists from their money. "We promise not to tell if you do for us."
"What exactly do you think we could do for you?" asked Annie's husband, eyes flashing with anger and annoyance. The other man in the room held up his hand, indicating to Annie's husband that he needed to calm down. This power dynamic was not lost on me. It was this other man that I needed to be speaking with.
"What do you have?" I asked the stranger.
"Vicious and… Spike, is it?" he asked. We both nodded solemnly. "You two have courage. And enough intelligence to see what the police haven't. Do you have parents?" We shook our heads.
"My name is Mao Yenrai. I am a member of Red Dragon. No one who comes against our clan is ever tolerated. You have put yourselves into a dangerous position in opposing us. But I respect that you came to us like men, without fear. Therefore, I will give you the option of joining us, becoming members, yourselves. You would no longer oppose us, but be one of us."
"What's in it for us?" I asked warily.
"We'll take you in, train you, give you places to sleep, food to eat, clothes to wear, and whatever else young men need. But you'll work for us. You'll do what we say, when we say it. You'll be told all you need to know and you will not question us." Annie's husband looked alarmed and shot Mao a look of contention.
"I'm not being generous or soft-hearted. This is strictly a business deal," Mao told him. "We need men who know the streets and who can work under the police's radar. We've been needing them." He turned back to us, "What do you say?"
Spike and I looked at each other, read each other's eyes.
"We'll do it," we said in unison and shook hands with Mao, our new boss.