"You think you're the only superhero in the world? Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe."
—Nick Fury; Iron Man

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of the evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will KNOW my name is the Lord when I lay MY VENGEANCE UPON THEE!"
—Jules Winnfield; Pulp Fiction


Disclaimer: The story is mine but the characters belong to Marvel Comics, a division of the Walt Disney Company. Gratuitous acts of violence, blood, gore, blood, mayhem, blood, death, and more blood ahead in future chapters!

Oh and in case you didn't figure it out, this story is an AU of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


Marc Spector was a mercenary and a paid killer who did unspeakable things in the name of money. And he was damn good at it.

But for one shining moment under the pale moonlight in the Egyptian desert, Spector tried to do the right thing under the watchful gaze of an ancient statue deifying Khonshu—the Egyptian God of the Moon and Guardian of Night Travelers. And was killed for it.

Then he miraculously returned to life.

Believing himself to have been resurrected by Khonshu as his Knightly Avatar, Spector assumed the God of the Moon's aspect to fight evil and for his own redemption. And now the Guilty will tremble before his wrath and the world will fear his vengeance … the Vengeance of the Moon Knight!


RISING MOON

In The Desert: Part 1


They call me crazy.

The realists. The rationalists. The petty and the small minded.

Because they look at me and they judge what they don't understand. They whine about what I do. They're afraid of me and piously proclaim about how civilized they are. How barbaric and loathsome I am. How dare I flout the rule of laws that they uphold.

But the truth of matter isn't that they're afraid of me. They're not afraid of what I'm doing. No, the truth of the matter is that they're the ones who are afraid of doing of what I do. What they wish that they could do. If they only had the stomach for it.

Or the will.

But they don't. They can't. They don't see the chains and manacles that bind them. Confine them. Restrain them. Unseen ones that they created for themselves and locked themselves willingly into. The laws that they proclaim so dear to them. So narrow minded that they religiously interpret the letter of the law but have completely forgotten it's spirit. When the law stood for the just. When justice bespoke of an eye for an eye instead of fines, time served, and early release due to prison overcrowding and a revolving door. When the law was supposed to punish the scum and make them tremble in fear.

People want to know.

How can I live like this?

How can I do the things that I do?

How?

I always feel like laughing at them. The small and petty minded. The realists. The rationalists. The ones who call me crazy.

The fact is that they—we made this world. A society where criminals have more rights than their victims. Where it doesn't matter what you say or what you do as long as you're rich enough to buy off the right lawyers and judges. Where the liars and hypocrites and media whores flourish and fashion themselves as policy makers and bureaucrats. Where crimes are sanitized and white washed, lies are spun to sound bites. Where the corporations exploit the poor and weak in the name of profit and greed and get away with it all.

A world of glitz and glamor. Of fame and fashion. Built on the backs of ruined lives and blood money.

The truth of it is that I was no different than any of you. I was a willing participant to all of it. I worshiped the Almighty Dollar as my Gospel and looking out for only myself because I knew that no one else would. And so I forsake my conscience and whored myself out; I killed innocents in the name of whoever would pay me the most. And I was good at it. Too good.

I did unspeakable things. I destroyed innocent lives, I ruined good and decent men, and I did so with a song in my heart and gleeful skip in my step because of one simple truth. I got paid for it.

Until one blood soaked night in the desert, I was shown the stark truth. I saw the true shape of things. The ugly, bitter, twisted truth of it all.

That the world itself is crazy. And we had made it that way.

And for someone who is crazy in a crazy world?

Well … they'd have to be the sanest person on the planet.

The truth is that anything that is made can also be unmade. For those that say it's impossible to change things … it's not. Not really. It's simple laziness and unwillingness to upset the status quo of what is. The truth is anything is possible. All that it is lacking is the proper motivation and the will to succeed.

And so when they ask how can I do the things that I do? How can I live the way that I do?

The answer is simple.

How can I not?

How could I live any other way?


AFGHANISTAN
JULY 11, 2010

The door rattles and then the hinges shriek as it's shouldered open by one of the men. He is young Middle Eastern man, heavily mustached and dressed in rough but decently made clothing save for his military styled boots. He gives a quick and bored glance into the room and proceeds to enter with his companion—a near mirror image of his own dress save for a turban wrapped around his head—both of them are half-propping and half-dragging the third man in-between them.

The last man is dressed in the tattered remnants of Western business suit, stained with dirt and blood and other less recognizable stains. His arms are tied behind his back and a burlap sack is covering his head. He is slumped over, staggering and unable to keep pace with his captors who simply haul him around by sheer brute strength.

By common consent, they bring him to roughly the center of the deserted chamber and dump him like a discarded sack of waste. The captive man half tumbles to the ground with a pained grunt, falling to one knee. He struggles to rise and gets a jeering boot by the turbaned man, causing him to collapse to the stone floor with a muffled cry. He lies there, half-cringing in anticipation of a follow-up blow but the turbaned captor grunts in mocking laughter and wheels around to follow his companion out the door.

The door hinges shriek in painful sympathy as the door bangs closed and there is a sound of a rattling lock engaging before the captive gives out a whimper of relief and starts to pray once more for someone—anyone to help him.

No one answers. He starts once more to weep…


AFGHANISTAN
JULY 14, 2010

The air is hot and dry and still. All of the moisture has been boiled away. I stroll down the dusty street, absently noticing the puffs of dust created by all of the foot traffic. I stand out from the entire crowd which is filled with dark bronzed skins or overlapping burqas and head scarves. Not only am I at least a foot taller than most with my pale white skin marks me as a foreigner, my outrageous aloha shirt with neon pink flamingos adorning it and white khakis stands out in the subdued clothing of the crowds.

I pause, orienting myself and then stride towards one of the tented stalls. It is the only one that has aside from the cursive Arabic script, English lettering as subtitles. I remove my overly priced hat as I stroll under the canopy of the tent, and laboriously fan myself with it even as I moisturize my parched skin by splashing myself with water from my overly expensive plastic bottle of purified water from a foreign country.

"Whoowee, it's pretty darned hot here ain't it?" I remark with a disarming grin to the dark skinned Arab standing underneath the canopy of the wooden stall.

His eyes narrowed fractionally. I could almost feel the waves of scorn and anger at my flagrant wastefulness of precious water here in the parched desert landscape. Instead, he smiled a bit woodenly and agrees, "Indeed it is my friend," he said solemnly with a sharp nod. "How may I help you?"

"Just browsing. Lookin' for something for my girlfriend. She loves these quaint little knickknacks and touristy thingabobs!" I drawled and pick up a stone statue and peer at it intently. I made a slight adjustment of the wristband of the overly large and gold plated expensive Rolex to emphasize it's presence. As if he hadn't seen it already. It matches with the large, and incredibly gaudy thick ring with the glittering diamonds set in a monogram adorning the same hand.

"Ah, how thoughtful of you!" the merchant purred. He reaches under the counter and brings out a more expensive and gaudier collection of trinkets for him to unload on his new sucker.

I laboriously peer at the new tray of items and casually remove my sunglasses, "Man, you guys make some nifty bits," I drawl, laying on the Southern accent. I'm sure that he already knows that I'm a Westerner but it doesn't hurt to emphasize it. And it lets me get a glimpse at the mirrored reflection in the lenses to scope out my rear and identify the person whom my new friend here made that discrete handwave to.

Got 'em. They appear to be a pair of idlers just sitting down at an outdoor café, sipping coffee but are now 'on duty', straightening up and getting ready. One of them quickly swallows the last dregs of his coffee and starts gesturing for the waiter for the bill.

I let the merchant talk me into buying three of the overly priced and cheap counterfeit gilded pieces. What the Hell. It's only money after all. I stroll out of the tent, whistling as I pass by the café, letting my peripheral vision track my two new shadows who are now standing and trying to casually stroll after me. I absently grin.

The art of fishing requires laborious preparation. It requires one to determine firstly, the location of where they intend to fish at.

An image of the tented stall with the English subtitled sign flashes onto my mind's eye.

It requires the proper outfitting of tools.

I grimace momentarily as I study the monogrammed diamond ring that is an offense to good taste and proceed to wiggle it onto my ring finger. If nothing else, it would leave one heck of a dent in somebody's jaw.

But most importantly and the most crucial is the vital last step:

It requires live bait.


TO BE CONTINUED…