The next day I found myself standing next a clearly irritated man. The elevator ride up to Frank's apartment was a tense one. Joe, or as most people called him "Big Joe", hated me. I knew it, he knew that I knew it, hell; everybody knew it. Big Joe was Frank's second in all but writing and when I suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started passing on Frank's messages to him, Joe took it as though I were directly ordering him around.

He hadn't liked that.

At least that's what I got from him pointing his pistol at me and demanding to know "Who the fuck I thought I was". After quickly disarming him and taking him down, I had called Frank and told him the situation, and boy had he been pissed.

Ever since then he had ignored me completely and the only time he ever talked to me was if we were in Frank's presence. As the doors opened and we stepped out, I couldn't help but look around. Despite being Chris's guard-dog, I rarely ever came into their home. It was even rare for Joe to be coming in here unannounced, but today we had a problem. And that problem was important enough that it warranted Joe gruffly telling me to follow him up to the D'Amico living area.


"What? Are you telling me that I've got to believe in ghosts or superheroes?"

As Joe tried to placate the man, I studied his expression. Frank was far more annoyed then he looked and the reason was because of how long these unknowns had been fucking us over. They had killed countless of our guys, busted even more exchanges than I could count, and now they were throwing all of this back in his face. Because of these people he had lost thousands upon thousands of dollars, but he was still a ruthless man and he wasn't going to show just how angry he really was, even in front of us, his most trusted employees.

"I think we're going to need to 'invite' our Russian over for a friendly chat."

His eyes turned towards me and I nodded, standing up from the comfortable leather seat and headed towards the door. Our snitches and drug-dealers didn't come to us, we came to them. It wasn't because Frank didn't trust them to reveal his more secret locations, it was because they needed to be reminded that no matter where they were in the city - we knew their location and that we were in control.

"Oh, and Dave?"

Looking back at him, I frowned at the brief look of hesitation that hardened into his usual flat stare.

"Take Chris with you. After all, he's going to be 18 in 8 months."

Oh fuck it all.


Chris looked far too excited for his own good. Glancing into the rear-view mirror I grimaced at the sight of him practically beaming. From the smile on his face it looked more like I was taking him to Disneyland and not to find some drug-addict that we were going to have to kidnap and interrogate.

Parking the car in front of the Russian's dingy apartment, I turned back and gave Chris a hard look.

"Listen, Chris. Stop smiling like an idiot and get serious. Dmitry, up there, isn't going to jump into ours arms and let himself get carted off to get interrogated, you're the one that's going to be taking him down. I'm not going to step in unless it gets really serious. Got it?"

Despite the fact that I had told him not to, he was still grinning like a loon.

"Sure, whatever. Do I get a gun?"

Sighing, I turned back and let my head fall onto the steering wheel. This was going to be a long night.


After breaking into the man's home, Chris had been able to knock the Russian out with a well timed vase to the head. The fact that he had been sleeping soundly in his bed didn't seem to deter the idiot from talking about how bad-ass he had been and how he was going to tell his dad all about it when they got home. It was slowly driving me mad and we still had a few more miles to go before we arrived to Frank's Lumber Supplies.

"Dave, can I ask you a completely random question?"

Glancing at him through the mirror, I cocked an eyebrow. Despite our differences and the fact that we didn't really like each other all that much, we did talk. And why not? We were the same age, we were both guys, and we were together most of the time. Sure he was annoying, but I didn't hate him. Judging from the serious look on his face, he didn't want to talk about how "fuck-able" some of the girls at our school were or what assignments were due next week.

"Sure, whats up?"

It took a while for him to respond and from the look on his face it took all it had for him to come out and say it.

"Have you ever...dreamed about being a superhero?"

What? He was right, that was completely random.

"I mean, just knocking that guy out back there had felt so good, y'know? Creeping into his house and knocking him out made me feel like Batman or something, I don't know how to describe it. It just felt good, man."

Blinking, I stared at the road as my body began driving on auto-pilot. I actually knew exactly what he was talking about. Back when I first started taking lessons in Taekwondo, I had felt like such a bad ass. I had even taken to wearing the training-gear at my house and performing the exercises in front of the mirror in my bedroom. I had imagined that the plain white sparring clothes were actually skin-tight suits and that my head-gear was a mask; that I was an ass-kicking superhero!

"-ut do you know what's really fucking weird? That in all these years that people have been reading comic books and shit, not one of them has ever tried suiting up, making a name for themselves and just going out to fight crime! I mean come on, how bad ass would that be? Walking around as a fucking super hero!"

It's like Chris had been rooting around in my brain. I had always wondered such things back in the day before the Mafia had taken over my life and I was just too fucking busy to enjoy comic books and just be a teenager.

Gripping the steering wheel a little tighter, I decided that it wouldn't be good to head down this direction again. Glancing into the mirror and into Chris's wistful face, I grinned a little.

"This coming from the son of a crime lord? What would your Dad think if his son were out there fighting for the good guys?"

Chris scoffed and he turned to stare out the window.

"Like my dad gives a shit about me."

The rest of the ride was spent in silence.


After unloading the Russian from the trunk of my car and having him strapped down to a chair, I found myself wondering if having Chris here to see this would really be a good idea. From the completely different mood he had now than when we were driving to the Russian's house, I can't help but think about the impact this would have on him now while he was in such a dark mood.

The first time I had seen a guy get the shit beaten out of him for some lousy information I had been 15 and I had been shell-shocked. The guy's face had looked like a bloody rag after the goons had finished him off. The guy had been unable to so much as utter anything that wasn't a groan of pain and because he couldn't answer the questions they continued to beat him. I had ran out of the building and vomited inside a nearby dumpster. It had taken me a year of constantly being put out there and witnessing these type of things for me to become desensitized enough so that even I could interrogate someone.

I was pretty lousy at it. It wasn't in my nature to beat down a completely defenseless guy. Give me a guy with a gun or knife aiming to kill me and I'll knock his ass flat, but a guy strapped to a chair whose only reason for being there was because we needed to know if Jimmy was a rat or if someone was trying to steal our drugs? Fuck that. Luckily, I wasn't going to be administering today's interrogation.

"We just need to know who sold you our coke."

By now the Russian's face was covered in bruises and cuts; his nose had been broken a long time ago and the area under it was dark with blood. Spitting out the blood that had accumulated in his mouth, he glared up at Joe.

"I fucking told you, it was Trey!"

The large amount of blood in his mouth along with the accent made his words barely understandable. Joe sighed, shaking his head and gave a nod towards one of the men. Loud cries followed the meaty sounds of flesh on flesh as the goon began beating at his stomach and chest.

This had been going on for the past thirty minutes and Joe didn't look like he was going to let up until the guy was dead. Frowning and shaking my head at the sight I looked over to where Chris was standing. Or at least where he had been standing. Shit.

Looking around the warehouse, I knew he wasn't in here, so the only logical place would be outside. Quickly heading for the door, the sound of puking was obvious.

Chris was leaning over the side of the road and staring down at his own puke, panting.

"You alright?"

He damn near jumped out of his skin at my voice and he turned around holding up his fists. What the fuck? After a few seconds of staring at me he lowered his arms and groaned. Standing up he leaned against the back of our car and glared at the floor.

"Can't they see that he doesn't know anything?"

Sighing, I stepped over his vomit to lean against the car as well - looks like I was going to have to explain these things to him. I was hoping he had been able to keep it in until he got home and had this conversation with his dad, but fuck it.

"Joe's not going to stop until the guy's dead, y'know? And even if he ends up giving us any sort of information, he's still a dead man."

Chris didn't seem all that shocked at the information, but it was pretty obvious.

"Didn't you want to learn about this stuff? Didn't you think you were ready?"

Chris's head snapped up to glare at me and I chuckled, raising my hands to placate him. With a huff, he went back to glaring down at his vomit.

"When I imagined it, being in Dad's place, I didn't see it as beating the shit out of random coke-heads that were tied up. I thought of it more as a business. We would meet the dealers, exchange the drugs and money, wave our guns around at people who tried going against us, and shot at the guys that did."

I stared at him from the corner of my eye and frowned.

"Where did you think we were taking him after you knocked him out and we dragged him into the trunk?"

He didn't immediately answer my question, opting to stare at the doors leading into the warehouse. We could vaguely hear the sound of violence going on inside.

"I knew we were going to question him, but what Joe and the rest of the guys did in there was just over-kill. Hell, most of the time they didn't even give the guy a chance to talk!"

I nodded to myself, that was definitely true. I had noticed that as well back when I had witnessed my first interrogation. The doors to the warehouse suddenly opened, and a pair of goons walked out carrying a thick rolled-up carpet. It was cliche as hell, but it worked. Walking over to the dark van they had come in, they tossed the carpet in and quickly drove away. Joe came out next, smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone. Noticing us, he gave Chris a cheery wave before walking towards his car.

Chris was frowning heavily and I eyed him.

"So. What now, Chris?"

We both knew that I wasn't talking about where we were going next. Chris never answered, he just got inside of the car. This car-ride was also spent in silence.


"Well if it isn't the boy-wonder himself!"

I chuckled at Marty's declaration and clapped him on the back. Taking a seat opposite my two best-friends I eyed them both carefully. In the past few days I hadn't been able to talk to them too much besides the few times we could in between classes. We had different schedules, so we didn't have the same lunch hour and I was busy with being Chris's chauffeur. Luckily, yet oddly enough, today was a Chris free day. He had seemed pretty distracted since that day and had been frequently telling me that I didn't need to hang around him so often anymore. Yesterday he had gone off on his own to do something and when I asked him what he had been doing this morning he had just given me a smug look.

Whatever, I doubt he could have done something too stupid in just one day.

"So, Dave. I know you've been busy with work and all but have you seen this new video on youtube?"

Todd looked far too excited for it to be just another video of a cute cat and a sudden feeling of dread crawled up and down my spine.

"Oh shit, look its even on the fucking news! Hey, turn it up!"

On the screen there was an attractive young reporter smiling and talking soundlessly. As the volume turned up, the small video that had been frozen next to her blew up and overtook the entire screen.

The grainy and far too shaky amateur video depicted a skinny male dressed up in a black and red skin-tight suit swinging a steel rod at a group of tattooed men in one hand and holding what looked like a taser in the other. He was screaming profanities at them as he swung the rod and looked a lot like a lunatic. After a few more seconds of the thugs getting hit by the rod and one of them damn-near getting tased, they finally ran off. The video focused in on the black and red clad male's face and my jaw dropped.

"That was awesome man! Who are you?"

And on the screen was the face of a person I could recognize, if only barely. Stubble coated his cheeks and chin, his hair was darker with red highlights, and a black mask covered the majority of his upper face.

"Me? I'm Red Mist."


Say what? Heh, and here start the deviations. Hope you guys like it, and I'll explain some other stuff in the next chapter "Like why didn't Mindy recognize him" etc. Dish, Out.