#3:Retaliation #2
Three days; that was how many days it had been since that vigilante had started his spree.
Ever since the faceless, tall, sharp dressed thing had brutally killed three Crips at East 3rd Street at Skid Row, Armando Ortiz had been sent by the Los Angeles Times to find enough pieces of the puzzle to create a story with the potential to set the Times' sales ablaze. Ever since then, the bizarre vigilante had killed all kinds of criminals, from nineteen drug dealers associated with the crime syndicate of El Miedo Humana, to a pedophile who had been caught stalking children at a playground (though there was not much left of the pedophile, and the police had only come to his apartment after those living next to him had called in concerning noise complaints).
And yet...why is no one else reporting on this vigilante? Surely, the news networks would pick the story up for ratings! So why haven't I heard from anyone else about this vigilante?, Armando Ortiz thought to himself as he showed the parking garage guard his ID before he parked.
And why have I not read anything about this vigilante on the Internet? You'd think the witnesses would brag about seeing the worlds first actual superhero in person, Armando kept thinking as he entered the elevator and went to the top floor.
That last thought made Armandos skin crawl. Could this faceless vigilante really be called a superhero? After all, it brutally slaughtered all of its victims, and as several accounts had told him, it had made vague yet menacing gestures towards several of the witnesses. Of course, during the nineties, many of the new heroes were gritty and sociopathic templars, but then again, it was the nineties, the eighties' angry little brother.
He pulled out his phone and checked the time as he entered the workplace; it was 6:58. He nodded to himself as he put the phone away and sat at his desk, booting up his computer to update the current outline of his story on the vigilante.
And then his head hit the keyboard.
Forcing himself back up, Armando decided that it wouldn't hurt to kill some time by heading to the lounge to pour himself a cup of coffee. He had woken up early so he could at least finish his outline using the facts he had already compiled before the actual story would be written. Normally, that wouldn't mean much, but he had still gotten very little sleep last night. He had been tossing and turning, wondering what could drive this thing to start murdering criminals left and right, and why now.
I mean, usually, these kinds of guys go after a specific kind of criminal. Those who lost their loved ones to a drive-by shooting go after the gangsters; the ones who got their wives raped start butchering the rapists; but what made this person start waging a war on all crime? Did anything even happen to whoever this guy is? Is he just a really depraved attention seeker? If that's the case, then why start murdering criminals to get people to see you? And just why the fuck did they decide to wear a piece of plastic over their face and head and make themselves eight feet tall? Are there even any stilts that can make you that tall? And how was he able to make the "tentacles" and make it appear as if though he was teleporting? All of these thoughts rushed through Armandos head at lightning fast speeds as he pushed open the door into the lounge and came across a familiar conversation.
The man to the left stood at five foot nine and was dressed in a shabby brown trenchcoat and ripped dark blue jeans. The man to the right was thickly muscled, wore a red Hilfiger dress shirt and black formal pants, and his hair was thickly gelled.
Rainer Mueller had been working for the Los Angeles Times for xi years now, and had been a constant victim of Trey Gardner, the sports writer whose parents were incredibly wealthy and had many connections. Trey was a pure jock, having switched to journalism in college after he hadn't gotten any offers from the NFL in his first year, and he often bullied Rainer due to his belief that Rainer was a nerd because he wrote for the economics section of the paper. For his part, though, Rainer possessed an equally sharp tongue and often forced Thomas Hellner, the published and editor-in-chief of the Times, to separate him and Gardner before blows could be traded.
"That's the funny thing, you fucking German-if we got into a fight, could you really keep fooling yourself that you have a chance to win? Look at you, you're five feet and nine fucking inches!" Trey laughed, pointing down at him and at a specific area to try to get the point across that he was more of a man.
"Oh, you think you're a man because you like throwing the F-bomb everywhere? That just shows you have the education of a fourth grader and the inability to pick up a thesaurus" Rainer shot back as he took a step towards Trey. Armando realized that, if Hellner wasn't here yet, he would have to act as the boss for the time being.
Never thought I'd see the day I take the role, Armando sneered in his head.
"Look, why is it so hard for you to realize that without the guys who analyze the way the stock market works, your sports franchises wouldn't be worth anything?" Armando told Trey as he pushed the two men away from each other.
"I don't need some amateur like you to defend me, Ortiz! To think that some half-ass journalist like you thinks he can get my favor is a disgrace! Shouldn't you be busy trying to find some two star article to write?" Rainer spat before he pushed Armando out of his way and left the lounge. Armando mentally chided himself, remembering that Rainer was the kind of victim who seeked no pity and often bullied those trying to stand up for himself.
"Well, didn't someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed" Armando muttered as the Today show came on the TV.
"And someone better wake up and remember not to touch me!" Trey growled, taking up a menacing stance before Matt Lauer began speaking.
"Now, usually, when you think of superhero, you think of Superman or Batman, men who fight to protect the weak but make sure to not stoop to their enemies' levels. But what if superheroes killed? Would they still be heroes? And what if I told you these individuals were real? Well, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, one dark and brutal vigilante seems to have sprung off the bleakest comic pages and started a spree of terror upon criminals" Lauer began before the scene shifted to a house surrounded by police cars, crime scene tape, and heavily armed policeman.
"Within this home, it seemed to be just like any other night-neighbors would hear the yelling, the screaming, the crying. They wouldn't do anything, though, as the husband, Marcus Bell, was a brute of a man, standing at six foot eight and weighing three hundred and forty six pounds. Nobody was sure if he had any criminal connections, and nobody liked to think of what he might do to them if they snitched. Last night, though, everything changed in an instant" the voice of Gabe Gutierrez said as the camera switched to a crying woman.
"I-it was...big! More than six feet, just barely shorter than my husband. It had these black clothes, long sl-sleeves, gloves, pants with a brown rope! The rope...it was its belt! And its head was so horrible! It had these white eyes that just stared us through, and a really big smile on its face! Its-its teeth were so sharp, and its hair...it was black, long in the back but short in the front and on the sides!" the woman whimpered, barely holding back her tears caused by the traumatic experience.
"I was looking up, 'cause I was knocked to the ground. It crashed...through the front window! Its face started blackening, and it groaned like a dog while it looked at our light. I don't think it liked the light. But, it ran up to my husband, and, so fast! It was so fast! A blur, like a blur! He just stood there, his mouth was so open, and then that things chest opened! It looked l-like its guts were coming out before they wrapped around my husbands head and tore it off, right off! The guts, they went back into the things body before it grew my husbands face! But, it looked like it didn't like my husbands face, 'cause the face...it turned to dust! You gotta understand, so many things were going through my head, when that thing crouched down and picked me up and said, "Woman, you will be fine, you don't have to worry about anything else" in this deep and growling voice like an animal! It turned around and before it could leave, I asked for its name. It just said, "The Pocket.""
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TWO DOING?!"
Both Armando and Trey spun around to face an incredibly anger Thomas Hellner. His face was so red, Armando could practically see the steam pouring from his ears.
"Uh, well, we…"
"Gardner, get your ass into your cubicle! I'm not paying you to stand around, drinking coffee and watching the damn TV!" Hellner barked, not paying attention to Treys flustered face and his leave before turning to face Armando.
"And you, Ortiz! Why aren't you working on your story?"
"Mr. Hellner, I just saw the news, and there's this new vigilante in Chicago…" Armando started before Hellner marched over to the TV and turned it off.
"I don't care about some rip off of our vigilante! I want you to start putting the finishing touches on the story about our superhero!" Hellner snapped.
There's that word again, Armando thought.
"Well, I don't have any more evidence, so should I just start now-?"
"No, I don't want you to finish just yet. I got another call from the cops, about how a hitman from the MS-13 was found impaled on a chainlink fence. From what I've been told, Fernando Saldivar is starting to mobilize the Los Angeles cliques of MS-13" Hellner told him, his voice growing in glee with every word.
Armando wanted to throw up at that. Fernando Saldivar was the "primera palabra"-first voice-of the Los Angeles cliques of Mara salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, the most powerful street gang in the city. He was known not just for his brutality towards anyone who so much as thought of screwing with him, but also towards anyone in his own gang who shamed him. If he got caught in the crossfire, he would be lucky if he died first.
"So you want me to report on that?" Armando asked in shock. Hellner grinned with glee as he nodded.
"Yup! Up close, getting every inch of the action! Get a picture of every corpse, describe every scream and gunshot, hell, I want a photo of the vigilante himself, " Hellner told him.
"But, sir, this is Fernando Saldivar we're talking about-"
"I don't wanna hear it, Ortiz! Either you get the climax of this story and get paid, or I can fire you and make the streets your new home!" Hellner roared, his mood changing in an instant.
"You can't do that! You can't make me go risk my life in a warzone just because you want to make money off the sales of a medium that's dying every day!"
"Oh, I sure can! Tell me, where would you live when I fire you, and give your name to every employer, where will you live? In front of this building? Because I'm not gonna give you one dollar for your troubles! Or will it be on Skid Row? If that's the case, then how do you know whether or not the man reading your cardboard sign has a shank?"
Armando was full of rage at his boss; he knew he was probably going to die, but he wanted to keep his job and get the respect from other writers that he had wanted from day one. And he really didn't want to be left homeless. He was nobody's bitch, and he wasn't gonna beg for a dollar from anyone.
"Fine, sir" Armando muttered as he marched out of the lounge and back into his cubicle. All the while, he couldn't stop thinking:
Why is the vigilante of L.A. not being reported on? Is someone trying to cover it up?
That sent an unnatural chill up his spine.
IIIIIIIIIIIIII
Although he was one of the worlds richest men as the founder, CEO, President, and Executive Chairman of Packsler Digital Corporations, Hector Mendoza honestly enjoyed life as El Miedo Humana better. As Humana, he was the leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in California and the West Coast, and he prided himself on the fact that only two other people knew of his criminal identity-"Golde", the man who monitored the quiet business such as prostitution, and "Watchman", the large and grizzled man in charge of street enforcement and retaliation.
Recently, nineteen of his drug dealers had been murdered by a bizarre vigilante with no face and who wore a suit and stood at approximately eight feet tall. Mendoza did not care, because after all, he had a whole network of dealers across the nation.
But now, he did care. He hated to admit it to himself, but he was afraid. Alex Shepard was his most profitable drug dealer and he lived in Chicago, and now there was some wolf headed psycho who called himself The Pocket and ripped off the heads of criminals. It was bad enough his own turf, Los Angeles, was being besieged by an eight foot tall freak, but now his very organization was being directly threatened. Of course, this "Pocket" had not done anything to harm him yet, but he couldn't take any chances. These vigilantes needed to be stopped before they got involved in something they shouldn't have.
And then there was the comic book theatrics. Descriptions of teleportation, super strength, and now guys with tendrils that could rip heads off. Was it a trend? Were these two part of a bigger, cooperating movement?
Hector Mendoza had no answers, and a lack of answers told him that it was just the calm before the storm.
(NEXT ISSUE:While Armando is caught in the vengeful crossfire between Fernando Saldivar and the vigilante, a series of terrorist attacks begins to tear Los Angeles to pieces...but who are they? Why do they keep leaving behind a photo of a smiling Siberian Husky at the scene of their crimes? And are they behind the sudden wave of cryptic emails at the Los Angeles Times headquarters? All this in Slender Man #4:Retaliation #3.)