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"Wake the fuck up, samurai. We've got a city to burn." – The Legend
.:.
Once Frank got his bearings, he reverted to his usual routine.
The first on the list was picking a base of operations. A safehouse, a bunker- maybe both. There was no shortage of exploitable resources found in the possession of the gangs he encountered in Santo Domingo. By the time the Punisher settled in, he got very familiar with the diverse groups of criminal organizations fighting the endless war for control of Night City's streets.
The corporations were on the top of the food chain. Around the middle were the gangs. Further down were what Frank described as pure detritus, psychopaths and madmen too far gone to be even considered human. He had no qualms with dealing with either one of the three types in his usual way.
Frank picked his first safehouse well. It was dirty on the outside, covered in provocative graffiti like a crackhouse and stank to high heaven. But on the inside, it was clean. There were a couple of rooms built for some gunrunner's stash, fortified steel with a tunnel system that led beneath the bowels of Night City. He had a few safehouses of the like before. Frank took the keycode off the guy's hands when the previous owner died in a deal gone horribly wrong. The Punisher had come across a dozen other events in the dark recesses of Santo Domingo, all eerily similar to that ill-fated deal. Gunrunning was dangerous work, and it just wasn't the poor bastard's day. He literally had to cut it out of the gunrunner's hand as almost everything in Night City was wireless or automated.
Frank hated that. Convenience of that sort was suboptimal to his Spartan standards. Wireless shit, this world took that concept to another level. They put that stuff in their heads. He could never understand how careless people could get around technology. In his experience, the head was the most vulnerable part of the human body. All that chrome, wired up into the fleshy red matter of the brain, was like making free tunnels for the tunnel rats. Bad idea.
"Welcome, Vinnie." A monotonous voice greeted Frank upon entering the safehouse. The Punisher didn't know it, but the door was rigged with a counter-measure against intruders, the explosive kind. Accessing the safehouse without Vinnie the Gunrunner's unique code would've been the end for Frank.
The first room was the storage room and the garage, with crates and cases of exotic weapons of every size and make. There was a hardlight holo-projector, a dusty machine from the late 2050's for gun range practice targets, sitting snugly on top of a stack of ammo boxes. Surplus materials for crafting ammunition were stowed away, meticulously arranged with the grenades and rockets. There were papers there too. Papers. Frank had seen so much of the future he thought that everyone had abandoned the tried and true analog path.
The papers had names. Frank sat down and studied them for a moment before moving on. They were files on the many contacts and connections that the gunrunner had in the business, prior to his ugly demise. The Punisher threw a glance at the armored truck sitting in the docking bay. It was a beast, a tank on six wheels. A 45mm auto-cannon for a main gun and .50 cal for the second. Reactive plates covered its exterior like a sturdy brick wall to guard against rockets and missiles, just the type of thing Frank would use when packing heavy. Sitting beside the tank was a simpler vehicle, an ARCH Nazaré motorcycle. In case he had to go around exploring, Frank supposed that the bike would have its uses.
The second room was purely for recreational. This 'Vinnie' fellow had enough eddies for a lot of luxuries. The room was tiled, decked out with shiny things that made it look like a private penthouse for some elitist. Bed was too soft, too large and too fluffy. At least the gunrunner invested on the basic amenities, like a shower, a proper fridge and a mini-bar.
Frank treated himself to some tequila. Just a little to unwind, not to dull his edge but wet it. Like a blade before the sharpening.
Vinnie had a network of screens hooked up to most channels in Night City, and Frank spent the rest of the day studying the world around him. Lot of garbage flooding the networks, it felt like wading up to his neck in a sewer filled with pervasive advertisements, but he found what he was looking for. He got to know Night City a little better, know the players who made up the pyramid of this dystopian future. Corporate businessmen ran the world, nothing new there. They had their own little empires, sharing space with aggressive and very competitive rivals. Those in the middle who were content with minding their own shit, the people who fed and oiled the machine, likely got trampled underfoot in the day-to-day battles fought by these corporations. At the very bottom were the scum. And just like a pyramid, the bottom took up a big fat chunk of that space.
Whatever passed for law enforcement in Night City was fighting a losing battle. Frank didn't have to see it, he already knew that the boys in blue were underpaid, overworked, undermanned and outgunned. With a city like Night City, there's bound to be a lot of corruption in their ranks. How far? Hard to say. But one thing was certain, they weren't getting any shit done.
His family... their graves wouldn't be around to help him find his center of gravity. Not here. Back then, it was the only thing keeping him sane, grounded. It was part of his routine. He'd go through the madness, make the world a little more sane by killing bad guys, then come back for a walk among the tombstones. Here, in madworld, Frank would have to settle for the killing.
The Punisher muted the screens and took off his coat. Something fell out of his pocket, but in his haste he didn't notice. He went through Vinnie's things and found some clean shirts to change in. His old one stank of sweat, blood and cordite.
"Hm?" He glanced down and saw a narrow slit along the length of his lowest rib.
Blood oozed from it, hot and red. Frank sighed and searched for a medicine cabinet. Vinnie had a mini-clinic, just like his bar. It surprised Frank to find a robot built into the cabinet wall where he expected to find the tools. He bared his teeth for a moment, then relaxed. The robot's little scanners detected his injuries and went to work, disinfecting the wound first with a quick swab then sewing it shut. It applied a bandage, thin like laminate, over the wound. All done in two minutes, the robot powered-down and folded up back into the wall.
"Useful." Frank remarked, closing a new shirt over his body.
Finally, his eyes glanced down at the thing that fell out of his coat pocket. It was a wrinkled photo of him and his family. The picture was old, folded and straightened out then folded again a hundred times. When he couldn't visit their graves as part of his routine, Frank looked at the photo and let the memories of happier days come rushing back.
It was Frank Jr.'s birthday. Frank Sr. was back from rotation, and the kid wanted a toy soldier for his present. The big guy didn't like how his son idolized him, with that poor naïve hero-worship that he'd seen in the eyes of the rookies who'd served with him, only to have the war chew them up with a heavy dose of reality and spit them out. He didn't like that his son wanted to become like him, a soldier thrown like fodder by a bunch of uncaring butter-bars in their ivory towers. Little Frank Jr. didn't know any of that. How could he? He'd just turned eight.
Frank didn't like it one bit, wished in that moment that his son wanted to become something else. He still bought him that toy, though.
Frankie would be eighteen then. And if he was anything like his old man, he'd go through his phase like a wild stallion. He'd drop out of college, knock up some girl and end up marrying her. He'd fight with the folks, enlist as a marine, then go overseas to fight some new enemy for the good ol' US of A.
He'd break his mom's heart, maybe his old man's. But he'd be alive. They all would.
Frank lost himself in the 'what-if' dream. It hurt to do that, but he just didn't care. Some might call it amateurish therapy, or some shit like that. Frank had no name for it, it just worked. Just seeing the blurry, faded dream of him with his kids... and Maria.
The big guy doesn't cry. He just smiled through the pain and went to sleep.
Frank opened his eyes to find the room dark and a little chilly. The safehouse custodian intelligence had turned the lights out and switched the AC on when it sensed he'd drifted off.
His body clock said it all. Morning. Time to go to work.
Frank went to Vinnie's storage room... or rather, his storage room, and prepped his gear for the day. On a workbench were two .45 caliber Unity pistols, which Vinnie was in the process of pimping up with some silver and gold overlays. Frank had left the guns undisturbed last night, but he needed a weapon. Something familiar, and the Unity power-pistols seemed the type.
He opened a green box labeled in dull white Militech International Armaments, and went through its contents. The smell of new fabrics and other unknown odors assaulted his nostrils. Vinnie had marked it as 'preem merch- to highest bidder only' on the invoice attached. Frank could see why. It was a ballistic protection suit, not a vest. It covered the whole torso, shoulders and lower body. Ballistic plates, made out of light alloys not composite, covered the wearer's vital organs. It even came with a ballistic mask and a tactical harness.
The only problem Frank had with it was the color. It came in urban blue. Easily fixable with a can of black and white spray paint. Frank glanced around and found nothing of the sort. Vinnie didn't have spray paint.
Frank got his battered and tattered vest, put it on, then donned his coat. He figured he'd go shopping while the day was still young. But with what money?
The Punisher glanced at his hands. He'd noticed things on his long walks through the streets of Santo Domingo. People rarely used bills, they just pointed or tapped at their faces and their eyes would shine with that odd electric glow. Wireless currency. The dollar and the euro put together. Eddies. There was not a single bit of cyberware in him, and Frank wouldn't dare start. That was just a recipe for disaster.
Frank got familiar with his new .45's. He treated them with respect as he went through the checklist, dropping and putting the mag back on, then firing at the hardlight targets projected by the holo-projector. The .45's snap to, like two obedient dogs. They bark and bite with deadly precision.
Vinnie may have been a punk, but he sure knew how to pick his guns.
Frank reloaded, holstered his pistols beneath his arms, then left the safehouse. The custodian intelligence locked up after him and armed the explosives built into the door. It was a new day in Night City, but it felt like picking up where he left off. Same drugged up bum sitting with his back against a dumpster, same hooker idling on the corner for her next customer, same NCPD patrolman taking a smoke break on his favorite spot outside a drug-store. The air of Santo Domingo smelled like motor oil, burnt plastic and new paint with a little something that burnt Frank's nostrils whenever he took a breath.
The Punisher followed the signs, blended in with the crowd, and slipped into a lonely little shop sandwiched between two large apartment complexes. The store owner glanced up and stared at the big guy, then pretended to go back to reading his little magazine. Frank went through the aisles, quickly studying the environment as he always did, then proceeded to pick his cans of spray paint.
As he did so, he noticed that the backdoor was slightly ajar. There were three men playing cards, seated around a small endtable. Frank overheard some non-English words, something Indo-European, exchanged between them along with some other crude slangs in English. The three men looked like the scum of the earth, covered in Slavic tattoos and odd Cyrillic letters from head to toe.
Then, in walked a fourth man wearing a slick black corpo trench coat. Without missing a beat, the stranger pulled out a gun and shot the card-players before they could react. Frank's brows furrowed. He watched the man work, forgetting his task at the shop for a second. The store owner didn't seem to mind the ruckus, he didn't even dial up the police.
In Santo Domingo, most problems tended to solve themselves.
Seeing Frank give him a dirty look, the store owner just shrugged. "Not worth my blood, pendejo."
There was a lot more shooting that followed. Frank got one of his power-pistols out and made his way through the backdoor. Suddenly, a giant cyberdog in full chrome bolted past the Punisher. Its head looked like someone bolted two chainsaws together and bent the metal to look a little to vaguely resemble a dog's head, the rest was an unholy amalgamation of flesh and metal.
"The fuck-!" Frank said under his breath.
The thing ignored him and rushed fearlessly in through the entrance of the next-door apartment complex. Frank could see the flashes of gunfire from the second floor, then the third, then the fourth. Whoever that man was, he worked quickly. Not wanting to be left out of the action, and just to check if he was a danger to anyone other than those punks, Frank headed inside. Dozens of gangers lay strewn all over the room, surrounded by growing pools of red and spent casings. He found something else along the way, something that made his expression grow dark and his teeth grind together.
In some of the rooms, Frank found young half-naked women handcuffed to the railings of their beds. Drugged out of their minds, they stared up at him with blank glassy eyes. Frank realized that the scumbags were human traffickers. He'd killed enough of them to know the signs when he saw them. The Punisher followed the bloody trail and the rattle of machineguns firing above. Floor after floor, the big guy just kept finding stacks and stacks of twitching corpses.
Finally, he got to the roof and arrived just in time for the finale.
The stranger was scuffling with another guy at least a head taller than he was. A big Russian with a funny red-striped shirt and metal arms that looked more like industrial tools than limbs. The stranger had lost his weapon, but he still had his cyberdog and his hands. He narrowly avoided the bigger Russian's fists and opened him up for the dog to lunge upwards and bite down hard on his crotch.
"Blyat!" The Russian swore, smashing the dog's snout in with a powerful downwards strike. Reeling in agony, but angry enough to focus on his opponent, the beast launched a haymaker that sent the smaller man toppling. Frank, content to be a spectator for the most part, made his decision and picked a side. He raised his weapon and took careful aim. The power-pistol barked and followed a straight line through the Russian's head, going through his soft right eye and soundly bouncing around his steel-plated skull.
The corpse fell backwards and was still. Frank lowered his gun and approached the man lying next to the damaged cyberdog. The stranger looked old, like a battle-hardened lion with a high mileage. The fire of his youth was gone in the eyes, replaced by a calloused cynicism that only men who courted death could have. When he spoke, it was in the same rough-as-gravel tone as Frank's voice.
He looked like a guy with a particular set of skills. "And who the hell are you supposed to be?"
Frank didn't answer right away. He let the man stand on his own. Both of them eyed each other warily, making their own conclusions as to what must happen next. Frank looked around to make sure the roof was safe, to look out for any more of the Russian's friends, then put another bullet into his corpse to make sure he was dead.
"Thanks for the assist." The stranger said, examining the damage on his dog. "Bastard was tougher than I thought. You okay, Gar?"
Garfield the Cyberdog emitted a robotic yip as it lifted its poor abused head. Sparks flew from the hole in its snout.
"Mind telling me what this was all about?" Frank asked.
"Not at all. I'm Ryan Hills." The stranger introduced himself, "Came to Night City looking for my daughter. She's... she's been taken."
Frank narrowed his eyes, "You mean kidnapped?"
Ryan nodded. "I tracked her last location ping to this place, went through the rooms, but didn't find her. That means they moved her."
He started moving downstairs and going from body to body. Frank followed, watching and learning from Ryan's actions. The other guy had some mods, allowing him to interface with and access the cyberware on the dead traffickers. It was useful tech, probably more effective than torturing the information out of them. Ryan's faded dull blue eyes lit up as he processed the intel.
"Hmm..." He turned to face Frank, "Look, I know you and I just met but... I could really use your help. These men have my girl, and they have a bigger army than the one I plowed through today."
There wasn't much that the old lion had to say to get Frank to jump onboard. Frank despised traffickers, and he had a soft spot for fathers and their kids. In a fucked-up world like Night City, there just might be a few good men left. And if he was onboard, maybe he just might be able to kill a few more scumbags like today.
"I'll help you." Frank stated simply.
"I'd appreciate it." Ryan shook his hand, "You got a name, friend?"
"Frank. Frank Castle."
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