So this is going to bee chapter 3/4, I'll need to figure out chapter 2/3, probably what happened between then and now, his trigger, maybe how he is when he gets back home, this chapter also needs a rework, now based on chapter one so I would just skip it for now
Frank
November 2015
Six months is a long time to get to know a place you hate. Six months of tracking down the kind of people that crawl out from under the rocks the city keeps trying to pave over. It was enough time to get my hands bloody again, enough to remind myself what I am, and more than enough to know this city isn't worth saving. Not by me.
I sit in the damp shadows of a crumbling subway station in Brooklyn, the stale scent of metal and mildew thick in the air. The darkness feels like an old friend. I've spent the last few months clearing out the trash that hides here, buried in places only men like me bother to look. But the government just gave me a head start, not a clean slate. They're watching. Always. Waiting for me to slip.
It doesn't matter. New York can keep its capes, heroes, and masked lunatics. They're no better than the gangs I've been gutting one by one. But there's a difference between the crooks in the street and the ones wearing capes. Capes think they're untouchable, like the powers that come to them in the night or in the middle of a panic attack make them something more than human. They don't bleed red any different than the rest of us. I've seen them run, seen them beg, seen them drop when I aim between the ribs and pull the trigger.
If I had known what kind of world I was getting back to, maybe I would've stayed dead. Afghanistan, that was different. A straight fight, no capes, no powers just men willing to kill other men. We were trained for that. When my boots hit the ground there, I knew what was waiting. Out here? It's another world. Parahumans aren't just men; they're weapons. Gangs recruit them like it's nothing, using these freaks to get the upper hand. That's how I lost my family. And every time I see one of these "heroes" parading around with their powers, I remember just how fragile life was for Maria, for Lisa, for Francis. They didn't have powers to save them from a bloodbath in Central Park. And they weren't the only ones.
Six months. I remember every face, every street corner, every alley I've been through, wiping out the scum that slipped through the cracks of the system. In the service, you learn a thing or two about going after the enemy. You learn to track, to hunt. That doesn't change. What's changed is the face of the enemy. Some of them go up in smoke, others melt your gun just by looking at it. One of them even threw fireballs, like he thought he was a living flamethrower. He still went down with a bullet between the eyes. Brutes god's worst creation, taking bullets like no one's business; just means I needed a bigger gun.
The government's crawling all over this city, more than they used to, ever since these parahumans started showing up by the dozens. They call them heroes, or they put them on watch lists, but it's all the same in the end. Some of them are playing the long con, hiding behind smiles and corporate sponsorships, pretending they're here to help. But the first thing you learn on the battlefield is that everyone's got a motive, a reason for putting on the mask. They think they're heroes; I think they're another kind of threat.
The government doesn't like that I see it this way. They said it right before they gave me my "head start." You would think that I would get a clean slate after cleaning up the filth of the CIA. Almost everyone ended up dead after that fiasco; Madani was the closest to making it out but a headshot is a headshot I would know that best. A two-man team from the Department of Parahuman Affairs knocked on my door after I put down a gang in the Bronx, a gang with ties to powered criminals, freaks with abilities that could tear through concrete. They said I was a loose end, a complication. But they didn't try to stop me, just made it clear that if I stepped out of line, they'd be on me. I don't care. Let them come. This whole city is full of people who think they're above justice. They might be able to bend it, twist it. I don't.
New York's under control now at least, as much as any place can be. The PRT swooped in right after I cleaned house, picking off the pieces and patching the holes I left behind. I know they don't want to admit it, but they needed me. The PRT's got numbers, sure, but they play by the rules, and the gangs don't. They needed someone willing to go to the places they wouldn't, someone who didn't mind getting blood on his hands to rip out the roots. They needed someone like me.
But now that the trash is taken out, I'm expendable. They want me gone, and it's not enough to just let me disappear. No, now the PRT's put me on a damn "kill or capture" list, filed right under the name Frank Castle. They didn't even have the guts to make me a number or a code like they do for the real threats. Just "Frank Castle." Guess they want it personal.
Doesn't matter to me. Marion James gave me a head start, but she does't have the power to reel in the PRT, not now that they've got a foothold in New York. The feds say I helped them, the local cops pretend they didn't see what I did to clear the streets, but the PRT? They've got a different way of looking at the world. To them, if you're not with them, you're against them. They don't like freelancers. They can't control me, so now they're trying to put me down like a rabid dog.
But I'm not rabid, not out of control. I know exactly what I'm doing.
New York's quiet now, and it's time for me to move on. There's a place north of here where the gangs are worse, and the PRT doesn't have the same stranglehold. A city rotting from the inside out, the kind of place that would've chewed me up and spit me out a few years ago. Brockton Bay. It's barely hanging on by a thread, plagued by capes that don't even pretend to be heroes. They don't wear masks to hide who they are, they wear them to declare war. And they'll get one.
I've heard enough rumors about the Bay to know what I'm walking into. They call it a "cape hub." More capes per square mile than anywhere else in the country, gangs fortified by parahumans that have turned the city into a war zone. The Empire Eighty-Eight. ABB. Merchants. Names whispered like legends in the dark alleys of New York, capes that run entire sections of the city. I've read enough about them to know they'll have to go down, each and every one of them. One by one, or all at once, it doesn't matter. They're not getting a pass.
But the PRT? They're not done with me either. They can play at being the heroes all they want, claiming they're protecting the innocent while they sit in their government offices. The higher-ups in the PRT don't give a damn about cleaning up crime; they just want control. Control over people like me, people who don't fall in line. So they stamped a kill order on my head, and every PRT agent out there now has the green light to take me down if I so much as show my face. Doesn't matter that I did their dirty work for them in New York. Doesn't matter that I tore out the roots they were too afraid to touch. I'm just another problem on their radar, something to "neutralize."
I roll my shoulders and stand, the weight of my old Kevlar vest comforting under my coat. My stash is just down the line, and tonight I'll be on the move again. It's time to leave New York. I've done my work here, or at least as much as I can stomach. This city's got its heroes. They won't miss one man with a grudge and a gun. There's a new name on my list, thinks his power makes him untouchable. He'll find out how wrong he is.
But Brockton Bay isn't New York, and the rules are different there. I'm done playing their game, walking their line, just to watch them turn on me when it's convenient. They think they're putting me on the run, driving me out of New York, out of their reach. But I'm not running; I'm moving forward.