"You hungry, man? Or what?"

Frank Castle suddenly wasn't in the now. He was in the Then.


His son looked up at him and said: "I'm hungry, dad."


"Hello?! Buddy?! You on drugs or something?"

Frank blinked and returned to the now, the usual iron ball of 'what-once-was' sitting like a tumor in his gut. Meanwhile, the hot dog vendor in front of him seemed to be mad. Why was he mad?

Oh.

Frank realized he'd reached the front of the short line of three people to get a hot dog. Because he'd suddenly realized he was hungry and the hot dog cart was right there. And now it was his turn. And the hot dog guy was annoyed.

But, well, what the fuck was this guy's problem? The man sold hot dogs. Frank was about to buy a hot dog. That's what a hot dog guy fucking lived for, right? He should be jizzing in his fucking pants that Frank was considering paying five bucks for lazily-steamed, cheap-shit franks bought from the grocery down the block where they were sixty-six cents a pop; trash sausage made from sinew slag scraped off a fifty-year-old industrial hog processor in fucking Iowa.

"Gimmie a dog," said Frank with a grunt, rubbing at his own temple. His head hurt. His head always hurt.

"Seriously?" said Hot Dog Guy with an exaggerated attitude. "After all that anticipation. You just want a plain ole' dog?"

Frank blinked and he was Then.


He asked his son: "You want it plain? Are you sure?"

"Yeah!"

"You're gonna like toppings some day."


"Bruh! Hellooo!"

Frank crashed back into the Now as the Hot Dog Man jabbed him in the shoulder with three fingers. This time, he returned with the acid 'what-should-have-been' burning down his throat. Frank's eyes locked onto the Hot Dog Man and the spectrum of visible light dimmed notably.

"Are you gone again? Are you serious?" said the Hot Dog Man.

The acid coming down Frank Castle's throat hit the cold in his gut and rage blazed out at the meeting. His hand snapped out, grabbed the Hot Dog Man's sweaty apron, and pulled the man's face towards his own with such ferocity that the hot dog cart almost fell over as the man's body was dragged onto it.

But it wasn't a crime to be an annoying asshole, technically. So the chains holding onto the demon in Frank's soul snapped taunt- but held. He bared his teeth into the wide-eyed vendor who was discovering how useless his own hands were against Frank's iron grip.

"Gimmie a dog to eat, or I'm gonna get five to stuff up your ass."

He threw the man backwards, almost sending the hot dog cart over the other direction. Hot Dog Man barely managed to keep his feet, his eyes still wide. He opened the cart's steam chamber and shakily took out a streaming frank and put it in a plain bun.

"H- here, man. A plain dog. On the house."

Frank scowled. "I ain't a thief."

He took the crumpled fiver out of his pocket and tossed it onto the cart's tiny countertop, and then angrily snatched the foil-wrapped hotdog and stalked away down the street. He ripped open the foil and stuffed the hot dog into his mouth, chewing without tasting anything.

"What was with that guy?" grumbled a subdued vendor, his other customer's wide-eyed and very much not eager to comment.

Frank forgot the Hot Dog Man almost immediately as his mind turned again to the problem of the Carlani Building. Public records had it as a five story building in one of the 'better' areas of East New York, five apartments a floor for the first four, and a building-wide suite at the top: twenty one rooms.

On personal stakeouts, Frank counted about twenty-one goons, coincidentally. All armed with heavy pistols and professionalism enough to keep their iron hidden on the street. But guys on the inside likely had a few shotguns and some automatic rifles. The Carlani was no simple nut to crack.

And from the nut cracking Frank had done on the limp-cocked johns going in and out of the palace, he strongly suspected every one of the rooms had one or more slaves in them- young girls and boys from Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and other points south. Most of them drugged. Some of them drugged and chained.

That had pissed Frank off. That these people would pay money to fuck someone obviously chained to a bed against their will? Or drugged out of their minds? When Frank heard them confess that kinda thing, his world went monochrome and the demon burst its chains off the wall of the cell.

Now there was an elevator shaft reeking with eight corpses and Frank hadn't even nixxed a single member of the people running the fucking place. He was running out of time. If someone discovered the shaft of dead fucking johns, the police would come, the Carlani Building would go on lock down, the operators would get spooked, and Frank would miss his chance to eradicate all the fucking rats inside.

Oh, and free the slaves. A bonus.

Tonight. It was gonna have to be tonight when-

A scream of pain and the thud of flesh on flesh brough Frank Castle out of his planning trance. His dark eyes scanned his surroundings- he had wandered from a shit part of town into a shittier one. Businesses were open, people were on the sidewalk, but fewer of them- and when they heard what Frank had heard, they put their heads down and walked a bit faster.

Frank zeroed in on the noise and went towards it. In a small hollow lot on the side of some decrepid commercial laundry, two young men were kicking a man who was on the ground. The cringing victim was clearly some sort of street dweller, and he'd clearly been hit a lot. A lot, a lot.

His son lay on the pavement, his body jerking from the automatic rifle fire, the high-caliber rounds causing a child's body to dance and burst apart.

The chains burst. Frank's vision went monochrome. His eyes focused on the two assaulters and he strode forward with murderous purpose, the bones in his knuckles cracking in his clenched fists.

One of the young men saw him coming, his rat-like eyes gleaming from under the him of a knitted beanie.

"Jake, man, we got company, ha ha."

The other young man looked up. A chin with a small scar and a shit haircut. A shit-eating grin.

"Oh, shit. Looks like Captain Middle Age coming to save the day?"

It wouldn't be right to just shoot these men. That wouldn't be a fit punishment. Frank had time to do things right. A little warm up before the real dust up tonight with the slavers.

Little Scar Chin cocked back for a punch. Frank's fist shattered his jaw before the man could bring his forward. Dazed and wide-eyed, the man collapsed towards the pavement.

"Fuck you!" said Rat-Eyes, and his punch at Frank successfully launched forward.

Frank's kick caught him in the side of the knee. There was an audible crunch of shattering joint. Rat-eye screamed shrilly and joined his friend on the ground, clutching a ruined kneecap. But the piercing screams of pain were a problem. Someone might hear. Someone might see.

Someone might call the police to come stop justice from being delivered.

Frank kicked Rat-Eyes in the head, steel toed work boots making a wet ruin of the delicate bones of a human face. Frank kicked again. And again. And again.

Scar-Chin looked like he might make a go for getting back up. Frank pivoted on his foot and kicked him in the face too, causing the man to flip onto his back. Frank stomped down on Scar-Chin's skull with his heel. Again. And again. And again. All of his weight into the effort.

Suddenly, Frank Castle realized he was yelling at the top of his lungs. He staggered backwards. He was deeply winded, his chest heaving from exertion. His boots and lower jeans were hot and wet. Gasping for breath and blinking color back into his vision, Frank evaluated his handiwork.

Three bodies lay in the hollow lot; the unconscious hobo and the two corpses with only the vague shapes of human heads on the crumpled ends of their necks.

Frank looked down at his jeans with dismay. They were dark red with human blood, but after he rubbed some random garbage on them, they didn't look that conspicuous- for East New York, anyway. It was the best he could do with what he had available.

Frank stalked off the way he'd come, leaving all three bodies on the ground behind him.

When he reached the street, no one looked at him. No one was interested. No one even knew. No one cared.

Frank checked the address of the laundry, called an ambulance for the hobo with one of his two burner phones, and then tossed the thing in the trash. He stalked off down the street. Putting as much distance between him and that lot was the immediate necessity. People knew his face. People who wanted to stop him for some naive ideal of justice.

He didn't have time for that shit. Not today. Not tonight.

In two blocks, Frank had forgotten the hobo, and Rat-Eye, and Little Scar Chin. He was busy visualizing his assault strategy on the slave house. In his mind's eye, dozens of fantasy goons fell bloody to the floor, riddled with bullets, as The Punisher planned his best path of movement through his memory of the Calani Building's blueprints…