Wretched Joy 13 (Patreon)

Commissioned by southmonk

Wretched Joy

Chapter 13

-VB-

I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. 

A week.

A week where I did not go out and kill Nazis. 

It was … tough. 

Part of this had to do with the fact that I was holding down the fort in the Docks where my Nightmare Circle was. Out of nowhere, people began to enter it by the droves and bought houses within it. 

As for why, it took me a few moments to realize that my own actions had been the result.

The Nightmare Circle dealt with any capes and criminals. Firefighters were exempt. Nurses, doctors, and paramedics were exempt. 

This meant that, by the time people got used to having a slowly growing circle that gave people nightmares, people realized that as long as they didn’t commit a serious crime (stealing, killing, raping, knowingly working for a criminal or criminal organization, et cetera), they could live within my circle.

Barring any kind of mass destruction like tsunamis, meteors, nuclear bomb, or the like, my Nightmare Circle had, after months of fearful people leaving it and then over a night of realization, become a safe haven unlike any other in the world. 

Not even being right next to Legend or Eidolon made someone safer than being within my Nightmare Circle. 

Because of that, people started flooding in, especially the rich folks. 

And it was exactly because of them that my circle got even more famous. 

See, one of those idiots tried underhanded, scumbag move that was legal.

But legal did not mean morally and ethically correct. In fact, because it involved shitty bureaucratic nonsense, it was almost criminal because several people who had remained in the circle had not received their court dates and whatnot because mailmen didn’t enter the circle after the first dozen or so among them suffering its effects. 

That was enough for the rich bastards trying to oust the poor unable to leave my circle to get targeted by my circle. 

Not too long after that, someone tried to start a false rumor about someone else in the circle. They knew it was false and would hurt the other person. 

What was the rumor?

Rape.

This was a criminal act.

The circle targeted the would-be liar immediately as soon as the sentence and “implication” left their mouth and stunned them with nightmares until they left. 

This only made my circle even more sought after.

A place where someone could not be falsely accused. A place where criminals could not exist. A place where life was … calm. Quiet. Peaceful.

Of course, there was a downside to this as well. A poor man tried to steal because he was hungry. He also got nightmare’d to hell, and after being forced to leave, he couldn’t come back in, which only made his life worse. 

While I ended up having to manage the place not as a landowner or civil servant but as the only authority that these people seemed to accept; because so many cops in Brockton Bay had accepted a bribe at least once in their career, most of them couldn’t enter the zone.

And as much as I liked Nazi-killing, I had a responsibility for the new problem I caused, so I spent a full week organizing the people, assigning “wardens,” and spending some time each day to ready myself for the future. 

And now, it was here. I was finally free of the responsibility that I had unknowingly created for myself. 

I was -.

“Hey, mister Joe?”

I sighed and turned around. “Yes, child?” I asked the little kid who’d walked up to me. 

“Can you help me with my mom and dad? They keep fighting.”

I took a deep breath in and crouched down to their eye level. “I’m sorry, kid. If they don’t invite me to help them, then I won’t help them.”

“But why? I’m asking!”

“Because as long as they keep it to themselves and not commit a crime, then I shouldn’t. Now shoo.” 

The kid pouted but did leave as I told him, too. 

This was a new problem for me. 

Children started thinking that I was a good guy instead of the scary bad guy beating bad guy their parents won’t let them near. 

But the Nightmare Circle’s existence meant that enough parents felt I was not a bad influence to let their kids approach me. Or enough of them weren’t paying enough attention to their kids that they just walked up to me anyways. 

After this week, I knew that I shouldn’t involve myself with any further governance or bureaucratic work. 

My purpose in my third life was simple. 

Kill bad guys and be happy about it. 

So …

I decided to get some stress relief.

I pulled out my Villain Pointing Compass.

“Where is … Alabaster right now?”

It was time to remind people that I wasn’t their leader, representative, landowner, or any other misconception that they placed on me to calm themselves.

-VB-

What was Alabaster to the Empire Eighty-Eight and its people? 

Through all of the racism he spouted and videos of his grotesquely damaged body returning whole and hale, he represented something that people often forgot about ideas.

Ideas did not die as long as the people who held them as their identity remained. 

Alabaster was the epitome of an idea’s survival. No matter the judgement wrought upon him, no matter the damage he suffered, and no matter how ugly he became, Alabaster remained a steadfast supporter and fighter for the white supremacy’s fight against the world. People looked upon him and saw in him their hero, if not a dog ready to be unleashed against their enemies. 

I intended to break that steadfast trust in their ideology. 

To temper their hatred with fear.

I stared down at the gathering of men and women in a warehouse. They were trying to run what looked like a dogfighting ring, but my focus was on only the cape among them. 

I stood up from my seat and slowly made my way over to where Alabaster sat among his cronies. 

“Umm, sir?”

He looked up at me. He didn’t recognize me. How would he? With my Silent Ring, I was just another face in the crowd, and in a crowded warehouse like this where people were exchanging money and roaring over puppies killing each other, he didn’t care who I was, only that I was someone who he considered “in” with the Empire. 

After all, Alabaster didn’t let no black man in his dogfighting ring.

“Who are you?”

“One of Victor’s people, sir.”

“Ah. What’d he send you here for?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. 

I pretended to be afraid. 

“Umm…. didn’t Kaiser say that we should keep our down? Victor … He said he wanted me to tell you to stop… but I’m just a normal guy, you know? I don’t know what goes on up among the top brass like yourself.”

A mixture of deflecting, reverence, and deference.

Alabaster sneered not at me but at the idea that Victor was trying to tell him what to do. “Tell that fucker to shut the fuck up. I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m not afraid of the race traitor.” Then he turned to the rest of the people there. “Are we afraid of one bastard who can’t fight in the open?!”

They cheered, some more than others. 

“Oh, I guess I should go tell him…?”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell Victor whatever you want to save your skin,” he snorted and turned back to look at the latest fight. 

With a shrug… I reached out and touched him just as I activated my Ring of Teleportation. 

With a silent hiss, both of us found ourselves high up in the sky far away from Brockton Bay.

“What the shit-?” Alabaster muttered before both of us began to fall. 

Unlike him, I remained calm and pulled out an ankle ring I’d prepared for this. 

At only ten charges, it wasn’t strong compared to most of my gear. However, it only had one seriously simple function. To become heavier with each charge. At ten charges, it weighed two tons.

I snapped it on Alabaster’s ankle.

He finally noticed me and while shouting something that was lost to the winds, he struggled to reach for me.

The man didn’t have any skydiving experience, apparently, because he began to flip and flop all over the place.

I laughed, which was also lost to the winds, before I teleported back out. 

If Alabaster was lucky, then he would land in the part of the ocean that was mostly flat. If not, then he would fall into the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Regardless of which location he fell to, he wouldn’t be able to take off the ankle ring. It would drag him down below until he was under crushing pressure from the ocean water above. Hell, he didn’t even need to fall into the Mid-Atlantic Ridge for that! That pressure would kill him over and over again, if the drowning didn’t. 

Even if he could somehow remove a ring that was tightly fitted onto him, where would he go? He was stranded in the middle of the ocean where the waters were calm. He was, in essence, stranded with no one to even look for him. Why would anyone look for Alabaster in the middle of the Atlantic? There were no shipping fleet carrying cargo to and fro on top of that. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean had about as much risk as climbing Mountain Everest without a guide. 

Possible, yes. Suicidal, also yes.

So unless God decided to forgive him and gave him a literal miracle, that’s where he would be, forever suffering.

A true hell for a life spent tormenting others.