Wretched Joy 17 (Patreon)

Commissioned by southmonk

Wretched Joy

Chapter 17

-VB-

I took time today to make breakfast for myself. 

I just felt good enough to do it! It mattered to me that I was personally putting an end to the very people that killed me and my friends. 

It made me satisfied. 

It made me happy to see the bastards and bitches who tormented my friends and I suffering in fear and then in pain as I worked on them. 

Even those that I didn’t kill were fleeing the city in an exodus as it became clearer every day that Kaiser couldn’t defend them. I didn’t care who or what they were. I made it all very personal. 

All Nazis had to die, and if I traumatized their kids with their parent’s death, then good! 

They should learn not to become a Nazi. If they became one even after that experience, then that was just Darwinism at work.

I finished making the food and walked over to my dinner table, set the food down, and turned on the television. Not paying for anything, the only channels available to me were the free local and free national channels, so I tuned in to a local channel. 

I dug into my paprika chicken with a side of clam chowder and milk bread, a kind of very fluffy bread that bordered on being cake from its sugar content but not quite there. 

Hah! Eat that, subway. My basic fluffy bread was healthier than your multigrain Italian.

Where was I?

Oh right, the TV.

Or more specifically, the news. 

I raised my eyebrow as the channel tuned into the local news station.

I watched as the channel went through its intro of the cast and everything else before the anchor, a pretty young man, spoke up.

“Hello, Brockton Bay, and welcome back to Channel 11 News. Today, we have a special news for all of you. Kaiser, the leader of the local parahuman criminal gang, the Empire Eighty-Eight, has surrendered himself to the custody of PRT ENE. Yes, you’ve heard me right, Brockton Bay. Kaiser, the successor of Allfather, and the leader of the E88 has surrendered himself to the PRT! Isn’t that great?”

What…?

“As part of his surrender, he was quickly transferred over to PRT Boston where he has neither the powerbase nor supporters to break him out. And with his surrender and the recent fatalities among its cape roster, I am pretty sure just as you are that the Empire Eighty-Eight, a criminal gang that has been plaguing the city for over four decades, has finally been destroyed with all of its criminals in the ground, on the run, or in government custody.”

No…

“But we all know who and what led to this. It wasn’t the PRT ENE or the police but the … justifiably homicidal villain, Everyday Joe. The PRT might call him something else but we all know what he wants to be called by, and I’m not about to make him mad by calling him something else on live camera!” the man chuckled before the screen switched, showing a different angle of the anchor before he turned to look at the camera. “Now, what could have caused Kaiser to surrender? What was the straw that broke the camel’s back? From the footage provided by Kaiser himself that our contact within the PRT acquired, it was this footage. Before we show you the video, I must warn you. Viewer’s discretion is advised, and all children should be kept away from the screen for a hot minute.”

And then it showed Kaiser’s office seconds before I teleported in and dropped Crusader’s head before teleporting back out before Kaiser could respond. 

Much of the video was blurred except for where I was to prevent leakage of Kaiser’s private office and thus his civilian identity. 

“Yes, you saw that correctly, folks. Joe just teleported in with someone’s head, dropped it, and left without a word. He can be a bit rude, huh?”

“That he can be,” the anchor’s partner, a slightly older woman but no less pretty, chuckled. She turned to look at a different camera. “From what we were told, it seems that Joe hunted down the former E88 cape Crusader, who had fled from Brockton Bay. However, Joe hunted him down and brought his head to Kaiser. This was a message that Kaiser could not ignore and led to his surrender.”

I reached for the remote and stopped when I realized that I was shaking. 

My breaths came quick. In, out. In, out. In out in out inout inout inoutinoutinout -.

I stopped. 

Held my breath.

Then took a deep breath in.

Oh, I was so … so very angry. So so very very angry.

Kaiser thought he could just up and flee? Take a plea deal or something? Surrender? Think he could get away from me?

I opened my mouth, realizing once again that I had been biting down hard unconsciously from how angry I was. 

I turned off the tv and went back to eating. 

I ate, shoving food in methodically and slowly.

Oh, I intended to get Kaiser. He wasn’t going to run away from me. No… No one ran away from me. 

If I had to run some heroes through to get him…

… That was a price I was going to have to deal with.