Wretched Joy 21 (Patreon)

Commissioned by southmonk

Wretched Joy

Chapter 21

-VB-

People were still talking about my “assault” on First Circuit court in Boston. 

Bah. 

Cornell Bomber, and thus Bakuda, was not yet a thing. 

Which meant that the ABB was a conventional force right now with just a Brute and a Mover. I also knew the general location of where they operated out of but not the exact specifics. 

I needed to start doing some reconnaissance if I didn’t want to get caught unaware by any traps, though. Perhaps a counter to Lung’s overwhelming growth? I could give him the Alabaster treatment, but, well, I didn’t think it was good enough of a punishment for Lung. 

Lung deserved something that Kaiser should have gotten. 

Eternal torment or a long and drawn execution. 

I didn’t think of it as me enjoying the act, per se, but a way to … dissuade others who would be warlords in the first place. At least here in Brockton Bay. I knew that I was pretty strong, but there was no way I could patrol all of New England, never mind the entire USA.

(Right?)

But before I go about doing just that, I wanted to empower a few more items just in case I might need them. It was going to take a few days, but I didn’t need to rush into taking down the ABB. 

Which just meant that while I cooked up more gear specifically to fuck over Lung, I should be going after the weakest parahuman gang in all of Brockton Bay. 

The Archer’s Bridge Merchants. 

I knew that they were based mostly in the Docks and the Trainyards, which limited where I would have to search for them. 

Now, how should I get rid of those pests? None of them were immortal and all of them were scum, one way or another. 

I thought about it while swinging my legs underneath the table. 

Well, they sold poison to people, but if I poisoned someone too quickly, then they won’t suffer before they died. Worse, I didn’t know anything about poison. 

But more than that, the Merchants were responsible for so much of the hopelessness people felt and were unable to escape from. 

They needed to be punished for that. People needed to see their oppressors suffer so that they can stand up and move forward. 

So how was I going to make that visible? Just setting up another Nightmare Circle wasn’t going to cut it. The Merchants will just avoid the new area and move on to terrorize people in a different area of the city if not a different city entirely, and while absence itself might be good enough for a few, it wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted the poisoner to be poisoned!

Poison… 

Poison…

Poison…

I paused. 

Did it strictly have to be poison that people recognize? 

Poison, by definition, was just a chemical substance like any other, but people feared poison for their effects.

So if I produce an effect that could be produced by poison, then did it matter if I used poison or not? 

… And I remembered a rather horrifying story involving a methane with four mercury bound to it and wondered how I could replicate its effects with what I had right now. 

Or just mercury.

I could make it, probably. There also probably a video somewhere on how to make mercurial hydrocarbons. 

Or I could just mix mercury into their drinking waters… but that had a chance to hurt innocent people, and that was not acceptable. 

… I was going to have get my hands dirty, wasn’t I? 

Like literally, not metaphorically. Those Merchants were stunk higher and stronger than a skunk with the habits of a domestic pig. 

Just the thought of my equipment getting splattered with shit, shit-covered grime, grime-covered blood, bloodied shit, shitty blood, and everything in between made a shiver run up my spine in disgust. 

Truly, the Merchants were the worst of the gangs. If the Empire hadn’t been the one to kill me, then I might have gone after the Merchants first. 

-VB-

Skidmark wasn’t dumb. 

A dumb fucker wouldn’t have rung out a whore’s pay from Brockton Bay’s underclass or survived like an old, dry pussy. 

No, a fucking chad like him who got pussies, bitches, and even little boys didn’t survive if he didn’t think about kinds of rainbow shits that wanted to fuck with him and his! Fucking cocksuckers, the lot of them. Sucking the government dog cock, sucking PR cock, and definitely not sucking their own cock. 

If they did, then they’d see how much like a fucking cockroach the big government was and they had no fucking power here! 

Look at Joe! He’s a fucking retard just like the rest of them, thinking about shit like revenge and ideology. 

Fucking bloated piece of shit cocksucking motherfucker taking it in his ears listening to bullshit like what’s right and wrong when the motherfucking truth of the world was that there was nothing better than cold fucking cash! 

That’s why he was in the Merchants and not some other gangbanging corpo! 

The fucking government sells you out to the public! 

The ABB whores themselves out! 

The E88 just wants them all dead. 

Nah.

The Merchants… the Merchants was where it was at. It was where no one gotta fucking lie shit to themselves. 

They were in it for the money, drugs, and whores! 

They -! 

“Sup.”

He stopped.

Huh? 

What dick cheese licking motherfucker was in the office? It should be just him in here. 

He looked up.

Skidmark squealed like how his namesake was made. 

He didn’t even grandstand. Only idiots grandstand! 

He immediately put down his fields and waited. 

Everyday Joe was in his office. Fucking piece of shit, Adam knew that he was a lying motherfucker when he said he was just after the Empire back at the bar! Dickless motherfucker -! 

Joe took a step forward but then stopped and looked at the field Adam put down.

Adam grinned. “Yeah! Can’t touch this Skiddy, dipshit motherfucker!” he laughed. 

Then Joe pulled out a sword. 

Adam felt his heart stutter like he took too much meth, because he recognized that sword. Hell, the fucking dumb sheeple across the entire United fucking States saw that sword. 

It’s the shit that shanked Kaiser.

His drug addled brain sputtered and chugged but … Adam had noticed things. Things that he knew that hte dick loving bitches over at the PRT probably also noticed. 

He shook his head. 

“No, man, no,” he hissed. “No no no. I ain’t going out. I’m fucking Skidmark! I fucking rule the Merchants!” he shouted as he pulled out his trusty “Bitch Maker” Desert Eagle that he always kept in his pants. He aimed and shot. 

The bullet, boosted by the field, utterly shattered the sound barrier like it was an artillery and not a pistol bullet. 

The bullet struck Joe in the chest, making his jacket ripple and ruffle… and do absolutely nothing. 

Joe lifted the sword up… and brought it down slowly. 

And Skidmark saw it. 

Where the blade descended, his field just … cut away. 

Like silk flowing away from an almost still blade. 

Then Joe reached in, his arms shooting toward him like a viper strike, and grabbed him by the neck.

“Hello, Skidmark,” Joe sneered as he dragged him out of the field. Adam struggled in Joe’s hand, kicking and punching but he did nothing. “I am so happy I found you so quickly. Who knew that Skidmark, the dipshit in charge of all dipshits … actually had his main office in Downtown? Probably tickled you funny because no one would look for you here.”

“F-Fucker…!” he hissed. 

“Oh, I am a fucker,” Joe nodded. “A mind fucker, that is.”

Skidmark stilled. 

Oh shit. Was the bitch going to put that nightmare field of his right here? 

But instead, he saw Joe pull out a needleless syringe filled with some kind of metallic fluid. 

“This, Adam Mustain, is poison like the stuff you peddle. But there’s no high associated with this. Oh no no…” he said as he pointed the syringe at him and squeezed. The metallic liquid splattered against his neck and … disappeared? It didn’t dribble away. It just disappeared. Then Joe tossed the syringe away. “That, Skidmark, was dimethyl mercury.”

Adam froze. 

“Mercury…?” he asked hoarsely with his neck still being squeezed. 

And then to his surprise, Joe let go. 

He immediately scrambled back and away from the crazy motherfucker.

“W-What did you do?” 

“I poisoned you like how you poison the rest of the city,” Joe replied giddily. “But it won’t kill you, at least not quickly.”

“You fucker!” Adam shouted as he stood up as he realized what happened. Or what was going to happen to him.

Joe didn’t say anything else and just teleported away. 

Adam stared at where Joe had been standing a second ago. The only evidence of his existing being the utterly disturbed office and the syringe still on the floor. 

“Fuck.”