The Descent Chapter 12: Hallowed Be Thy Name Part 3

Full Novel Synopsis: Sequel to 'The Spiralling', itself a sequel to the Kick-Ass (2010) movie. However, this novel can be read on its own. After Big Daddy died, Mindy was driven mad, subdued by Dave, and locked away in an Institute after killing all who she deemed responsible but Dave. Will she recover? What will happen next to a New York without her nor the Motherfucker? Elements of the Kick-Ass 2 (2013) movie and comic series will be taken in.

The Descent

Chapter 12: Hallowed be thy Name Part 3

Later…

Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Those were the days we were active, minus what Colonel Stars and Stripes term ‘special operations’. It was the real deal. Being a superhero was no longer a flight of fantasy, especially for the newer guys like Marty, or ‘Battleguy’. It’d become an obsession, our life. The Colonel was the man who tore it out of the pages of comic books and made it real, even if he didn’t look like the comic book type.

The schedule was to meet up at the Justice Forever Headquarters at 8 those days for all kinds of things. Training, equipment maintenance and upgrade, and at this early stage, fixing up the headquarters itself.

“Combat experience. Let’s go ‘round the table, starting with you two.” The Colonel was eyeing the Remembering Tommy duo just beside him.

“We don’t fight, actually.” The husband half said, shrugging, “We’re just doing this for our boy.”

“Well, there’s this once we stood up to a child-beater. Does that count?” The wife added enthusiastically, “He was a huge man.”

“Certainly. It takes courage, same as going down and dirty with a bunch.” The Colonel said, and then waved a hand at the next superhero in line – Insectman.

“I don’t have a whole lot of experience. I started this just 3 months ago.” Insectman began slow. He looked weak and fragile with his thin and short frame, but the way he handles himself was admirable; he didn’t play the part of the victim, nor show weakness, yet at the same time he wasn’t boisterous, “I ran into these 2 muggers once, a black dude and a white dude, robbing this Latino office guy. I took a serious beating, but my tricks with my police batons got me through.” Somehow, I couldn’t help but to think of the 2 guys who kept mugging me while I was on my way home from school or the Atomics Café.

“Well done, Insectman. Nightbitch?” The Colonel continued turning the wheel. It was turning out to be an interesting story session.

“It was on one of my patrols. I saw a man beating up a woman outside a pub. She was drunk, I think. I decided to go in and have a talk with him.” Nightbitch went on with her story, but it seemed a little harder to tell than Insectman’s, “He decided that one woman in one night wasn’t enough, but a decade of ballet taught me a thing or two about kicking. He had friends though. I can’t really remember how I got out of that.” She showed her modified pool cue to all of us, putting it on the table, “But it had something to do with this. I must have gotten it off a pool table. But I had to spend a few days in hospital.”

“Nice job, looking out for women in their most vulnerable. We’ll see what we can do about you avoiding injury. Battleguy?” The wheel keeps getting turned by the Colonel.

“Uh… I’ve just started out. I’ve got nothing.” Marty said, this time remaining honest.

“At least you weren’t stabbed and run down by a car.” I tried my best to cushion his lack of experience.

“Well said, Kick-Ass. Don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of combat experience here in Justice Forever, I can vouch to that. Kick-Ass, you’re up.” Again, I had no idea where to begin. I was surrounded by new superheroes, inspired by me. I didn’t want to come across as arrogant – that would be as super-unheroic as it could get. Yet at the same time, they needed to know how it was really like out there.

“Yeah well, urm… before I begin, I just want to say that I’m just like the rest of you when I started out, except even worst, probably. I nearly died the first time I engaged.” I said – it had to be the right way. Yeah, that’s the ticket, “Anyway, like I said” whoops, that might be a mistake there, “I tried taking on two car thieves, but I was stabbed and knocked down by a car. I have no idea if I even stopped them from carjacking. Then I went up against three street gangsters laying into one guy. I… uh…” No, don’t mention anything about becoming viral, “I got hurt a little, but it was nothing compared to my first try.”

“I was nearly killed when I took up an assignment to warn an ex-boyfriend to leave a girl alone. I couldn’t do much. He was a drug dealer with like 5 guards with him. I shocked Rasul with my taser, that’s about it. Big Daddy and Hit-Girl saved me.” By now, everyone’s eyes were on me, intent on sucking up every single word. It was jarring. Having Big-Daddy and Hit-Girl on my resume sure helped a lot with that, at the cost of a bit of my soul each time I say their name. Not to mention, I was hoping to scare them a bit, to get them on their guard, but my stories were having the opposite effect, “Then this Red Mist guy came along. I thought he was one of us. Turns out he was a plant.” A hint of familiarity in the Colonel’s eyes, then regret, “Big Daddy and Hit-Girl wanted to help us, but it was a story, a trap to get at all of us.” I’ve gone into the black hole once again. The event horizon I felt like tearing my eyes out, like Sam Neil.

“You guys saw on TV what happened. Big Daddy died, Hit-Girl rescued me. I didn’t do nothing. I got people killed.” I couldn’t even tell what was happening to me while I told my story once again. Marty had a hand on my shoulder, and that’s saying a lot because he rarely does that. The last time was when my mother died, “Anyway, after that, we hit the D’Amico tower for Big Daddy, me and Hit-Girl. She killed a whole bunch of them. I took out 3, I think, plus Frank D’Amico and his son.” It was the blackhole, the point of no return. Tear my eyes out!

“Then there was Demoness. I kept running into her.” Because she wanted me dead, but oh no, she wanted me for dessert. Mindy, the same Mindy in my home had wanted to killed me for her daddy, “I fought her once on some skyscraper… Benson Skyscraper, yeah. But she let me go.”

“Then I found her in some alleyway fighting the Grandmaster, which was where I met that swordsman guy. She ran away though.” I continued the story, falling into the blackhole. Tear my eyes out! I thought someone had asked me a question, something about why Demoness would let me go, but I just continued, “Then one last time on top of the D’Amico Tower. Life came full circle, I suppose, no idea where I got it from. I had help, Grandmaster and Michael. Oh… Huh… And somewhere in between I stopped two men robbing a store. One of them had a gun. I was lucky I lived to take Demoness in.”

“I guess that’s what you guys will be getting down the road.” I said, but it felt surreal all of a sudden. I wasn’t even thinking anymore, or even looking at them, but it felt like I was getting them excited. Mission failed. “But like I said, I think I’m just some lousy guy trying to be a hero. You guys are better off.”

“Hey, I feel you man.” Doctor Gravity offered. I smiled at him offhandedly.

“You’ve seen lousy guys, Kick-Ass. I was one of them. You’re not.” The Colonel said. He had this way of comforting people – he didn’t need to go out of his way to be mushy. He knew the right words. I was glad to be in Justice Forever just for this guy. Group Therapy was an unwritten part of the team, and I was glad it was, “For what it’s worth, you are a hero. A Superhero, a real one. And a real superhero makes mistakes, just like every other person, just like me.”

“Thanks. Thanks, Colonel.” I said. It was the least I could do.

“Doctor Gravity?” The wheel went on turning. For a moment, I imagined Big Daddy and Hit-Girl here in Justice Forever. They would have a ton of stories to tell, to keep the meeting going for hours. They would have been… Awesome. The fantasy went dead very quickly. In reality, one of them was dead, and the other one might as well be.

“I’ve got nothing, except last Monday.” Doctor Gravity said, in his usual enthusiastic self, “I was meeting Kick-Ass. We did a round together, then these two guys showed up and started beating Kick-Ass up. I was just out of the men’s room, but I helped with one of them. They ran, but brought back a whole gang of them. Total of five, I think. Kick-Ass was… Kick-Ass! He took them all out, and I helped with one or two of them. Well done, Kick-Ass!” He slapped me in the shoulder. I smiled at him – at least I had some stamina for that. I was 18 plus, but I felt like 80.

Then it all came down to Colonel Stars and Stripes after we were all done. Long story short, he’d been doing his stuff ever since he was, like 16. He was a runner for a few years at first, before participating in guard duties, raids, ambushes, drive-bys, drug smuggling, you name it, he’d done it. He knew the criminal underground like the back of his hand. He wasn’t always with the D’Amicos. He served Italian crime families mostly – race was a sensitive thing in the criminal world. But as Colonel Stars and Stripes, he was just starting out, and even then, he knew where exactly to look. He started small first, experimenting with terrorising a street gang to put them on the defensive so that they’d be too busy to do anything harmful or illegal. “A special operation’s coming up, this I can promise you.” He said when the meeting was over.

Wednesday was different. We started designing our logo, while Insectman was working on improving his batons. The Colonel got Remembering Tommy to work on finding themselves weapons, even if they were uncomfortable with it. The wife half had a handbag with a brick in it, while the Husband’s golf club idea was rejected by the Colonel. They weren’t much in a fight, but they were important for everything else, for the less violent things to come. We were shaping up our headquarters – each of us had our own chair now, with our own names written on it. We had a group photo – Remembering Tommy brought the camera.

This was when I found out that Nightbitch had a thing for me. She snuggled up close to me, and I put my arm around her, my experience with Katie Deauxma taught me that much. We had a lot in common – she’d lost her sister, and I’d lost Mindy, the old Mindy. I’d lost my mother, and she’d lost her parents. Okay, she’d lost more, but we all had our losses. I’ve never made varsity football, or got cast in a school play. Hell, I’ve never even made honour roll. But if I had, I gotta believe it would have felt a lot like this! Me and Marty, we were in the ultimate clique. It didn’t matter that no one else knew. We knew, and that was enough. We felt like rock stars!

By Friday, we had our own team pledge, worked on and agreed upon by consensus of all seven of us. It felt like we’d become the original founding members. It was a pledge we would declare before heading out on patrol, and gladly, I said it everytime, just like everyone. I said it with gusto each time. It'd become a warcry:

When the cops could

No longer protect and serve,

Be warned, muggers,

Heads up, perv,

We got the strength,

We got the nerve,

To give those in need,

What they deserve!

Justice Forever!

But it wasn’t always about finding criminals on the streets to arrest. For two hours, we ran a soup kitchen, providing food for the homeless. It was the Colonel’s way to make up to those he stole from, but it was a wake-up call for me that things didn’t have to always end in violence. Hit-Girl would not have approved, I thought uselessly, and I’d less likely find her handing out meals to the homeless in soup kitchens. But for the first time, useless thoughts had never felt better. With Justice Forever, there was a semblance of stability in my life for once.

That stability, however, didn’t follow me home…