CHAPTER TWENTY ONE


"Remember all that I have taught you, DarkFlood..."


...one month ago...


The damp Triad holding room shines one ceiling light on Jack, Dr. Randolph, Sensei, and his grandson. The room was stale and hot. Everyone was sweating over their bounds and gags. Sensei was preoccupied with making sure his grandson was okay. He had no time for instructions. Jack looked over at Dr. Randolph. He twisted out of his muffle and yelled, "What are you waiting for!?" Jack knew what he had to do. But when he checked with his Sensei, he realized...

This was not the time to reveal his power.

Randolph kept flipping out. Jack was trying to figure out what the Triads had planned. The last he had left it they were thriving in a hood now vacant of any other gang. They should be thanking Jack, if anything, not punishing him. Maybe they thought because Jack killed every other crime family in Chinatown, they better strike first or risk being next on Jack's list.

He could not risk the lives of his friends. He must do something before they come back in. He knew the next time a Triad walked through that door, someone would die. It was up to Jack whether or not it would be one of his friends of one of the guards. Jack still could not believe this was happening.

Jack was under the impression that the gangs of the kingpins that he assassinated would come for him before long. Never in his wildest dreams, did he imagine the Triads being responsible for the early termination of DarkFlood. Jack could not sit idly by and let this happen. And yet something was keeping him from releasing his super human abilities.

"They will take us away."

"Away where?" Jack asked the old Chinese man.

"They will take us before the Dragon Leaders for our execution."

"...." Jack put it together, "...You want me to unleash my fury then?"

Sensei nodded his head. He closed his eyes and exhaled. He was tired. Jack looked deep in the old man's eyes. All of the long exciting years of the quiet Sensei's life had finally caught up with him. As if he was already defeated, or accepted something Jack did not know. He continued talking to his student, "Then we will have put an end to all of this..."

"...Once and for all..."

Jack took inventory of all his abilities. First there was his ability to heal rapidly. Or as Dr. Randolph deemed it, "Catalization." Next there was the Flood Martial Arts technique that Sensei taught him. Next was his camouflage. After that was the tumors in his body responsible for his super strength and reactive stone armor. And last was his pulse blasts from his palms. Combined his almost had a full outfit of useful wartime abilities. If used together, both the defensive powers of armor and healing, and the offensive powers of super strength and pulse blasts would make Jack unstoppable.

Right now he could not use them. He must save up all his power for the showdown Sensei had foretold. Jack sat in his seat and began to gather the energy and fury from within. This would be his biggest triumph yet. Once he laid the Triads to waste, Chinatown would be free of crime. Jack remembered his fight at the Slaughterhouse, it would be nothing compared to this. Sensei watched on and Randolph and Sensei's grandson began to comprehend what was happening.

The door unlocked. The echo of the key pivoting within the door echoes in the small dark room. The door swings open and in walk five men dressed in black suits and red ties. They are armed with SMG's, tiny machine guns that make almost no noise; except for one. One walks a silver pistol with a golden dragon on its handle over to Sensei and fires it through his head.

The blast knocks the old dead-man's chair to the floor.

His brains slide across the blood to the side of Jack's boot. Sensei is dead. His grandson cries, strapped to his chair. Randolph screams for Jack to do something. But he just sits there, in awe. His mentor is dead. First his Grandfather, now Sensei. All he could do now, is follow through with Sensei's last requests.

To put an end to all of this once and for all. . .

Chapter 4: Hickory Hill

The Gunslinger looked up at the hill. It was covered in brown grass and breaching the sky. There were few trees alone along the hilltop. Charlie admired his new rifle. Little did he know, it was a beacon for all of those he crossed paths with. A beacon of Porter's Lake royalty. . .

"Do you know what this place is?" he asked Charlie.

Charlie looked up the hill. He followed the stone tabs up to a house made of thin wood planks, and a charcoal colored roof. There was nothing else but the house on Hickory Hill. Charlie finally answered the Gunslinger...

"A sanctuary."

"That's right. We shall replenish our supplies and continue on to the Run."

"So you do know the road?" Charlie figured out.

"I have been studying this mountain and its inhabitants for years."

"Gunslingers think they rule the world."

The Gunslinger stopped walking up the stone tablets and approached Charlie harshly. Charlie stumbled back and blurted out, "That is what they said!" The Gunslinger stopped.

"That is what who said?"

"The men I met inside the house on Hickory Hill."

Charlie thought he would have asked more questions, not just turn around and briskly walk up the hill to the house. Then he realized...The Gunslinger meant to kill whoever was in that house.

"NO!" he screamed after him. "IT WAS YEARS AGO!"

The Gunslinger did not break his gate. He pulled his guns and raised them up along with his heel. The Gunslinger kicked the door in and before those inside could pull their guns they were defeated. He turned around and looked at Charlie, keeping his guns pointed at the men.

"Are these them?"

Charlie looked at each and every one of there faces. He thought back to that time. He could remember it so clearly, the manner in which they talked of the Gunslingers always kept it fresh on his memory. Coming into company with one he could not help but mention it. Now he was the center of a line-up hold-up.

Charlie remembered the first guy. How his brow dropped just over his nose. He remembered his personality resembled it. He was frumpy and odd. He kept to himself and laughed at the other men. He had to be eight feet tall.

The other two guys looked like every other outlaw or cowboy that comes through here, dirty and drunk. They talked too much and made fools of their kind. Charlie tried to remember specific physical features. 'One guy', he recalled, "had what he thought was makeup over his eyelid, but after careful examination he realized it was gunpowder. Someone had fire a revolver at such close range to his eyes that the blast got under the skin of his lids.' Charlie tried to identify the last guy in the bar that day. He opened his eyes back up from thinking.

Charlie looked around and saw the three of them. It did not matter at this point. Two of the same and one generic outlaw rounding out the trio...

"That's them."

The Gunslinger rolled to the center of the room and open fired. Charlie freaked out, arming his rifle but thinking about fleeing for cover until the Gunslinger does his work. The Gunslinger killed the two outlaws, both with two shots each to the chest and head. He picked them apart.

The giant was left.

It threw its gun at the back of the Gunslinger's head and rocked him off his feet. He stumbled forward as his caught himself on his gun-hands and rolled back around. He fired off his remaining four rounds into the body of the giant, but it barely slowed him down. It kicked him before he could get back to his feet, and launched the Gunslinger into the wall across from the doorway.

Charlie stood with his rifle cocked and loaded and watched the Gunslinger tangle with the giant. It grabs at him writhing on the floor and Charlie swallows his fears. He pulls the trigger and it goes wide right and the giant continues to try to pick up the Gunslinger. He reloads. Charlie holds the gun up again and this time drags his eye-line down the barrel of the gun.

He lines his eye up with the barrel and the head of the giant and pulls the trigger. The bullet blows the giant brains out all over the ceiling as he dies and lifelessly pins down the Gunslinger beneath him.

Charlie does not know whether or not to help him out. Twenty minutes ago he was about to kill him over a saying. Was this man a hero or a maniac? What gives Gunslinger's the right to take lives without consequence?

Charlie put down the rifle and pulled the dead giant off of the Gunslinger. When they got back up, the Gunslinger thanked him and brushed the dirt off his coat and vest. "Gather ammo and food and lets get outta here."

"Another place wasted. You leave a desolate trail for a man, Gunslinger."

"Then ask yourself, Charles..." the Gunslinger said, "Why are you following it?"

Charlie stood on the road as he said that, frozen stiff. He looked ahead as the Gunslinger walked further down the hill, further down the road. 'This was the last time', he said to himself, 'that he would doubt following the Gunslinger.' Either Charlie left now and parted ways forever, or he sticks this out and commits completely.

He stood on the road and looked ahead at the Gunslinger.