NARCOLEPTIC DOGS PRESS, IN ASSOCIATION WITH COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED,
PRESENTS...

WARDEN: AN ASH UNIVERSE COMIC

(ASH property of Dave Van Domelen. Warden property of Matt Rossi and Dave
 Van Domelen. All Rights Reserved.)

ISSUE NUMBER SIX: WHO WARDS THE WARDEN?

(Cover: Warden is engaged in combat with Taograth of the Onyx Eye tong.  His
jacket lies on the floor near his feet, and he is standing in the center of a
circle of light descending from overhead.  Warden's ribcage has taken a sharp
cut on his right side, and is red in several places.  Taograth has a gash on
his left arm, and Warden's bundi is wet with his blood, having made the cut a
second before.  Onyx Master Barrukh is observing dispassionately from a seat
behind the two of them; his daughter Varru'Ke is on his right.  In the
shadows behind Barrukh's head, two clawed hands are extending to strike.)

In a dark time, the eye begins to see
(Theodore Roethke, from *In a Dark Time*)

I don't want to kill you.
(Matt Murdock to Slade, from DAREDEVIL - THE MAN WITHOUT FEAR #5)

January 26, 2023  1:59 PM

     "Stop _bullshitting_ me, Christine!"
     Kelly's voice lashed out, and both Roguelin and Simon were taken aback
by the intensity of it.  For the past ten minutes, while Rosa Alvarez had
been standing in the corner of the room, blocking all Paranormal abilities by
virtue of her nature as an Anchor, Kelly had been standing in the corner,
listening to the girl respond to Andrea Roguelin's questions.
     "Lieutenant!"  Roguelin turned to him in shock.  "I don't think...."
     "We don't have time to coddle her.  She's lying, and I need the truth
out of her."  He turned the full intensity of his scowl onto the ravaged face
of the young telepath, feeling barely one step above raw sewage.  "What did
you do to Malfeas?  Why does he think of you as a 'Mentor'?  Talk to me,
Goddamn it.  I'm not interested in punishing you, but I need to know what
you've done."
     Past the scar, her eyes bored into his face, but Kelly'd been a cop long
enough to learn how to twist his features into a granite mask.  And without
her telepathy, she was just one more member of the ravaged generation,
without the ability to know what he felt and thought.  They stood like that
for a few seconds.
     "I _am_ interested in punishment."
     Roguelin, who'd been on the verge of pulling Kelly out of there, felt
her pulse rate rocket.  Without her Paranormal intuition, she'd had no idea
what the girl had been about to say.
     "And you punished the gang that hurt you.  They're all gone."
     "There are others.  This place, this _city_ is cancerous with them.
Rejects who hid from MetaPsych or the Academy, brainless assholes who...I
just decided that we'd had enough of them."  Her eyes were colder than Kelly
would have thought possible.  He knew that rage was driving her, but it was a
rage that took up all her passion, leaving her frozen in manner, almost
robotic.  "And Thomas was perfect."
     "What did you do to him?"  Kelly sat down across from her, making sure
to keep contact with her eyes, afraid to break their grip for fear of losing
her train of thought.
     "Not much.  At first, I was floating inside of myself, ignoring everyone
and everything, just safe and happy underneath my shields...and then I
noticed a kind of black hole."  She smiled, almost human, and continued on.
"He was absorbing _everything_.  Every thought, every emotion that took place
near him he absorbed.  He didn't have _any_ shields.  I mean, most people
have a kind of primitive resistance to telepathic intrusion...if nothing
else, their ego rebels at the touch of an alien mind...but not Thomas.  He
was so open, he appeared mindless."
     "So that's how we missed him."  Roguelin spoke from over Kelly's
shoulder, but he didn't move to look at her.  Christine nodded imperceptably.
"It took me days of playing along the edges of his mind to discover that he
_had_ one.  Almost two weeks.  Any of the MetaPsych counselors who went to
check would be better than me, but none of them had the _time_ I did."
     "So you made him a killer?"
     "He was already dead."  Christine's face seemed trapped between remorse
and revenge.  "I just asked him to take a few with him."

January 26, 2023  2:04 PM

     The Onyx Eye lived in splendor, inside a brick brownstone on Central
Park West.  From his vantage point inside the trees of the park, Warden felt
the guards shift around the structure.  Ten of them, all vicious, all highly
trained...and no real threat to him at all.  No, they weren't intended to
stand against him.  Soon, if they didn't already know, King Snake would get
in contact with them from jail, and they would probably beef up their
security....
     No.
     Warden settled back into the branches and thought.  King Snake will
*not* call them.  It would be suicide to call them.  If he revealed to them
that he had allowed anyone to learn where the Onyx Eye sheltered...he would
be killed in the most painful ways the Tong possessed.  Warden catalogued the
martial arts that he'd learned from them...there were many excrutiating ways
they could kill him, all of which would take at least six hours of torturous
agony to kill him.
     He would not call.
     And Warden could enter their sanctum without them knowing.
     He smiled and dropped to the ground.

January 26, 2023  2:07 PM

     Lao'Kse Ma, a huge hulking enforcer for the Onyx Eye who'd been involved
in twenty-seven eliminations for Barrukh, dropped unconscious to the ground.
Warden stood over her, dispassionately making sure that he hadn't killed her,
sensing for her pulse and breathing.  The ability to make such precise nerve
strikes was very useful to someone who'd grown weary of death.  Even as he
thought it he cocked his head to the side and thought out at the shadows,
sensing the locations of the other nine sentries, each equally unconscious.
The Mentor might not have approved of it....
     Perhaps...perhaps that did not matter.
     Even as he slid into the window, half of him was revulsed at that
thought.  He stepped onto a delicate persian carpet while remembering that
the Mentor would have let Jimmy die.  Jimmy, who'd taken him in.  Jimmy,
who'd been, and still was, his friend.  He slunk past a man in dark red robes
who almost noticed him, and as that man tried to decide what he was hearing,
he shut all of that man's senses off.  After that, rendering him unconscious
was simple, the matter of a simple heel-palm strike to the face.
     The decor on the first floor was rather conventional for the location,
hardly like Warden might have expected it to be.  But careful sensing of the
room revealed a draft coming from behind a cupboard in the kitchen, and soon
enough Warden found the trigger-plate and catch to the secret passage.  Of
course there would be a secret passage.  He triggered it, sliding the
refridgerator aside.
     Stepping into the passageway, he drew his Bundi.  He may have been tired
of all the killing, but that didn't make him suddenly stupid.  He remembered
entering Bathory's sanctum, the battle with the man-beast Raoul; this was
worse, more sinister, and he would do what he needed to.
     Feeling along the walls with his mind, throwing his senses far ahead of
him, he made his way deeper and deeper into the heart of the Onyx Eye.
     The passageway came out into an enormous round chamber.  Warden held
back, just out of reach of the flickering torchlight he saw in the minds of
the people inside the Egg...what they Onyx Eye called this room.  It was
where they trained, ate, and listened as one to the voice of the Onyx Master
Barrukh.  Who was sitting in a simple yet grand chair conversing with his
daughter Varru'Ke and someone Warden did not know...the name Taograth came
into his head.  Taograth, the savage killer, the lover of death, Barrukh's
number one man.
     Taograth, Varru'Ke's promised husband, who was turning his head to look
in the direction of the passageway.  Warden realized he'd been spotted
somehow, and did the only thing he could think to do: he walked out into the
Egg and let them see him.
     "*Greetings to the Master of the Onyx Eye.*"  Warden spoke in Mandarin,
which he'd learned but an hour before from King Snake of the Onyx Eye.  The
reptile had been quite helpful.  "*I am Warden.  You call me the Eyeless
Face.  I am here to end the hostilities between us.*"
     Everyone in the room tensed to attack him, but a gesture from Barrukh
held them.
     "*I am impressed, Warden.  That is the name you prefer?*"
     "*It is.*"
     "How, if I might ask, did you find us?"  Barrukh suddenly switched to
English, and Warden suspected that it was to keep most of his people from
knowing the answer.
     "I would rather not say."  Warden tried out an expression that was new
to him: he hoped it was a rather insufferable smile.  It was not, yet it
carried enough of that tone.  Barrukh nodded slightly, somewhat abashed at
the rudeness of having asked.
     "*Very well.  Now, before I have you killed, what is you want from me?*"
     "*I said I have come to end the hostilities between us.*"  Warden
suddenly leapt straight up into the air, weapons drawn.  "*Let us begin.*"

January 26, 2023  2:23 PM

     Kelly drove like the devil he felt was chasing him, and Roguelin had to
hold on as the car took the corner onto Central Park West squealing from all
four tires.  The NYPD couldn't afford Supertech, or even just plain
*advanced* tech: their computer system was the most advanced machine they
had.  He pushed the car until they were doing nearly a hundred and seventy
KPH.
     "We don't even know which building he's in.  Christine just said Central
Park West.  That's not enough to go on...."
     "I know that."  He suddenly stopped the car, locking the brakes and
nearly skidding.  Waiting for him was another police car...this one
containing Gwendolyn Thomas and Melissa Tao.  As Kelly got out, Roguelin saw
that the two of them were wearing Riot Gear and carrying projecting tasers as
well as shotguns.  "Melissa, Gwendolyn...our boys somewhere on this street.
Any suggestions?"
     "Hell."  Gwen snorted.  "We can't very well check every damn building on
CPW.  We'd be looking all day."
     "That," said Roguelin. "Must be where I come in. One of my hunches?"
     "Exactly that." Kelly smiled.
     Roguelin closed her eyes.

January 26, 2023  2:27 PM

     Thirty-seven to one.
     Thirty-five to one.
     Thirty-one to one.
     Twenty-eight to one.
     The numbers kept dropping, as within five minutes Warden disabled nine
highly-trained tong assasins with a whirl of knee strikes, the flat of his
bundi, entangling them with his coat and smashing them with his hook sword,
using brutal slashing kicks, all in a variety of martial arts styles.
     Barrukh, Varru'Ke and Taograth watched, at first expecting Warden to be
easily buried by the sheer numbers of his opponents, then not able to
understand what they were seeing, then just plain impressed.  It was Taograth
who said it out loud.
     "Gwailo."
     Barrukh nodded in approval.  He _was_ like some sort of avenging
phantom, managing to keep the weapons that sought to bury themselves in him
away from his pale skin as if by sorcery, drifting between the hardened
killers of the Onyx Eye like a dancer.
     An incredibly violent, seductively efficent dancer.
     Twenty-six to one.
     Three of the Onyx Eye, each wielding crescent axes, attempted to corner
Warden, each swinging their blades in a timed pattern that allowed no space
to dodge.  Warden reached into their minds and caused their visual acuity to
twist, and one of them buried his axe in another's throat.  The third was
dispatched by a swing of the bundi, smashing the flat of the blade into his
face, knocking him back into two others who were trying to approach unseen,
not quite able to understand that Warden, with no eyes, did not need to see
them.  The last axeman, still unable to get his weapon out of his ally's
throat, received a punishing kick to the kidneys.
     And skulking in along the path Warden had cleared, glowing cat eyes
watched the fight with admiration and envy, trying to decide how best to make
it work for her.
     Twenty-one to one.
     The weapons slashed and glinted, arms and legs tensed and swung, impacts
rang out.  Several of the Onyx Eye found that glancing blows they should have
been able to ignore were magnified into crippling pain, or that they would
lose their sense of balance just as they were performing intricate manuevers,
or that they simply could not aim well enough to hit the gliding wraith, the
thin, tautly muscled young man who just _couldn't_ be doing what he was
doing.  It simply wasn't possible.
     Unfortunately for them, the impossible was possible now.
     Eighteen to one.

January 26, 2023  2:39 PM

     It took Roguelin a few minutes to focus her ability.  In that time the
three cops waited anxiously, tapping their feet or looking at their watches,
while Kelly put on his own riot armor and a vanload of SWAT officers arrived.
     "Any anchors?"
     "Nope."
     "Shit! Not only is the kid Para, some of these damn Onyx Eye might be,
and Bathory's still mixed up in this somehow...."
     "Look, we'll do our jobs just fine.  Hell, with the Paragangs scared to
show their faces, we've actually got some manpower for this.  Personally, I
think we should let Warden keep doing what he's doing...."
     "We'll, luckily we don't live in a free country."
     "Hey, watch your mouth!"
     "Gentlemen."  Roguelin's voice sounded alien to her, as the laws of
probability were bending around her, infusing her with information she should
not have.  "I know where they are...or, at least I have a _really_ good
hunch."
	"We're going on a hunch?"  Capt. Harris "Blood and Steel" Han Wu, head
of the SWAT team, looked over at Kelly, Thomas and Tao.
     "Trust us."  Gwendolyn smiled and slapped a charge into her projecting
taser.  "She has really, really good hunches."

January 26, 2023  2:45 PM

     It was down to five to one when Barrukh stopped it.
     "*Enough!*"  The last five conscious members of the Onyx Eye backed away
in gratitude, keeping their weapons up and between them and Thomas.  "*You
may be able to use your ghostly tricks against my agents, but those of us who
have mastered the Onyx Way are much more difficult, resistant to your tricks.
Will you face us honestly?*"
     "*I am not the one who assasinates people here.*"
     "*Taograth...kill him for me, would you?*"
     "*I would be honored, great master.*"  The huge killer made a gesture,
rolling his shoulders and tightening every muscle in his body, causing a
series of creaks and pops.  It was quite impressive.  He must have outweighed
Warden by a factor of two, at least.  A strange brassy light began to play
about his skin.  "*Are you ready, White Ghost?*"
     Warden said nothing, merely waved his blade, gesturing for Taograth to
come forward.  Smiling, the glowing man drew two Kukri knives, the kind made
famous by the British Empire's Gurkhas, and dropped to the floor like a
Siberian Tiger, all sinew and menace.
     Bathory, clinging to a decorative alcove in the ceiling, watched with
interest.  If Warden could kill *this* one, she'd certainly have to make him
one of her pets.  And if not, the Onyx Eye were looking pretty ripe for a
takeover right about now....
     Varru'Ke could not help herself: despite the danger to herself, her
family and her beloved Onyx Eye, she hoped the Eyeless Face could kill
Taograth.  Never had she wanted the marriage with him that her father had
convinced her to agree to, so disgusted was she by his gleeful antics when
performing necessary tasks of elimination or discipline.  One was either
professional, as she was, or one was a callow fool, as Taograth.
     A callow fool with power.  But a callow fool still.
     Taograth leapt and slashed, tearing Warden's coat nearly in half,
managing to draw blood from his ribcage in a shallow cut.  Warden whirled and
kicked him as he went past, and felt the strange glow around the man push his
foot on a strange angle.  Crouching on his heels, he considered: the field
diverts incoming objects.
     As Taograth landed, rolling to come to his feet, Warden tested his
theory.  He managed to remove his torn coat with one hand and toss it
directly at the broad chest of Taograth...and it veered away, literally being
brushed aside as if by invisible fingers.  Taograth chuckled.
     "*How will you hit me, little man?*"
     Warden smiled, and suddenly Taograth was blind.
     "*I could ask you the same question.  But soon, you won't be able to
hear it, so why bother?*"  Thomas then removed his hearing, his tactile
sense, his sense of smell, even taste.  He stripped Taograth of them all,
sweat beading on his blank face as the strain of holding so many senses away
at once began to gnaw at his mind.
     To Taograth, it was as if the world had dropped away and he'd fallen
into void.  He could not feel the floor beneath his feet, the slight air
currents on his skin, the beating of his own heart.  He could command his
limbs to move, but he could not tell if they had.  He could not hear himself
breathe, smell the fear sweat beginning to cling to his body, or even know
whether or not he was still armed.  He was in a dark, dark place.
     It was a place that Thomas Malfeas, the boy who called himself Warden,
knew very well.  As the big man began to panic, Warden walked up to him and
easily extracted both knives from his hands, then swept his legs out from
under him.  As an amazed Barrukh and Varru'Ke watched, Warden used his own
torn coat and sashes from several downed Onyx Eye warriors to bind the
unresponsive Taograth, who did not even know that he was face down on the
floor.  The feeling of pain in Warden's mind was beginning to make him black
out, and he worked feverishly.
     When Thomas was satisfied that there was no leverage possible for the
big man to apply his strength, he allowed him to sense the world again.
Taograth was very startled to find himself on the ground and tied *very*
securely, unable to free himself.  Warden leaned over him, placing his Bundi
against his throat, his wrist fighting the glowing field surrounding his
enemy, twitching with the effort.
     "*I think that if I decide to lean down, this blade will cut your
throat, as long as I go slow enough.  Would you care to find out if I'm
right?*"
     "*No.*"
     "*Good.*"  Warden stood up and walked right up to Barrukh's chair.
"*Now, in the future, you will stay away from any member of the Willot
family, as well as the three block radius surrounding James Willot's studio.
If you do not do this, I will come back, and I will finish this.  If I were
not weary of death and of serving other people's needs, I would kill you.  I
could do so now.  But I choose not to.  Are we in understanding, master of
the Onyx Eye?*"
     "*There will be a reckoning for this.*"
     "*I do not care.*"  Warden 'looked' at Barrukh and Varru'Ke.  Then he
tilted his head to the side.  "*As long as it does not extend any further
than _me_.  If you involve any member of the Willot family, I will end this.
Are we in understanding, or shall I end this now?*"
     "*We...are in understanding.  You have my word that I shall not again
attack the Willot family, and I will avoid the Willot school.*"  Barrukh's
eyes, his posture, his tone of voice said it all: _I may have to swallow this
now, but when I rebuild my strength, you will die for this_.  Warden didn't
care.  He knew that Bathory was watching them, trying to decide what to do.
He knew that the police were in the house and about to find the secret door.
He knew that Varru'Ke was looking at him in a way completely different than
her father's glare of hate.
     He saw very well, without eyes.
     And then he moved, gliding on ghost feet, to another secret door and was
gone from everyone's sight before they could react.  Bathory, stunned by the
swiftness of his retreat, was just about to attack the last two members of
the tong when the police, lead by Kelly, came running down the passageway and
placed them under arrest.  Deciding that a fight with ten microwave-taser
toting SWAT troopers wasn't productive, she crawled down the ceiling and out
the very way they came in with no one the wiser.
     All the while making plans for a new, bigger future.

January 26, 2023  6:22 PM

     Kelly stood at the windows of his office, shaking his head at the chaos
in the station.
     They'd arrested pretty much the entire Onyx Eye Tong.  Barrukh and
Varru'Ke had probably very little chance of being prosecuted for anything...
the house was in another person's name, they had covered their tracks
admirably on any crimes committed and they had _powerful_ friends.  But
Taograth was fucked.  He was a Paranormal who'd committed crimes, and the
North American Combine didn't have many compunctions about denying him the
rights it was slowly giving back to the rest of the populace.  He wasn't
going anywhere for a long, long time.  The Onyx Eye wasn't dead, but it'd
been hamstrung.
     "What are you thinking?" Andrea Roguelin was sitting on his desk.  It
was just now occurring to Kelly...who hadn't had a date since this whole
Warden case started...that she was an attractive woman.
     "Well, the Razors, Oblivious, and various other Paragangs are either
broken up or terrified that Warden'll come down on them, the Onyx Eye is more
or less out of the running, which leaves a pretty big vacuum to fill.  I'm
wondering when 'Our Thing' will get into gear and start trying to make a
move."
     "Bullshit. You're worried about him."
     "Yeah, I am."  Kelly sat down in his chair, looking up at Roguelin.
"He's just a kid.  Technically, the person we call Thomas Malfeas wasn't born
before July 5th, 2022.  Even if what those mooks out there have to say is
true...and I believe it...it's still too dangerous for some kid to wander
around in a trenchcoat fighting crime.  Life isn't some Pulp novel..."
     "Hey, I like Pulps!"
     "...or chop-sockey movie.  Eventually, Thomas will miss something with
his psychic senses, and he'll end up dead."  He looked, really looked, at her
eyes.  "You like Pulps?"
     "Yeah. Got a whole shelf of them at home.  The originals.  Printed on
paper."
     "_Really_?"  Kelly couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice.  They
didn't call the books "pulps" because the paper was good, and originals which
hadn't crumbled were hard to find.  "God, I'd love to see that.  Do you have
Jeff McCoskey's _Vengeance Alley_?"
     "All ten volumes.  You can consider yourself invited to see them, if
you'd like."
     He stopped.  This was rapidly turning into a date.  Was that ethical?
     Screw it.  She had all ten volumes of _Vengeance Alley_.  On the
original paper.  This he _had_ to see.
     "I'll get my coat.  Hey, maybe we can get some dinner on the way?"
     "You read my mind, Kelly."

January 26, 2023 7:30 PM

     A young man, crouched in an alleyway, watches a man walk past and senses
that man's organs are all perfect for donation. Worth their weight in
platinum.  He reaches for a knife....
     And sees the flitting shadow cross the rooftops.  He rethinks his
options and decides to see a movie instead.
     Three women in a car driving down Fifth Avenue see a lone man walking.
He isn't a member of the Snakeaters, so they decide to have a little fun with
him.  One begins to step on the accelerator....
     A shape, a streak of black and pale skin, lands on the hood of their
car.  It is a man. He has a red bandana tied around his face.  As they stare
in horror, realizing the stories that little Jack told them before he fell
into his coma are true, he shatters the windshield of their car and leaps,
landing safely on a ledge twenty feet above him while they drive into a wall.
     A man selling powerful Pranir opiates is found unconscious, his drugs
scattered to the four winds.  He doesn't even remember what happened.
     A group of four teenagers, all Paranormals who like to practice home
invasion as a hobby, are found beaten unconscious in their apartment.
     A young boy is rescued from the top floor of a burning tenement near
Columbia University.
     Several people make it home who otherwise would have died, guarded every
step of their unaware peril by a silent man who strides the rooftops, alert
and sensing everything both glorious and dark, all dangers thwarted.
     Thomas Malfeas, standing on top of a roof and looking down on his city,
smiles softly to himself.  He cannot save them all, and he knows it.  But he
can save some.  It's not much of a life.
     But it's more than anyone would have ever expected him to have, and it's
all his.
     In love with the world and free, he jumps and spins in the air.

Written by Matthew "Badger" Rossi

Writer's Notes:

     I don't really have a lot to say.  I'm glad I finally finished the first
story arc in Warden, and I'm currently tinkering with some ideas for a new
one.  (I think this time I'm going to finish the entire arc before I post any
of it :)) An idea I think I need to do is a Warden Annual dealing with what
he's been up to between January of 2023 and 'now' in the current ASH books
[Editor's Note: this will be coming soon in the form of Warden #7].
Basically, it deals with the idea that in a New York City with rogue gangs of
Paranormals, evil Tongs, the high-tech Mafia and maybe some more exotic
criminals (remind me to talk to Dave about an idea I had...) some cops are
going to be more than happy to have Warden around, some cops (like Kelly, who
will remain a supporting cast member, as will Roguelin) will want to stop him
for his own good, and others will find the whole idea insulting.  Meanwhile,
there's always Beth Willot's moral dilemma, the fact that under North
American Combine law Thomas isn't supposed to be out and about without
training, and hopefully some crossovers in the future.

     Right now, I'm actually feeling pretty damn optimistic about the future
of Warden.  I mean, here he is, all set to head off into the future with
friends, well-wishers, acquaintances and even enemies (And some people who
count in more than one category).  I intend on having Thomas confront
Christine Simon at some point in the future, but there's more gritty street
adventure to deal with first.  That's the meat of this series.

     Well, enough of my rambling.  Thomas is happy for now. Let's leave him
now to cavort in the air over the buildings of New York.

- Matthew Rossi, who comes from the Wilderness...