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 FIVE: DAYBREAK AND A CANDLE-END (Cover: Warden is standing over the unconscious bodies of several Onyx Eye thugs in a Chinatown Grocery store. Standing crouched on the counter of the store is a man/snake hybrid, cradling a shotgun in his hands. They stare at each other in a face-off, red bandana to reptilian slits. The caption reads "Standoff.") Bolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow. (William Butler Yeats, from *Mad as the mist and snow*) January 25, 2023 7:27 PM Beth Willot stood staring out the picture window of the house she'd grown up in, the mansion in Bronxville that was now considered too small by her parents. Icy masses of snow were piling up on the lawn and in the driveway, and even though it was wet now, the cold would freeze them to ice by morning. However, they'd stay warm inside. The Willots had profited handsomely from the upheval and chaos brought on by the Godmarket and the dark days afterwards. Where most of the poor had been annihilated, as well as many of the rich, the upper middle class stepped in and began to run the show. Of course, they'd had to wait until the riots were over, hadn't they? She felt a vague distaste for them, her own parents. Angela and James Willot Sr. If they ever cared for anyone besides themselves, it was news to her. Her own relationship with them had been cordial, but distant. The fact that she and her brother were almost living advertisments for the Owens Effect hadn't made things any easier to deal with. When Jimmy was born, paranormal babies were a social hindrance, even possibly viewed as freaks. Six years later, apparently the idea of a paranormal in the family had _cachet_ and so Beth was born. Beth Willot, psychology student. Beth Willot, Supernatural manipulator of electromagnetic energy, with a Tesla Index in the thirties on both the Bullock and Chung tests. Beth Willot, who wanted nothing more in life that to become a member of the Academy of Super-Heroes team when she graduated. Straight arrow, prospective hero, loyal citizen Beth Willot of the North American Combine had a wanted fugitive living in her house, and she didn't know what to do about it. It was killing her. Part of her wanted to grab the phone and call somebody, _anybody_ about this. MetaPsych. The Academy. The NYPD. But she'd seen the fact that her brother, who made friends once in a blue moon and who'd been more scarred by their parents indifference than she'd thought possible, considered the slight young man a member of his immediate family. He'd _expected_ Beth to like him and trust him, almost as soon as they'd met. Beth walked by the fireplace, scowling, and directed a static charge into it, just as she magnetically 'twisted' the nozzle for the gas jet. Blue-white flames hissed out of the fake log, and Beth shuddered at the waste that the Willots could afford. She shut it off. It hadn't made her feel any better, because the worst thing was, she _did_ like Tommy. Once she'd gotten past the shock of looking at him, that is. Even after having read Jimmy's E-Mail, she hadn't been prepared for the faceless boy-man sitting on the banister, somehow managing to look quizzically at her. But he'd been so open to her, trusting of anyone who Jimmy said was okay, that she'd found herself in the situation she was in now. "Bethany?" She turned around, knowing it was him. In the past four days, the kid had always seemed to just pop out of the woodwork whenever she'd been on the verge of turning him in. "Oh...Tom. Hi." "It is cold outside, and snowing." "Yeah, Tommy, it sure is." Beth sat down on the couch. "Did you come because I was thinking about you?" He looked puzzled. "Just now, I mean." "No...the walls the Mentor helped me make are still in place inside me. I did not know you were thinking about me. I do not listen if I can avoid it." "But you can't always avoid it, can you?" Beth sat up on the couch. This might be the tactic to get him to go to MetaPsych. How to say to him what was coming? Sooner or later MetaPsych or the Academy or SOMEONE was going to have to teach this kid about the world. She hoped it was the former. She had a hard time picturing him going through the indoctrination of Academy life...he'd already been thoroughly brainwashed. This was too big for her! "How did you learn how to fight? You learned it from Jimmy, huh? You took it from his mind...and then, when you went to Boston, you learned other forms from the other people there. And when you fought those people on Tommy's roof, you learned _their_ form. Do you do that with everyone?" "I...do. From you, I know what you consider 'Self-Defense Manuevers.' In fact, they are not very efficent, nor graceful. They seem to be stripped down from Kempo. I do not do it on purpose. I simply...feel the way someone fights coiled inside of them. The Mentor said it was not important." "Tom, can you tell me about the Mentor?" "The Mentor? Don't _you_ have one?" In a manner of speaking...the Academy was her mentor, or she hoped it to be. What about him? Who was telling him what to do? "No, I don't exactly, Tom. I'd just like to know how you and she...came to know each other." "Oh, I don't _know_ the Mentor." Tom looked down at the floor. "She just spoke to me, before I could move, when so many loud ones were yammering at me. Her voice was so loud that by listening to it, the others would just...fade." "I see." Actually, she didn't. That didn't surprise her, though. January 26, 2023 11:41 AM Andrea Roguelin was one of those people very good at melting into the background. She was a 'Touch' telepath by nature, and empathic understanding was very much her specialty. It was for her knowledge of counseling that she was selected to come out to New York (a city most people tried to avoid, with its burgeoning Paragang problem and its relative lack of Anchors. There were maybe fifteen of them in the entire city of 1.3 Million People) and assist Lt. Kelly with the Warden case. So she had just spent the last three hours going over everything Kelly had on the young man. Taking a sip from her tea (Andrea loved tea...she couldn't get through the day without it) she took a look at the pad in front of her, using her fingers to scroll the screen, building a profile of events. Kelly was a good detective, but he didn't understand the games the mind could play, especially on untrained telepaths. Maybe somewhere in there was a clue to what had happened to awaken Thomas Malfeas, sending him out into a world he was misunderstanding. Dr. Douglas Mayhen's journals were helpful in that regard, as were the incoming and outgoing patient files. On July 4th of last year, Piotr Malfeas visited Thomas. He didn't notice anything unusual. The next day, David Maquis, the hospital anchor, was knocked unconscious by Thomas, who threw a bedpan at him with sufficent force that it dented. The people who saw him do this, mostly the kids from the Paranormal Ward, said that Thomas spoke gibberish at that time. So he wasn't fully functioning upon his awakening. What could have happened between those days that got him up? As Andrea ran through the files, Kelly walked into the room, which was in fact his office. He waited a few seconds for her to notice him, and when that didn't happen he cleared his throat. Loudly. "RRHMHM." "Oh...was I spacing again? I'm sorry. When I get focused on an issue my 'sixth sense' kicks into high gear, telling me if my ideas feel wrong or not. It's kind of like having really accurate intuition. But it phases me out. What's up? You feel tense." "I _am_ tense." Kelly swallowed. "Look, I'm sorry if we got off on the wrong foot the other day. I'm just uncomfortable around all this...and I don't like hunting this kid. I've been feeling crummy about it all month." "That's understandable, Lt. Kelly. I don't think we're really _hunting_ him, though. Even with Paranormal abilities, Thomas strikes me as someone who needs help before he gets himself killed. We'll be doing him a favor if we catch him." "That's assuming he doesn't fillet _us_ the way he's been hitting the Oblivious." Andrea considered that, folding into herself, her blue suit seeming almost to shrink a little as the strange gifts of her mind batted the idea around like cats with yarn. "It feels wrong. I can't tell you why, but my whole _being_ tells me that he won't use force against us. Not even to escape." "And have you ever been wrong?" "Once or twice. It happens. But since MetaPsych trained me to focus, no." "I hope you'll forgive me if I keep worrying, then." Andrea smiled at him. After all, he wasn't a bad guy underneath that craggy face and short red hair. She could feel his concern from where she was sitting, and it was aimed more at Warden than himself. He was afraid the kid would get himself killed, a sentiment she shared. "Go right ahead, Lt. Kelly. In the meantime, though, that little voice in my head tells me I'm on the right track. Three weeks before Thomas got up, a MetaPsych trainee named Christine Simon was brought into Merriam and placed into the Paranormal Ward. She'd been beaten and assaulted, both mentally and physically, by the Paragang known as the Fifth Ave. Snakeaters." "Jesus, Fifth Ave...who'd go into a slum like that?" "Her family lived near there. And they were also assaulted. Her brother, Chad, was killed, as was her mother Paula. Her father suffered the loss of his right leg, and was driven into permanent catatonia by the telepathic assault. Even Christine, with the aid of 3 MetaPsych instructors, was only brought back into reality just after Christmas." "Hey, wait a minute...Fifth Avenue. That's one of the places Warden first hit. I think I remember something about that...." Kelly walked over to the computer at his desk and began typing. While Voice-Recognition Programming was available, he preferred using his hands. Sometimes he fantasized about being a PI back in the 70's, when people still kept files in filing cabinets. "Yeah, here it is. The New York Post, October 12, 2022. _WASTELAND ON FIFTH AVE_ They got torn into little bits. No fatalities, but only just. And one of them was put into a coma." Andrea sunk back into herself. This felt right. Nothing was trying to tell her not to follow this. "I think...." She finally rose, trying to form her thought. "We should go talk to Christine. She's currently staying at the MetaPsych annex in the World Trade Center until she feels well enough to head back to MetaPsych. So that's where we'll go." "I'll get my coat." Kelly got up and walked towards the door. "Hell, maybe I needed a psychic after all. Good job, Roguelin." "Thanks. Just remember...let me do the talking. She'll trust me more...I'm with MetaPsych, and I'm an empath. I'll know when to back off and when to press. Okay?" "Okay." January 26, 2023 12:02 PM The Warden was back in New York. Thomas had been terrified, the past three days, that somehow the news that he wasn't there to stop them anymore would filter out. Who would tell them, he wasn't clear on, but it gnawed at him. After all, he was their keeper, wasn't he? The Mentor had made that clear to him. In talking to Beth Willot, he'd realized that the Mentor hadn't spoken to him since he saved Jimmy from Bathory. In defying her, had he made her so angry that she'd forsaken him? The fear _that_ brought on was intolerable. So he'd gotten dressed, putting on the duster and the tabi, tying one of James' black belts over his eyes, and gathering his weapons. The throwing coins, the Hook Sword, and the bundi were in their sheaths and pouches. Thomas had then borrowed one of the cars that the Willot family seemed to have in abundance. Somehow, he'd acquired the ability to drive it...probably from Beth. Jimmy didn't drive much. Now he was out in the sunlight, on a bright snappy cold day, standing on the roof of the dojo. There was no one inside, but the Onyx Eye had obviously returned once or twice since his departure. Casting his senses to the four winds, he sought for any scrap of their existence. The tastes, smells, sounds and feels of Chinatown slowly opened for him. "...now you know that no one can evade the Onyx Eye?" It was a male voice. Unfamiliar to him. It was coming from Madalyne Chin's home, above her store, a small neighborhood grocery specializing in the foods that they left behind when they came to America. Warden was in motion as soon as he heard the word _Onyx_ spoken out loud, leaping from roof to roof. When he landed on Madalyne's roof, he sensed the skylight near him and silently lifted it, at the same time deadening his opponents ability to hear. Luckily, other than Ms. Chin, there were only three bulky men with no grace and the smell of sweat and blood about them, and one serpentine man who obviously dominated them. So Warden didn't fear harming innocent people. The bundi slid free, well-oiled and ready, from the sheath on his back. He deadened most of their tactile senses, and turned all of that into their ability to sense pain. He also twisted their balance, inducing a kind of standing vertigo. Then he dropped like an owl into the room, landing on the one closest to Ms. Chin, a great brutal hulk of a Cantonese man. His bundi ripped the dark skin of his chest open in a superficial cut, which seemed to make the entire world explode in pain. The musclular thug screeched, clutching his chest and nearly blacking out, and instead of leaping away from Warden, he fell on his ass, unable to keep his balance. "*Where can I find the Onyx Eye?*" Warden asked, in perfect Cantonese. "*You have found them, and your death as well, eyeless one.*" The small serpent-like man, whose eyes were in fact those of a King Snake, hissed in Mandarin. He seemed almost unaffected by Warden, somehow holding his power around himself like a shield. "*Kill him.*" It was a short and needless fight. Warden was faster than them, stronger than them, and they were even more clumsy than usual. He swung onto his right arm and swung his left leg, kicking the balance out from the nearer of the two rushing him, a boy really, with the body of a wrestler and the skills of one. The pain in his leg made him believe that it was broken, and his head clunked off of the floor like a melon dropping from a basket held by one of Madelyne's careless patrons. The sudden explosions running up and down his nerves pinned him there, trapped by nausea and clumsiness. Meanwhile, the third of the trio almost managed to get his hands around Warden's throat when Warden somehow slipped his bundi up and into his chest. He impaled himself on it, driving the point up and into his heart, the pain so great that it instantly froze him where he stood, the blood dripping on the floor making a stain next to where a bottle of juice had spilled a month earlier. Warden pulled the blade from the dead man's chest and kicked him aside. "*I will not ask again.*' Now Warden spoke Mandarin, with the same sibilant accent as the King Snake crouched in the produce aisle. "*Where are your masters?*" "*Can you not take it from me, eyeless face?*" "*You have fuzz on your thoughts. But you _will_ tell me....*" As King Snake leapt upward, his hands coated with the venom his paranormal gifts allowed him to secrete, Warden dropped and rolled under him, coming up behind as the snake-man landed, his Hook Sword drawn to complement the bundi. Before the snake could move again Warden was in motion, X-slashing with the blades, drawing blood in a cockeyed cross from the slightly green and mottled skin on the snake's back. Even as the blades were slashing Warden's foot was coming in a crescent strike, cracking into the snake's ribs, which had the unnatural give of the reptile's. Warden's command to the snake's pain signals was the only thing that made the kick effective, but it was, rolling him into the barrel of roots on the counter and over behind it. Warden sensed that Ms. Chin was already running down the street as the King Snake leapt back up on the counter-top, holding a Remington Street- Sweeper Shotgun that had obviously been purchased by Chin Anho, Madelyne's father, before he died. It was usually used by storekeepers to protect themselves, as no license was required to own it under the Brady-Quayle Firearm Law. And King Snake smiled, the smile of someone who knows how to use a gun well. Then he aimed and pulled the trigger. January 26, 2023 1:06 PM Kelly tried and knew he was probably failing, but he tried anyway. He hoped his discomfort at being inside a MetaPsych facility, even this small annex, wasn't getting on their nerves, and he tried _again_ to suppress it. It wasn't happening. Plus, they were in the WORLD TRADE CENTER, site of one of the messier consequences of the Godmarket: The Ride of the Einhenjinar. No one knew why Odin had taken such an interest in New York City in the first place, much less why he'd claimed the top ten floors of each tower as his own fiefs. His action in doing so attracted many of the rich and powerful, or those hoping to become so, to his cult. When things went all to hell, Odin claimed all of his followers as 'Einhenjinar' or his Host: he sucked them dry in a massacre that left New York bereft, and the WTC piled up with corpses. It had taken the new city government, with the help of the Combine, two months to bury all of the dead. If more than two/thirds of them hadn't bodily vanished, consumed just before the whole thing crashed to a stop...Kelly didn't like to remember. He thanked his Irish forbears for their stubborn Irish Catholicism, which kept him and his family insulated. But 4 Million deaths...and then the mass rioting, and the exodus of fleeing souls...New York had been left beaten near to death by the god who'd claimed the World Trade Center and all of his ilk. The place had bad vibes. Which was probably why MetaPsych had taken over these bottom offices, to try and study the psychic energies of the massacre. Or whatever. Kelly forced himself to stop thinking about it as Andrea led him past the reception area and into the interview suite. They walked into a room similar to the cubicle observation area back at the precinct. Through a sheet of glass, Kelly looked into a room straight out of a psychiatrist's office. "So what's the drill?" "This room is shielded, so you won't inadverdently affect Christine. This glass is a painting in the room: she won't know you are here, although she will know that someone probably is. The procedure is common here. I'll go in and interview her, try and figure things out, while you watch and think of things to ask her. Then I'll come out and consult with you...and then we'll go at it again, until we're satisfied." "Sounds like it could take a while." "True, but it is the only safe way we have to question her while ensuring that we don't re-inflict some of the wounds that put her in coma in the first place." Andrea looked down at her pad. Kelly remembered the pictures she'd shown him, and nodded. January 26, 2023 1:13 PM King Snake pulled the trigger, and shot his own foot off. Warden had managed to increase his tendril of command just enough to make all of the muscles in the snake's arms convulse at the same time, in the same way, aiming the barrel down. The pain of the flesh burning off and spattering the floor, charred and smoking, caused King Snake to bite through his own lip. Warden kicked the gun out of the snake's weakening hands and concentrated his will. He formed a question and pictured his mind as an archer, holding it as an arrow, allowing it to slip free when it must without controlling it. And it did. ++Where can I find the Masters of the Onyx Eye?++ Between pain and shock, the King Snake could not keep the answer from rising out of the back of his mind. - -Central Park West.- - An image of a grey brownstone with a black egg raised on a plaque opened to Warden. The egg was held by the talons of some great beast, and the egg seemed to have a pupil forming in its center. The actual Onyx Eye symbol, blatantly on their door for the world to see. Warden smiled, and then leapt into a side-kick, knocking the reptile-man back into the wall, bleeding and unconscious. He knew where they were now. Time to take the waging of terror to them. January 26, 2023 1:29 PM Christine Simon sat impassively on the couch. Her face was scarred and torn, a mask of pain, evidence of what she'd been forced to endure. Underneath the wicked stitches of the largest scar, the one trailing down her face from her right eye to her lower lip and then across it, finally ending at her left collarbone, Kelly thought he could see the beauty that had once been hers. Not so much physical beauty...she was cute, in the photos he'd seen, but not beautiful...as the strength of spirit that would have animated and transformed those figures. Now she was colder than stone, and she was blatantly lying to Roguelin. His own instincts, honed by years as a cop, were screaming at him that she knew more than she was telling. He stood and listened to her non-committal answers to all the questions Andrea asked her, and he knew it. When Roguelin finally left the room and entered the cubicle, Kelly's anger surprised her. "What is it?" "She's playing you." "I beg your pardon?" Andrea didn't appreciate the inference. She _was_ a trained counselor. It was true that Christine was locked down, not giving a thing away, but actually _lying_ to her? That was something MetaPsych trained out of its people...lies were foolish in a telepath's vocabulary. "I do know what I'm doing...." "Look, you asked me to trust your 'intuition.' Now I'm telling you, as a fifteen year cop, she's sitting there and lying right in your face. I may not be able to read minds," Kelly walked over to the window and let out a ragged breath. "But I have a reason to think this. Which is more than you had." "What's your reason, then?" "Look at the way she's holding her hands. Not inward, to protect herself from invasion...flat on the couch at her sides. They haven't moved the whole time you've been talking to her. Not even a little. She's holding herself to no motion, which to me suggests she's aware of body language and is trying to keep from _having_ any. And her eyes." "What about them?" "They're just a little smug." "Smug?" Andrea wanted to scream at him. "She's been beaten, raped and assaulted...." "And that shows. The pain shows. So does the satisfaction. She reminds me of a man who found out his wife was having an affair on him, White Plains, I think. He killed the guy she was sleeping with and then hid the body, buried it in lime in their basement, and then faked that his wife did it out of jealousy. We almost didn't catch him. He sat there, besides his wife, supporting her, forgiving her for her infidelity, swearing up and down that she'd _never_ do such a thing. Finally, my partner at the time...this was ten years ago...he looked at the guy one day, while his wife was getting chewed alive on the stand...and he said to me, 'That motherfucker's gettin' his jollies from this.' I looked over. The guy was hurting, yeah, and nothing was making that go away...but he was _satisfied_. An eye for an eye." Kelly stepped away from the glass and looked at Roguelin, who had been shocked into silence. "I don't just think she knows about this Mentor...I think she _is_ the Mentor." Silence reigned in the cubicle for a few minutes, as Kelly turned and paced and Roguelin tried to compose herself. Seeking her own decision on all this, she sunk into the corners of her mind, hoping that something would contradict Kelly's deductions. Nothing did. "So what do you want to do?" Roguelin said, in a quiet voice. "Nothing. Except that we go in there and tell her that we know, and that we won't let her keep doing it. First, however, we should get an anchor in here and shut her down, so she can't call the kid and make him rescue her or commit suicide in some splashy raid on every ganger he can find." "Then what?" "Then we find the kid and get him some help." NEXT ISSUE: Warden, the Onyx Eye, and Bathory...the final conflict. The Mentor spills her guts. And a difficult decision ends one way of life, and opens a new one. Written by Matthew "Badger" Rossi Writer's Notes: To Kill or Not To Kill? This is an important issue to me. I've really been thinking about it a lot as I've been trying to re-start my interest (as well as your own, dear readers, people that I love) in this long-delayed Warden storyline. I've tried to establish that Thomas Malfeas as an innocent, unaware of the real world, trapped in other people's delusions even as he uses other people's perceptions against them. However, he has been killing people left and right, hasn't he? Actually, that's probably pretty unfair. In my admittedly cursory scan of the first three issues, he fights rather brutally, but I can't find an actual death until #3, when he kills a member of the Onyx Eye tong on the roof of Jimmy Willot's Studio: later he pins a gang member to the wall by lancing his bundi through his throat. (The backstory in this issue counts as before that, I guess.) Both deaths seem to come out of Warden's sense of responsibility to his friend, but they still lead me to wonder: Are they out of character? Which is not to say that people don't do things uncharacteristic of themselves, but what are the ramifications of such actions? If Warden, a virtual innocent, gets blood on his hands what effect will that have on his mind? For instance, reading this issue, Warden goes out of his way *not* to kill King Snake and his goons. I didn't notice it till later, but Warden is at once becoming more violent and less lethal...which leads me to other story ideas. Well, this musing has been good for me and probably painfully dull for you, but such is life. Does anyone have an opinion on the idea of the proper (that is, the best for the story at hand, whatever that story might be) use of violence and death in this and other series of mine? Feel free to send me an email (mr9767a@american.edu) if you do, and let me know in the letter if I can use it in an upcoming issue of BADGER'S WORLD. -Matthew "Badger" Rossi, Wandering Aimlessly...