Chapter Three

THE CASE I

Chapter Three

The ghost rider was insane. That was obvious. No human mind could live that long and experience things that world bending to such extreme degrees and come out the same way it went in.

I could see the strings that held whatever remained of his psyche together, drifting pieces of taut twine stitching one mismatched part of shattered mind to another.

Yet he has told me of more than I could have ever known by sitting on Titan alone, he has shown me worlds past the mere confines of my holopad. We traveled faster than light, leaving stars and planets whizzing in the distance as we honed in on his target.

It was a world called Markus Centauri, one much like earth, in infrastructure, civilization and technology, yet populated by alien humanoids with green, hard ridged skin and tentacled chins beneath bulbous almost obsidian eyes.

The Rider brought us to a bar front, parked his hellfire powered bike by the entrance and dragged me in.

He remained oddly quiet, while I contemplated my fate, which rested upon his friend. Death was becoming certain by the second. Talking of Death, I had yet to see the mistress.

"Get me two of your strongest stuff." The Rider's voice cut through the lively room. He obtained a seat by the counter and placed me down on one next to his. His flames were gone, he looked normal, old, weathered, but normal. A headful of white hair cascaded down to his shoulders, his jaw was dotted by a scraggly beard. He looked like a man who had lost much, much more than he should, and his only aim now was to live and take things as they came. Perhaps I pitied him.

"What you looking at?" He pointed, a frown on his face.

"You look human when you're not on fire, dare I say it, friendly even.4

"Don't let the exterior fool you kid, I'm still deadly."

"Whatever you say, Frank." I turned away from him and observed the bar. No one here looked at me like a curse or with the dread that those back on titan did. I was just another face, albeit I did draw curious looks considering I was in chains, but their gazes weren't decidedly malicious or filled with fear.

I truly was just another individual, not an omen of death and destruction.

"I'm sorry sir but we don't serve alcohol to kids." The short statured Centaurian waiter said.

"You do now. Get us the damn drinks."

"I'm sorry but it's against policy to—"

"It is not your concern, waiter, just get us the drinks we ordered." I chimed in. I'd rather not pass up the chance to experience alien alcohol, with all that's happened, I deserved it. Also my biology was advanced enough to endure the beverage.

"You heard the kid."

"I'll have to get the manager." Said the young waiter who rushed to the back.

The manager was a towering bulk of muscle dressed in buttoned up, sea green long sleeves and black trousers. He looked like he belonged in an office cubicle for extreme bodybuilders.

"Do we have a problem here?"

"Not if you get me my fucking drink pal." Said the Rider, uncouth as always, ready to rip the man's head off.

"I suggest you make the man happy sir, he has a very short temper and is prone to ultra-violent outbursts."

"Is that right?" He chuckled, measuring up Frank by his elderly exterior. I could see the options going through his head, peace flittered past his mind replaced by violence. He saw our insistence as an affront to his masculinity and status.

"I'll have to ask you to leave." He said to Frank.

"Make me pal." Frank challenged.

"Don't do it, you'll regret it." I warned him.

"You'll be dragging your grandpa out in a sack when I'm done with him." He scoffed. "Guess it's the hard way." His hand touched the Rider's shoulder and I saw the Rider reach for the manager's arm with a calm demeanor, he held it by the elbow and tugged down, I'd never seen a man lose a limb faster.

Bone, tendons, flesh, all raw and in bloody beautiful, grisly display. The act was so swift that the manager himself paused to watch in grim fascination. Forgetting to scream and shout in agony as he looked upon his own hand and the bleeding stump it was pulled from.

The warm blood splattered across my face as the Rider whipped the arm into the manager's chest with such force it rocketed the man into the back of the room and through the subsequent wall.

"Do you see a drink in my hand?" He said to the trembling waiter who had soiled himself, frozen in place from the gruesome event.

I closed my eyes and breathed in, wiping the blood from my face and strangling the urge to get up, rage and cause as much chaos as possible. To bring destruction with every living fiber of my being, to grab something by the head and bash it repeatedly against the wall hard enough to crush it. I wanted to make things bleed and bathe in their still warm blood, I wanted to hear the wet crunch of their bones shattering and the near elastic tear of their flesh and tissues pulled apart.

I expelled the breath and opened my eyes, meeting the Rider's. A confident grin, one that begged for a swift punch, was etched across his face.

"See?" He smirked, downing the glass of alcohol in his hand.

"This proves nothing." This was the proof he alluded to, that my inner nature was one of evil and destruction. But those were darker impulses I would never surrender to, I was more than my primal programming.

The world quivered and shook like a leaf in the wind. The ground quaked at catastrophic magnitudes, tectonic plates were shifting to a disastrous degree. People cried as they tried to run and crawl to no avail, the ground beneath their very feet betrayed their efforts.

The Rider sighed, muttering something under his breath and dragged me out of the collapsing bar, walking over those that begged for assistance and aid to reach his bike. I made no effort at asking him to lend them a hand, this man, who supposedly wanted to save all futures, had very little value for life. The only reason I was still alive was because he was still curious enough to forgo immediately ending, well till he consulted his 'friend' that is.

I looked up, paused and whispered "Amazing." with as much awe as my voice would allow.

The face of literal destruction pierced through darkened and rumbling clouds. His enormous size and mass caused the world to fold and buckle around him, the very planet strained to support his immensity.

Pillars of electricity arced along his periphery, mass ejections of raw cosmic aura disintegrated whatever material thing that remotely neared his proximity.

The very sight of him drove those beneath me mad. I could see it in their eyes as I'd seen in my mother's, I could hear it in their screams. They could not comprehend the being that stood on their world, their feeble minds could not grasp the sheer concept of a universal constant made flesh. I wondered what he appeared as to their eyes, what form they perceived him as. Each race saw him differently.

"Galactus buddy!" Frank, now assuming his Rider form, cackled as we flew for the destroyer.

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