La Perdita

6:03 AM

While most of the neighborhood sleeps, the door to Jake's Bar opens and Jake himself stands in the doorway, sweeping dust and dirt off to the street, preparing his establishment for what he calls his 'early birds'.

"What's this? You're still here?" Jake says as he notices the drunken man sitting on the street against his wall, with his head hanging low and his middle body covered by a dirty blanket.

"Come on! Shoosh! Shoosh!" Jake begins to yell as he hits the man with his broom. "Hey! I'm talking to you!" Jake 'brooms' the man with a little more strenght, and he falls to the side. "Oh, crap, he's wasted..." Jake says under his breath.

"Ah, what the heck..." Everyone knows Jake is a tough guy, but no one can say he's not compassionate. Jake walks over to the man and removes the blanket to pick him up. "Come here, buddy... SHIT!"

The first thing Jake notices is that the man's hands are a mess of broken bones and open flesh. Then he sees the stab wounds all over his torso. They're 19 in total, but right now, he's a bit too shocked to take the time to count. The next thing Jake notices are the bruises that cover every visible body part... including the face, that only now Jake has taken the time to inspect. It's deformed almost beyond recognition. Jake knows that if he looked at the man's torso, arms, or legs, he would find more bruises of the same kind.
Jake tries to find a pulse but fails. He almost feels relieved for the poor man, considering the sorry state he's been left in.

"Jake? What's wrong?"

The voice takes Jake by surprise. "Oh... Otto. Take a look at this."

The large, round bear-man, a Jake's Bar regular, approaches the corpse slowly, only to pull back in one second as soon as he realizes what he's looking at. "Holy granola! What happened here, Jake?"

"I dunno... I first saw this guy when I was kickin' out some bums around 4... Figured he was drunk, y'know? Poor fella was probably already dead by then... I dun--"

"Hold on..." Otto says, interrupting the bar owner. "I know this guy!"

"Wha? Who's he?"

"His brother Frank was with Shirley's group a while back!"

"The Vanguards?!"

"Yeah! Name's something Cavalli... Rick I think. I met Frank a couple of times... He said he was working with Shirley's friends to pay Rick's hospital bill. He had some sort of meta disease... Frank dissapeared pretty soon after that... I thought I saw him in your bar one day, but it turned out to be Rick. He told me he was cured in that hospital in one of the islands and wanted to start a new life here."

"I don't recall seein' him..." Jake says, looking at what's left of the man's face. "So this guy was a meta?"

"Yeah... He could grow big or something, but the medication they gave him for his disease didn't let him do that... Whatever hit 'im, poor guy couldn't fight back."

"Yeah, but the bastards who did this are gonna pay... I know who I'm gonna call now, and it ain't precisely the cops..."

"Jake..." Otto said, trying to be as sensible as he could "...the C-Men's disbanded, we can't..."

"I mean Vanguard."

"Right," Otto nodded. "Right."