Many Years Ago

Anna was seventeen years old and living the perfect life in the upper Manhattan district, where all the wealthy families lived. The neighborhood was perfect, always free of litter and vagrants; the house Anna and her family lived in was always spotless and well organized. You’d never find a speck of dust anywhere within.

Anna was the apple of her father’s eye, always being called ‘princess’ and generally given whatever she wanted. All that was asked of her was that she kept up her grades and if she wanted to go out, her friends had to pass her father’s inspection.

Tommy, however, was a different story. He was eight years old and no matter what he did, he couldn’t earn his father’s love or respect. Tommy was always below his father’s expectations in every way. If he got a B on his report card, his sister would show him up with an A+; if his room was clean and his bed was made, there was always a wrinkle in the bedsheets or a loose toy gun from one of his action figures on the floor; his sister wore pretty dresses and proper clothes for a girl of their family’s wealth, while Tommy’s shirt was often untucked, his pants often got holes in them from playing too rough, and he preferred a ratty old pair of sneakers over nice dress shoes.

That didn’t mean that Tommy wasn’t a well behaved boy, in fact he was the most perfect child any parent could ask for. He was polite, generous and loved to help others. He was just seemingly born into the wrong social status. In a poorer family, Tommy would have fit right in. While his sister could do no wrong in their parent’s eyes, Tommy found himself constantly on the other end of lectures, groundings, and spankings for the most minor offenses.

It also didn’t help that Anna and Tommy’s father was the homicidal vigilante known as Elite, a criminal in a white plated mask who killed anyone who wasn’t up to his perfect standards. Elite was doing this to emulate the Punisher, another vigilante who was out to stop the scum of the world. It seemed as if Elite and the Punisher were born allies, destined to meet and save the world from the unwelcome scum.

Frank Castle, however, didn’t see things this way. Upon tracking down Elite and his vigilante group, the Trinity, the Punisher wasted no time in executing all three of them and that’s where things started going wrong for Anna and her family.

Upon finding Elite’s body and identifying him, a massive investigation was launched, up to and including freezing the family’s assets. The art gallery that their father had owned was shut down, and the family’s good name within the community was destroyed beyond repair. Lawsuits from Elite’s surviving victims eventually wiped out the family’s fortune and put them into massive debt.

Soon, Anna and Tommy’s mother had no choice but to move them to a poorer neighborhood in the Hell’s Kitchen district, which was about as far away from Riverside Park as one could get. Anna and Tommy were forced to attend public school, while their mother took a job at a laundromat to pay the bills. Anna, on the verge of graduating high school, had started to become bitter towards the world, and especially the Punisher, for destroying her perfect life.

Tommy, however, couldn’t have been happier. He was making new friends, loved his new inner city school, and was taking whatever odd jobs where he could to pitch in. Everything from paper delivery to washing cars to dog-walking, Tommy did what he was able to bring money in for the family.

He missed his father, true, but now that he was able to be free of his father’s strict regulations and guidelines and was able to really step up to help the family when  they needed him. He had grown to be the man of the house and was pulling more than his own weight at his young age. It wasn’t perfect, but Tommy was now happy with his lot in life.

That is until the night that Anna came home and found her mother having hung herself in the kitchen, having left a note that she couldn’t take living the life of a poor woman anymore. And that was the night that what was left of Anna’s perfect world was forever gone.

Since Tommy was so young, he was taken out of Anna’s care and put into a foster home, where after a few speed bumps, he lived happily for the next nine years before going on to college in Kansas. But that’s when his own life started taking a downward spiral*.

(*The Punisher #17-#18 -TC)

Anna, however, had grown cruel and bitter towards the world. It had taken everything from her: her home; her wealth; and her family. And that was when she stumbled upon her father’s storage locker in Queens, the only thing the authorities hadn’t confiscated in their investigation. It was filled with his journals, a briefcase filled with cash, and many, many weapons. There was also a spare mask and white suit hidden in a case, still perfectly pressed.

Anna knew what she had to do, so she begun training herself both mentally and physically. She learned how to shoot not only a gun, but became skilled in archery. Learning martial arts, she quickly became a black belt in a few short years. The money she found went toward investments which she used to quickly build her social status and wealth back to what she was used to.

But that wasn’t enough for Anna. There was still the Punisher, out there ruining many other families. And that’s when Anna decided it was time for Elite to make a glorious return . . .

SWEET & ELITE

By Tobias Christopher

Today
New Jersey

The Giovanni family had gathered together for a dinner to celebrate the peace treaty with their enemies, the Trafford family. The heads of each family had come to an agreement that would benefit both families, making them even richer while flooding the streets with more guns and drugs than the police would be able to control.

Coby Giovanni, an older man in his sixties, looked at the table which consisted of his six sons, five daughters, wife, mistress, and those who were a part of the Trafford’s family, which consisted of the head of the family, two sons, two daughters, a wife, and two mistresses. The only ones not in attendance were the underage children who were too young to take part in such an event, even though their parents would introduce them to the world of trafficking soon enough.

“To a mutually beneficial agreement,” Giovanni said as he raised his glass. The others did the same as they drank. As he sat his glass down on the table, the old man noticed the glasses were trembling. “What in the hell?”

At the same time, a loud whistling noise was heard just outside the window. Giovanni looked outside, just in time to see a large rocket headed toward his mansion. Before any words could escape his lips, the rocket had crashed through the window, exploding as soon as it hit the head of the other family, Harmon Trafford, who was sitting at the other end of the table. As soon as the rocket struck Trafford’s chest, all hell broke loose. Not to mention Trafford’s body parts, which were now scattered across the room.

A fireball exploded inside the dining room, shattering the remaining windows, sending a large cloud of black smoke flowing through the broken windows of the mansion. Standing at the other end of the lawn was Frank Castle, holding a smoking rocket launcher in his hand. He tossed it to the ground as his partner Chip tossed him an assault rifle. Frank calmly walked toward the devastation, shooting the assigned guards who were still reeling from the shock of the attack before they could fire back.

Frank kicked open the door, shooting the remaining guards as he headed toward the dining room. Everyone should have been dead in the explosion, but there was no sense in taking chances. That’s when he heard the moans of one man under the debris.

This strike was only supposed to send a message that Frank was declaring war, but if someone was still alive, he could get some information before he really started getting his hands dirty. Well, dirtier.

The man still alive was old man Giovanni’s son, Willis. He was next in line to assume power, and had already made his name well known in the business for heading up a prostitution ring. Frank kneeled down, grabbing the young man by the collar. He was bleeding to death from a shrapnel would and probably wouldn’t last the hour.

“Good, you’re still alive. We’re going to have a chat, and you’re going to tell me everything I need to know. If not, if you think you’re going to die and be free, guess again. Because I can keep you alive for years, making you beg for the sweet release of death. I will never let you die if you don’t answer one simple question for me. Where is my son?”

72 Hours Ago

Frank Castle and his young partner, Chip, were sitting in a motel room somewhere in the midwest, unsure of what to do next. Between Chip finding out his baby brother was still alive, but now comatose thanks to a bullet in the brain, and Frank finding out his biological son Benji had been kidnapped by an unknown enemy, the two weren’t sure how to proceed.

Frank desperately wanted to cut a path of destruction through the underworld, and so did Chip but Frank knew that Chip only had one reason for getting into this life, and that was to avenge the brother he thought he’d lost. Now that his brother was somewhat alive, Frank felt that Chip might be better off going out into the world on his own. Chip was still young enough so that he could easily return to college, get a degree, and make an honest living in the world if he wanted.

“What next?” Chip asked in barely a whisper, knowing damn well what was coming.

“A lot of people are going to die before this is over,” Frank told him truthfully as he cleaned his gun on the table. “I’m going to kill every last slimy bastard who might have had even the slightest connection to Benji’s disappearance. There’s going to be a lot of blood, kid. Theirs, and quite possibly, ours.”

“And you want me to get out while I can,” Chip said without looking up at the man.

“Your brother’s alive, he could still wake up from that coma,” Frank replied as he  started putting the gun back together. “And you need to be there when it happens.”

“Morgan has no idea who I even am,” Chip told him, finally looking up at Frank. “Even if he wakes up, he has his adopted brother that he knows, and loves, more than he ever would with me. If Morgan does wake up, I do want to see him, but . . .  I’m not the brother he knows. That brother died when Howard Saint shot me and left me for dead.”

“Kid, I know I said once you get into this life, there’s no getting out it,” Frank told him as he put the gun down onto the table. “But for once you have a shot at having a normal life. Maybe get an apartment close to Morgan’s hospital, visit him everyday until he wakes up. Or go see if Griffen’s daughter is still single, and if her father doesn’t break your legs, you two make a life together. Or maybe you can track down that kid you hooked up with back in Kansas. He shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

A lump formed in Chip’s throat as Frank mentioned his one night stand with a suspect in a cannibalism case. Chip had always been ashamed to admit he was bisexual, something he’d buried deep inside himself since he had a secret relationship with his dead friend Connor back in college. “You–you know about Tommy?”

“You seemed a bit more relaxed that one should be after nearly getting eaten by a psychopath, so I just put two and two together, ” Frank replied as he picked his gun back up. “The way you talked about him, it just seemed kind of obvious what happened. All the dark shit I’ve been through in my lifetime, and I can still tell what puppy love looks like.”

“And it doesn’t bother you that I slept with a guy?”

“Let’s get one thing straight, kid,” Frank said as he stared Chip in the eye. “I don’t care if you’re gay, straight, bi, asexual, trans or whatever, that’s none of my business. It’s when you cross the line and break the law that I start to give a shit about your after school activities. You want to go out and find out if someone you had feelings for still has a thing for you, now’s the time. If not, there won’t be another chance because I’m about to declare war, and there’s no coming back from this until either they’re all dead, or we both are. Or realistically, them and us. So, what’s it going to be?”

Chip looked out the window, watching the rain outside for a few moments. He cared for both Jasmine and Tommy, but odds were both had moved on by now. But there was something in knowing that Frank didn’t care about him being bisexual that made him want to fight by his side even more.

“I’m in,” Chip told him with a new confidence. “Let’s get your son back. Just one question, though. If and when we find him . . . what do we do with him? You can’t raise Benji in this life, and he’s obviously not safe anywhere you place him.”

Frank stood up and looked out the window. “I’ve been asking myself that same question since we went after Saint. The truth is . . . I don’t know. If this thing turns in our favor and we do manage to walk away with the kid . . . I have absolutely no idea how to proceed beyond that.”

“Long day at work, Tommy?” Martin Soap asked as his girlfriend’s younger brother walked into the apartment, exhausted.

“I had no idea waiting tables could be so exhausting,” Tommy said as he collapsed onto the couch. “Is Anna home?”

“No, she said she had a few last minute business deals to take care of,” Soap told him. “So I guess it’s just you and me for dinner, kid. You want some takeout?”

“That sounds great, I can barely stand up right now,” Tommy said as he looked down at the paper. The headline was detailing the Punisher’s wave of killings in the criminal underworld. “You think that guy’s heading here?”

“That’s what everyone’s thinking,” Soap told him as he picked up the paper. “I guess ol’ Frank’s finally gone off the deep end. Well, further off, anyway. Wonder what caused him to step up his war against crime?”

“You sound like you and the Punisher are old friends,” Tommy told him as he propped his feet up on the table.

“I wouldn’t put it like that,” Soap replied as he tried to think of how he  could put it.

“Can I tell you something personal?” Tommy asked as he looked over at the man.

“You’ve already told me you’re gay and that you like to put peanut butter on your pizza, what else is left?” Soap asked with a laugh.

“The Punisher killed my dad,” Tommy told him. “And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Then

Tommy was eleven years old when he was put into foster care. It was a cramped facility downtown where he had to share the same bed with three other boys. There wasso little food, clothing, and other supplies to go around and p Tommy, being the new kid, always ended up getting the short end of the stick when it came to getting something nice.

By the time the Eckerts took him in a year later, he was horribly thin with long stringy brown hair. He had holes in his shirt and pants, and had no shoes. The ones he’d come up in with, despite being beat up and ragged, were stolen within weeks of his arrival and there was no money in the budget for another pair.

But his run of bad luck ended when the Eckerts came. They weren’t a rich family, but they were a loving one, and within three days Tommy had clean cut hair, nice clothes and comfortable pair of shoes. He got to go to a good school and make all sorts of new friends. After a few years, he’d forgotten all about his old life, and the tales of the psychotic father that had followed him to the orphanage.

Even when he came out to his foster parents at the age of fifteen, he was still loved and accepted. His life was now perfect, and nothing could bring Tommy down.

Until the night his parents died in a horrific car accident when he was seventeen, along with his then boyfriend Dean. The four of them were headed to a restaurant to celebrate Valentine’s Day when a patch of black ice had caused the car to slide into the path of a truck. Only Tommy survived the wreck, although he wished he hadn’t for months afterward.

In one terrible tragedy, Tommy had lost everything again. His parents and his boyfriend were gone, and he had nothing left to live for. Until the night his sister had finally made contact with him when she heard about the accident on the news. The two had been reunited just in time for Tommy to accept a scholarship to a Kansas college, but now he had his sister back in his life and the two would continue to remain in contact until he returned to New York two years later.

Elite walked into the old warehouse where she had told the others to meet her. The last thing she wanted was to associate with the likes of these circus freaks, but they were merely a means to an end. The Punisher had to be taken care of, and she couldn’t do it alone.

Elite was well aware of the fact that her father had tried his hand at teaming up with others like himself as well, and died for his troubles. But the original Elite was sloppy and attempted to emulate the vigilante actions of Frank Castle, believing they could work side by side to achieve their goals.

That was his mistake. The world wasn’t big enough for two powerhouses like Elite and the Punisher. So one of them had to go, even if she had to enlist the help of others. But this time, Elite would only be employing their services, not offering a partnership. She would also have a contingency plan in case things went south and needed to dispose of them.

“It’s about time you showed up,” the first person said as he leaned forward. He was six feet tall, wearing cowboy clothes with a ten gallon hat on his head. As he spoke, his lips didn’t move at all, and his voice was very high-pitched for a man his size. There were two small eye holes in his hat, as well. “I was about ready to leave.”

“Yeah, and you said there’d by refreshments,” the man in the purple jester costume added as he crossed his arms and sulked. He saw a cockroach crossing the table, smashing it with hand before eating the remains.

“That’s disgusting,” Elite said as she looked at the last member of the group; the man in a regular business suit that was sitting on the other side of the table. He looked completely out of place, but was probably the most lethal person there. He was middle-aged with clean cut brown hair and a big goofy grin on his face.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want some?” the Jester asked.

“I’m low on nutrients, pass that shit over,” ‘Big’ Doug Hanson said from under the ten gallon cowboy hat. “I keep forgetting I have to feed this lard ass under me.”

“Hanson brothers, Jester,” Elite said as she addressed them before looking at the other man. “Bob.”

“Hi!” the man said cheerfully, causing the others to jump slightly in shock.

“I assume you all know the reason I called you here,” Elite said as she looked around the room.

“Our sparking personalities?” Jester asked with a gleeful look on his face. Having spent a lot of time in a coma, on top of having been possessed by a demon wasn’t the best for Jonathon Power’s psyche. The demon was long gone, but the insanity still remained.

“Because we’re a bunch of sideshow rejects?” Doug asked as he looked at Bob through the small eye holes in the 10 gallon hat and made his brother’s finger point at the smiling man. “Alright, I want to know this motherfucker’s story!”

“Trust me, you don’t,” Elite told him as she stood at the head of the table. She threw up upon reading about Bob’s exploits, then again when she managed to contact him and asked if the stories were true. He replied by telling her about the stuff the news reports left out. She knew he’d be a valuable asset in bringing the Punisher down after that. “We’re here about a common threat, and his name if Frank Castle.”

A sneer crossed Jester’s face as he looked over at Bob. “Why are you smiling?”

“I’m sneering on the inside, friend!” Bob cheerfully said.

“He’s the lowdown sombitch who killed my brother!” Doug said from under the hat. “When he died, I got 100% control of his body, now I have to do all the eating and shitting for both of us.”

Jester reached for the cowboy as Elite stopped him. “You . . . don’t want to look under there.”

“So the five–“

“Four,” Doug corrected.

“The four of us are going to kill the Punisher?” Jester asked. After what Frank Castle did to him, he was itching for some payback. “How?”

“Under my guidance and leadership, and your muscle, we’ll have all we need to lure the Punisher to us and trap him,” Elite replied as she looked at the three men. “Are you in?”

“Of course, darlin’!” Doug replied.

“I’m in, too,” Jester said as he looked at Bob. “So, uh, what did the Punisher ever do to you?”

“He frowned at me when I passed him on the street one day,” Bob said, never stopping his horrific smile.

“Okay,” Jester mouthed as he looked away. “Say, what are we calling ourselves?”

“I hadn’t thought of a name,” Elite replied with a sigh. She was already starting to regret this plan. “It’s not really important, is it?”

“I’ve got a name for us,” Doug replied from under the hat.

The war was getting bloody as Frank made his way toward New York. Several crime families had been taken out, and while Frank’s methods were always considered brutal, now he was taking it to the extreme. He was making sure the message was getting out that he was no longer screwing around.

“Did you really have to roast them all alive?” Chip asked as he wiped the blood off of his hands. He had to get dirty during the last assault as well, killing a few lookouts so Frank could sneak past. “I can still hear the screams.”

“Yeah, you’ll be hearing those for a long time,” Frank replied casually as he washed the blood off of his face. “The screaming never really stops, you just get used to hearing it while you sleep.”

“Frank, I don’t get it,” Chip said as he pulled his shirt off and stared at himself in the bathroom mirror of the seedy hotel they were staying in for the night. The patch of skin on his chest that been removed by a cannibal had long since grown back, but now it was a large noticeable mark on his body, something that resembled a six-inch tattoo of the state of Maine. “We’ve gone through a dozen families since this started, and not one of them has brought us closer to finding Benji. What if it wasn’t the mafia that took him? What if it was someone who has no connection to them?”

“You’ve searched every inch of cyberspace, and I’ve choked answers out of every living person that’s managed to survive so far,” Frank said as he dried his face off. “If someone outside the mafia has my kid, why haven’t they tried to contact me for some kind of ransom, or blackmail threat, or something? What are they waiting for?”

Sweetwater, Wyoming

Benji tugged at the chain around his ankle as he sat on the blanket free mattress of the small bed. The room was tiny and had no windows, with nothing other than the bed, a sink to wash himself in,  and a bucket to use the bathroom in when he needed to go. Barracuda only checked in on him every few days since there was zero chance of getting out of the room, even if he wasn’t chained to the wall.

He knew his father would come to rescue him, he just didn’t know when. Benji dreamed of the day when the Punisher would break the door down, pick Benji up into his arms and take him to a better life.

“Where are you, dad?” Benji asked himself as he felt his stomach rumbling again. When Barracuda came, he only brought toilet paper, a few bottles of water and very little food. Benji had lost a good ten pounds since being taken captive and was sure to lose more. He was starting to lose hope that the Punisher was coming for him, and that left him with zero alternatives.

Benji looked down at the belt around his waist, realizing the buckle’s clasp was pretty sharp. Maybe sharp enough to grant him an escape route.

Downstairs, Barracuda was reading the comics from the local paper, laughing at ‘Baby Blues’, while smoking a pipe. He was dressed as a stereotypical fifties dad, only the clothes were stretched out on his massive body.

“Now those motherfuckin’ kids are funny!” Barracuda said as he heard a man screaming from outside. He sighed and got up, taking his shotgun to the window. A man was running, covered in blood as he ran from his attacker. Barracuda took aim and shot him in the leg, watching the man fall as the man who had attacked him finally caught up. “Keep it down, I’m reading the motherfuckin’ funnies!”

Barracuda returned to the couch, picked up his pipe and went back to reading. He loved the small town life.

The doors of the LGBT Youth Center was blown off of its hinges as Elite stepped through, holding an uzi in her hands. The panicked youths and their mentors started screaming and trying to flee, but found their paths cut off by the other members of Elite’s new group.

“All of you disgust me, and you disgust the Lord with your sinful ways,” Elite said as the Hanson brothers and Bob started pouring gasoline all over the floor. “It makes me sick.”

Elite opened fire, spraying the room with bullets, leaving only one teenager alive, cowering in the corner. She grabbed the girl by the arm and got closer to her face. “You will tell the story. When the Punisher comes, tell him that this is the work of . . .,” Elite sighed as Jester stood tall and proud.

“The Fucked-Up Four!” Jester said in unison with Doug and Bob. The girl was ushered out of the building and pushed on to the sidewalk as the Fucked-Up Four walked out, with Elite tossing a match behind her. The building ignited as a fireball engulfed everything behind her while the group walked away.

“Gentlemen,” Elite said as she grinned under her mask. “Let the games begin.”

To be continued . . .