CARETAKER	GHOST RIDER 2099	VENGEANCE

[Timestamp: December 14, 2099]

The city cried out for help.

[Transverse City was the bastard offspring of Chicago and Detroit, a sprawling trans-spatial super highway with a twelve-gauge load of miles between the mega-levels of bad road that rocketed into the sky like the launch of the Alchemax advertisement satellite back in ’91. The megacorp thought that a satellite beaming product placement ads straight into peoples’ brains from outer space would make them some money. Naturally…it did.]

The citizens’ broken bodies littered the fragmented infrastructure, painting a grim picture of a madman’s genocidal tendencies.

[The biz suits and the megacorps used to rule here, too. First it was Alchemax…then D/Monix…Doom…and now? Now everyone is pissing in their pants, bleeding in the gutters from massive head wounds, crackling forth with any shockin’ riotous act that could possibly be conceived. Nobody is in control now, everything is legal again…free will is more than just a figment of television past and Ethernet dreams. The city is ours.]

Children and the homeless scattered like rats at the sound of the engine. The legend was true; the hollow face painted on the walls of broken buildings was real. The halo of righteous allegiances was there to help them, to save them, to give them back everything they had lost in the fall of the City. The street gangs of toxic zombies and sewer line waste paused in their gutting of small animals at the sound, their hearts dropping into the pits of their stomachs. They knew what was coming.

[The city may be ours. Hell, we fought hard enough for it. There’s one question, though…who in their right mind would want a place like this?]

The steel and rubber sole of the industrial strength, theft-deterrent boot crushed the cracked pavement under an obscenely heavy foot. The Ford Velociraptor 900 eased to the ground as the propulsion unit powered off, allowing the vehicle’s owner the chance to abandon it in favor of walking. The people in the broken hovels of unrest and dirty penance each came out of the woodwork, one by one by one. “It’s him,” one remarked. “The Rider,” another gasped.

[They look at me as if I’m their savior, as if I can lead them to something better. Not my biz, I’m afraid.]

Kenshiro “Zero” Cochrane scanned the growing crowd with digital eyes. They had taken to calling him the Ghost Rider, an archival agent of retribution that prowled the back roads of twentieth century America. The robotic body with the skull surrounded by holographic flame had probably helped with that conclusion. The warbot’s sensors made him aware of every tiny movement in the area, a bad section of anywhere straight in the middle of the first level of Transverse City. In other words…Hell.

[These people are crying for help, but not the kind I can give. There’s only one thing I can give them.]

“Skull Face?” a young girl asked upon approach. “My mommy, she won’t wake up. The rocks hit her in the head. Please wake her up for me, please.”

The Ghost Rider looked down at the young girl, cybernetic appendages bulging with anger and stress.

[What can I give these people?]

“Please?”

[Vengeance.]

“The men, Skull Face. They did something to Mommy.”

[My life’s been one, long, burning scream since the Ghostworks made me what I am today. They saved my life, while at the same time condemning me to a non-existence of artificial intelligence. Ran on autopilot for so long, I don’t even know the first place to start rebuilding.]

The three men jumped and ran, leaving the bloody and butchered woman lying in the rubble. Her head was caved in due to the rocks that the men had used to subdue her. The pants she wore were ripped to shreds, panties pulled apart at the crotch area so as to allow them easier access. The Ghost Rider studied the woman’s body, picking up fibrous details that would allow him to track the perpetrators into the ground. The first man stopped his flight, turning to produce an ancient PK 1130-mm pistol.

[The Pillar Kaman 1130 millimeter laser sighted revolver was a big deal back in the 40’s, until the manufacturer realized how shockin’ obsolete they were. Nosebleed violators of the ordinance law of ’57, the PK can still be found on the black market. Owned a few myself, back in the meat days. Now, the son of a glitch won’t even dent my chrome.]

The flash of the bullet exploding from the pistol’s muzzle lit up the darkened roadway, streaking a golden flame trail through the air. The Ghost Rider held his ground as the bullet flamed across his metallic frame, barely singeing the chassis. The little girl gasped as the warbot’s eyes blazed red, a thin laser beam igniting the air on the way to its target. The man screamed in pain as the beam burned a hole straight through his body, exiting out his back in a thin expulsion of red.

“The…the other two got away,” one of the downrampers explained, their eyes transfixed on the smoldering corpse of the gunman.

“S’ok,” the Ghost Rider said, “Got their DNA strands burned into ROM. I’ll find them, when they last shockin’ expect it.”

“But…my mommy?” the little girl questioned as she stared at her mother’s body. Tearful eyes locked with the red sensor ports of the Rider’s, questioning the world and everything in it with that single gaze. The tears streamed like a river after her hero shook his head “no.”

“Listen up!” Zero shouted to everyone around him. “The corp’s fallen. The biz suits aren’t around anymore. It’s a free for all down here, ESPECIALLY down here. Watch your backs, or this,” he pointed to the woman’s body, “will happen to every shockin’ last one of you.”

“Thank you,” the mass of skunge workers expressed, some even attempting to lay hands upon the being they felt could save them. Their protector. Their savior.

“Don’t thank me,” Zero answered as he mounted his bike, “I’m not here to help you. I don’t give two shocks about any of you. Vid?” With that final statement, the living urban legend gunned the thruster and exploded away in a gust of wind and fury.

“Dude, come ON!” Valiant shouted as he pulled on the coat sleeve of his ally. The two were running for their lives, hoping to escape the solid steel demon that nipped at their heels. Mud just laughed, the effects of the White Heat in his system still jacking him up to a state of violent euphoria.

Mud threw back his shoulder, the back of his palm connecting with Valiant’s face. “Let the freak come, man! I’ll give him a shockin’ reason to STAY dead!”

“Shockin’ synthetic courage,” Valiant muttered as he scampered back to his feet. He knew there was no way to stop the ghost, especially when better than they had tried and failed. There was nothing to do but run, even if it meant leaving Mud to face certain death. His friend was still shouting to the heavens as Val turned the corner into the blind alley. The wall appeared out of nowhere, knocking him straight on his ass.

“Oh…”

The shimmering data halo of the Ghost Rider flared against the night sky, black eye-sockets burrowing into Val’s brain.

“…SHOCK!”

“You should’ve seen this coming, pusbag,” the Rider said as he lifted his massive right leg. The metal appendage crashed down, stomping Valiant’s kneecap deep into the concrete.

“Gaaaaaaaahh! I’m sooo sorry!” the human screamed as the silver creature ground his foot through the bone of his leg. “I tried to stop Gill and Mud from raping that girl, I really did!”

“Sure you did,” the Rider stated with his cold, robotic detachment, “that’s why you were the one that hit her in the head with a shockin’ rock.”

“Please, man, don’t kill me,” Valiant pleaded, tears streaming down his face, “don’t shockin’ kill me…”

“You pusbags killed yourselves,” Zero replied calmly, “the moment you decided it was hunting season on downramper sex organs.”

The murderer continued to sob weakly.

“Ratbiters like you are what’s gonna get us all killed,” the Ghost Rider began, fully realizing that his words were falling on deaf ears. “We survived so much shit in this City, but right now we’ve been written off by the biz suits as a lost cause. All it takes is a few like you and your pals to make this a national emergency. If they caught wind of the type of shit you’re doing, this place would be put under martial law in a shockin’ heartbeat. Is that what you WANT? Do you want several stealth smokers to fly over and obliterate this place off the map?”

“Don’ kill me, man,” Valiant reiterated.

“Shock this,” the Rider decided after a moment of thought. His massive foot shot forward, the toe of his boot connecting under his victim’s jaw. Valiant’s head came right off, with only a slight tearing sound as the death knell.

“One left.”

His name was Mud, and it fairly accurately summed up the extent of his mental facilities. He’d talked bravely moments before, but the sight of the giant metal warbot scraping his friend’s brain matter off of the heel of its massive boot had caused his drug-induced courage to take a backseat to an emotion even more primal: fear.

He’d seen the Ghost Rider before, as had most of the downramper population, and while the monster had always looked menacing there seemed something...different...about it now. In the past, the Rider had seemed to focus itself on dismantling CSS and UrMan securicops, leaving the skels to stand by and cheer him on. Something had happened since D/Monix’s fall, something had made the demon discontent with his former victims.

“Shockin’ system, can’t leave a fella alone to do his biz,” he panted out as he ran, mumbling to no one in particular. Weaving in and out of the densely packed alleyways that littered the side of the highway, he was confident that he could lose his pursuer. He’d lived in Transverse-Down his whole life, so he surely knew more about the area than some blackboot serial killing appliance.

He never saw the pencil-thin red beam streak across the alley exit in front of him. He ran full tilt through the opening, but immediately knew something was wrong. He stopped running involuntarily, though his momentum kept him going forward in a vertical motion. He hit the pavement hard, coughing up blood from deep within his chest. Rolling over onto his back, he looked down at his chest to see the cauterized burn mark that stretched across his breast and forearms.

“That’s gotta hurt,” the buzzing voice of the Ghost Rider sounded off, prompting Mud to roll his eyes backwards. Standing over and behind him was the skeletal avenger, and though he knew it was impossible Mud could’ve sworn that the monster was smiling.

“What’s...what’s hurtin’?” Mud said through more coughing spurts of blood.

“You ran through a laser set on its highest frequency,” Zero replied, his eyes pulsing with red energy, “meaning it didn’t just cut you on its way through your body, it also interspersed enough radiation to turn a country into a giant steambathed graveyard.”

“Wreck you, man,” Mud said, spitting a large wad of blood into the air, splattering it across the Ghost Rider’s steel chassis.

“Oh, we ain’t done, pusbag,” Cochrane admitted as he crouched down beside Mud’s head. Raising his right arm, he allowed the electrically energized chainsaw emerge slowly, crackling to life as it roared and screamed to furious life. “You know what I use this for?” The Rider asked, enjoying the widening of the downramper’s eyes.

Mud shook his head negatively. The Ghost Rider pulled his arm back, lining the saw with the rapist’s head.

“Emergency dental surgery...”

[I’d made up my mind after D/Monix fell. I was gonna leave this city and hit the open road, make my own destiny out in the destination unknown. I don’t have a conscience; I purged that a long time ago. So why does one little girl with haunted eyes make me feel like my whole life is a lie?]

He sat straddling his bike, allowing the crowd of downrampers to slowly emerge into the street from their strategically built shanty town. There was blood on his fist and bits of hair sticking to the wet parts of his boots, but that only made the homeless denizens want to inspect their hero further. Within moments, the Ghost Rider was surrounded by his people, the huddled and crying masses of Transverse City. It wasn’t until he saw the little girl from before that he spoke.

“I spent the better part of my life fightin’ against this shockin’ place,” he stated, his voice amplified from in-built speaker systems installed in his throat, “but that doesn’t make me your hero. I hate everyone in this place, from the lowest ratbiter in Level One to the highest biz suit in Level Ten. But we’re in anarchy now, and what’s to keep you all from killing each other?”

No response came from the crowd, nothing but a muted blanket of whispers.

[Don’t do it. Don’t give me a reason...]

“Mr. Skull Face?” the little girl that had become an orphan in less time than it took to conceive her began.

[Don’t give me a reason to care.]

“Thank you, Mr. Skull Face,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears as she placed a small hand on his silver arm, “thank you for hurting the men that killed my mommy.”

[Aw, shock...]

“If you need me,” the Ghost Rider said as he placed his hands on the handlebars of his bike, “I’ll be around.”

Gunning the combustible engine, Zero Cochrane popped a hovering wheelie before he sped off, the noise of the vehicle echoing through the buildings that lined the highway. Unfortunately, the engines weren’t quite loud enough to drown out the cheers of the crowd that followed behind him. The Ghost Rider’s thoughts were occupied, his mind elsewhere as he rode through the levels of Transverse City.

So distracted, he failed to notice the old man with the shovel watching from the street corner.

[Timestamp: February 3, 2011]

“Eight A.M., Michael. It’s time to take your pills and start the day.”

Michael Badilino grunted in response to the young nurse standing in his doorway. It was the same routine, each and every morning without fail, with Nurse Rachel waking him up with a cup of water and a handful of medication. For the past year, Michael had been quarantined within the walls of Silver Springs Sanitarium in Rutland, Vermont. It had been three years since Michael had returned from his time in Hell, three years since he was resurrected and given a second chance in the realm of mortals...three years since Michael Badilino had been a Ghost Rider.

Michael sat up in bed and reached out for the small paper cup of pills. This was what his life consisted of now, little red and white capsules with names like Haloperidol and Clozapine that kept him in a calm stupor. There were times he had to catch himself before he drooled down his shirt, that was how out of touch with reality he had become. Michael swallowed the pills, assisted by the cup of water handed to him by Nurse Rachel, and swung his legs off the bed for his feet to touch the floor.

“I’ll give you a few minutes to wake up,” Rachel said as she backed out of the room, “breakfast is in 15 minutes, don’t forget.”

Michael nodded and wiped his hands over his face, trying to rub out the lingering remnants of sleep from his eyes. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how many drugs he ingested, Badilino couldn’t forget what had brought him to this place. It would be simple for him to point to one moment, one bad decision, but it wouldn’t be accurate. His life had been heading in this direction since he was a child.

His father was a bastard, a criminal involved with everything from purse snatching to liquor store robbery. To his credit, Michael had to admit, his dad did try to shield his wife, son, and daughter from the life he led. Too bad he failed, and failed miserably. During a stick-up of an elderly couple, William Badilino came across the creature called the Ghost Rider, the Spirit of Vengeance. Engulfing his father with soul-searing hellfire, Michael’s life was marked for the first (but not the last) time by the Ghost Rider.

The hellfire that burned William Badilino’s soul also drove him irreversibly insane, and when he returned home his family felt the brunt of his newfound madness. Michael was away from the home when his father took a loaded shotgun to his screaming wife and sleeping daughter, before turning the gun barrels on himself. Michael returned to his house to find his whole family dead at his father’s hand, but it wasn’t his dad that he blamed for the tragedy.

No, Michael blamed the Ghost Rider.

Badilino grew into adulthood with vengeance burning in his heart. A tour of duty with the military’s Special Forces led him into a career in law enforcement, heading his own anti-vigilante task force. It was in that capacity that Badilino and his team were called to New York City by Police Captain Gerald Arthur Dolan to track down and arrest Brooklyn’s latest vigilante menace: the Ghost Rider.

To Michael, it was a favorable coincidence. It was obvious to anyone who was paying attention, however, that it was anything but a coincidental turn of events. Despite all of his training and expertise, Badilino found himself unable time and again to bring the Ghost Rider to justice. These failures took their toll on the already unstable man’s sanity, and it didn’t take much to finally drive him over the edge. It was then that Michael made his deal with the Devil.

Literally.

The demon creature Mephisto gave Michael exactly what he wanted: the power to destroy the Ghost Rider, and all it cost him was his soul. The specifics of Mephisto’s curse was unknown, but to his horror Michael found himself bound to another Spirit of Vengeance, one even more dangerously unstable than the Ghost Rider. Riding upon a motorcycle infused with the blood of the innocent, Mephisto christened his new pawn Vengeance and sent him into the world.

And though it took time, Badilino was able to curb his desire for revenge and found himself not destroying but instead fighting side by side with the Ghost Rider to save the world. Michael thought himself a hero, using his Vengeance identity to fight crime...until the day came when Badilino lost control of his Spirit of Vengeance, and the terrible things he did sent him not only to his death but also to Hell.

Since his return to Earth, all Michael had wanted to do was forget, forget it all before the weight of his sins buried him alive.

“Michael?” Nurse Rachel asked, knocking on the door when she saw her patient sitting in the same position on the bed as he had been sitting twenty minutes prior. “You missed breakfast again, and you have a visitor.”

Michael raised his head and wiped away the tears. A visitor was impossible, since no one knew where he was or that he was even alive. He stood and nodded toward Rachel, curiosity getting the better of him.

A few minutes later, Michael shuffled into the hospital’s cafeteria, which doubled for the visitation area when meals weren’t being served. The person he saw sitting by the farthest barred window was the drop dead last man he’d ever expected to see again. It was a man he’d sworn to murder, violently, if they ever crossed paths again. Badilino’s pace quickened as he neared his visitor, hands balling into white-knuckled fists.

“Hey, sport,” the Caretaker said with a grin and a tip of his wide-brimmed hat, “how’s life been treatin’ you?”

“You can’t be here,” Michael whispered as he neared the table, “these are good people, they don’t deserve the insanity that always follows you. Leave me to my penance, old man.”

“Sit down,” Caretaker ordered, his grin turning into a scowl as he pushed the opposite chair out with his foot, “and listen closely, because I refuse to dumb this down for a retard like you.”

Badilino looked pensively over his shoulder at the orderlies helping other patients down the hall, while Nurse Rachel attended to paperwork behind the nurse station. “Fine,” he agreed as he sat down, “you got five minutes, make ‘em count.”

“Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing here, kid?” Caretaker began, immediately dispensing with any pleasantries toward his associate. “You think you’re being noble by keeping yourself locked away from the outside world? You’re being played like a chump, and I’m here to get you back in the game.”

“Fuck. No.” Michael defiantly crossed his arms against his chest.

“It involves an old buddy of yours,” Caretaker explained, playing his trump card early, “it involves killing a demon named Zarathos...remember him?”

“I can’t help you,” Badilino answered, “I’m not a Spirit of Vengeance anymore, I lost that power when I escaped Hell. Find Blaze or Ketch, they were always happy to be your whipping boys from what I recall.”

“Bullshit,” the old man spat out, “you didn’t lose your power, you moron. Once a Ghost Rider, always a Ghost Rider, until the day you die - and sometimes even after that! Now c’mon, I gotta get you outta here before these assholes trip onto what I’m here for...”

“These people look after me,” Michael said, refusing to budge from his seat, “they care about me, and demonic powers or not I can’t throw their help back in their faces by returning to a life that drove me insane once already.”

“These people aren’t your friends, dumbass,” Caretaker said as he stood from the table, “they’re keeping you drugged out of your tiny, little mind to keep you in line and away from the outside world. You ever asked how you got admitted here, hotshot? You remember anything before the day you woke up here in your cozy bed?”

“You...you’re lying, like always,” Michael stammered, unable to hide just how accurate the old man’s questions were.

“This place is owned by a scumbag named Anton Hellgate, another name you should remember pretty well. I recall you came close to killing him in Atlantic City a few years back, and he’s primed for some payback. Every person in this building, outside of me and you, is under his employment - the staff, the patients, the cute little nurse that you’re crushing on - everybody!”

“No, no, this can’t be happening,” a frantic Michael whispered as he turned in his seat to see the people he’d lived with day in and day out acting in a fashion he’d never seen before. They were moving into the room, taking up positions in strategic fashion, and they were all brandishing rifles of a high-tech design. The Caretaker was right after all, to Badilino’s everlasting horror.

“Fuck it,” the Caretaker said as he grabbed Michael by the back of his neck, “we ain’t got time to dilly-dally. Consider this your wake up call.”

Michael Badilino screamed, and with a flash of hellfire the man was consumed by a transformation he hadn’t felt in years. His flesh seared from his bones, while his mass doubled and his skull began to morph and change to allow the spikes to protrude from his head and the tusk-like teeth to descend from his cheekbones. When the transformation finished, Michael’s scream had turned into a terrifying fit of laughter, causing the onlookers of the sanitarium to shiver with fear.

Vengeance had been reborn!

“Drop the mother fucker!” Nurse Rachel yelled as she raised her rifle, which was pulsing with blue light.

One by one, a dozen plus armed agents were firing upon the resurrected Vengeance. The rifles had been created by SHIELD years before as weapons capable of stopping Ghost Rider by disrupting his mystical energy matrix. The rifles had proven to be very, very effective - against both Ghost Rider and Vengeance. But this time, something had changed and things were going very, very wrong.

Beam after beam of blue energy splashed against Vengeance’s spiked chest as he slowly stalked forward, silently bearing the brunt of the onslaught let loose upon him. When he was within fifteen feet of the first row of enemies, the hulking Ghost Rider stopped dead and raised his clawed hands at the end of outstretched arms.

“No penance,” Badilino stated, barely heard over the cacophony of shouts and gunfire, “BURN!”

And with that single word, a wall of hellfire exploded beneath the first phalanx of foes, incinerating them where they crouched. This brutal attack scattered the remaining agents, knocking most to their backsides while the rest scrambled to escape before the monster could burn them alive as well. Michael’s response to his fleeing foes was not one of mercy. He reached to the large spikes that adorned his shoulders and pulled them free, launching them forward to skewer nearly the whole host of enemies.

In a matter of moments, the entire population of Silver Springs Sanitarium had been murdered by a Spirit of Vengeance gone mad. As he walked over burnt and blistered bodies, Michael thought about how he had trusted each and every person he’d just killed, how he had connected with them all.

How he had connected with one of them in particular. Nurse Rachel cowered against the corner of the room, huddled back while her rifle propped her up to a kneeling stance. Her right arm and leg were smoldering, badly burned from Vengeance’s hellfire burst, and she fought valiantly to keep from crying. “Michael,” she said when Vengeance approached her, “I didn’t want to do this, please believe me. Hellgate ordered us to watch after you, but I didn’t expect you to be such an amazing person. Please, please forgive me, I never wanted to hurt you.”

Badilino went several long moments without a response to her pleading, weighing the choices he had available. Finally, he reached his massive hand to take hers in a gesture of kindness. Rachel smiled and placed her hand in his, pulling herself up carefully.

“No penance,” Vengeance reiterated.

Nurse Rachel screamed as the flesh began to sizzle, pop, and then melt away from her arm. Hellfire rushed up her forearm and past her shoulder, burning her alive in a slow and torturous method. When nothing was left but ash blowing in the air, Vengeance turned to leave. He found the Caretaker waiting for him at the door.

“Ready now, big fella?” the old man asked as he hefted his shovel up over his shoulder.

Michael Badilino said nothing as he walked past the Caretaker. His actions had proven to be much loader than any words.

To be Continued...

“What do you do the night after you’ve made the biggest goddamn mistake of your life?”

The bartender smirked and nodded at the empty shot glasses sitting on the bar. “Looks like you’ve already found the answer to that question, friend.”

Christopher Burns expressed a forced smile in response to the bartender’s quip, then returned to his melancholy. He’d been sitting on the same bar stool for two hours plus, trying to drink himself into oblivion, hoping to forget what he’d done earlier in the day. It was a wasted effort, it seemed - each drink sobered him up more, sharpening his obsessive distress to a razored keen.

It was December in New York City, Brooklyn to be precise, and Christmas was only a week away. It was a time that people should celebrate with loved ones, not wasting inside a cesspool of a tavern. The name of the bar wasn’t important, Chris had forgotten it as soon as he’d walked inside. He initially wanted solitude, to be alone with his guilty thoughts, but as the hours wore on he felt the need more and more for someone to lend him an ear and a sympathetic shoulder.

The bartender was providing a poor outlet for his misery, but Chris continued nonetheless.

“My girlfriend dumped my ass last week,” Burns admitted as he fumbled through his coat pocket for his lighter, cigarette dangling from his lips, “right before Christmas, can you believe it?”

“Shit, man,” the bartender answered, “that sucks.”

“We’d been together over a year,” Christopher continued, still searching for his lighter, “and I could tell things were going bad, even if I didn’t want to admit it. Hell, it wasn’t so much that she broke up with me that’s so upsetting, it was the way the bitch did it. She waits until I wake up on Sunday morning, and while I’m still half-asleep she blind-sides me with the ‘we should just be friends’ bullshit. Turned out, Crystal had stayed with me out of pity, she more or less copped to it. Every time she said ‘I love you’ was a goddamn lie!”

The bartender had wandered away by this point, uninterested in Christopher’s tale of woe. Before he could fall into a further depressive state, however, the sound of a Zippo lighter clicking open behind his ear snapped him to attention. “Need a light?”

Chris nodded as he took the lighter from the stranger’s hand, watching as his newfound friend took a seat at the bar beside him. The stranger was an odd sight, of that there was little doubt: his black hair was slicked back, while a shock of white ran across his left temple and behind his ear; a red leather jacket hung down his back, covering the black silken shirt he wore with a similarly red tie; and strangest of all were his eyes, black as coal. “Thanks,” Chris said as he handed the lighter back, “dunno what happened to mine.”

“Oh, no problem,” the stranger said as he lit a cigarette of his own and exhaled. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but I was listening to your story before the barman walked away. If you still need a listener, I profess to being sympathetic. Women are devils in the flesh, I know this first hand.”

“The bitch broke my heart,” Chris explained, “shattered it into a million pieces. Not much to say beyond that, I’m afraid.”

“I rather doubt that,” the stranger prodded, “you still haven’t said what your so-called ‘biggest mistake of your goddamn life’ was yet. You can’t leave something that dramatic to hang unresolved, friend.”

Burns nodded in reply, agreeing with the man’s statement. Chris couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but there was something about the stranger that made Chris trust him. It was the only way to explain what he said next...

“I killed her.”

The stranger smiled. “Pray continue...”

Christopher sighed. “Or, well, I came close before chickening out. I want the woman to die, or at least feel a fraction of the pain she’s caused me. When she ended our relationship she had all the emotion of someone canceling a gym membership or ordering a fucking pizza. Killing her would feel great, and my mistake...? My mistake was not going through with it when I had the chance!”

“That’s no mistake,” the stranger replied, “it’s an opportunity that can still be taken advantage of, I think.”

“I’m too big of a coward,” Chris responded, “but thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I have a story I’d like to tell you, about an old friend of mine,” the stranger said as the bartender placed a shot of bourbon in front of him. “It might give you the inspiration you’re looking for.”

Burns was absorbed in his friend’s eyes, drawn in with each spoken word until even the thought of turning away was impossible. The stranger’s smile grew wider after he downed the bourbon and took a drag off his cigarette. “My old friend’s name was Johnny Blaze, and he was about the unluckiest bastard you’d ever heard of.”

“Johnny grew up in a traveling carnival with his dad, a stunt-biker named Barton who couldn’t get off unless he was sailing through the air at 80 miles per hour. Johnny’s mother, Naomi, had left when he was just a baby - she was a bitch kinda like your Crystal, come to think of it - so all the kid had was his dad. Naturally, because Barton was Johnny’s entire world, the loser kept defying death until the day death refused to be defied any longer. Barton Blaze died in a fiery crash, leaving poor ol’ Johnny all alone in the big, bad world.

“But there was a guardian angel of sorts looking out for the kid - a gruff, bearded angel named Crash Simpson, who had been Barton’s partner in the stunt-riding business. Crash, his wife Mona, and their daughter Roxanne took Johnny into their family and raised him as their own. Johnny took up the bike just like his old man would’ve wanted, and the four of them became one happy daredevil family...until the day death struck again, leaving another soul added to Johnny’s guilty conscience. Mona Simpson died in an explosion from a bike crash, taking away the only mother figure Johnny had ever known.

“They went on, though, the three of them - Crash, Johnny, and Roxanne. Now, I confess I’ve never quite understood why this happened, considering the fact that they were raised as siblings for most of their lives, but as they grew older Johnny and Roxy fell in love with one another. The Crash Simpson Cycle Show had left the carnival circuit and gone legit, gaining reputation with each performance. Things were looking up for the tragic threesome, until the day that changed everything...”

The stranger paused to take another drag from his cigarette, leaving an anxious Chris hanging on his last words. “Well, what happened? What happened that day that changed everything?”

The stranger’s smile evaporated. “That day...that day, the Devil himself joined their family.”

To be continued...

Next Issue: You’ve met the first two members of the Ghost Rider Coalition, and next issue you’ll meet the next two members of the team. Look to the past in part two of “A Gathering of Storms”! Also, the retelling of Johnny Blaze’s origin continues in our special back-up story-arc!

I’ve received some awesome feedback for my first issue of Ghost Rider, the final chapter of “Spirits of Vengeance”! For example, here’s a wonderful letter from a wonderful fellow writer, Scott Redmond, about issue # 23:

While I have a lot of knowledge of the Marvel Universe and a vast amount of characters from A down to Z list, Ghost Rider is one that I have only the basest of knowledge about. The deal with the devil. The spirit of vengeance. The names of the hosts, and their connections, etc. I've never actually read any Ghost Rider comics except the recent Shadowland tie in issue. That being said I've delved a bit into Ghost Rider at MO and I'm more than glad I did. I've come to find the character concept to be very entertaining and this issue kept that going. The best part about this issue, keeping in line with the others of the event, is that while steeped in Ghost Rider mythos its reader friendly. Not once did I find myself lost about anything or questioning "Who's that" or "What's going on there". Enough was given about James Fargo for me to understand his past and where he fits into the story of the Ghost Rider without dragging the story down into vast recaps or the like.

When it comes to stories I'm always a fan of stories that do things differently time line or story telling wise, not just following the line of events from A-Z. Starting with Flagg's meeting with Blaze and then jumping back and working the way right back to the present is a nice tool to give an issue a fresh change of pace from others that might be following a standard story telling direction. Flagg came off as a character you could relate to, over just being the washed up guy out for glory. While he wanted glory to follow at his end, it's understandable why. You are made to feel for the man as he faces down death and doesn't want to find death while in a bed. Something I'm sure most of us can relate to on some level. So many of the writers at Marvel Omega and other sites I write at are so good at description and dialogue and Chris is definitely up there in those top levels. The best stories to me are one's that cause me to actually visualize the scenes as I'm reading them. Actually seeing the stunts or the action or the people and their facial expressions seems to add a whole new level to the overall experience. Definitely an experience that I got from this issue. I am more than ready to see where this goes when Chris takes over the title on an ongoing basis.

Thanks, Scott! Here’s another letter, this time from writer Ed Ainsworth:

I liked the issue for the most part! I felt that you really telegraphed the death of the main guy. I think that was probably intentional though, so, you know. Not really a complaint, just an observation. I liked that it was really about the main character and Ghost Rider was a sort of secondary concern. Was the guy actually mentioned in Marvel, or was he totally your creation, because I enjoyed this little piece of retroactive continuity.

So, yeah, in conclusion. I enjoyed it, it was really good and I'm looking forward to seeing your next Ghost Rider issue at MO!

Thanks, Ed (and yes, Flagg Fargo is an established Marvel character)! Finally, here’s a review from someone that enjoyed a previous run on this very title a while back, Meriades Rai:

It's taken a while for Omega's commendable Spirits Of Vengeance project to reach its finale but the wait's been well worthwhile. A subtle distinction that sometimes get overlooked, but Chris Munn doesn't only write a damn fine Ghost Rider; he writes a pitch-perfect Johnny Blaze as well. Here Blaze is as much menacing as weary long before the Ghost Rider's manifestation, which isn't always the case in Marvel's various incarnations (but which really should be).

I thought the parallels drawn between Johnny and the aged Flagg Fargo were extremely clever, especially in the climactic stunt scene that hearkens back to the classic 70s Ghost Rider and the tale of Johnny's dad, and the juxtaposition of Flagg's letter to Johnny interwoven with his own feelings of elation during his final stunt was beautifully done. The pacing of the issue was also perfect, given that the flashbacks could have been disruptive if not handled so well. They never lagged, however, and Flagg's story became engrossing from start to finish.

A real privilege to read this, very enjoyable. Looking forward to Chris' full GR run kicking off sometime soon.

- The Caretaker first appeared in Ghost Rider # 28 (vol. 2). He’s from a race of immortal mystics called “the Blood”, but his origins are up for debate due to the amount of lies and manipulations he’s heaped on the Ghost Riders over the years.

- The Ghost Riders mentioned by the Caretaker in the opening scene first appeared in the following places: Noble Kale and Dan Ketch in Ghost Rider # 1 (vol. 2) and Max Parrish in Before the 4: The Storms # 1. The others named were created for Marvel Omega: Rebecca Lockwood and Lady Guinevere in Ghost Rider # 1 and # 17 by Meriades Rai, Kristopher Smithson in Ghost Rider # 22 by Ed Ainsworth, and Jerroh Smith in Ghost Rider # 18 by David Golightly. Johnny Ackerman was created by Mike McGee in his “Ghost Rider 1957" story elsewhere on the ‘net, but the character was established as a Ghost Rider in Marvel Omega continuity in Ghost Rider # 9 by Chris Munn.

- Zero Cochrane first appeared in Ghost Rider 2099 # 1. His appearance in this issue follows the series’ final issue, Ghost Rider 2099 # 25.

- Michael Badilino first appeared in Ghost Rider # 21 (vol. 2) and became Vengeance in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance # 9. He went insane and killed himself in Ghost Rider # 76 (vol. 2), then was found in Hell by Dan Ketch in Ghost Rider # 92 (vol. 2). His appearance here takes place after Noble Kale released him from Hell in Ghost Rider Finale # 1.

- For information on more Ghost Riders of the past, read the “Spirits of Vengeance” arc in Marvel Omega’s Ghost Rider # 17-23.