logs 4 vern

<LaGoMorph> Envision, if you would, dear reader, the following scene:
<LaGoMorph> It is the beginning of the year 2001. Scant months after the death of Hero, the finest among us, at the hands of the Siberian.
<LaGoMorph> Chicago is worsened for the loss of him, and a more staggeringly terse and impersonal understatement I will hope never to again author in my life.
<LaGoMorph> In his absence, any Chicagoan worth their salt would declare their city a festering hive of scum and criminality, and an honest, God-fearing proportion of them would go on to volunteer themselves as one among that number.
<LaGoMorph> Snow dusts the pavement of an unlit alleyway, what scant amount of flakes capable of meandering into the mouth of the incidental construction tossed and belabored by the howling winds.
<LaGoMorph> Surely, yes, these are the winds that Chicago is known for, but more surely, these are the winds that bestow upon the city's residents its selfsame demeanor: bitter, biting, and the tendency to cut straight to the bone.
<LaGoMorph> A solitary light illuminates the alleyway, enough to provide a casual onlooker (were there any, nay, dear reader, the only onlookers were anything but casual) a momentary glimpse of gloved hands, tugging down a thick, woolen scarf the fraction of inches enough to place a cigarette between a set of stained, well-used teeth.
<LaGoMorph> Ed Connolly exhales, fogging the air as his breath intermingles with smoke. It is a slight warmth, and he allows himself this creature comfort.
<LaGoMorph> His onlookers observe him, charitable enough to afford him one final courtesy. The cigarette returns itself to ashes, embers fizzling in an instant on white-speckled concrete. His eyes will need time to adjust.
<LaGoMorph> This, this is where your undoubtedly fertile imagination steps to the forefront, dear reader!
<LaGoMorph> Consider, perhaps, that his body danced with juddering, arrhythmic delight, perforated by a brief but final salvo of automatic fire; see in your mind's eye how his guts splatter the brickwork behind him!
<LaGoMorph> But I propose an alternative. A silent assailant - or perhaps several? - approach him as he crushes the stub of his smoke beneath his well-booted heel.
<LaGoMorph> One serves as a distraction. A request for a light, a casual and unexpected hello at this less-than-godly hour. The other draws cold steel, and our so-very-recently late Mr. Connolly drops like a puppet with its strings - and throat - cut.
<LaGoMorph> Or could it very well be fouler play? This is America, after all. You can never be sure what bastard you eye on the street can or can't shoot lasers from his fingertip, transmogrify his arm into a bone-spiked weapon of war, have minions slink out of the shadows to do their every bidding.
<LaGoMorph> The possibilities, avid reader, are limitless, but one certainty remains.
<LaGoMorph> Edward James Connolly - better known to his colleagues and associates as the interim leader of Chicago's formidable Irish Mob as the supervillain gangster 'Shillelagh' - is well and truly deceased.
<LaGoMorph> I will, alas, speak no further on the subject. You will remain clueless as poor Mr. Connolly to the circumstances of his demise - clueless, indeed, as I!
<LaGoMorph> Do you wish to know the why of it? The how? Read on, then, and I will join you as this story grows in the telling ---
<LaGoMorph> But as you do, dear reader, remember. The people of Chicago are asking a far more pressing question.
<LaGoMorph> What comes next?
<LaGoMorph> =================================
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<LaGoMorph> Some anachronisms are built to last.
<LaGoMorph> The Violet Room is one such - the Prohibition-era speakeasy serves much the same function as it did when its taps flowed with bootleg liquor, and its halls flowed with jazz - O, jazz, illicit of all sounds.
<LaGoMorph> The same subterfuge required to dodge the Feds and peddle sinful quantities of white lightning and alley bourbon by the liter comes into play in this brave new America, land of masks and false names, of costumes and trapping and finery, too glamorous, too profitable to have intrepid parties peek behind the curtain and mutter about its absurdity.
<LaGoMorph> It is a busy time in the wake of Hero's death. Villains make their move, claim their territory, adapt and react to the sudden shift in climate, hoping to catch the winds now blowing in their favor.
<LaGoMorph> The Violet Room, one could say, is buzzing, and today it buzzes with unease.  Its patrons shift about, warier than usual, snatching glimpses over their shoulder at every opportunity. Every individual, it seems, moves as if a colony of nervous ants were crawling beneath their skin.
<LaGoMorph> Our friend David Falconi, whom you know and love (surely, dear reader, if you do not, you shall grow to!) as the supervillain Arson Jones, sits in the corner. Why Jones, you ask? That is for him to tell, not I.
<LaGoMorph> Some would say that he is not wanted here, but tolerated, a necessary fixture for those in the city who would like to see their foes' holdings burned to the ground.
<LaGoMorph> Others would say, and I quote this verbatim, dear reader, so you must pardon my language, that "he's a fink-ass rat bastard of a firebug who creeps me the fuck out, the fucking weirdo," but reader, you must understand: Mr. Jones, nay, call him Arson, Mr. Jones is his father, and I digress - Arson Jones is a pure soul.
<LaGoMorph> Within his heart he houses a bright, unwavering light. He has only one desire in this wretched path from birth to death some disparagingly refer to as 'life', and it is to burn.
<LaGoMorph> On this momentous day in Chicago, he watches the tiny flame of the candlelight dance and twist on the wick, gyrating like a stripper turning fervent tricks for a one-man audience, listening to the buzzing, the uneasy buzzing.
<LaGoMorph> Shillelagh is dead. The Mob crumbles from within, weaker than ever. Swathes of the city ripe for the taking.
<LaGoMorph> He thinks to his dwindling cache of accelerants, the tanks of gasoline he has laboriously pillaged from unattended vehicles.
<LaGoMorph> He thinks to the swathes of the city. Ripe for the taking. For the burning. For those, generous benefactors they are, that would pay him to do so.
<LaGoMorph> He had a duty to perform -- no, a prerogative.
<LaGoMorph> ||
<Bel|Jones> ...
<Bel|Jones> Arson Jones sits, nursing a tumbler of high-proof whiskey and willing the candle ever lower. His mother called him David, David Falconi, for his grandfather, but he hasn't been called that in a very long time.
<Bel|Jones> The rotgut was foul, but he'd acquired a taste. Wasteful, to empty a bottle just to fill it with gasoline.
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<Bel|Jones> He sits, hunched over, perched on his elbows and letting the heavy duster keep the chill from his bones. It tended to set in and stay a while, nowadays, if he let it.