In the beginning, Zorro was just a story. He was just a film adaptation, was fanfiction, a legend. But my perspective all changed when I met Orizious. First, My name is Chinche, and I am not into giving you the whole rundown of how I ended up in the gutter, just take notice that I'm still here. But what I can tell you is, of no real consequence to anyone's reputation, that everyone in this tale is dead. Even as I speak his name, my partner Orizious is dead. I only know this because I was his accomplice in his blatant disregard for his own life and his brutal, chaotic, and I hate to say honest vigilantism for the time that I knew him. In the end, it's difficult to say, but I'm the one who buried him.
He wasn't by any measure a 'superhero'. He was just a homeless wanderer, like me, drifting with no real purpose in life. He didn't really make it clear how he ended up as so, but I know for sure that he was not a bad guy. He just wasn't born into the life of luxury or middle class, and sometimes, when he did mention his past, I could get the sense that he was born to a poor family. Not a broken home, just a poor standard of living, and because he felt like a burden to his family who struggled to provide for him and his siblings, he told me that he decided to 'Lighten the load' as it were.
He told me a lot back then. Back before the calling cards, the planning, and difficult tracking of so-called villains in the dark alleyways. Before he turned hungry for what he continued to call cases and investigations. For one thing, we were broke as all hell, if anything should have been 'investigated' it should have been a damn 7-11 or a fucking burger joint whole-in-the-wall or somthin', but it wasn't in his heart to just survive the night knowing that some people just get ripped apart while he sleeps. The world nowadays, especially from what we saw, was a very bad place to be. Take it from me kid, we tried our hardest to be the change, and look at what it took. Look at what it did to my friend. He lived by the sword, so to speak, and as he tried to help me protect about 20 other people the last night I saw him, he died by it too. It was a damn shame. In the rain at the foot of the stairs, right in front of the church he told me he once sang at, as a kid in choir. I could still see him with a hole right where his heart used to be. Poor kid.
I took his lifeless remains to a forest outside of the city where we had taken very bad folks that had tortured and harassed the city's people with murder and drugs, prostitution and extortion, and other very filthy rackets I care not to mention, and buried him among his fallen enemies. I said some words that I don't really feel comfortable repeating, and remember afterwards saying, under my breath, something I wish I told him sooner. I told him "You will always be Zorro, to me pal. Always. Even if I'm the only one who remembers." Out of all things, I chose to say those words because when we would struggle together about town and what we would do for food, shelter, clothing and extra, he'd recount the stories of the legend that stood for decades and always filled my ear with the crap. But, it was good crap. I'd tell him sometimes that it blew his head up with air, and then he'd laugh it off, and in those moments I would be serious, but I also knew too that It's what inspired him to stay firm and stand strong. Until that night when there was a villain like no other and while he was the only one willing to take it to him, I was gathering the folks to one side of the church and failed him by letting him alone with that asshole. He was too fair for his own good. And one thing I'm sure you know, Life ain't fair. I told him I'd remember because I was the only one left. No one else would be able to do it. And I told him he Was because that's who he chose to be on the inside. Especially in the end. I'm telling you this because it's my way of honoring his memory. Finally I told him after a couple moments of silence, "I'll finish it... For you, it will be done. Goodnight." Leaving a Z in the wet dirt, I left him to rest...
