Part 2 of 4
CHAPTER 1: Waking and Fearing
The world around Jack seemed to flash with colors, fading from quiet and soothing blues, greens, and whites into slashing, bleeding reds, purples, and pinks. Jack felt himself materializing into existence, everything ringing around him as he struggled to plant his hands on solid ground. Everything was spinning. The world around him, the whole of it, his senses, his eyes, rattling in their skull, everything was too chaotic for one man to bear. Getting to one blurry and twisting knee, Jack clutched his head, struggling to move his fingers through his hair when he felt his fedora, still resting atop his head. Jack twisted in anger and ripped his hat off, tossing it on the ground. His eyes blinked open slowly, and weary things wandered around his new and shaking perspective.
Gone were the clouds in the sky and the sunshine streaming through the windows in the city of New York. Instead, the sky was replaced with a veil of smoke and ash, and a terrifying dystopia, distorted and fractured like a piece of abstract art, whose hands were owned by a depressed individual, loomed before our protagonist. Jack clutched his chest as he moved slowly to his feet, trying to comprehend his new situation. Jack breathed a sigh of slow relief, honing in on the more immediate problems he had to deal with. A new place, a scary place, one where anything could happen. Jack shook his head, instead stuffing his hands into his pockets as he began to walk, picking up speed slowly, the soft, clinging grass shifting beneath his boots, giving way to rough and cracked pavement.
Jack scooped his weathered fedora back from the ground, not breaking his stride, and he adjusted the fedora neatly on his head, looking all around the city. "Sorry about that, pal. Had to clear my head for a moment." Jack slid down the tight and barbed grassy hill, leaping across a small creek, and flipping through the air across the gap, his boots collided with cold, hard pavement on the other side. Jack righted himself, adjusting his height while he looked around the growing city around him. "Huh. This wasn't anything like what I was expecting Heaven to look like." As Jack inched further and further into the city, he passed varieties of people. Well, crowds would be a bit more accurate. Nobody looked entirely like another, though everyone maintained somewhat humanoid features.
Large jaws, gaping tusks, slitted pupils, barbed tails, this really was one hell of a circus show. Jack scoffed, tucking his head down as he passed a crowd of individuals gathered around some kind of person on the floor, laughing with smoke wisping into the air. Their faces illuminated in the glowing light of their cigarettes and their fiery expressions. Jack took it upon himself to steer clear of these people, at least for a while longer. Thankfully, not everybody looked or was in the process of doing nearly as awful things. Some people could be found having a delightful stroll, others fighting and killing each other. One group of firefighters (were they firefighters?) clustered in an alleyway, their demented fire truck blaring its alarms as they cheered in drunk unison, smashing bottles against their uniforms.
Jack struggled to drown everything out, clamping his ears shut as he continued walking, pulling a trench coat over his face. And when he felt the popped collar brush against his face, he stopped on the sidewalk, grasping the leather of his getup in surprise. "Wait, a trench coat? Now where did I get this from??" Jack slid past two strange people, presumably lovers, and he leapt into an alleyway off of the blood-paved roads, stopping for a moment beside a garbage can to inspect his new attire. His new getup was slightly bulkier than what he had previously, with a muddied trench coat, tactical armor (which scared him the most), a leather satchel over the trench coat, and a strap around his lower right leg with a knife tucked into the sheath.
On his left leg, he had some kind of ammunition strap. He kept the same spurred boots over his feet, but now they were a dark black. Charcoal dark, with muted gray accents on the sole. Jack gritted his teeth, panicking. "So this is looking worse and worse for me. Why do I look like I just killed somebody?" The detective shifted his focus to his hands, which were proudly supported by shredded sleeves, riddled with holes and tears, and fingerless gloves. The fingerless gloves sat on top of and gave way to a pair of striking white gloves, which Jack found immensely surprising. "The gloves feel a bit unnecessary. But never mind that, when did I start dressing like a killer? This is the freakiest getup I've ever seen someone wear, let alone myself." Jack tilted his fedora to an odd angle, and his vision drifted into a dripping puddle, which flowed past into a nearby gutter.
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The Sin Hunter: An (Un)apologetic Introduction
Action"People want you dead, Jack. Unless you put a gun and some bullets between that, you won't last long around here." Jack was dead. But death didn't take him where he should have been. Then again, Jack wasn't looking for a nice, quiet retirement eithe...
