[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/kxtPWp5.jpg?3[/img] [i][url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172062]“The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”[/url][/i] -- W.B. Yeats [/center] [b]Midtown Manhattan [b]10:14 AM[/b][/b] Yorkie Mitchell kept a long leash on his tails. Right now he was nearly a half block away from Sam Symington and his protective detail. Somewhere on the other side of the block Castle watched as well. Yorkie was back tail while Castle was the front tail. They were always the day shift since they didn't have jobs. Tonight, Alves and Chase would take over and watch Symington until he called it a night. Currently, Symington was in a jewelry store while his bodyguards sat in their car and shadowed the store's front door. He had three goons with him currently. Even from this far away Yorkie knew they were carrying weapons under those baggy suits. [i]"Y. Let's switch off, I work back and you work front. While we trade off, get close to the car and tell me what you can about it."[/i] Yorkie stuck a finger in his ear and mimed like he was picking earwax as Castle spoke to him through the tiny earpiece. When he was done, Yorkie rogered and started walking down the block. He saw Castle from across the street, walking in the opposite direction with a cap covering most of his face. Smart move. Unlike the other three members, he was wanted. The guards sized Yorkie up as he approached the car but let him pass without hassle. He did his best to observe them while trying to look nonchalant. A few minutes later he took over the front tail and radioed Castle. "The guards look like ex-military types. There's a logo on the sides and fronts of that SUV. An arrow wrapped in thorns. Said Thornguard underneath it." [i]"Shit."[/i] "You know them?" [i]"You remember Hephaestus Security when you were in Afghanistan? That's them, they just rebranded themselves after all that shit."[/i] "Shit." A PMC company, Hephaestus was believed responsible for the Wadi Massacre. Twenty men, women, and children were found shot dead in a Wadi in Northeastern Afghanistan in 2010. Despite all the fingers pointing towards Hephaestus and its mercenaries, Congress never found any concrete evidence to indict the company. The stink lingered, however, and the name was now synonymous with corporate greed, corruption, and American Imperialism. They once tried to recruit Yorkie after his messy exit from SIS. They promised a hundred thousand dollars a year but couldn't give him Finn Cooley... but Castle could. And that's where his allegiance lay right at the moment. "What does this mean?" [i]"We just have to be more careful about how we plan this. Thornguard may be ruthless, but so were the Scargetti Family. Here he comes..."[/i] Yorkie turned and saw Symington exiting the store with two large bags. The bodyguards hurried into place and helped him into the SUV before it took off down the street, blowing past Yorkie on the sidewalk. The windows were tinted, but Yorkie caught the clear image of Symington grinning widely while he held up a Rolex encrusted in diamonds. ----- [b]One Police Plaza Manhattan 2:39 PM[/b] Detective Oscar Clemmons looked up when he heard the sound of an elevator opening. He was surprised to have a visitor. Sometimes, whole days would go by down here in the basement and he wouldn't see another human being. If he did, more than likely it was a janitor just passing through towards the utility room down the hall. Clemmons stared over his reading glasses at the open door, expecting to see Ramon coming by with a mop bucket. Instead, he smiled widely when Adrian Chase breezed through the door. Like always, he looked like a million bucks in his expensive three-piece suit and slicked back hair with not one fiber out of place. "And how is my favorite NYPD one-man investigation squad this afternoon?" Chase asked as he held his hands up and revealed a paper sack in his hand. "I got you a bagel from the place down the street." A few minutes later Clemmons was eating his bagel while Chase examined the big board on the far wall. It was laid out with a map of Manhattan and the rest of the boroughs. Marked across the map were red pins, a lot more than were there the last time Chase was here. Chase tapped on the pieces of purple thread that were connecting pins together. "The thread is new, Oscar. What's it represent?" "Timeline," Clemmons said between bites. "If you accept that each one of those red pins are murders Frank Castle committed, then the purple thread between the two pins represent a murder that he either could not possibly accomplish or would have been hard to accomplish." "Example?" "The one near the bottom," Clemmons nodded toward the map. "If Castle strangled a Triad pimp to death that night, then there would be no way for him to have been up in Queens at the same time, shanking a drug dealer. Over the past four months, I've noticed an overlap in a few of the murders and ran it back to at least six months of overlapping vigilante violence." "So one of the murders isn't a Castle hit, that or Castle has superpowers?" Clemmons laughed and wiped bagel crumbs from his hands. "Castle with superpowers is a very scary thought. My working theory is this: He's got help. The media is calling him the Punisher, but what if there are Punishers, plural?" Chase turned away from the board and smirked at Clemmons. "That's a very interesting theory, have you told anyone else about it?" "I wrote a couple of reports on it and kicked it up to my boss in Intelligence. Haven't heard anything back. Hell, Adrian, I'm here in this basement for a reason. Nobody cares about Castle along as he waste scumbags." Chase shrugged. "It's a win-win for some people, Oscar. Gets bad guys off the streets for no cost." "It's more than that, Chase, and you know it." Clemmons stood up and walked towards the map. He stared at it as he spoke. "He's a man acting like his own legal system, playing judge, jury, and executioner. No oversight and nothing stopping him. So far he's taken out the worst humanity has to offer, but what happens when he makes a mistake? He will make a mistake and some innocent person will be killed because of it." "I feel like I had a hand in this. That case, Oscar. It was... I should have won it. If I win that case, Castle gets justice and the Punisher isn't created." "Hell, we all created him. It wasn't you or me, but all of us. We all silently consented to graft and corruption and apathy in everyday life. What worked for us ruined Castle's life. And now, he's ruining other people's lives by inspiring more vigilantes just like him." Clemmons pulled at the threads connecting the murders together and sighed. "Before long this entire map will be nothing but red and purple. How many of those red dots will have actually deserved it?" "All of them, if we're lucky."