[CENTER][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/xd25o72.jpg[/IMG] [B]Fortunate Son Part I: Civilization [/B] [I]“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.” -- Eugene V. Debs[/i][/CENTER] [B]Gotham City June 30th, 1888[/B] If a city could be compared with a body, then the city of Gotham was a sickly one. Jonah Hex saw that with every street he walked down and every house and every face that he passed. Factory workers traveled down the crowded city streets, their raggedy clothing covered in soot and their sallow faces streaked with creosote. Workers of all ages, stoop-shouldered old men to boys still with their baby teeth still intact all did the same dead-eyed shuffle through the streets after twelve hours hard labor in the factories. The buildings here were five and ten floors tall and eclipsed some of the tallest buildings he had seen out west. These tall buildings all crowded close to each other down the blocks, row after row making the city seem to be one large tenement to house its stinking, malnourished, and diseased residents. Hex saw whores as well. Just like those that worked in the factories, women as young as twelve and as old as sixty were on the corners at every junction trying to sell their flesh for whatever the going rate was. They had the same vacuous gazes as them that spent any amount of time in the city. That look came natural after a certain point. As many whores here as were the entire population of a town like Dodge City. Stench, squalor, and despair. Civilization. That's what the Europeans who came here called what they brought with them. They stole and raped and murdered everything worth stealing, raping, or killing. Yet they were supposed to be the civilized ones in the story. This was their civilization in action, this rotten town was one of the shining examples of what it mean to be civilized and advanced. They could keep it, Hex thought as he walked through the mud and filth. Hex was given room to walk without much interference. Even in a place like this he was recognized as someone not to be trifled with. The twin Colts on both hips helped hammer that fact home. Still, there was some fool who thought he could approach him. "Say, friend," a skinny man in a baggy suit and a straw boater hat said as he approached Hex. He had in his hands a bottle filled with turquoise liquid. "You look as if you could use some of Dr. Jerimiah von Hausen's Miracle Elixir. It's the cure for whatever your ill is. For just two dollars, it can be yours." "Some sorta wonder tonic?" Hex asked with raised eyebrows. "Yes, indeed," the man perked up at the thought of a potential client. See you have some nasty scar there, friend. This can cure it and anything else. Why, there's nothing it can't do." Hex nodded before he spat a large wad of tobacco juice on the salesman's lapel. "How's it work on stains?" [CENTER]****[/CENTER] The house was big and looming. Three floors high, it stretched out across the rural outskirts of the city where it sat on a hill that had a clear view of the bustling metropolis. Hex sat in the foyer of the mansion, his hat off and awaiting the return of a stuck up butler who answered the door and led him inside without so much as two words. "Mr. Kane will see you now, sir." Hex was led to a study that had bookshelves covering it from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Every inch of the shelves were crammed and chocked full of books of different sizes and thicknesses. A man sat in a leather chair near an empty fireplace, reading intently at the small book in his hands. "Mr. Hex, sir." The man looked up and his fat, ruddy face broke out into a wide grin. He had a thick mustache that went down to his chin and was dressed in an expensive three-piece suit that tried to hide his portly figure. The man leaped up and bounded across the room with an energy that took Hex off guard. "Jona Hex? Eliot Davis Kane. Damn smashing to meet you!" He took Hex's hand into his pudgy one and vigorously shook it. "Have a seat. Mr. Miller, you're dismissed." The butler left them alone while Kane settled back into his chair and Hex took the seat across from him. "I am thrilled to meet you. I have heard so much of your exploits over the years, sir. Why, I myself spent some time in the Dakota Territory some years pass. There was a bit of family tragedy involving my wife and I had to leave city life behind for a spell. I served as a ranch hand and deputy sheriff out there. It was a smashing good time." Hex grunted in a non-committed way and played with the hat in his hands. Kane's sharp eyes fell upon the hat and his expression brightened. "I forgot you were in the War! The War of Northern Aggression, I believe you Rebs called it. I wanted to serve, tried like hell to. I'm afraid I was too young to fight. Oh, what fun I missed out. I would have been a cavalry man, you see. I could imagine protecting Sherman's flanks as he tore through Georgia. A time I would have had!" Hex thought back to the Battle of Shiloh, over twenty-six years ago he fought in Tennessee. Hex wrestled with a Yankee in the mud for nearly ten minutes before he got the upperhand and pinned the man to the ground. He strangled the man to death with his bare hands. The Yankee's last words before he died were a choked sob of "mommy." "Yeah... it was a time," he said sardonically before looking at Kane. "Listen, Mr. Kane. I appreciate the big money ya sent me, but what do you want? I'm not gonna sit around here and listen to you gab no matter how much you paid me." "There's that prickliness I've heard so much about! I would expect nothing less from Jonah Hex." Kane rose from his chair and walked around to the back. He leaned against it as he spoke to Hex with a soft smile. "After coming back to Gotham I got into public service. It was what I had to do, you see. It's expected of me as a Kane. The people I come from made this city what it is." "Don't know if that's something I'd brag about." Kane flashed a wry smirk and continued. "Public service to the city of Gotham is a Kane tradition. My grandfather was mayor, my father a City Councilman. I intend to follow my grandfather to City Hall, but for now I currently serve as one of three civilian commissioners for the Gotham City Police Department. We form a reviewing board that oversee all actions the police make. I fancy myself as something of a reformer, but it is a tough slog to attain progress. The majority of policemen are either corrupt or apathetic and it seems nigh impossible to change that. Over the past few months, Mr. Hex, I have begun to notice a startling trend among the working girls in the Bowery." "Whores, you mean?" Kane bristle at the word. "... Yes, for lack of a better word. A steady rate of them have gone missing. It wouldn't be a problem, women of that sort often do come and go like the wind, but the steady numbers has my attention. I think a gang of bandits and kidnappers may be behind these abductions, Mr. Hex. I have tried to raise the question with my fellow commissioners and other policemen, but I am mostly ignored. They do not care. Nobody cares about those poor girls." "If a whore gets killed and ain't nobody around to see it, is she actually murdered?" "Exactly," Kane said with an animated jab of the finger. "An what's more, the police department do not care. I could cause a panic by taking this to the press. I could hire a Pinkerton, but they cannot be trusted for this. You, on the other hand. You have a reputation as a fearless fighter, a man who will do the right thing when it comes down to it, and an expert hunter. I need those hunting and tracking skills now." Hex looked down at his boots and thought it over. It was a damn fools errand, finding a killer or killers in this town was like finding the right needle in a stack of needles. But... somebody was gonna take advantage of this damn fool Kane, and it may as well be him. "Pay me another five hundred dollars and I'm yours for at least another month."