QD:Season 2, Chapter 4. (Jade Shade meets The Excruciationizer!!)

Holden Allen was sitting on a lawn chair on a beach in Hawaii sipping a giant drink with an umbrella in it.

He closed his eyes, and aimed his face toward the warmth of the sun, and grinned like a pumpkin thinking of all the old people who he'd screwed over to get here.

It took every ounce of control not to burst out into roaring laughter.

They had lost, he had won.
They were weak, he was strong.
He had gotten away with all of it, the system allowed it, God Bless America.

With the sun in his face, he missed his death coming.

A muscular man with a buzz-cut in floral print boxers rose up from the sea, and casually walked up onto dry land.

His right hand had been amputated at the wrist, and replaced with a prosthetic.
It vaguely resembled a pointing fist, but was really a custom made gun.
Specifically, for this occasion, a spear-gun.

He aimed the spear-gun at Holden, and fired the spear into his jugular vein.

Holden gasped, gurgled, and bled out, unable to see his assailant with the sun in the way.

Women screamed.

The assailant, more accurately, the assassin, calmly walked back into the ocean, and vanished.


29 years earlier....


Wayne Vance and Hunter Haggard were hanging out by the jungle-gym at the Elisa Jack playground.

"Oh, by the way, did you hear about G.I. Joe?", Hunter said.

"No, what?", Wayne said.

"The show's over. G.I. Joe died".

"What?!?! How??".

"Stomach caved in".

"Wait, there's no character called G.I. Joe, do you mean all the characters?".

"Yep. Stomachs caved in".

"....huh".

"Yep".

"Really??".

"Yep. Stomachs caved in".

"Huh".

"So if I turn on my TV tomorrow, there'll be no G.I. Joe on".

"Nope. You shouldn't even check. Y'know, cuz you'll be too sad".

Wayne looked at him with a squint of distrust.


Fall came, and Hunter got into an argument with his teacher, Mr. Pacer, over a paramilitary thriller of the day.

Mr. Pacer insisted it was war propaganda, and stupid, and bad for kids like him to see, Hunter stuck by that it had artistic merit (in the way a kid with a kid's vocabulary could).
The argument escalated, and escalated, until both were red faced and screaming, and Hunter was bawling "they drew first blood!! They drew first blood!!".

It ended with Hunter sobbing at his desk, and Mr. Pacer sitting in eerie silence with a sanctimonious look on his face you couldn't pry off with a jackhammer.

Pacer wasn't punished for psychological cruelty, but Hunter was sent to the "special class", the very next day.


Winter came, and Wayne would go to Hunter's house to play Bastilles and Basilisks, or B&B.

Hunter's character was "The Excruciationizer", and his back story was that he was the guy who caused G.I. Joe's stomach to cave in.

Hunter talked Wayne into making some special mazes, then had him describe them.
He secretly taped the session.
The infamous "Corey's trap", tape was born.
Wayne got sent to "special class".

Hunter had just wanted some company.


Spring came back around, and Wayne went to an Offal concert, and had a poster autographed.
He brought it in to class to show Hunter.

The teacher, Ms. Whitesmith, tore it up.

Wayne vowed vengeance on her if it was the last thing he ever did.
Hunter joined in on that oath, and they made a solemn promise.


Eventually, Hunter got tired of being the fat kid, and picked on, so he took karate, and got really good.
Eventually, he moved away from Lentilville.
Wayne missed him, but moved on, and the promise was forgotten.


In the 1990's, Hunter enlisted in the U.S. ARMY.

After 9/11, he got shipped off to Iraq.

There, he lost a hand to an IED.

He came home, got an advanced prosthetic, got into MMA for awhile, but still felt aimless.

Then, in the early 2010's, he saw the rising superhero movement in his old hometown of Lentilville and knew he had to get in on it.


2013, Hunter admired his handwork.
A prosthetic weapon to swap out with his hand.
He called it The Uzi-Fist.

Then, he looked at his costume draped over a kitchen chair.
It was just a black t-shirt.
Emblazoned on it was a fist clutching a tiny torn off human arm, and snapping it like a twig.
Fat bolts of orange pain lightning radiated from the little broken arm, and surrounded the fist in a perfect arc.

It was the mark of The Excruciationizer.

Hunter grinned.
"I'm back", he whispered.


But first, he thought, he had to take care of a couple minor errands.


Hunter flashed back to when he was a kid of about three, and seeing a movie on late night network TV about an Orca Whale that gets vengeance on humans.

There was a scene with a dying whale, and it made him cry, and exclaim "I wish those PEOPLE were killed instead!!".

Flash-forward to the present, and Hunter was in a wet-suit and scuba gear, and swimming towards a whaling ship.
Uzi-Fist attached, and a Bowie knife between his teeth.


In a matter of 20 minutes, the whalers were all dead.
Gore drenched the deck of the ship.

Hunter held up the spear from one of their spear-guns, clicked it into the barrel of the Uzi-Fist, and thought of some modifications to make for his next errand.


Hunter walked up onto a beach on one of the islands of Hawaii, wearing floral print boxer swim-trunks, Uzi-fist modified into a spear gun, and took out Holden Allen.

"No one messes with my grandpa", he silently thought to himself.

He then turned, and walked back into the ocean, ignoring screams of witnesses.


2014, back at his apartment, errands taken care of, and ready to find his fellow superheroes.
He was in full Excruciationizer gear.
The shirt, a black trench coat, a utility belt, and boots, both the same shade of orange as the pain-lightning on his chest logo.

Before he could set out, he got a knock on the door.

It was Jade-Shade, and Commander Continuum.
They were recruiting.
He was more than ready.

Commander Continuum confronted him with the "Corey's trap", tape, and both his identity became apparent, and the years melted away, as if space-time had been folded together like paper

Excruciationizer held up his right hand, and said "dude, I got this, I think we're even", and just like that, in that instant, they had made up, and were friends again.

The three left together to get more recruits.
The team was growing.