Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Grand Theft Auto: Nerima ❯ Whipping Post ( Chapter 31 )

Whipping Post

(Allman Brothers Band - Whipping Post)

 

 

It all started back in the early seventies. He was still young back then with only a mother he was planning on leaving soon seeing as his father died in the Vietnam War only just a few years back. He had two brothers who were both younger then him, Timothy the middle child and Louis the youngest. As far back as he could remember, Louis was always a little screwed up, but what Louis did at the age of twenty-three was almost unforgivable. Timothy on the other hand was a conniving knot head; he always had to bail Timothy out whatever master plan he cooked up time and time again. With this in mind Jasper, or as his birth certificate immortalized him as Henry Alexander Foster, was not close to his younger brothers in any real way, in fact to him they were his everlasting burden, but family nonetheless.

 

Jasper himself wasn't exactly a saint when it came to the big decisions in life, but what he establish from the beginning was that he was in charge and what ever he said was right became right and when the day came that he realized how much people feared him, he had an idea. He realized that he could make it to the top of the world and further if he wanted, and all he'd have to do was cover his ass at all times and climb on the broken backs of the people that did what he said. He was still young back then and never truly saw to whole picture of things that caused that horrible thing. You see, he was naïve once and only once in his life and being naïve was what got his mother killed.

 

He let things get out of hand and for maybe only for a moment he felt untouchable, he felt like a god and started playing with lives. Up until he was twenty-two he had never killed a man before, because he felt it unnecessary. He thought that once you kicked a dog it wouldn't bare fangs at you, but run yelping instead. He was right for the most part, until he ripped off a man by the nickname of Baxter `Bloody Knuckles' Mackenzie. When Jasper first met that man he KNEW that he was just another meat sack with a wallet, and he KNEW that Baxter was not a smart man, but what he didn't know was to what bounds Baxter's anger had and what Jasper would discover is that the bounds were almost limitless.

 

It was it was drawn out and torturous if anything else. The first warning was when he got some mail at his apartment, or office as he referred to it, and in one of the envelopes was a small stack of pictures. His face grew red and hot as he looked at the voyeuristic photos of his own mother in the shower, and immediately set out on a mad search to find out who did it, but with the long list of people he'd managed to fuck with, he hadn't much clues other then to look at his most recent cons. Unfortunately it was too little too late and he found himself surrounded shortly after leaving his office and being on the receiving end of lead pipes, chains, and baseball bats.

 

Beaten and bloody he was thrown into the trunk of a GTO and taken away. He'd grown so used to being feared that the single emotion he lacked was fear itself and was therefore constantly living with a false sense of security. Even being beaten down like that and thrown feebly into a trunk didn't shake his confidence for some strange reason. Even now in a bloody fetal position, he felt stronger then them and knew this was just a return for something he had done and that he was going to walk out of this alive. Maybe a little sore, but alive and that's all that mattered. Then the atom bomb was dropped when the trunk lip opened. The air had the scent of a wheat field all around it and the white oak tree he caught a glance of just seemed all too familiar. Even the dirt road he was being dragged over had it's own brand of familiarity, but still he didn't want to believe he was back at that run down little Kansas shack with all the peeling paint and burnt grass out front that he called home.

 

Jasper could only remember the next bits in short wild flashes, punctuated with even shorter moments of agonizing terror. He remembered thinking that his little brother Louis was dead because of how much blood caked his face and hair. He also remembered seeing his mothers body, but with a different face. It wasn't the lazy blonde face that smoked a carton of cigarettes every day and still managed to look young. It wasn't the woman he'd seen everyday of his life up until that point. I was someone with sickly puffed out cheeks, with a bloody twisted face that must have been screaming in shear horror before it lost breath and died. After this things became even fuzzier, but the rush of something icy cold in his chest combined with a raw burning furry somewhere in his head would forever imprint itself in his mind. He became something that had, for a long time, tried to get out before. He became barbaric and enraged in a split moment bringing him to do something he never felt necessary up until now.

 

Baxter was not the first person Jasper killed, but the fifth. Baxter had some boys that did dirty work for him, much like Jasper had, and for them that day would have been better spent acting sick. The first murder was nothing short of savage. Since both his hands were held all he could do was lunge forward to the man in front of him with the only weapon he had. He buried his teeth around the goon's windpipe and with a disgustingly slow tearing, he pulled it out as the other three tried to subdue him. Jasper couldn't remember how he got free, nor could he remember how he killed the next man, but he did remember hearing Timothy screaming his lungs out as he watched. The next two were done in with a lead pipe that he couldn't remember picking up, but did remember seeing. Then there was Baxter, bearing his teeth like a dog that Jasper had never seen before. Baxter was in no way large like one would assume his name implied, but he was actually shorter then most. He acquired his name by having arms and legs that could wrap around you like tight metal cords that could cut the flesh and having a disturbing perversion for beating in anyone's skull with his bear fists. He was strong and put up a struggle, but a lead pipe made him go to the ground like anyone else and then Jasper did it.

 

He wrapped his fingers around the exposed throat just beneath the pork chop sideburns and pushed his thumbs down cutting off the precious air Baxter needed. Baxter fought back but not for long. Soon his fists stopped swinging and he tried feebly to pull the hands clasped around his neck free. His mouth flew open and his tongue waved as if trying dearly to remember the taste of the sweet air. Baxter's final attempt was to pull Jasper's hair and maybe swing him off, but even as a handful of hair ripped away from Jasper's skull he just kept choking the life out of him, until the eyes went wide, glassy and vacant.

 

When Jasper could focus his eyes again he found himself driving away from a blood splattered home with his brothers in the car with him. He didn't have a clue where he was going, and he couldn't remember for the life of him how he got this car, but in the end it didn't matter because he started thinking. The drive was long, silent, and personally uncomfortable. Every one seemed to try and stay away from each other as much as possible, but when you're all three feet away from each other, it's just hard. Jasper checked in the mirror to see Louis in the back, but his own face took his breath away. His face was the reason there was such silence in the car. There was something behind it all and it wasn't because of the blood, nor the injuries, and not even the little pieces of someone else's flesh stuck around his lips. He was smiling something wicked and his eyes had a laid back look inside of them like he'd just done the greatest deed. He was painted red like the devil and the devil's work he'd just done. His mother was dead for Christ sake, but for some reason she was nothing more then a stepping-stone on the road. Something easily overlooked. And that's when it hit him. There was something cosmically wrong with him, as well as the entire world.

 

In the following years Jasper became the man who was most notorious for his cruelty. He had a chance to travel around and collect his thoughts while looking after a couple of brothers he hated. Jasper had come to some realizations that made his brothers fear him. One of these was when he was thinking about a good old fashion Texas execution. He started to ponder what the death penalty was exactly and it didn't take him long to figure it out. It's just a legalized murder. It's something a bunch of people agrees on, then the judge gives a verdict and then the state snuffs him out. It's utterly inexcusable, it's horrible, it's man acting as god dictating lives, but then there was the other side of the coin. Some guys just deserve to burn. It's the ultimate justice taking away another man's life and if the some crusty old fuck in a silly robe is allowed to point his finger of blame then why the hell not him? This was Jasper's rationale.

 

 

In four years Jasper had managed to raise a couple of corrupt kids and start a small and illegal gambling gig. It was exciting for the first few months but all the novelty had grown thin quickly and it wasn't long until he needed something new to occupy his mind. He could have gotten around to finally visiting his mothers grave, but after four years of not giving a damn it was hard to fake the effort and to top it off both Timothy and Louis seemed to forget who that person was as well. Timothy had become old enough to start helping Jasper out with a few things, so neither of them got the chance to pay much attention to Louis who'd taken to strange and almost occult hobbies, but that'll serve a purpose later.

 

Now one day Jasper was looking out his window of his apartment and decided to take notice of someone that had always been there. There was an old woman that did one thing with her day every day. She sat in front of the building, pretended to be sick, and asked anyone that walked by if they could go to the store and buy her smokes. Jasper watched this go on for a week straight every time he had a chance to look out the window and the more he watched, the angrier he became. She lived the most useless and pitiful existence anyone could hope to accomplish. She sat on the side of the goddamn road for fourteen hours a day and humiliated herself for smokes and the only reason she did it was because she was a big fat lazy bitch with no goddamn ambition in life. All day long she'd leach off of anyone that happened to walk by and pretend to look like a poor crippled woman that didn't get a whopping cheque from the government at the end month. She was the type of person that had a job for a week and decided to go on disability leave because she dropped a book on her foot and has been milking the injury ever since. Or maybe some doctor told her she had a learning disorder that forced her to be lazy and took away all of the vitality in her to get up and do something for a change. This was the excuse she'd hid behind all her life to justify her worthless existence.

 

On a Saturday morning, Jasper made a decision that he would never regret. He walked outside, crossed the street and put a loaded gun against her head. When all she did was look at him and quiver with fear he asked her a question. “Aren't you going to fight me? Aren't you going to resist me at all?” She made a gesture that came from instinct that said she wouldn't do anything to save her life. She just shook her head and prayed to god he'd lose interest and go away, but for someone like her he didn't look away and he didn't lose interest. Instead he just grabbed her hair and threw her to the ground and started kicking the living piss out of her. The whole reason he was doing this was because he came to another realization. He was just as infinitely unless as her. All he did all day was sit around his apartment, empty a few slot machines, and go leach money off of anyone that happened to be passing by. He blamed everything on the fact that someone had killed a mother he'd lost interest in and he blamed a couple of brothers he didn't much care about for dragging him down and turning him into a leech firmly attached to the asshole of humanity and he did this for about fourteen hours a day. In a sense he'd just thrown someone just like him to the ground and started kicking her in the face.

 

The only thing from the incident that made sense was Timothy pulling Jasper off the old lady and a day later having the headline of the newspaper screamed to him by Timothy as he packed all their suitcases. The last thing he heard about the woman was that she was in a coma for almost a week and died in hospital from some sort of bleeding of the brain or something to that extent. He didn't really care, but that something he came to realize about himself he did care about. There wasn't going to be any more nickel and dime operations, it was just going to be big time shit with the real coin rolling in. He needed a start and he figured that Chicago was a good place to find it.

 

The drive was worth it almost instantly with a few guys in with the mafia finding him right away and taking him to a small time crime boss that trading in human cargo. Right away Jasper knew that this boss was still fresh like him, but showed all the potential in the world. He was organized, ruthless, and fair to those he worked with. His name was Bugsy Malone. Bugsy needed a real cutthroat like Jasper to pull a few jobs for him from time to time and it earned him money. Almost every Thursday or Friday night, Jasper would get a call on his huge clunky cell phone and a voice would say, “Hank, I got a little job for you.” And the next day there would be a headline or a subcategory in the morning paper about some brutal murder of a man or woman suspected to be connected to one crime ring or another. He never left any witnesses, always took his shell casings or bloody knife and burnt all the evidence. Then someone would come by his place the next day and hand him an envelope with three grand in cash inside. Jasper considered this for a while and it defiantly beat working at a burger joint.

 

It was too bad the jobs didn't last longer, but Bugsy moved himself to Liberty City and quickly became a big shot while Jasper, or Henry Foster as he was still known, stayed behind and continued to erode with the city. He was back to nickel and dime jobs and he'd killed so many people that pretty much everyone was pissed off at him, but within six months of Bugsy leaving, Henry Foster had an idea. A business only really needs someone to have an idea and to take charge. Well he had an idea, but now the issue of a tainted name stood before him with a stupidly simple solution. He changed his and his brother's names to Garino and so the idea was set in motion.

 

Jasper Garino started as the boss and stayed as the boss of his organization. He started dealing in everything the mafia did and more. He got into the drug trade, murder, politics, slavery, child pornography; you name it he had something for every last filthy degenerate motherfucker crawling through the gutter for their next fix of whatever sick disgusting shit that got them off and through the day. Jasper sat in the center of this state of human decay and conducted it using fear as his medium and a complete disregard for any one other then himself. So much so that he eventually pushed his brothers away and set them up with work so as not to get in his way. If he had been a good brother though, he would have noticed Louis strange behavior and would have never let him go on his own.

 

In his youth and all the way into the nineties, Louis had a particular liking for patterns of the occult and an absurd amount of fondness for domination. In Louis's world he was a god below his brother Jasper and this megalomania is what lead to all of the rape and dodgy murder cases. Later on Jasper suspected that his brother was meeting with an urban legend from Texas named Chuck Palmer, and was proven right upon an uncomfortable introduction. Jasper was fine with the encounter, but Chuck Palmer was scared stiff of Jasper the moment he locked eyes with him. Those yellow eyes pierced into him and it felt like Jasper was closely examining a berating Chuck's naked body from every fathomable angle. It was always Jasper's advantage to be able to look at someone like nothing more then a piece of meat, while keeping an air of sanity around him that was impossible to tell if it was true or false. It's an amazing ability to look at a chainsaw murderer and make him flinch and force him to break eye contact first.

 

Years passed and as time went on bellbottoms and pork chop sideburns went out of style only to be replaced with loud clothing and synthesized music. The eighties proved to be a world devoted to ultimate party drug known as cocaine and business boomed, especially after he took over the Vercetti Empire in Vice City. It was one of the few things he didn't have to kill anyone over and in truth it was his useless brother Timothy that came up with an idea to con Vercetti out of his money, but to still let him walk off with a handsome sum. Other then that the entirety of the eighties and most of the nineties went by in a fast blur of sifting though sheer bullshit. Problems fired from left right and center and his job consisted of answering as many questions as he could. He eventually worked out that he was asked about two and half thousand questions a day and if he answered about one and a half thousand right then he would have a relatively smooth day.

 

Then one day he got a call. He'd received the best news he'd ever received in his career of being mean sonovabitch. Louis was dead and he couldn't have been happier. Finally the little fucking perverted leach was dead, the court cases were all going to close, and finally that asshole wouldn't call him anymore. Jasper cracked a long overdue smile, but knew that this couldn't go unpunished. Sure he was happy about Louis's painful and disfiguring death, but someone had now stepped on his toes and when someone did that, someone usually died. It was such a nice change that for once someone didn't know who he was fucking with and now Jasper could have his fun with eroding the very soul and being of that person for as long as he pleased. It was such a nice way to make people remember just why challenging him was so taboo. However now as it seems, that very person who stepped on his toes got around to surviving for a lot longer then anyone else had before. Then almost a year later the same guy killed his other brother Timothy. This had become serious.

 

Things were falling apart over in Japan, so he decided to take a closer look at what was over there and then he remembered it all. To get both Bugsy and Jerry out of Liberty City he'd exported them there along with all the other people that annoyed him. He had thought that throwing all of his enemies on one huge spit of land was going to be good enough, however he didn't expect them to all get together and have hoopla on his industry. Quickly he thought up a plan. Since everyone over in Japan was so good at killing everyone he sent over there, then why not get all of the guys he really hated, over there and in a big room. He made it look like a big old happy convention for a bunch of gangsters that knew he wouldn't possibly try to pull anything funny while they were all there. All he had to do was show up and show them trust and as soon as he got word that the Nerima wrecking crew was arriving, he'd split and head back to Liberty City. The only problem was that he underestimated how well they worked. He figured that they'd come along blow shit up, and while they were out he could get his boys to kill Bugsy and make off with all of the cash in the basement. Then everyone just up an died on him and now that Ranma guy, or girl he wasn't sure anymore, had just performed one of the most insanely stupid stunts he'd ever seen, had everyone else killed in the process and had gotten as far as flinging pipe bombs at him with an air of mirth in his drugged induced giggling. It was quickly turning out to be the worst day he'd ever had.

 

 

Another nearly deafening blast followed by a hail of nails went off close by Jasper's ear and he was starting to get a little angry. He brushed a bit of the dust off his head and put a finger in his ear as if to clear it. “So, what? Do you have a sister I've never heard about, or are you actually one of them homosexuals like that Jerry guy?” He leaned out from behind a large stone bust now fully covered in nails and missing chunks and started firing in Ranma's direction.

 

Ranma got down low as the bullets whizzed by and said, “You're being awfully friendly. I thought you'd be a lot more pissed at me over your casino and me killing brothers and all.” Ranma fired his own weapon and took a few more pieces out of the bust. “Seriously, you're taking it well.”

 

“To show emotion I have to first care that you did it.” Jasper said as he peeked an eye around the corner of the stonework. “If it really concerned me I would have had you killed right away.” Jasper took aim silently but didn't fire.

 

“Oh? And how'd you manage that? Lots of guys have had a good crack at it, but so far that Palmer guy I hacked to pieces has been the closest so far AND he had to get me while I wasn't looking.” He added almost smugly.

 

Jasper's gun followed Ranma's voice and he kept waiting for the moment Ranma's head stuck up a little. “For you I'd make it damn near poetic. Shakespeare style if you will and it would be done in one of two ways.”

 

“Oh?” Ranma was interested so when he fired his gun he kept his sights wide. “How's that?”

 

Jasper caught a hand sticking out of the railing and almost took it off with a single bullet. “If you were just an average Joe I have you poisoned, and if you were an emperor I'd have a bunch of your closest advisors stab you in the stomach about twenty times.”

 

Ranma laughed as he cradled the hand that a bullet grazed. “Am I safe to assume you've got someone I know under your thumb.”

 

“Did I spill something?” Jasper said in a mock arrogance. “This'll knock your tits off, but almost everyone is under my thumb, and those who aren't usually don't live that long.” Quietly he pulled out a small Swiss army knife with a miniature compass built into it and then pulled a small slick radio out of his inside coat and whispered, “West wall, second floor. Move fast.”

 

“I'm still living, aren't I?” It sounded cliché and it was after he said it that he knew that the statement was about as sub par as you could get at the retort game.

 

“That's because you've been under my thumb you idiot.” Jasper watched as Ranma stood up quick with another pipe bomb in hand and as he threw it Jasper's hands went into overdrive with deadly aim. It was lucky for Ranma that the rug he stood on wasn't stable enough to stay put on his rapid movements or else the bullet would have passed into his chest and not his shoulder.

 

Ranma let out a yell, but Jasper was exposed too long for his own good and Ranma paid him back in turn with some wicked fast desperado gun slinging. “You shot me you fuck!”

 

Jasper took off his coat, pulled off the long thin black tie around his neck and tied it tightly around his own wound with an astonishing speed that said he'd done this a few times already. “Really? I didn't notice. I'll make sure to kill you with the next shot though.”

 

Ranma was beginning to think the higher ground was putting him at a disadvantage with being a bit pinned down and all, but then again Jasper wasn't doing any better himself, and then he heard something. Both of them went quiet as they listened for it. Then Ranma said, “Shit! Cops!” The sound of a helicopter came nearer and nearer to the building, and Ranma began to panic. “How about we finish this up quick?”

 

Jasper's voice came back calm. “Nah, that ain't the cops. That's just my ride.” As Ranma risked a look over the ledge he saw that Jasper was out in the open again and he hadn't been silent because he was listening for the chopper, but because he was busy attaching a few new parts to his 9mm. With quick and easy snap-on pieces the 9mm pistol now had an extended stock, a bigger custom clip size, and a nice new burst feature. A spill of three rapid shots came out with each squeeze of the trigger, and the new thirty round clip said he could fire it ten times without reloading, but the aim wasn't to hit Ranma, it was to keep him pinned down while the helicopter came around to the west side of the building and start firing at the second floor with the mounted minigun.

 

The door on the side of the black chopper slid open revealing a man in commando gear, pivoting the gun around with a thumb over a button. The front-end pipe work started rotating with the sound of a small motor propelling it and moments later it spat fire. A deafening cry of bullets rained down into the area where Ranma was huddled up and for a few moments all he heard was the wail of the gun and only felt the shards of glass and bit of debris pelt him relentlessly. It may have been a few seconds or many hours, but eventually it stopped and it took Ranma a few moments to rake up the nerve to look around him. There wasn't anything around him that didn't have at least a few deep dark holes in it and after a few more moments he realized that this did not exempt him. Looking down he finally figured out that the reason he couldn't feel his leg was because a heavy piece of something had pinned it to the floor and had cut off most of the blood flow, but there they were, one bloody hole on the upper thigh and another just below the knee. Then the nerves in his leg finally found a way to send a signal to the brain. “ARRRGH!!!” No matter how many times it happens, getting shot is always unexpected and very painful.

 

The clatter of Jasper's footsteps went further and further away as Ranma writhed in pain and all he could do was lay there without much choice as to do. However looking around wildly in his slightly comatose state he saw the miniature radio he'd thrown, it was his link to Hikori and he reached out for it. He stretched his arm as far as it could go and eventually he got the tips of his fingers to bring it to him. “Hikori you there!?”

 

An annoyed voice came through from the other end and high tone shots flowed through with it. “I'm a little busy out here!”

 

“He's getting' away, and my leg is fucked!”

 

“I guessed as much, you know with the chopper and deluge Jasper's little private army coming in around us from all corners. Get up there and kill the bastard!”

 

Ranma looked at the small radio like is was a small smelly offensive object for a few moments and said. “I have been shot in the leg twice! I have a mountain of rubble on top of me! And I have the biggest caffeine buzz I've ever had in my life! I cannot chase him at this given moment! Can't you guys shoot the chopper where you're from?”

 

“I'm a good shot, but not that good. Fuck it, it's taking off.”

 

Ranma was about to smash the radio, but thought better of it. “Which way is it heading?”

 

“East.”

 

“Ok…” Then Ranma thought for a moment as he watched the blood pour out of his leg. “Which way's east?”

 

“I'm guessing the airport.” Hikori said wisely.

 

“Well get going then!”

 

“YOU get going! I'd like to see you just hop in a car out here and bugger off while a thousand bullets a second are flying around.”

 

The noisy whirling sound of the chopper started to fade away somewhere to Ranma's back and he started pushing as much junk off of himself as he could. It was a full minute of radio silence until an unexpected yet familiar voice came on. “I see im' comin'.”

 

Ranma stopped almost instantly and picked up the radio. “Jerry! You're alive. Where the hell are ya?”

 

Over the radio transmission the sound of a chopper coming in close to Jerry was faint but picking up volume. “On the roof of the casino. Just leave everything to me.” She said it slowly with a hint of self-gratification in her voice.

 

 

“Hurry up with that thing ya useless pukes!” Two men hurried through the roof entrance both carrying one large green on either side. They dropped it as her feet and she waved them away. “Now get the hell out of here. I've got a bone to pick with a certain asshole.” They saluted her and ran off while she kneeled down and opened the case with a smile. She was red with her own blood and probably many others, her hair was a mess, her suit badly torn and now she had a rocket launcher hiked onto her shoulder. She could have easily rendered Rambo permanently impudent with a single dangerous glance.

 

She took careful aim as it came closer and closer from below the building. It hadn't seen her yet, but the pilot would see her soon enough. Her eyes started to blur and the rocket launcher started feeling kind of heavy. She could feel herself growing cold and she knew without looking in a mirror that her skin had become deathly pale. The deep dark gunshot wound in her chest still hadn't been tended to and too much blood had left her body. Her entire body wavered as she focused every last ounce of strength to stay standing and aim.

 

The chopper flew up from below to building to go over it and the pilot saw her standing there with a wild smile and holding something very dangerous. The pilot froze and didn't know what else to do then go forward and hopefully miss the shot, but Jerry pushed the button just as Jasper ran up front and turned the control stick, forcing the helicopter to turn swiftly in the air. It was too little too late and the rocket hit the tail sending the chopper spinning wilding in the air like a flaming frisbee, and right towards Jerry, who didn't move, but fell to her knees and watched it come at her with a broad smile of self satisfaction spread across her lips.

 

 

(Allman Brothers Band - Whipping Post: You know, going to film school is actually a lot harder then it sounds. Twenty-six hour days, a three page report every three days, storyboarding, working with a bunch of inexperienced asshole actors. This takes time out of my writing and so does the fact that I live very close to a beach and it being summer. With this said, I'll update the goddamn story when I'm good and ready, so until then rock on and party hard!)