Deadshot

Weeper sat in front of the door to the home of Jordan James, his ever-present tears streaming down his face. Weeper wasn’t sad, he had experimented with tear gas and their like-minded cousins for so long that his tear ducts were now constantly leaking. There were worse fates and the money he made by hiring himself out as an assassin/bodyguard more than covered the otherwise tragic cost of his experimentation. For instance, the job he was currently working with Deadshot and Matter Master was an easy identify-and-eliminate for the employer. He wouldn’t even work up a sweat.

“What’s wrong, Weeper?” asked Matter Master as he and Deadshot came outside the front door. “Did wittle Weeper wose his wittle toy?” he said in his most obnoxious voice. “Or did Weeper find out nobody woves him? Hahhahhahahahhaha, man you crack me up. I mean you come up with some of the most deadly mustard gas shit ever thought of and instead of trying it out on some dumb animals first, you keep having it go off in your face. There are names for guys like you…Losers!”

Deadshot looked at Weeper and then at Matter Master. “Thirty Grand and I’ll waste him where he stands.”

As Matter Master’s face turned white with shock, Weeper’s own face was a mixture of tears and laughter. “No thanks, I think I can handle myself if the need arises against this asshole.”

Matter Master raised his Matter Wand high into the air. “Defend yourself against this, Dillweed!” His wand touched the front door and suddenly it burst to life, slamming itself wildly at Weeper. “Not so funny now, are ya, pal?” A wrist magnum pushed into the side of his head made Matter Master rethink the practical joke. “I was only screwin around, Deadshot. Besides, we’re all on the same side, aren’t we?”

Deadshot lowered his weapon as Matter Master took his enchantment off the living door. “We’ve been hired to protect Jordan James from an unknown assassin…an assassin who tried killing him last night on your watch using a sniper rifle. You got lucky and the guy missed, but I swear if I ever find out that you’re loafing around when you should be guarding James, I will kill you myself.” As Deadshot walked away Matter Master sarcastically mouthed back at him, “Kill you myself… Who does that asshole think he is?”

Weeper looked at him with tearful eyes, wiping his nose. “He’s the best.”

As Thomas Blake and Abe Tarrant stood in the dark pool hall, one thing was very much on Blake’s mind. “Abe, why don’t you ever use the dragon tattoo?”

Abe slammed back his beer. “Tommy, I used the dragon tattoo once and that was one time too many.”

“What happened?”

“I was using it to cover my escape from a bank job out in Coast City. Back then Green Lantern, the real one not these kids flying around today, he was all over the place. He was hot on my ass and I had thrown damn near everything on my body at him until he trapped me in a dead end alley. Out of desperation I tore my shirt off and touched the dragon tattoo; I had no idea what it would do.”

“Well?”

“Tommy, that thing came to life and it was a good thirty stories tall. Its tail swished this way and that. It tore down buildings faster than anything the JLA ever went up against did. I damn near shit myself just looking at it! I mean I seen some crazy shit, but this was primal rage.”

“I bet Green Lantern was scared stupid.”

“You know what? I looked in his eyes as soon as the dragon started tearing the place up, and there was no fear in that man. Not an ounce. He just knuckled up and dove right into the bastard. It took everything I had in me to try and control that thing, but it’s kinda like having more than one tattoo going at once, I just don’t have the concentration for it.”

“So what did Lantern do?”

“He saved as many innocent bystanders as he could and in the panic of trying to control the damn thing I got in its way. That son of a bitch Green Lantern saved my ass!”

“No way!”

“Yes!” screamed Jordan James into his telephone. He had been trying to convince the local authorities that he was once again under attack from an unknown assassin. However, the last time the authorities made their way to James’ mansion in the Catskills they were met by a suppressing fire, tear gas of unknown origin, and attacking oak trees. They had no desire to protect and serve right this moment. “You bastards can’t leave me here! I pay taxes!” James slammed the phone down and looked over at Deadshot. “They say that I’m prank calling them. They refuse to send a patrol out after the last time the three of you nearly killed them.”

“Good, we don’t need them anyway. They’ll just get in the way when the killing really starts.” As Deadshot spoke he looked over at Weeper who lay on the floor bleeding to death. His chest wound was from a sniper’s bullet that had penetrated his right lung. He would die before the morning came. “You want me to end it now?” asked Deadshot.

“Don’t end it now!” screamed Blake. “You’ve got to tell me what happened in the end.”

“It’s like I said,” Abe lifted his beer to his lips and finished his sixth in the last two hours. “Green Lantern just stayed in there and fought the good fight. He was way outmatched by my black dragon, and that was with me unable to really control the thing. So anyway, he saves me from some falling rubble and looks me right in the face and he says, “MAKE IT GO AWAY OR I WILL HURT YOU!” Well you can imagine what my response was to him.”

“You turned the tattoo off.”

“No! I told him to shove it up his butt!”

“His butt?”

“Those were simpler times, you just didn’t hear the swearing then that you do nowadays.”

“Son of a bitch!” screamed Matter Master. His wand was broken in half as the hail of gunfire pounded away at his position behind the desk of Jordan James. “Deadshot! Do something you crazy mother..”

Deadshot raised his wrist magnum up and fired a bullet through the desk drawer and into Matter Master’s mouth. “Don’t cuss.”

“Are you insane?” screamed James. “With Weeper dead he was your only ally against that maniac outside!”

As James yelled in rage, Deadshot leaned against the back of the large over turned sofa and sighed to himself. “He’s not a maniac,” he said coolly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“This guy’s a pro. You pissed off someone with some bigger money than you, or you pissed off a known killer. My guess is that it had something to do with your business endeavors that you never mentioned to us. What is it that you do, Mr. James?” To accent his question Deadshot leveled his wrist magnum to Jordan’s crotch.

“I’m a former CIA agent. I worked the local Washington D.C. scene. That’s it, I swear.”

“You were a spook?” Deadshot looked around the posh room. “With the amount of money you must have I’m guessing you weren’t the cleanest company man in the world. So, who did you piss off the most, in alphabetical order please.”

Thomas finished his beer and he and Abe left the bar and headed to their temporary home at the hotel. “So, the dragon’s out of control, you’re being held by Green Lantern, and you aren’t sure the dragon will even do you much good because you can’t control it if you want to. So, you’re there hoping Lantern lets you go to wrap up the dragon right?”

“That was what I thought might happen,” said Abe. “But instead there’s this sudden burst of green energy and he makes his own dragon. An emerald dragon against my black one, so I figure, since mine has no direction then this isn’t a fair fight. So I bust him in the chops with a right cross. He looks at me with those eyes and we both know that it’s on! We start slugging it out, man to man, like in the old days. We both realized that the first one of us to fall would have his dragon fade out and I was sure that behind all that ring power he wasn’t nuthin but a big pussy.”

“So, what happened?”

“Well, somehow, during the course of our fight I accidentally get knocked unconscious. I think I slipped on something and hit my head.” Abe rubbed the back of his head to accentuate his point.

“Or maybe he just knocked you out cold with his non super powered fist!” laughed Catman.

Abe looked at Catman and smiled. “Well, maybe…but if you ever tell anyone that I said that was true, I’ll triple the gay jokes.”

Catman threw his hands in the air. “You know I’m not gay! Right?”

Abe smiled again. “Sure Tommy, sure.”

The hail of gunfire had already blown the window to James Jordan’s study away, so when the assassin made his way inside there was little glass in his way. Each step he carefully placed made little to no noise. He had to be certain that his kill was made before he fled. He had to make sure James paid for his crimes.

“Hello, Tommy,” Deadshot turned the corner of the hall with his wrist magnums both pointed at the assassin’s head. “Long time no see. You never call, and you never write.”

The assassin pulled his M-16 up to Deadshot’s chest but did not fire. Instead, he reached up with his left hand and pulled the black mask off his face revealing himself as Tom Tresser, the former Suicide Squad member known as Nemesis. “Lawton…guess it was too much to hope that you had abandoned this piece of crap when it hit the fan.” He pointed over to Matter Master’s dead body. “Your handiwork, I suppose?”

“Yeah, kid had a dirty mouth. So listen, the spook is paying me a lot of money to make sure you don’t kack him where he stands. I gotta go with the money, you know?”

James came out from around the corner behind Deadshot, an evil grin adorning his face. “Too bad Tom, you should have stayed dead when you had the chance the first time. Selling your identity to the KGB back in ’87 made me quite the small fortune. Hell, you paid for my early retirement. Now you’re back and this is going to hurt…a lot.”

Tom narrowed his eyes at Deadshot. “Number?”

“Ten,” Deadshot replied coolly.

“I’ll make it twelve, just for old times’ sake,” Tresser said.

Deadshot quickly slung his left arm towards James’ head and fired. Before James could react he was on the floor dead. “Didn’t like the guy enough for twelve, I’ll take eleven from you, here’s the account number, just have it there by tomorrow night.” As Deadshot handed Tresser a piece of paper he stepped over the bleeding body of James. “Good seeing you again, Tom.”

Tom watched Deadshot leave. “Yeah, just like the old days.”

Two days later at the hotel suite occupied by Catman and Tattooed Man in New York City.

“Welcome back Floyd!” Catman said as he opened the door for the returning Deadshot. “How did the job go?”

“It went, I decided while I was away that it’s a little more fun working with friends than it is without. So I guess I wanted to know if you and Abe are serious about this permanent teaming up thing.”

Abe looked at Blake, both men were smiling, “Buddy, the three of us on one team, nothing is gonna be able to stop us this side of the damn JLA themselves!” crowed Abe.

“So, what’s first?” asked Catman.

“First we get ourselves a new place,” said Deadshot. “A permanent place, I’m thinking. I mean all the super heroes have their own clubhouses, why can’t we?”

“Floyd, for that kind of set up we’re gonna need some BIG bucks, and we ain’t got that kind of money yet,” said Abe.

Deadshot sat down and opened up his laptop computer. “That’s where this job comes in. Fun in the sun, and we get to take out an old time foe of yours!” As the other two villains leaned in to the screen their quizzical looks slowly became three broad smiles.

Next Issue: What’s the new job? Check out DEADSHOT #5 with guest writer Erik Fromme for the answer!

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