The middle aged Italian man gave a pleasant smile to the pretty young waitress as she poured his glass of wine. “Here you go, boss,” She said in a flirty voice.



He waited for her to leave, admiring her form as she walked away, before addressing his dinner companion. His face went from cherubic to somber. "So can you do it? Do you really think you can kill him?"



His dinner companion was a young man with thick blonde hair in a widow’s peak, crystal blue eyes and a high cheek boned face. "I can kill anyone, Maronelli. It is simply a matter of will." the young man concentrated for a minute and the bodyguard sitting next to Maroni slumped forward, his face landing in his spaghetti.



Maronelli gave a growl. “Vincenzo was my number one guy… did you…?”



The young man didn’t even bother to look up as he cut into his veal parmesan. “No…. no…. he’s alive. I was simply making a point. Your boy doesn’t stand a chance against me when all it’s going to take is a thought.”



“You seem pretty confident, kid. I’ll give you that,” Maronelli said, with an expression that made the young man think of Robert DeNiro in any number of gangster roles. “I knew a lot of other confident guys… talked to them at this very same table about the very same thing I’m talking to you about. Attended their funerals, too.”



The young man smiled. He gave a chuckle before taking a bite of his veal parmesan.



“Oh, you can laugh now, but Vincenzo here…” He gestured to the unconscious man to his left, and then stopped to lift and turn his head sideways so the man didn’t smother in his own spaghetti. “Vincenzo here is a tough guy… one of my best guys, in fact… but he aint no Vigilante. The Vigilante…He's killed….."



Maronelli was cut off by the young man "I don't care how many of your people he's killed and I don't care how skilled he is. He’s just a man. I’m something else."



Maronelli glared at the young man "Okay, wise-ass. Fine.. so you will have no problem killing The Vigilante for me then. The worst case scenario is that you just become another notch on his gun barrel. If he takes you alive, I’m also paying for your silence, understood?"



“Understood. But it’s never gonna happen,” the young man said with a smirk. “To quote from Monty Python, the Vigilante is now an ex-super hero.”



This drew nervous laughter from Maronelli’s other men. After seeing what this slightly built young man had done to Vincenzo, he was making the much larger thugs uneasy.



The young man stood up from the table. "Do you want anything special?"



Maronelli looked up "What’s that?"



The young man repeated himself calmly, "Anything special? You know, his head on a silver platter…. That sort of thing?



Maronelli simply shook his head at the kid’s bravado "No, kid. Nothin’ like that. I just want him dead. Do that little thing for me and I’ll be happy as hell.”



Adrian Chase stared at the warehouse through a pair of binoculars. He had been putting extra pressure on Maronelli’s mob and rumor had it they were planning something for him. It was hardly the first time a mobster had threatened him, though. Turn the heat up hard enough and they were like cornered animals.



This was hardly the first time a price had been put on his head. After all the men like Maronelli he had put away … or put down… the market value of his head was running pretty high, he thought, smiling to himself. If Maronelli thought letting word slip that he was gunning for him would get him to back off, he had another thing coming.



One of his sources had tipped him off that a shipment of Afghanistan’s finest heroin would be arriving at the warehouse in his sights. That was hardcore even for Maronelli. Usually, the mobster stuck to gambling, prostitution, racketeering, etc. If Maronelli was moving into drugs, playtime was over. It was time to put him down for good.



The Vigilante moved from his perch on the roof and moved town to the fire escape. After racing down four stories, he hopped onto his motorcycle and raced towards the warehouse. Firing two rockets, the doorway exploded open, startling the men inside. He was greeted with a hail of gunfire as he breached the doorway, so he released a cloud of gas to blind the men guarding the many crates inside.



The guards might have been blind, but the Vigilante wasn’t. His visor allowed him to see the silhouette of Maronelli’s men as they stumbled about blindly. Despite the gas, the men continued to fire, sometimes hitting each other, as they tried to aim for the invader. Vigilante proceeded to pick them off one by one, taking down the last man as the gas began to clear.



The room was littered with fallen thugs. One lay slumped across one of the half dozen large wooden crates that sat in the center of the warehouse. The fallen man was holding a crowbar which he had obviously meant to use as a weapon against the Vigilante.



“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Vigilante said, taking the crowbar from the man’s hand before shoving him off the box.



Vigilante shoved the edge of the crowbar in the space where two boards met and began to pry them apart. With a snap, one of the boards broke free to reveal the contents inside.



When he peered inside the box, he was greeted with the site of white packing peanuts. He shoved his hand inside the peanuts and dug around. When he pulled the hand out, it was holding a cabbage patch doll. “What the?”



It was common to put drugs in innocuous looking merchandise to try and throw off the authorities, so Vigilante pulled out a knife and shoved it into the belly of the doll. Disemboweling it, he was greeted with nothing but polyfoam stuffing. He pulled out another doll and did the same thing. Then another and another.



“No! No! No!” Vigilante growled. He yanked the man who lay by his feet up by the collar. He was alive, but barely coherent. “Where’s the stuff?! Where is it?!!”



“Stuff? What stuff? There was never any stuff,” he heard a laughing voice say from behind him.



Vigilante turned and saw a blond haired, blue eyed young man walking towards him. He looked totally out of place in the warehouse. With his angelic looks, moussed hair, and trendy clothes, he looked more like the lead singer of a boy band than one of Maronelli’s thugs.



The young man looked down at the ruined toys. “Oh, you bad bad man. If I were ten years younger, I would be in tears right now.”



“Tell me who you are and what’s going on or you really will be in tears,” Vigilante said.



“Oh, that’s right. You’re supposed to be a tough guy,” the young man said. “You can call me Mindtrip. And this is the end of your part in my story.” Mindtrip concentrated for a second but was surprised to see Vigilante still standing.



"STAR technology," Vigilante said, pointing to a small blinking light on the side of his belt. "I was warned that a telekinetic was after me. I just didn't have a face or a name." He pulled his gun from his holster and aimed it towards Mindtrip. “Looks like I’ll be part of the plotline a while longer.”



Vigilante let out a gasp as the gun was yanked from his hand and turned in midair. He leapt over and behind the crates as the gun began firing at him.



The Vigilante pulled a grenade from his belt and threw it over the crates towards the young man. The grenade stopped in midair and then changed direction, flying back towards Vigilante. The grenade landed on one of the boxes. Vigilante leapt as it exploded and rolled as he was hit by wooden debris, foam peanuts, and pieces of cabbage patch dolls.



"You can't beat me" Mindtrip laughed confidently. "Bullets… grenades …anything you have won't work"



Mindtrip latched onto one of the surviving crates telekinetically and hurled it at Vigilante. He managed to roll out of the way.



Vigilante found where his pistol had been discarded and retrieved it. He peered over the remaining crates and fired at the youth. Mindtrip created a force field and the bullet bounced off harmlessly.



This wasn’t going to work, Vigilante realized. The kid could keep this up all day. Anything he could throw at Mindtrip, he could just turn around on him.



“This has all been fun, but I really need to cut this short so I can get the rest of my pay,” the youth said, sounding bored. The wooden debris of the shattered crates suddenly began to lift up and shoot down over the crates towards where Vigilante was huddled.



Vigilante rolled out of the way quickly before narrowly being impaled. When he rolled, he caught sight of his motorcycle and an idea hit him.



Army crawling towards his bike, he retrieved several gas canisters. He pulled the pins and threw them towards Mindtrip.



Mindtrip stopped the gas canisters in midair, but it did not matter. They continued to leak their contents and before he knew it, the warehouse was filled with fog.



“Whatever you’re trying, it won’t work!” the startled young man shouted. He reached out with his mind, trying to find the costumed crime fighter. Nothing. It was as if he was by himself. How was that possible?



Following the sound of his voice, Vigilante leapt towards him and delivered a right cross. Mindtrip didn’t do down quite as quickly as expected and he threw the Vigilante off balance by hitting him in the face and then kicking him in the leg.



The Vigilante delivered a swift chop that made the youth’s left arm go numb. Mindtrip swung blindly with the right and Adrian Chase quickly ducked. He shot his hand forward and managed to punch him hard enough to break his nose.



Mindtrip’s head exploded with pain and his mind became a red haze. The wooden debris of the shattered crates began to lift, as did every remaining crate in the warehouse. All shattered into shards of wood that began to spin wildly…, faster and faster. The Vigilante suddenly found himself in the eye of a very lethal hurricane. One shard ripped passed his back, tearing his uniform and leaving a bloody track. Another large splinter impaled itself into his thigh. If he didn’t move fast, he would be torn apart. He closed his eyes and made one last leap, landing on Mindtrip and tackling him to the ground.



The young man gave a terrified cry. Why couldn't he hear The Vigilante’s thoughts? It was the last thought he would have.



Even as he felt the orbiting shards of wood moving closer and tearing at his flesh, Vigilante pulled his hunting knife from his belt. Raising it up with both hands, he brought it down and plunged it into the center of Mindtrip’s chest. The spinning wood shards stopped in midair and suddenly fell to the ground. It was over.



“Why … why could I not… feel you…?” Mindtrip gasped. With one last shudder, the life left him.



Adrian Chase staggered wearily to his feet. Being able to make his mind go blank through meditative techniques was just one of the many tricks the ghosts of the wrongly killed had taught him out in the desert. Their lessons had saved him from countless thugs and hitmen. It had saved him here. And in the end, that’s all Mindtrip was …. Just another hitman.



Maronelli wanted his attention? Well, now he had it. As Vigilante staggered for the doorway, he found he was suddenly in the mood for Italian. And he knew just the restaurant he would soon be visiting.