The boys were not accustomed to espionage. Or camouflage for that manner. Dropping out of school before the age of eighteen, coupled with the irreverence they held for education before that, would seem to account for the bright clothes they wore outside their high school at midnight's late hour. They had the intention of breaking into their former school, and they also had the intention of not being identified, but the only disguise they wore were two black baseball caps pulled low over their faces. They waited in the bushes, and had done so for the past two hours, swatting at mosquitoes and cracking each other up with dirty jokes.

One was Russ Pinkett, a lanky, pale boy with matted brown hair and a slight overbite. His combat boots dug into the ground when he got bored, and they had been digging away constantly that night. He poked and prodded at the ground, the dust he kicked up clinging to his ripped jeans. He zipped and unzipped his bag impatiently, eyeing the glint of metal from inside. His partner was equally restless. And more obvious about it as well. Ron Saari was a short, fat young man with dark brown skin. His hair grew out wildly on his head, and he wore the baseball cap all the time to keep it tamed. He had a handsome face that betrayed his family lineage. The Saari's had been in Saari, Georgia for years, and were held in high regard within their social circle for their community work and good Christian way of life. Ron was something of an embarrassment, or at the very least, the black sheep of the family. His mother and father were both elementary school teachers, which was the only reason he could muster up the courage to break into this school. The knowledge that it had nothing to them and that they wouldn't be as mad about it if he got busted.

The two had been friends for years, the kind that warm hearts, although they try patiences. They lived a block from each other, and had met when Russ needed someone to help him build his fort in the backyard. Ron eagerly agreed, and after a full summer of throwing rotten apples at Russ's sister, their pact was sealed. Every year the targets got larger. They stole from convenience stores, harassed old people outside of the retirement home, and leered at girls from school who were walking down the street. But everything was done together. They were partners and everyone in town knew it.

Finally Russ glanced at his watch.

"Alright, man. It's time."

"Sweet," Ron added, rubbing his hands together.

It was just after the school's spring formal and both boys would have been graduating that year. Instead they had decided to pay back some pent up aggression on the school they no longer attended. Vandalism was the intent this time. Some theft. Set in the countryside as it was, a stream ran by the school, only a few yards away. As they charged forwards from their hiding places, giddy with the thought of a bad deed, the only sound in the night was the stomping of their heavy feet and the babbling of the water from behind.

Russ ran behind his friend and tried to keep his laughter to himself. He unzipped his bag as he went, and shook up a can of green spray paint. He shook it violently in his hands.

The can rattled once… twice…. And Russ had almost reached the front of the school.

A window shattered loudly, Ron having heaved a large rock through it.

Russ smiled and shook once more.

And the world seemed to explode in light.

His head reeled, despite the fact that only the headlights of three squad cars were shining in his eyes. Having become accustomed to the dark in the last few hours, any light at all was unpleasant.

"FREEZE!," a policeman barked, jumping out of the front seat of his car. He looked like some extraterrestrial phenomenon, a flickering black figure, stepping loosely forward, framed completely by bright light.

"Cops!," Ron hissed violently.

As tonight had been homecoming night, and Ponoma, Georgia had a problem with vandalism after big school events. The policemen had already busted up at least four to five gangs of hooligan kids each. Their were tired and more than a little testy… and not especially great cops anyway.

"I said freeze! Don't you punks move a muscle or I'll shoot!," yelled a man with a thick red beard. His partner, and older man, nudged him.

"Laying it on a bit thick aren't you?"

Ron and Russ were just a few feet from each other. They quivered in fear. "They said they were gonna' shoot! What do we do?"

"I don't- I don't know- I…," Russ stammered. He looked around for a way out, and found none. He looked the cops, and dropped his bag. He bent over to pick it up, and a loud shot fired. The bag, containing cans of spray paint, exploded in a green flash, with neon emerald paint splattering everywhere.

Russ pulled out his hand, which had been partially in the bag and screamed. Red blood, from the can-shrapnel embedded in his hand, ran down his harm and mixed with the green paint coating it.

Ron took a second to react, blinking his eyes dumbly. His senses were dulled by the speed of the action. Mouth agape, eyes searching, he watched his friend struggling on the ground cradling his hand. He didn't know whether to go to his partner, or retaliate against the policemen. Confused, and halted in mid-thought, he made his biggest mistake. He started to do both.

Running the few feet toward Russ, he reached into his belt, and pulled out a dull gray gun. Before he could even lift it all the way up two more gunshots stung his ears. He ducked and hit the ground, grass streaking his face. The gun was still clutched in his cold hands as he covered his head. But as he opened his eyes quizzically and scanned around him, he discovered that he was fine, but his best friend Russ Pinket was laying face up on the ground with two large gaping bullet wounds in his chest.

He stood up straight, numbly, but the pain was only momentarily delayed. Tears appeared at the corners of his eyes, then blurred all of his vision. His knees gave way and he fell back to the ground. As he felt rough hands pull him up, he tried to blink away the tears. All his strength was focused on pushing away the pain. Nothing the policemen around him even registered, until he heard the cop who'd yelled "freeze" talking directly to him.

"That was a dumb thing to do, son. Darn shame too… Killing that there white boy before we could stop yah," he mumbled. "Darn shame."

As the realization of what the cop meant sunk in to Ron's mind, he lowered his head, and accepted the handcuffs behind his back. This time he fully gave into the tears. As they guided him to the back seat of the squad car, he could only clear his sight long enough to see the empty liquor bottles scattered on the other man's front seat.

Corey spent the last two hours staring at the ceiling. He spent the two hours before that wandering around, looking for something to do. Or watch. Or occupy his imagination in anyway. There was nothing. The worst part about being homeless, he had decided, was that it was extremely boring.

It was a Monday, about nine o'clock. The weather outside was mild, but a cold breeze sifted in through the cracked windows of the building, and the heat seeped out, due to the poor insulation. However, it was, overall, one of the better homeless shelters Corey had slept in. He hadn't seen many. In most of his time spent wandering all over Atlanta with his brother, Shawn, usually there was some friend's apartment to stay in, or a trashy restaurant they could sleep in instead of getting paid. But some winter nights they would wander the streets as long as possible, and when it got too cold and Corey got too tired, Shawn would pick him up, and carry him sleepily to a shelter, if one was nearby. And he'd wake up in the morning, expecting to be in his bed back home but finding only scratchy, urine soaked sheets.

That was early on, after they had just left home, and Corey was still a definite child. Now he could be classified as "relatively" a child, and he went to sleep in the urine-soaked beds all by himself.

The shelter was a small, one-floor building set in the middle of Maurine, Georgia. It was painted white, but the town's unusual amount of rain in the past year had chipped and filed away the sides, revealing the dull yellow underneath. The hallway was carpeted in a faded gray-blue and it led to a large white center room of the same size and design as a junior high cafeteria. Cots and sheets were scattered throughout, some empty and neat, but most adapted to their individual occupants. The lights high above were dim, and buzzed incessantly, flickering on and off.

That had been Corey's game when he arrived there. Trying to guess when the lights would turn off and on again, seconds before they did. It hadn't lasted long.

Now he could only lay on his back listening to the music from a nearby child's game boy.

He tried to tune it out, but it was the only direct sound in the whole room.

"Bleep-bleep-boop-ble-deep-Bleep...," it went.

He put his hands over his ears desperately.

"Bleep…Bleep-de-bleep…"

He tried to focus on the lights above him, but the sound echoed in his brain. His eye twitched in time with the "music."

"Bleep…"

Twitch.

"Bleep…"

Twitch.

"……"

"……"

"………………………….BLEEP!"

Corey screwed his eyes shut, and dug his nails into his legs. He sat up straight in his cot, glaring at the small boy across from him. He entertained notions of holding the kid down, and seeing if the Game Boy fit down his throat, but his heart softened just a little bit seeing the child's eyes fall. He reasoned the boy must have just "died."

Not like you're about too…, a little voice in the back of his head began, but he suppressed it.

His head tilted back comfortably, and he drifted off once more into his own thoughts, mostly centered around the origins of the Spectre and just what he would discover once he reached Gotham City. Many days ago, he had returned to his family's old home, revisiting the scene of his father's death, and the last day he had ever had a real home and real family. Upon inspection of some old family relics, however, he had discovered a photograph, and a journal with missing entries, which pointed to a connection between his grandfather, Wyatt Jobe, and the Spirit of Vengeance, The Spectre, and by default, the Justice Society of America. Following up on a phone number at the end of the journal, he was making the trip across the face of America towards Gotham City, home of the JSA museum.*

*Back in The Spectre #6- Jonah

His mind had almost drifted off towards sleep when the sounds of angry voices in the kitchen caught his ear. He felt sick to his stomach again but dismissed it.

Most of the homeless people using the shelter that night were in different parts, meandering about by either their own cots or the bathrooms. Dinner had been served, so the kitchen was no longer the center of attention, and most nights this gave the cooking staff time to talk amongst themselves. Tonight, the volunteer cook-staff was the Saaris. A family of three women and two young men, they were scattered about at their own stations around the kitchen.

Corey crept closer, trying to put together the muffled words, but for some reason, not wanting to be seen.

"-now, you sit down by that machine, and scrub those dishes, and I don't want to hear another word out of you. I don't want to listen to your angry, hurtful words, Bradley," said a tall woman as she sprayed water at a set of dishes. She was a large woman. Corey guessed about six feet tall. She was slightly heavyset, and the oldest woman present, being in her thirties. But as she scrubbed furiously at the dishes in her hands, Corey could see the strong muscles under her arms. She was a thick woman, with long hair pulled back tightly behind her head, and dark, dark brown skin. She spoke with strength and authority, and a rich, deep alto voice.

A younger man, looking to be just out of his teens, with a mild afro and angry eyes sat nearest to her, pulling plates out of a washing machine.

"This isn't right. We shouldn't be here. If Ron is in jail, why do you have us sitting here on our hands, like nothing happened? We're wasting our time!"

She didn't even look up at him as she spoke. "We're not wasting time. We're helping people."

"Momma', Ron needs help!," the boy spoke, slamming down a plate onto the countertop, just loud enough to make it ring out.

"Ron is a fool of a boy, who tried to do something stupid one to many times, and now he's paying for it."

A shorter, younger woman spoke up from the refrigerator where she was stocking Tupperware containers of Jell-O. "No doubt about that, but he didn't kill nobody. Especially not Roy."

"What if he was drunk?," the youngest girl present piped up.

The young man at the dishwasher scoffed and shook his head. "I'll tell you who was drunk," he muttered.

His mother shut off the water and whipped a finger around at him. "Now don't go making accusations!"

"Tell them! Tell it to the people who are going to lock Ron away! Tell it to these bums here, for all I care," he shouted motioning his arms to the cafeteria around him. "But I'm going to go do something about it!"

He picked up a coffee mug and flung it at the linoleum floor where it shattered into a million bits and pieces. The tall woman shrieked, and called after him as he ran out the door, but stopped when she realized he wasn't coming back. She turned, strong as she had been before, but the second she faced completely away from the open door, her knees gave way, and she sunk to the ground sobbing. The other woman rushed to her side and picked her up, holding her close.

"Shhh...," she soothed. "It's okay, baby. It's okay..."

Corey stepped away from the door, startled by the look into another family's life. Turning on his heels, he hadn't taken his second breath when he ran head first into another volunteer.

"Oh!," said a fat, rosy-cheeked woman. She smiled as Corey took a step back, and adjusted her large glasses on her nose and smoothed her red hair. "Sorry about that, honey. I wasn't watching where I was going." She glanced at him questioningly, this horribly thin child staring curiously at the floor, then she looked on through the door to the kitchen, and saw the woman crying on the floor. She bit her lip thoughtfully.

"Doing a bit of spying were we,?" she asked.

"No, I-"

"Well, I don't recommend you get involved in that family's affairs. They've got enough worries as it is."

She pushed forth, attempting to scuttle on, but Corey stopped her.

"Hey, hold on a second. Look... just...," he sighed, searching for the words. "Who are they?"

"Well that's the Saaris. A big, proud family, with roots that go way back here in Maurine. They're one of the most respectable families in town, both 'cause of their money, the father's a doctor and the mother's a teacher, and all the good work they do. They coordinate things down at the Presbyterian church more than even the pastor, and one of them's always here to help out at the shelter, or the food pantry, or god-knows-what. They're angels."

Corey's mind held onto the image of the angry one with the dishes.

"Then what's wrong with them?"

The woman bit her lip again, chewing it a bit, nervously. "It's kind of hard to really explain. See, there's two communities here. Both just about right on top of the other. Maurine and Maude. They used to be one place, but split apart after segregation ended. Which I guess wasn't really the idea, but who knows... Anyway, one community was mostly white, one mostly black. Well, just a few years back, Maude's school burned down. And rather than build a new school, they just said all the Maude kids had to go to school at Maurine High. So first the kids came, then families came with them."

"So what you've got is two communities that never really got a chance to be integrated, being integrated a couple decades late. So tensions have been a little high ever since. See, there are a couple people on the Margery side with the old way of thinking. Their parents were upset about Brown vs. Board of Education and all that, so automatically they are too. Not me though. I come from a fully open-minded family. My mother watched the Martin Luther King Jr. march when she was to sick with the flu to go-"

Corey couldn't take it anymore, and cut the rambling woman off. "But what does that have to do with the family in the kitchen? And why'd the lady's son, take off?"

"Who? Brad? Did that boy storm out again? When I said they were angels, son, I didn't mean all of them. That one... he tries. But he gets angry."

"But why is she crying?"

"Because they say her son, Ron, shot a boy down at the school. No one believes it, but a lot of people stick to it as the truth, and it looks like he's in a lot of trouble."

From the opened door, Corey heard an engine gunning loudly, then tires screeching off down the road.

"I guess that's Brad, now."

"Any idea where he's going?"

"Well, if he's mad enough..."

"He's mad enough," Corey confirmed.

"He'll probably go the one place he shouldn't. Down to the Lawson & Dale office in town, to pick a fight with whoever he sees first. That's the office of his brother's lawyer."

"Thanks a lot."

"Wait a second, son-," she started, but he was already past the woman, past the family, and out the door.

It wasn't much of an office. Corey noticed as he peered through a window, that offices probably don't usually look like they do in the movies. Doesn't matter what type of office, or in what type of movie, but it just wasn't the same. Most offices probably didn't look like the dark work places in Law & Order, the dingy feeling places in old noir detective movies, and probably least of all, the big, ornate high-rise type offices you see greedy tycoons sitting in. And honestly, as he looked at this office, he felt a little disappointed at that. Most offices were probably as plain and stale as this one, and this meant that overall, the America he was going to be seeing would be just a little less flavorful. Less interesting.

…Not that he planned on being in many offices. After living on the streets so long, he decided, he should probably give due appreciation to any place with a roof and four walls.

The room itself looked more like a dentist's waiting area than anything else. Bright fluorescent lights and a fan in the center. The carpet on the floor was a dark gray that clashed garishly with the light gray of the walls. There was a bookcase behind the man sitting at his cheap, red, metal desk, but it was only half filled with books, which, pristinely stacked and sorted, looked like they were very rarely used.

Corey watched intently through a slightly opened window, and with his ear against the glass, he could perfectly make out the dulled commotion going on behind the man's closed door, while still remaining perfectly hidden. The man, with all credit due to him, sat behind his desk pleasantly, giving no heed to what sounded like a loud argument coming from outside his door. He just resigned himself to flipping through books, and making some marks on a piece of paper, sometimes stopping only to run his hands through what looked to be a thick, lustrous hairpiece.

Corey had ran for a few blocks, then walked the last, thankful that the homeless shelter was only a stone's throw away from downtown Maurine. He only need to stop to ask for directions three times before he found the attorney's office. And luckily, it looked like the lawyer's secretary had stalled the Saari brother long enough to keep Corey from missing any action.

Finally the young man from the kitchen burst through the door, a petite old secretary following huffily behind him

"-Hey, I'm here to see-"

"-I'm sorry, sir, I couldn't keep him-," they both prattled on top of each other.

The lawyer, a middle-aged man with some lines on his face that looked like they came from smiling too much, just held up his hand, silencing both. "It's okay Janet, I'll talk to him. You can go."

She turned on her heels and walked briskly out of the room, shooting the boy with the afro a venomous look.

"Bradley, you know you're not supposed to be here. I specifically asked that all family members be denied contact for now, except in situations like questioning. It's only temporary, but it's still a court order, son."

"Don't call me "son." Or Bradley. It's Brad," the man shot, unfazed by the lawman's disarming attitude. He walked closer to the desk, but didn't sit down. The fan whirred above their heads, and Corey fought to separate the sounds of those blades from the discussion.

"And yes, I know you had a judge set up this whole "don't call us, we'll call you" situation, but you'd better have on very good reason you haven't called anybody yet."

The man pushed his swivel chair back and stood up, smiling, hands in his hair again. "There simply isn't any reason yet. It's nothing to get upset about," he soothed, walking around the desk. "I'm reviewing the case right now, going over courtroom procedure with your brother, and all that, and I feel I won't be needing any of the family's testimony."

He tried to put his hand on Brad's shoulder, but it was knocked away, and Brad firmly locked his eyes with the older man's.

"I here you're pleading guilty, Mr. Lawson," he accused, letting the name hang on his tongue, lathering the words in sarcasm and contempt.

The man paused, processing the accusation. "Yes. Yes, that's true. I know it's hard to accept, but-"

"It's bogus and everyone knows it!," Brad yelled. "He didn't kill Russ, they were best friends!"

Ted Lawson continued on his track, not recognizing the interruption. "I think if we fess up now, I can get a few years shaved off your brother's sentence-"

"How can you not be fighting this? It's a clear-cut case, and everybody and their dog knows it!"

But once again Lawson disregarded the outburst and moved back to the side of his desk. "That's simply opinion, and yours is bound to be a little biased. Sorry, but that's court kid. Now let me handle this the way I know how, and you can go run off home, now."

"He couldn't have shot that boy," Brad pressed. "Even if he tried to shoot somebody and missed, he was standing way to far away, and would have had to have been pointing right at Russ, which doesn't make sense at all. I heard the report on the news. There's a million questions, and you're not even trying to answer any of them!"

"That's not how law works, son. At this moment, I'm juggling three other cases, and frankly, this one's cut-and-dry. He killed him, but it was probably an accident, end of story."

"What about autopsy reports? They could prove where Russ got hit from. Where's the piece that Ron was packing? He probably didn't even fire a bullet! And if he did, where's the bullet? And what about-," Brad ranted.

Corey shifted his leg to relieve a cramp, and pressed his ear tighter against the glass, hanging transfixed on every word.

But through the ravings of the young man before him, Lawson just picked up a legal book and flipped through it absentmindedly. We don't have the gun, it got stalled when we sent it upstate to have it checked out… might even be lost," he muttered. "But we don't need it. Our initial checks said one shot had been fired. And as for the autopsy reports, those check out. He got shot from behind."

"Yeah, the reports said that?," Brad challenged. "Let me see 'em."

"Can't allow you to tamper with evidence. Court order. Sorry."

Brad crossed closer to the desk, and leaned in on the lawyer, sticking his face in close to the older man's. "I don't believe you."

Lawson just set the book down and pulled himself up to look Brad calmly in the eye.

"Doesn't matter. I'm a lawyer, you're not."

"Some lawyer!," Brad burst out. "You sent the gun "somewhere upstate," where it got "tied up," possibly "lost," and you're not even going to ask about it? It's evidence! You could hold the trial! But no! It's cut-and-dry!"

"Look!," he finally retorted, loudly. "You people just don't understand law! I do, okay? So why don't you run along back to the ghetto, or wherever it is you came from!"

For the first time since starting his tirade, Brad shut his mouth, surprised. "You people" who?," he questioned.

"No one. Forget it," Ted Lawson smiled smugly. Knowingly.

Brad stared at this man his enemy, searching. Trying to wrap his thoughts around a seemingly hopeless situation. And outside, Corey felt the same way. For some reason he connected with this older boy. The hopelessness of the situation was an oppressive feeling.

Brad scanned the attorney before him, searching himself for answers, when finally, realization dawned on his face. He pushed even closer to Lawson. "You're throwing the case, aren't you?," he asked.

"What?"

"You don't want to win. Someone wants you to settle and you're going to send my brother to prison to make it work."

Out of nowhere, Ted Lawson lashed out. His hands flashed, an in a second they were on the front of Brad's shirt. He shifted his greater weight, and pressed the boy firmly against the bookshelf, which groaned pitifully under the unwelcome weight.

"Now you listen here, boy," he hissed sharply. "You're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble throwing around accusations like that. I know you too kid. You've gotten yourself in a whole lot of trouble yourself haven't you, but rich 'ol Aunt Jemima and the rest of your family were always there to bail you out weren't they? You think you're invulnerable, but if you even think of messing with me, I can make things a whole lot worse for your stupid brother, and anyone else involved. Do we understand each other?"

Silently, Brad pushed against the fists pressed against his chest, but the man's weight held him down. His eyes blazed with outrage, and his focus on his attacker was possibly the only think that kept him from seeing Corey's small face in the window, shock worn as his expression. Corey wondered if he should help, and if so, how?

"No," was all Brad said.

"What?"

"No."

Brad pushed Lawson's hands off of him, and stormed towards the door.

"I'm not the one things are going to get worse for. You have a lot of enemies in this town," he threatened and marched stiffly out the door.

The glass window was completely shattered.

Looking back on his most recent adventures since the inclusion of the Spectre into his life, he realized that that was a recurring misfortune. Everywhere place he'd been in the past few weeks, when he and the Spectre left, it was destroyed. The thought passed through his mind that if one window repair agency could figure out the connection, they could own the market.

But he pushed the trivial pondering aside to try and see what was going on below him, in the shattered window. A man climbed slowly climbed inside, moving cautiously to avoid broken shards of glass. He had been one of the men in front of a large crowd, and the one who had just thrown a large, metal trashcan through the window of Lawson & Dale, Attorneys at Law.

When Brad Saari had left the law office that evening, Corey knew he had no way of tailing him or finding out his plans. He was no superhero. No secret agent. But he needed to know what "You have a lot of enemies in this town" meant. So he closed his eyes and did his best to tap on something he had never forced before but usually came to him randomly. He reached out with what he guessed was his spirit and tried to touch Brad's.

He opened himself to whatever images were meant to flood over him. In a second, his brain had filled with clips of Brad's past. There was Brad and Ron, fighting over toys as children. In another scene, Brad was sniffing cocaine in the back of someone else's car. In another, he saw Brad and his father, the older man on the phone, bribing the boy's high-school teacher to keep Brad in school, then fighting about it with Brad's mother later. And in the last scene, the one that hung in the air before Corey's eyes, Brad was on the phone, calling all his family, all his friends, every sympathetic ear in town.

It turned out his warning to Ted Lawson meant "riot."

He hid in the alley behind them, watching the events unfold. A crowd of other people, led by Brad stood outside the small building. Some yelled and shouted, others turned and talked to each other, murmuring, but all were visibly angry. Corey could pick out certain people he's seen before. Brad and Ron's other family members from the homeless shelter were there, though the boys' mother was nowhere to be seen. The crowd was mostly all African-American members of the community, but some white residents seemed to be sprinkled in as well.

Five went into the building, and were emerging now with stacks of files and papers. One came out with what looked like personal effects from Lawson's desk. Then the police pulled up down the street to the left. Six squad- cars. Corey watched in horror as the cops emerged from the cars, some with guns drawn. Then, the final car opened it's doors and two men, Ted Lawson face furious, screaming at the crowd, even as another police officer held him back, and his partner Rufus Dale. At the sight of the police men, several men and women from inside their homes gathered the courage to face the disturbance. Some were curious to see what was going on and what would happen. Some wanted to make sure their homes were safe from any fight that might break out. And some had less than noble motivations. Corey realized this as he saw and old man, tough and stocky with a mean face and a long white beard open the door to his book store, brandishing a shotgun.

Corey Jobe's eyes flashed over the crowd once more, and his eyes fell on a man in a police uniform. The man had thick head of black hair with a large black moustache to go with. His eyes were dark, any expression in them unreadable. Something throbbed behind Corey's temples and painfully sick sensation sent him to his knees on the ground. He saw more images, all set in a dark purple hue… it made him sick. He saw a boy, older than him, lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. He saw the man with the moustache putting handcuffs on an older boy. Ron Saari he suddenly knew, though no audible voice told him so.

Oh my god, he thought. That cop killed the kid. Not Ron!

He flashed back to reality, but by that point the chaos had already started, and all he could do was watch, safe in his little corner of the alleyway, as all hell broke loose.

It was not in Brad's plan to set the office on fire. He did not know who had done it, or whether it was an accident or a direct action. But once the flames caught the carpet, then spread to the many papers within the small room, the fire grew like a demon and swallowed everything it touched. Reactions from the outside were mixed all around. From around the stand-off, Brad looked around in fear to see who was responsible, Ted Lawson watched in shock as his place of business went up in flames, some people were nervous, doubting their participation in the looting, and some were glad. One man threw up a strong arm and whooped loudly, a broad grin on his face.

Then the old man from further on down the street raised up his shotgun and shot him in the head. People screamed around the body as it fell, and one weeping woman kneeled down, cradling the body. That was the breaking point. The tension built over decades of small-town living pushed together and cracked as a whole, and one of the men who had been involved through a furious punch into a cops gut. Two other cops turned immediately to shoot the attacker, but at that point it was too late. A massive rush of people swarmed towards the squad cars and all the policemen could do was raise their guns and try their best to hold them back.

Fists flew everywhere. Black hand on white face. White knee in black stomach. And some people on both sides who didn't care what they were hitting. Some onlookers from the streets jumped away from their families or loved ones to join the fray. Some attempted only to pull people apart, but soon even the more peaceful were consumed by the need for self-preservation and were trapped, needing to fight simply to remove themselves from the wave of rioters.

A man fell on the ground, where a cop found him when he too was pushed down. Trying to get up, he was knocked out cold when the man in uniform swung out and clipped him in the neck with the butt of his gun. The policeman proceeded to climb onto the man's back, and drive his fists wherever he could hit, senselessly and the man's face broke and swelled and bled beneath him.

On the other side of the fight, a little too close to the fire then was likely safe, Brad and another of his friends had a policeman one of the men from the street pinned against a wall, where they punched and kicked him again and again. Brad kneed him in the stomach and as he collapsed to the ground, his partner raised his foot, and stomped on the man's back as he tried to regain footing.

Meanwhile, the fire just grew and a large tongues of flame shot out of the broken window, licking upwards, climbing the large building.

In all the confusion, it almost made sense that no one would notice the arrival of the Spectre until too late.

From the corner in the alley, Corey doubled over as his body was racked with a sensation like an electric jolt worming it's way over the sinews of his body, from the tips of his fingers through his muscles to a certain middle point in his chest. He howled in surprise and pain as a white beam of light shot out of him, and he could finally stand again the Spectre had materialized right in the middle of the riot.

His body looked massive and terrible as the flame reflected off his cloak and body. He set his eyes straightforward, and never erred for a second as he cut a swath through the fight. He punched one man in the face sending him rocketing to the ground feet away. He did so with another, then two more. Halfway through he grabbed a strong, burly man in a wife-beater by the neck and with a great heave of his muscles through him screaming up into the night air. The man flew backwards only to land, with an unsettling crunch, on top of a mailbox.

The Spectre's cape whipped and whirled around him. Two men tried to grab onto his cloak, but he simply picked them both up, smacked them into each other, and discarded their unconscious bodies on the ground. A piece of metal pipe flew at his head from behind and just before he would have been caught unawares he turned his whole body around, fast like water, and caught the bar in his hands, rending it in two just by twitching. He picked up the man attached to it by the front of his shirt, tossed him over his head, and never even bothered to see him hit the ground, picking a new opponent within the mass of bodies and continuing his crusade.

On the ground away from him, his eye caught sight of a young woman on the ground being kicked in the stomach. She had been one of the good Samaritans from the street who had tried to pull fighting men off each other and diffuse the riot, but had been swept up in the tide. In less time than it took to blink, she was gone in a slight shimmer of white light, deposited in a hospital lobby the next town over, where she would receive aid. Throwing out his fist all at once, the Spectre caught five raging men all at once, and they flew out separately in an arc, each sent screaming to the street below. When a small circle had been cleared around him, he concentrated and several people, those who had not been involved in the initial riot, began to disappear in quick blips of light as their assailants were left to wonder what had become of them, before returning to their own battles.

Corey watched the battle raging, and silently cursed himself. What am I doing? I made a big show out of some big promise when I was back at my house, about doing whatever I could to stop the Spectre. But now? I can't do anything to stop this. There are maybe fifty people out there and they're going to kill each other, and in the middle of it all is some super-powered angel. There's nothing I can do!

"Bradley! Bradley, where are you!," a shrill voice screamed from down the street. He looked to see who it was, and there came Bradley and Ron's mother, running down the street, stumbling as she was in high heels, and screaming bloody murder in an attempt to find her family.

He stopped her before she could barrel into the chaos and fought to keep the powerful woman on the sidewalk.

"Hey, lady, what's going on?," he grunted.

"My baby!," she shrieked. "My family's in there!"

"Wait," he continued grunting against her. "Ugh! Would you…..STOP!"

He pushed her back onto the sidewalk and she stopped fighting him, though her worried eyes were focused always on the fighting crowd.

"Look," he said, and idea dawning on him. I can get your son out, just wait here, please! I need help to end this."

She readied herself up to charge in again, but saw the pleading in the young man's voice, and resigned herself. "I'll wait… as long as I can."

And with that, Corey turned and ran straight into the crowd. He launched himself over a group of fighting men, and landed in the middle of a pit of writhing bodies. Digging his way through tangled arms and legs, he found cold ground, and stated to crawl along under people, careful to get stepped on as little as possible, and went searching for Brad Saari.

Fifteen minutes later, and the fight was still raging. Some people had left, finally making their way to freedom. Some had entered, eager to replace those leaving. And very many were littered on the ground, bodies battered and bleeding, completely unconscious to the madness around them.

The Spectre pulled a man off a car's hood by his ankles. The man lost his balance and fell, crashing through the front window. He stood up tall above this, another conquered foe and his chilling white face seemed to hang independently in the cold black space of his hood.

He turned to the left and finally his target became clear. Or targets.

They stood on top of a squad car. One on front, Brad Saari stood poised his arm extended into the air with a gun in his hand. The gun was pointed at the man with the black moustache, who also had a gun. They were at a stand-off. Both sets of eyes met and never flinched. Both fingers caressed the trigger slowly, itching for release.

With a mighty jump, the Spectre launched himself into the air, completely clearing the distance between cars, and landed with a thump between the two men. To their credit, they each dealt with the shock of the Spectre's sudden appearance without once taking their weapon off their intention.

"I don't care who you are!," Brad cried irrationally, the chaos of the situation taking it's toll on him. He wiped blood off of his head with his sleeve as he spoke. "Get out of the way! This man has to die! He killed my brother's best friend and he's going to let my brother rot in jail for it."

"You're a dead man," he threatened to the cop, his hand tensing on the gun.

"I didn't kill anybody!," the man shouted, eyes darting back and forth between the Spectre and the boy.

The Spectre cocked his head just the slightest bit in the cop's direction. "You're a liar," he said simply.

"I knew it! I knew-," Brad cried.

"Wait! Wait!," Corey beat his legs furiously, trying to run as fast as he could to the car. He stood on the ground beneath them all. And beyond the notice of the four main characters who had wound up in this dead-lock, people closer to the scene slowly stopped their fighting to watch events unfold.

"You can stop this! Both of you can stop it, and end this, before anybody dies."

"Shut up, kid, this ain't none of your business," the cop shouted over his shoulder.

"No you shut up!," he screamed back. "The Spectre'll kill you! He'll kill you both! And he might kill more people down here on the ground, if this riot doesn't stop!" "You," he directed to the cop. "You killed a kid. You were drunk. You got people to lie about it, to cover stuff up for you."

"And you," Corey turned to Brad, sweat pouring down his face as he did so. His voice shook, and his eyes jumped all over the scene. Vicious fighting was still going on in back, with gunshots being fired. And just past it all, the fire was raging out of control. It might consume the whole building soon if nothing was done.

"You," he continued, "started a riot. You took advantage of all the bad stuff this town's been through, all the hurt and confused people who live here, and you set them loose. There's violence and death in the streets and it's your fault!"

"But there's still a chance! Stop now and they'll stop too. If you put down your guns you can stop the fighting and that fire before it destroys this whole neighborhood. If one of you shoots the other, then one of you becomes a martyr, an excuse for more violence, and this whole town goes to Hell!"

Both men looked at each other. Unsure. They held their guns trained at each other for what felt like, to all present, hours. Neither breathed.

Finally the cop dropped his gun to his side. "I'm sorry, kid."

Brad's eyes went wild. He considered this for a moment, unsure. Then he took a step closer to the black-haired man. "No!"

The Spectre turned ready to act, just the same as Brad was ready to shoot, until they both heard a voice.

"Brad! Baby no!"

Brad stopped and his whole body wavered. He looked over to his side and saw his mother there. She was crying and cradling her arm. She had fallen on it, possibly broken it, during the fight. Her eye was swelled up and purple.

"Mama!," he stuttered. He dropped the gun to the ground and jumped down off the car, running to his mother and hugging her. She pulled him close, sobbing.

"I'm so sorry…," he repeated over and over again into her shoulder. "I'm so sorry…"

The fighting ended eventually. More policemen came and broke up any more scuffles that had broken out. The fire in the law office had spread to another building, but was put out by the fire department before too much damage could be done. People went home cradling bruises, concussions, and many broken bones. The move towards easing years of racial tension, for many, would be made in recovery rooms at St. Mary's Hospital in Maurine.

The policeman went to jail, pleading guilty to various charges on the stand. Ron Saari was acquitted of all charges. Ted Lawson lost his license to practice law. Brad Saari spent a short spell in jail as well, but the second he got out he talked to every member of the community, looking for anyone who had seen or heard anything about the young boy or the wraith-like figure who had been present at the showdown on the car top. No one knew anything.

They couldn't have. There was nothing to say.

Both characters had left Maurine, Georgia the second everyone's back's were turned.

Spirited Writings

Hey guys! As of last issue, and the one on the computer screen before you now, let me say, welcome to the format of the series. The characters are there, the dynamic's set up, and the questions (most of them) have been asked, and the answers are waited for. This is basically how I see the series running overall, with slight breaks for longer storylines. I'm looking to make each story a one issue deal with a beginning, middle, and end, where I get to ask questions within, and give the reader two opposing viewpoints by the end of the issue. But as always, the philosophy will always be balanced by the action, and if you're the type that at anytime you feel yourself getting bored by pages and pages of set-up, just skip ahead to watch the Spectre beat up on people.
Oh, and just for curiosity's sake, if you're the type that gets into the whole "Special Features" deal, I've got a behind-the-scenes tidbit that's I was going to save for the DVD-version, buuuuut… you know the scene last issue, where Corey gets beat up by a psychotic, violent, pedophile? I wrote that at about 4:00 in the morning and I was dozing off and falling asleep at my keyboard. Eventually I'll probably go back and read it too see if I typed in stuff I don't remember, but I think I cleaned it up pretty well…
Well, that's all the space I'm going to waste! Peace!

-Jonah Rite

P.S. The Spectre needs your feedback! It sustains his otherworldly existence! Send comments, criticism, and (heaven forbid) words of enjoyment to jonah_rite@hotmail.com.