A Bad Mood

"It's him—the black SUV! And that license plate! He's back!"

"Is that guy ever going to quit?! Does he think Hell's Kitchen is his personal punching bag?!"

"You're talking big. Why don't you go deal with him yourself?!"

Jack drove his SUV through the streets of Hell's Kitchen at less than five yards an hour. Anyone who spotted his license plate behind them did not dare honk.

Over the past six days, a foul-tempered Jack had beaten up nearly every lowlife in Hell's Kitchen. By now, quite a few gangsters ran the moment they saw him.

It was not because Jack was arresting them. It was because that bastard had come here to beat people up whenever he was in a bad mood!

He treated them, these gangsters, like punching bags!

With one hand on the steering wheel and a bottle of beer in the other, Jack looked every bit the road tyrant. He glanced at the endless line of cars in the rearview mirror, slammed on the brakes, and got out.

He shouted at the traffic behind him, "I'm driving this slowly, and none of you know how to drive against traffic?! People need to learn to adapt!"

"Do you only eat pizza with extra cheese for your entire lives?!"

"If you were starving for a full hundred hours and someone put a cheese-free pizza in front of you, would you rather starve to death on the spot than eat it?!"

The drivers behind Jack silently rolled up their windows, each of them cursing him inwardly with a dark expression.

"Adapt? Drive against traffic? The last guy who did that got beaten straight into the ICU by you! Who the hell would dare drive against traffic in front of you?!"

"Other people entrap criminals. You entrap people into getting punched!"

"You people at S.H.I.E.L.D. really are inhuman!"

The gang members, already miserable enough, watched Jack pull a small chair out of the back seat and closed their eyes in despair.

Great. This lord had not gotten his punches in today. Now he was just waiting for someone to come over and get beaten up.

The many drivers turned off their engines and began a contest of patience. They could not back up, and they could not drive against traffic, so they could only wait it out!

Seeing that these gangsters were no longer as "adorable" as they had been a few days ago, Jack shook his head in disappointment. He had thought they could hold out a little longer.

Who knew they would crack after only a few days?

Bored, Jack looked up at the warm sun and lazily stretched. As he drank his beer, he recalled what had happened six days ago.

After waiting in the office for a full five minutes without Marian returning, Jack, wanting to explain things to her, went to the restroom at the end of the hall and found Marian attempting suicide by slitting her wrists.

Jack panicked then. It was the first time he had lost his head since coming to Marvel. Having inherited the original owner's memories and spent three years together with her day after day, Jack finally realized that Marian had become part of his life.

When he had gone to Antarctica, he had thought about returning to New York every day. Rather than wanting to harvest points, he had wanted to stay by Marian's side.

The two times he had been temporarily demoted, Jack had never once gone to the shared office for Level Two agents. Did he really not know S.H.I.E.L.D.'s rules?

Why had Marian gotten intimate with other women in Jack's office chair every time?

Jack hurriedly sent Marian to S.H.I.E.L.D. Hospital for emergency treatment, but after she woke up, she had driven him away as if she had gone mad.

Not knowing how to make up for it, Jack had been so irritated that he could only come to Hell's Kitchen to punch people.

Hell's Kitchen gangsters: "You two are having a lovers' quarrel. Go find a relationship expert! Why come beat up gangsters?!"

After finishing a bottle of beer and seeing that no car still dared move, Jack got back into his vehicle in disappointment.

"Caused a Hell's Kitchen traffic jam with the bearing of a road tyrant. Evil Points +2000."

Jack paid no attention to the system's Evil Points notification. Over the past few days, he had freely attacked Hell's Kitchen gangs and even smashed up or burned down casinos, drug dens, and brothels.

He had earned more than twenty thousand Evil Points.

It should have been a good deed, using violence to fight violence, but because Jack had harbored no goodwill in his heart, it had been judged as an increase in Evil Points.

That showed Jack where the system's biggest loophole lay.

As long as you did something without good intentions, it did not matter whether you targeted bad people or good people. As long as you were the evildoer, Evil Points would increase.

Jack should have been happy about that, but he felt no joy at all. His mood today was even worse than yesterday.

Because the wedding was scheduled for next month, he had to accompany Jenny to try on wedding dresses tonight.

At a private custom wedding dress shop in Manhattan District, he would have to choose a wedding dress for a woman he did not love and tell her she looked beautiful.

"Fuck, I don't want to deal with this anymore!"

Jack punched the steering wheel. He truly did not want to deal with it anymore. Whether Rogers was Captain America or Hydra Cap, he did not want to put up with this anymore!

But when the car had driven halfway to headquarters, Jack calmed down again.

For no other reason than that he had spotted Daredevil. The man, tormented beyond endurance by the truth, was sitting in an alley between two buildings, surrounded by empty bottles.

Jack parked by the roadside and got out. Daredevil's body odor and the lingering stench of alcohol made Jack frown deeply.

"Matt, you... how much have you had to drink here?!"

Hearing Jack's voice, Matt, who was not wearing sunglasses, opened his blind eyes and looked in Jack's direction. Seeing nothing, with only darkness before him, he suddenly gave a self-mocking laugh.

"I knew it. You know my name. You know me very well. S.H.I.E.L.D. already has information on all of us vigilantes."

"We're just a bunch of chess pieces."

"When you no longer need us, you can discard us whenever you want."

Looking at the despondent Matt, Jack shook his head. "No. You're imagining too much, and you... fuck! Pull yourself together!"

Jack grabbed Matt from the ground with one hand, took him to a nearby hotel, shoved him into the bathtub, and turned on the faucet. The scalding water made Matt's body react slightly.

Looking at Matt soaking in the tub, Jack said viciously, "If you plan to kill yourself, I suggest you dunk your head under the water right now. With your constitution, you can go painlessly in under three minutes."

"If you still have even the slightest hope for the future, then take a proper bath, wash everything off yourself, and then we'll talk about something more serious!"