Difference between revisions of "Wandering the Streets (Eliot Ness)"

Latest revision as of 20:46, 24 June 2014

'You should head out into the Multiverse, Mister Ness.'

The single sentiment from Kiyoko rang through Eliot Ness's mind as he trudged through the streets of Manehattan. Hat pulled down, hands tucked in pockets, collar pulled up. Gloved fingers ran over a coin in his pocket. An 1889 Gold Dollar coin. He'd heard they were, for metal alone, worth a great deal more on other worlds that were not his.

A stone strikes him in the square of the back, breaking him from his internal thoughts and causing him to look around. A pair of children snicker as he spots the rock on the ground behind him. They chant some phrase he doesn't know, before their mother tells them he has a condition, and not to stare at him. It wasn't the first time... it wouldn't be the last, he knew.

His hand withdraws from his pocket, taking out a packet of Chesterfields. One is stuck between his lips and then lit with a match. Eliot pulled down his hat and lost himself in thoughts once more. An interesting world to encounter on his first visit outside of his Chicago. More than the inhabitants of this world, with their forms both strange and familiar to him, was the simple realization that Eliot had avoided before now:

There might be worlds that need him more than his own.

This land had a disease. One that he knew the taste and smell of, because he lived it every day. A police force that could do nothing, good cops paralyzed by their less savory cohorts or smothered under a blanket of politics. A world with death as the notepad for a rhetoric between the oppressed and the oppressor.

But he wasn't here for just his own thoughts, as disquieting and consuming as they were. No, Ness's footfalls had taken him to a ghetto. Because in worlds like these, it's the poorest people that were overlooked by everyone. The people that lived on the streets were all but invisible to those in their ivory towers.

And the irony was that it made them more valuable than they'd ever know.

And so the man walked... and it didn't take long to get exactly what he wanted. The ALMOST imperceptible tug at the back of his jacket. A gloved hand reached backwards and caught a small girl by her wrist. She was ragged and on her hip was the mark of a coin. She tugged against his grasp fearfully.

"What is your name?" "N... Nimble Grasp." She stammers out.

He twists her wrist, bringing her palm up. Into that palm, he deposits the single golden coin from his world, "You will tell me everything you saw for the past week. And then every week I visit you after this, you will get another coin. If you tell anyone about this, I will vanish."

Slowly, she nodded.