I’ve chased evil and I’ve been chased by it. Despite the right wing media outlets, I’m the good guy. My name is August Vulture, the man that shot and killed the President of the United States on live television. The national media has branded me a traitor and a world-class bastard. The local media, in Washington DC, hasn’t had much to say after the bomb went off. I didn’t launch it; Pan-Europe did. But the timing off the bomb, its resultant destructive consequences, and the head of the Secret Service capping POTUS was too much of a coincidence. Unfortunately, it was. I said I chased evil. That’s true. I found out the mafia was running the government, top to bottom. I know that sounds kind of Hollywood and conspiracy theory, but it was true. Maybe still is. The mafia has been running the government since the mid-60’s. All of those limped-dick lobbyists you see rubbing the crotches of their designer slacks with a little too much “special interest,” those Network talking heads full of piss, vinegar and violently fucking the American dream, and all of those smug edutainment assholes, acting like the news could be any more valid when spoon-fed to the drooling masses with a snide punch line. They’re all working for the mob. Whether they know it or not, the work for some smoky room filled with Captains of Industry with a don at the head of the table. The proof has been there, being quietly blared between every line of every inaugural speech, the Bay of Pigs, the space race, and Mission Accomplished. When I heard the President tell the Wall Street kingpins it was time for a class war, I started worry about whose side were what and my choice. It took me months, based on others’ years of research and evidence to finally realize what the hell had been really going on. Smash cut to six months later: I’m standing there with a Sig Sauer P229, staring down at the 357 caliber tunnel I just drilled through the Leader of the Free World’s head. My standard issue sunglasses were sliding down my sweaty face. The reports say that was the highest rated kids’ show in history. Then, the air raid sirens started to wail. As it turned out, the Pan-Europe decided several hours earlier that it would send a message against the United States’ embargo in the form a bomb. Not a bomb, really, but a highly experimental and untested new kind of missile-based weapon. The rest of the country’s media is calling it the “Mag Bomb” or the “Magneto,” the latter being a quaint reference to a fictional genocidal supremacist super villain. The weapon, when detonated upon impact, caused a massive and catastrophic magnetic field to envelop several square miles. That doesn’t sound that scary until you see people bloodied, pulped and shredded being thrust fifty feet into the air followed by several feet of train track and the 3:37pm Blue Line. The entire rail system was being vomited up by the city. Any and all of the remaining ore deposits under the city were being spat up vengefully and with absolute malice. Under the concrete, asphalt, and unwary pedestrians, an ominous groaning birthed. It gave way to rebar shooting though the ground like bullets. Innocents were skewered, punctured, maimed…killed dead. The streets of Washington DC ran red with blood and exploded with shrapnel and revealed a newly freakish skyline. While I may have simply popped a hot one in the executive branch, PE took out the rest of the diseased beast that was the ill-prepared judicial and legislative branches. Washington DC became a quarantined reclamation zone, a no man’s land. The city erupted into further chaos as the survivors rioted and started block wars. I saw Wall Street slicksters biting the legs of immigrant cabbies for canned food. I have a safe room, a secret room hidden at the top of the US Capital Building. It has a plethora of dehydrated astronaut foods, gallons upon gallons of bottled water, and enough ammo that I think I have a bullet for every man, woman, and child in the city. Every night, under blankets instead of having to cozy up to surly strangers around a barrel fire, I say a silent prayer to whatever overly paranoid government official slipped my new home into the national budget. After those Twilight movies, there was an explosion of kids named “Bella” and “Edward.” My parents wanted me to have a famous name too, but they also wanted something different. My name is Avatar Winters and I’m a woman that’s going to kill the man that killed Pan-Europe. After I watched those fat, rich American slobs conquer the world market, after I watched Pan-Europe’s people in growing lines for just bread and toilet paper scraps, I saw my leaders finally do something about it. If the PE was to grow strong again, it was to be fattened on the corpse of our enemy.