Kane and Fred: American Success

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Fred interrogates Kane about one of his childhood heroes. Feelings Ensue.



Fred moved much quicker than his usual gait, his easy long stride shortened as he checked in doorways and around corners. Fred kept looking down at the massive stack of papers, then back to his search. He knew Mr. Kane was a night owl like him, and swore he saw him around earlier in the night...

"Mr. Kane...?" Fred called out as he stepped out of the elevator onto the first sub-level of the Mansion, "Yah down here, sir...?"

Garrison looked up from his screen. Was that the time? "Yeah Fred. I'm in the DR Control Room." He called back through the open door. It's not like he was all that busy, doing the digital equivalent of busy work on the programming and cleaning out old data.

Fred moved into the room, looking from his stack of papers to Kane and back at the papers and back to Kane. He seemed to barely be able to restrain himself long enough for pleasantries, "Uh, hey Mr. Kane. Yah gotta second...?"

"That all depends on what you want it for. If it involves some kind of special Danger Room request, the answer is that I'm so busy with something that could potentially mean the end of all life on Earth if I look away from it for even a second. If it involves anything else, especially like you fetching me a beer from the fridge in the ready room, then I have all the time in the world."

Fred rooted around in his large jacket, producing a large can of Red Bull, "Ah ain't tha fetchin' type. But I'll bribe yah with what Ah got." Fred put the stack of papers down next to Kane's arm. On them, a picture of a middle aged man with a broad smile sat atop a large block of text that read JACOB 'ARCADE' LOWENSTEIN - CLASS 2 THREAT'

"That shit gives baby seals brain tumours." Kane said of the can of Red Bull, getting up and leaving the room long enough to pull a pair of Moosehead from the fridge. Logan and he had done a good job weaning the mansion away from a dominance of Bud and Coors. "Alright, so tell me why you're reading about Arcade."

Fred was a large man, and fairly stoic most of the time; seeing him with such barely restrained excitement was probably an odd thing. He was almost giddy when he finally blurted out, "So this is for real? This is the Jacob Lowenstein? Tha Arcade King of Vegas? Tha Console Kaiser? Tha Man with tha Plan? Like, for real...!?!"

"Yes, this is also the asshole psychopath who nearly killed a lot of us." Kane took a sip from the bottle and settled baack in his chair. "You've got access to mission summaries from Ms. Monroe and others."

Fred nodded a little, and actually looked a little hurt and offended. He flipped through the large stack of papers to one of the mentioned debriefing files. "Ah do. Been readin em for hours. What kinda 'asshole psychopath' allegedly targets what looks like only killers and psychos and mobsters and rapists? Let's kids go free and helps people he's supposedly tryin tah 'kill tha lot of' not once, but what looks like ah habit kinda thing...?"

"If you're attempting to rationalize things a little much, Fred." Kane said, although without heat to his words. "Lowenstein is a criminal, first and foremost. The whole concept of MurderWorld is to present entertaining ways for people to watch their opponents die gruesomely and in great pain. Take a look in the files that X-Force put together. Most of those people are targeted by their business rivals, with Arcade gleefully profiting from the drug dealers and mobsters and killers that pay him for the service. Normal people don't pour their time and energy into inventing new ways to inflict pain on other people, even if they happen to be bad."

Fred looked furious for a split second, before he sagged, visibly, his skin and tissue going loose momentarily around his face before he composed himself and tightened it back up, "Ah...look, Ah'm not an idiot, Mr. Kane. Ah...yeah, this crap all looks pretty bad, but..." he sighed and sat down next to Garrison, yanking a large PBR can from another abyss within his coat. Guzzling half the contents almost immediately, Fred wiped his mouth before he continued, "Ah spent most of mah life a bit closer tah Vegas than maybe tha resta ya'll. Mr. Lowenstein...ah grew up on his games, and readin' in tha paper about his scholarship programs...public centers built almost as far out as Lubbock...women's shelters, yah name it..." Fred took another long pull from his own beer, "Guy like that...Ah just can't believe he's all bad, yah know...?"

"The reality is that he's not all bad. No one is all bad or all good. But he's bad enough to be considered as much of a danger as the other people we fight. The first time the X-Men ran across him, he attempted to execute Amanda Sefton by shooting her through the face." Garrison set his beer on the console. "When I was in my second year on the force, I was shocked to see a priest sitting in the holding cell one morning. Got the full rundown; he ran a local ministry, food bank, lots of charity work, counseled addicts, worked with the mentally disabled on the street. From the stories, you figured this guy was a step away from being the next Messiah. We caught him tampering with packages of morning after pills in drug stores all over Vancouver, trying to slip poison into them. Just because someone does bad things doesn't mean they aren't capable of good things too. Arcade has his own twisted honour, and at times that's helped us. But he's also killed a lot of people, and we know not all of them were evil people who deserved it."

Fred slumped in his chair after finishing his large drink, "Tryin tah poison ladies? Damn..." Fred looked down at the smiling picture of Lowenstein sitting on top of his stack of papers, "It ain't that Ah don't believe yah, Mr. Kane, but...Ah gotta tell yah, sir, it feels like findin' out Mother Theresa was runnin' a dogfightin operation or somethin. Tha man is, like, sixty percent responsible for the best parts of mah childhood. Animatronics he came up with for pizza joints, arcades he owned everywhere...hell, the guy programmed and distributed all mah favorite Nintendo games..." Despite the overall tenor of the conversation, Fred couldn't help a small, nostalgic smile from growing across his face...

"Just because he's a nutball doesn't mean you have to trash enjoying those memories. I can enjoy re-watching 'Lethal Weapon' even though I know the lead is a bigoted anti-semite who likes to hit girls. The key is not to confuse the memories of your enjoyment with assessing the person involved." Kane pointed out. "The other important thing to keep in mind is that while Lowenstein has helped us in the past, it's always been based around his own self-interest. He's never sacrificed his own gain to do the right thing. That's a big distinction there."

Fred nodded, but couldn't keep from sighing as he threw away his beer can, "Ah...ah know. It's just...even as a kid Ah...Ah didn't look up tah football players er' Rangers er' even nah Dad..." Fred coughed a little, and shook his head, "Nevermind. 'S nuthin. Can Ah grab yah another beer? Ah still ain't the fetchin type, but Ah owe yah for tha story...."

"No, one's the limit for the afternoon." Kane waved the offer away. "Look, Fred, it may hurt losing some of those idols. But, take Arcade seriously. Deadly seriously. He's got a really bad habit of showing up where he's least expected, and he can be dangerous. Past the smile and the donations and the video games, if there's something he wants, he's not worried about who gets hurts in the process of getting it, okay?"

Fred, for all the other things he was feeling, managed a smile. He patted Kane on the shoulder as he stood up, "Loud an' clear, Mr. Kane. Lowenstein equals bad. Won't forget it. But Ah ain't throwin out mah old games. Would break mah heart too much."

"That's the right way to look at it. Besides," Kane shrugged. "I still have a signed Roger Clemens baseball in my room back in Toronto. We all have our crosses to bear."