Walkin' a New Beat

[MADBULL34]

John Estes fluttered his eyes, opening them apprehensively. The ivory white chamber was almost blinding at first, but after a time, he adjusted and began to settle.  He found himself sitting on the edge of a fountain, as stark naked as the day he was born.

John Estes was a cop where he had come from, and a damn good one… depending on who you asked. His enemies called him Mad Bull, but his friends called him “Sleepy,” and that's just how he felt at the moment. With confusion, the burly, muscled man scratched at the great Burt Reynolds style mustache that bristled on his upper lip.

“Goddamnit, that's the last time I eat the double gyro special and down a fifth of Jack before I hit the hay…” he muttered.

After taking some time to compose himself, he spotted in the distance a column of Imperial soldiers marching along the Nexus in route to the fountain.

“Come to think of it, the dealer I busted last night mighta been tradin’ in PCP or LSD…” he mused.

The measured steps of the column soon stopped near the fountain and each soldier stood firmly at attention as their grey garbed captain approached the naked pile of man-beef.

“Hail Prime. Perhaps you feel a momentary sense of confusion, but worry not for this emotion is not uncommon among your kind that find their way here.  As we have proposed to many, I would like to suggest you serve the Emperor of this new land of yours."

“An emperor...that's like a king or somethin’, yeah?”

“Quite. It's very much like a king…” the captain raised an eyebrow and steepled his fingers for effect, “...but better.”

He continued, “A man of your stature and size, pardon my presumption, but may I ask if you were a warrior, fighter, or soldier of your former land?”

MAD BULL stood up with a grumble, cracked the bones of his back, then his knuckles. Fully erect, he stood a head and shoulder taller than the not-insignificant captain. “I was a cop, small-fry. You need cops in this Christmas-land lookin’ place?”

The captain’s nose wrinkled. “This area is just a gateway to our world, and yes, we have need of law officers such as yourself to keep the peace...especially amongst the ruffians and rogues you are no doubt so intimately accustomed to.”

“You want me to be a cop, eh?”

“Why yes, if you don’t mind.”

“And you’d give me a gun?”

“Assuredly.”

“I could bust up criminals?”

“Yes.”

“...and plow dames?”

“Certainly?”

“Booze it up nightly?”

“If you were so inclined.”

“So this is real, this just ain’t like some PCP freakout?”

“A PC.... what?”

MAD BULL slapped the captain brutishly on the shoulder. “Lead on small-fry. I’ll bust perps and crack cases for ya if that's what you want, just show me the way.”

[MADBULL34]

Continuing from earlier dreams in the Astralverse: http://omniverse-rpg.com/showthread.php?tid=8599

Once again Sergeant John Estes found himself standing within the empty and vacant expanse of the Nexus.  For seven days and nights the burly officer had dreamt of days gone by. Unlike his first pass through the hallowed halls, Mad Bull wasn’t confounded by the sudden confusion of being dropped off in such an alien and unfamiliar setting.  Rather, he felt exhausted.
 
The great god of the Omniverse himself had been so kind as to revive the lumbering cop in his full dress blues.  It had been years since he could remember wearing such crisp and pressed trousers. The uniformed shirt was stoutly buttoned across his bursting pectorals, just the way he liked it, but didn’t have the usual stank of sweat and B.O. that came from sitting for hours behind the wheel of a squad car.  There was an eeriness to it, that crisp, sharp starchy feeling of not only being in a new pair of cloths, but a new body - reborn, from temple to toe.
 
Even for the veteran officer it was a new experience.  Mad Bull contemplated the complicated idea of it all and scratched at his thick Burt Reynolds styled mustache with agitation.  He scowled at the gleaming white horizon, realizing his dear sweet Ma would be spinning in her grave if she knew that her one and only son had been blasphemously reborn like El Jesucristo.

“I’ll say a couple o’ Hail Marys for ya when I get back on solid earth,” he muttered to no one in particular.  Instinctively, he reached to his hip and satisfyingly felt that his revolver was in place.  While gazing across the endless confines of the Nexus, he lackadaisically unclipped the leather snap and withdrew his weapon.  He held it in his palm, admiring the safety and serenity that came from its weight.  As his eyes had done a thousand times before, he read the stenciled letters etched along the barrel – SMITH & WESSON.
 
His chest heaved, hearkening back to the memory, the dream that his sleeping self had reflected upon while in the Astralverse.  He could remember with crystal clear clarity that first time he had read those eleven letters in the dirty bathroom of a porno theater on 42nd Street, and could remember even more vividly when he had shoved the barrel, obscuring those letters, into the mouth of El Jefe Negro and pulled the trigger four times.
 
With grim satisfaction he shoved the weapon back in its holster.
 
He paused for a moment, studying the lay of the land. In the far distance he could see the gates of Corsucant, but not far away either Camelot and other locals could be spotted, promising new adventures, new friends and certainly sunnier beaches than the always oppressively bleak and polluted streets of Corsucant.  With the pains of death still lingering in his bones, the unknown elsewhere held a certain appeal, until he suddenly saw a small object lying on the blank ground. Mad Bull bent to pick it up.
 
“SERGEANT: JOHN ESTES – 34 PRECINCT”
 
He held the badge in his fist and gripped it tightly, the etched metal pressing indentations into his flesh.  The memories of his final fight in Dante’s Abyss came flooding back, reminding him of the passion, the zeal and the fury he poured out from his simple, wicked heart.
 
“I ain’t done down there yet. My shift ain’t over. For you Ma, for all your kind and mine. This one, this life is for all the no good kids like me tryin’ to climb out of the gutter and trying to make it…”
 
He pinned the badge to his chest proudly, then patted the SMITH & WESSON revolver at his hip, “And this one, this one still carries four in the chamber to make things right, to let crooks and crumbs taste justice for once in their rotten lives, even if it’s gotta come churning out the barrel of my gun.”