The Crow: City of Diamond

A Story by Abishai100

An idealist is murdered, but he's resurrected as an American urban avenger, seeking capitalism restoration, formed by DNA.

This is a neo-gothic fanfiction concept I've been working on for some time now, inspired equally by Proyas' The Crow, the iconic fortune-diary The Gift of the Magi, the iconic capitalism-descriptive Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and the modernism love-letter The Town (Ben Affleck). Enjoy readers,

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An ambitious American city lawyer named Brandon worked to improve the relations between a local baron and landlord and the idealistic tenants building a lively community for neighborhood night-time basketball and competitive nonviolent tournaments meant to detract attention away from modern urban hellmouth problems like bloody murder and vandalism.

BRANDON: I've been a social sciences teacher at the city-school for a few years, and I consider my crusade valiant.

Not everyone considered Brandon a man of great value. The biggest nemesis was the local urban crimelord, Dollar. Dollar hated all forms of revolutionary idealism among the city-dwellers under his umbrella of new age blood-diamond powers. Dollar, among other things, smuggled in blood-diamonds or 'conflict diamonds' from Africa/Europe, used to finance warlord regimes and terrorism, and sullied the North American gem market while inflating his own! Dollar wanted Brandon and his new age urban crusade destroyed in the name of inventive urban anarchy. He was a real bad guy.

Dollar sent his minions of hell to break into Brandon's city apartment and ransack it before they shot him to death with pistols and threw out his bloody body out his own giant window. Brandon fell to this horrifying death. Dollar got away with murder, and Brandon was buried in the cemetery. This cemented the end of Brandon's idealistic basketball crusade, and years later, Dollar would cement his power and mystique as the city's unquestioned master of traffic. Dollar turned the city into a proverbial 'dark city' after Brandon was murdered.

INTERPOL: Blood-diamond traffic is pure hellfire, and the sullying of the global gem market's a sign of capitalism deformity!

Not all storied end in such deformity! Brandon's body and soul were resurrected by the strange afterlife visiting spirit of the black bird called the crow, which lifted Brandon out of his grave and gave his decaying dead life a new rejuvenated animated strength and honor! Brandon ran back to his now looted city apartment and put on some makeshift survival-gear clothing out of leather and wool and then dyed his face white like an avenging clown with some theater makeup he had from his city-school drama classes.

Brandon then hit the streets as an avenging angel of vigilantism in the same place where the mighty and dark crimelord Dollar had managed to destroy the only crusade of nonviolent competitive social activity in a city otherwise beset by capitalism deformities and blood diamond traffic sullying woes. Brandon called himself the Crow and went about striking down one of Dollar's main goons before methodically hunting down all his other minions of hell who operated in this proverbial 'dark city' as drug-runners, hitmen, extortionists, rapists, vandals, enforcers, and terrorists. The Crow told these gargoyles of Dollar that justice was at hand, even inspiring a local comic book artist to start following his antics with a series of urban vigilantism fanfiction tales simply called Tales of the Crow.

Brandon had found his old cat Gabriel hiding in his looted and destroyed city apartment and hid him in a treehouse and fed him after his night-rounds of vigilante action. His goal was to restore hope to this one commercially vibrant US city. Gabriel would provide him homely spiritualism and encouragement while his guidance-force black-bird the crow would give him more strength and honor in his bizarre battle with the dark crimelord known as Dollar.

DOLLAR: I want this Crow destroyed and cut into pieces for my barbecue sandwich for Devil's Night by this October!

Brandon, the Crow, was now immortalized in comic books and the police started to praise his strange and mysterious underworld mystique as well, while many wondered if he was even a real registered American citizen. Some of his fans thought through rumor that he might be an angel of some kind, which was never really investigated! Brandon, or the Crow, meanwhile continued to do his work. He destroyed some of the diamond stores run by the merchants under the crimelord Dollar, subverting the highways leading to jewelry sales among the city's wealthy who'd made blood-diamond trading quite lucrative in North America.

THE CROW: You tell this fat extortionist Dollar that vengeance has come to this dark city in the form of a clown-oracle.

CITY REPORTER: Whether or not people have been sighting this 'Crow' figure is not as important as if he actually wins!

DOLLAR: I'm ordering a city-wide parallel series of fires and arson-hits on Devil's Night to draw out the Crow to me.

Dollar's hideous plan worked, and the Crow (Brandon) had no choice but to seek out this crimelord willing to use arson-blueprints on Devil's Night to create a need for immediate negotiations. Brandon decided to meet with the dark Dollar on an apartment complex rooftop in the rain late one night in this proverbial 'dark city' of utter depression.

OFFICER ALBRECHT: This is a trend in modern urban dollar-delusions, man!

REPORTER STARLING: No, officer, I want the story of the century here.
OFFICER ALBRECHT: It's just rumors of vigilantism against a known invincible lord!
REPORTER STARLING: Many in the city know of the power and fear of Dollar, officer.
OFFICER ALBRECHT: Yeah, and we're doing everything we can to reign in the madness!
REPORTER STARLING: No, officer, I want a straight report on the scales of doom here.
OFFICER ALBRECHT: We just can't account for all levels of vigilante-passions right now, man!
REPORTER STARLING: Well, you'll have to provide the people with adequate doses of capital-dance.
OFFICER ALBRECHT: Man, what the hell can average cops do in conditions of complete urban betrayal?
REPORTER STARLING: I dunno, but when you badges mature...please tell us, officer.

It was clear that all the underground folkloric fanfiction generated by the Crow was somewhat confounding the actual work of the everyday normal cops, and the Crow (Brandon) didn't want his personal avenging-angel missions to interfere with the bureaucratic capitalism inquiries (e.g., blood-diamond reporting) performed by the paid authorities! The Crow wondered if all this modern urban capitalism-oriented deformity was somehow related to the geometric 'omens' of the 'leviathan' of socialized anarchy described in Adam Smith's dioramic The Wealth of Nations, a work of urban diligence.

DOLLAR: You think this Robin Hood crap will alleviate the depths of urban betrayal feeding the modern man?

CROW: You doubt the integrity and resilience of the basic man, capable of transcending limited pains.

Dollar and Crow met for an ultimate showdown in the pouring rain of this proverbially 'dark city' of capitalism ruins. Dollar was still the American master of blood-diamond folklore. The Crow (Brandon) had become a night-time angelic messenger of revisionist American urban imagination! This was a battle now of swords, gunfire, rooftop acrobatics, and divine madness. Who'd win --- the deflating Dollar...or the dorky Crow (Brandon)?

The Crow defeated Dollar and buried him in the same cemetery where his dead body once lay. His guardian black-bird, the crow, had now given him an extra lease on life, and he used it to obtain a new license to live in his once proud city, working with the cops in secret now to rebuild what was lost because of blood diamonds. Meanwhile, Brandon had met a beautiful city resident named Shelbye who worked as an airline stewardess out of JFK. Was his destiny officially drawn?

Brandon deposited some of his earnings from blood-diamond routs of Dollar's once hideous urban empire in a bank safe-box in the city to develop some savings dreams for himself and Shelbye with whom he now sought an envisioned 'afterlife' of capitalism daydreams.