Rotgut walks through the
city streets, obsessing over all the flaws he sees in everyone around him. A
starving couple pass by him, deciding whether they should spend the little
money they have on food or sleep. The couple parts ways and Rotgut approaches
the woman, spouting his usual rambling nonsense before he kills her! Not long
later, a landlord is harassing a tenant, an old woman, about the rent,
completely ignoring her requests to get things fixed. Daredevil shows up
suddenly and threatens the man into fixing up everything the woman asked for.
She gives Daredevil some sweetbread as thanks and he departs, thinking this
lead he had of finding Rotgut a bust. Had Daredevil checked more thoroughly, he
would have found Rotgut, who comes out of hiding in the next room. He tells the
woman, his mother, that he has to go and she bemoans how he’s always working in
the building’s basement. Down in the basement, Rotgut works on the pipes and
plumbing with a surgeon’s precision and suddenly flashes back to when he was a
kid. He remembers a time when his mother took him to care for his sick
grandmother, and she grabbed him when he was giving her the medicine, scaring
him off. Since that time, Rotgut has thought he was poisoned and wonders how
sick he truly is!
Meanwhile, Matt returns
to the warehouse that he and Karen are staying at and surprises her with
flowers. She reminds Matt that they’re having dinner with Hilda, the waitress
at his job, soon. Hilda shows up not long after with a guy and says that she won’t
be able to make their dinner. The two couples part ways and Karen wonders why
Hilda always seems to attract losers. Matt mentions how he wants to find Rotgut
as soon as he can when Hilda’s date suddenly runs back up to them. He tells
them how she saw a patron that harassed her and completely ran off on him!
Knowing that must mean Rotgut, Matt heads out to find her. Meanwhile, Hilda’s
followed Rotgut to his basement and witnesses him fiddling with all of the
tubes and plumbing, re-routing the whole system! She watches him poison his
building’s water supply as we see all of the various tenants throughout the
building currently using the water! Hilda confronts Rotgut and he pulls out a
knife to use on her!
High above, on the
rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen, Daredevil perches atop a church, trying to use his
senses to locate any sign of Hilda or Rotgut. The kids of the Fatboys gang ask
him if they can help, but he tells them to go home. Daredevil then hears Hilda’s
whistle, and arrives at Rotgut’s basement to find him attacking her! Rotgut
springs a trap on Daredevil, dropping a bunch of pipes on him. Daredevil crawls
out, and the Fatboys kids, having followed Daredevil, offer to warn everyone in
the building of the poisoned water! Daredevil fights Rotgut and tries to talk
some sense into him, telling him that he understands all of the pain he sees,
but assures him there’s beauty in the world too. As the two fight, the kids
warn everyone about the poisoned water, until one kid encounters a particularly
rude tenant. He decides not to warn the man, and lets him drink the poisoned
water.
Daredevil continues to
fight Rotgut, his words having no effect, and eventually topples a large boiler
on him! As Rotgut crawls out from under it, he hears his mother’s voice, crying
out for help! She tells her son she’s been poisoned, and he says he forgot she
lived there too! Realizing her son was behind this, Rotgut’s mother admonishes
him and disowns him, telling him something like him couldn’t have a mother!
Daredevil stops Rotgut from killing himself and soon later, he’s being taken
away by the police. Rotgut’s mother wants to go with him, but Daredevil tells
her she’s done enough already. The paramedics tell Daredevil that they’ll be
able to save almost everyone. The kid who let the rude tenant drink the
water stares at his dead body being loaded into an ambulance, knowing that it’s
his fault, and echoing Rotgut’s words that nothing will ever be the same…
For the special marvelite in you