No johns this time! I had a late night and wanted to get some sleep.
Also, this contains a reference to my Batman game. So yeah, enjoy that, people that get it.
An ominous cloud is cast over the shambles of the Sinister Seventeen as they reconvene in the morning.
Suddenly, a black, gaping hole tears into the air above the conference room, and a man in a tattered white suit with orange hair drops onto the rosewood table.
Arcade (Nicholas1024; SS-alligned watcher) stares up unseeing, body diced and carved, his normally cruel and devious visage now frozen in final moments of pure agony. Through the crack above, The Spot leaps down, landing atop Arcade.
Eddie Brock grunts, pointing a finger at him as his symbiote slithers about him, inching up his body. "I thought it was you! I
knew you were no good. And
now you're DEAD!"
"Ah,"
boomed a voice from behind, as Mysterio stepped forth from a doorway. "But who is to say that Mr. Ohmm was alone in his endeavors? That'd be a bit...
deluded of a belief, wouldn't you say?"
Black Cat's fists clench as she steadies herself for a battle. "I thought you didn't
have a side in this!"
"It was but one of many masterful illusions I have cast in the past few days."
Mysterio's opague helmet betrays no emotion, although his bellowing laugh certainly does. "Including that of my loyalty to this organization."
The Kingpin remains seated, his fingers interlocked contemplatively. "This has become a most interesting development. It seems as though the game has become quite balanced."
He stands and steps backward, leaning against the wall, his cane planted firmly. "It seems ideal to wait out your conflict and side with the stronger aggressive body."
Mysterio presses a button on belt, and a light fog starts to come in from the air conditioning vents on the floor. Any unprepared watch the gas warily, hoping to avoid it with great caution.
The Spot cracks his knuckles. "Then we've whittled you down to even money. I suppose we've done well to shed the need for deceiving you buffoons any longer."
Without warning, Venom charges forward, toward the crouching Spot. "You can NOT stop us, Ohmm! You are WEAK! WHAT CAN YOU DO TO
US!?"
And as he leaped wildly through the air, fingertips turning to spikes, The Spot opened a portal immediately in front of him.
"This."
Hurtling through limbo, Venom soon find himself crackling hard into the plexiglass window, and felt The Spot's feet slam hard into his back immediately thereafter. Lashing out wildly, he fell to the floor solitary, his opponent long disappeared.
Faring better was the Black Cat, who had landed a vicious roundhouse into Mysterio's backside and sent him skidding across the carpet.
"B
astard!"
she hisses. "Years of being straight, and you lure me back to crime just to
sell us all out?"
She pounces forward, landing on top of him and gripping the tufts of his cape.
She grins. "Let's see how many illusions you can cast with the shards of your own helmet in you
eyes!"
But she soon finds herself tumbling across the room with a grunt, as the Sandman steps forward, returning his arm from a mallet to an ordinary appendage. Black Cat digs her heels in to stop her roll and faces the two, as Mysterio stands.
"Not you too, Marko!"
"Sorry, girl,"
he shrugs. "The money's better when you go into business for yourself. Sometimes I gotta step on a few chumps."
Across the room, Venom is lost, surrounded by portals, swinging wildly in the hopes of hitting The Spot as he feels himself pelted by strike after strike, always caught unaware.
"Show yourself to us and FIGHT FAIR!"
"I could fight fair, or I could fight smart."
A fist collides with his temple. "The latter has served me better."
But he was not prepared for Venom catching his wrist. A grin sheds across the face of the symbiotic warrior as he catches The Spot's leg after a kick, the tongue lolling cheerfully. Try though he might, The Spot could not escape the monster's grip.
"Now you'll feel our TRUE might, Ohmm!"
And he pulls. And pulls. And pulls. Before long, The Spot is shrieking in pain as he feels his tendons and ligaments tearing apart.
"Ohhhh yes. We will
enjoy studying you!"
But Venom grunts, as he's cast across the room by a massive shoulder that could belong to the Kingpin. Standing, Venom stares down his new opponent. And after a moment, they charge, exchanging blow after might blow, the room shaking with the collision of either's strikes.
As her leg sinks into the Sandman's chest, Black Cat feels the sand coil tightly around her leg and tries futilely to dislodge it.
"Now now, darlin',"
he smirks, as his right arm grows larger and larger. "Where
are your manners?"
The hit sends her flying across the room. Using the wall as a springboard, she launches herself toward the desk, rolling forward and booting the recovering Spot in the jaw and sending him sprawling once more. Sandman, meanwhile, crept up to Venom, who had managed to cover the Kingpin in his inky webbing and pin him to the wall. Just as he leans forward for the killing blow, Sandman's fearsome kick sends him skidding away, and he pulls away the Kingpin's restraitns.
"We won't forget your help, Fisk,"
Sandman assured. "You have allies in us."
Unprepared, Sandman feels his legs kicked clean through by Black Cat's sweep, and he collapses, erupting briefly into sand. At the same time, she pivots and thrusts her elbow into the Kingpin's gut, who grips her tight in response.
"I've declawed many a cat in my youth, my dear."
And he punctuated his point by launching her into the wall. As she flew through the air, a white and black polka-dotted arm appeared from a portal and collided with her throat, sending her gasping to the ground
Unfortuantely, this distraction had allowed Venom to cast webbing into both the Kingpin and the Sandman and crash them hard into one another. Recognizing the true threat, here, he leaped over the downed foes and charged straight for Mysterio.
"Without YOU,"
he surmised, the tongue trailing behind him. "They have NOTHING to stop US!"
"That's true enough,"
Mysterio acknowledged, before he put his hands forward and purple gas flowed from the fingertips. Quickly, Venom ducks away, rolling across the ground... and then he realizes that something is very wrong.
Coughing, Black Cat stands, waving away the smoke on the ground. She'd taken a lungful after the Kingpin threw her... and then she realized what Venom just had, as her vision began to blur.
The fog. The fog was the hallucinogen!
"It's funny how gladly people will accept diversionary gas as your weapon so long as it is a bright and distracting color,"
Mysterio guffawed. "One last parlor trick before my truly beautiful illusion."
And as he pressed another button on his belt, another Mysterio appeared. Then another Spot. Another Sandman. Then another Mysterio, and another Spot. Another Sandman. And so on, and so forth, until the room was filled to the brim with dozens of sentient illusions.
These kind of odds could not be defeated. Venom and Black Cat fight bravely, but when each of their strikes soars cleanly through a false enemy, they are destined to be worn down by their true nemeses. Before long, they lay defeated, and the gas and holograms began to disappear.
"Gentleman,"
Mysterio beckoned. "I believe we've done it."
"You've definitely done it, Fishbowl!"
They turn just in time to see Spider-Man sink a red fist deep into Mysterio's helmet, and he slides across the ground unconscious.
The Spot fires a fist through a portal, but the webslinger manages to catch it and yank hard enough to bring him right out of the portal -- and facefirst into a devastating knee.
"No!"
Sandman yelped. "We had a
deal, bughead!"
Spider-Man responded by sliding beneath him and kicking straight up, launching the Sandman into the ceiling and webbing him in place. "I've got my own deal."
"Well, so do I! FISK!"
But as the Sandman looked around, and as the SWAT teams burst through the doors to collect the defeated villains, he saw that the Kingpin was nowhere to be found.
"He betrayed us,"
he mused. And after a moment, he couldn't help but laugh. "Just like we betrayed them..."
Five Days Later...
In a grand office, a large man sips idly at a luxurious whiskey brand as he watches the television. A news cast about the dismantling of the Sinister Seventeen -- some caught, some murdered.
"Studies indicate the men's morale is up,"
says his advisor. "They feel truly unified now, sir."
"Good."
On the television, pictures of Flint Marko, Quentin Beck, and Johnathon Ohmm flash across the screen, both in costume and out. The Kingpin sips at his whiskey, hand framing his chin.
"What do you want us to do about them, Mr. Fisk?"
He pauses introspectively. "Are the bridge teams in place?"
The advisor nods. "Yes sir."
"Mmmm,"
the Kingpin nods. "Break them out. They could prove useful."
"Yes sir."
The advisor turns and exits, leaving Wilson Fisk to his thoughts.
The Kingpin nods to himself. "They could prove quite useful indeed..."
The Daily Bugle August 8th, 2009
Villainous Escape By Tom Tucker
A journalist's shot of Fisk Lagoon, a hundred miles off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea.
Few could forget the successful NYPD raid of a warehouse anonymously tipped off as being the headquarters of the reputed Sinister Seventeen. The raid resulted in the arrests of Quentin Beck, also known as Mysterio; Johnathon Ohmm, aka The Spot; Flint Marko, aka the Sandman; Felicia Hardy, aka the Black Cat; and Eddie Brock, aka Venom. Earlier apprehended were Aleksei Sytsevich, aka The Rhino, and Peter Petruski, aka The Trapster, and Dmitri Smerdyakov, aka The Chameleon, was killed in a high-profile fight with Spider-Man just a few days ago. The majority of the Sinister Seventeen's active members were found dead on arrival.
NYPD officials would not comment on possible involvement by the vigilante Spider-Man in the arrests, although it is considered likely.
Beck, Ohmm, and Marko were recently broken out of custody while being transported to their court dates. As their convoy travelled across George Washington Bridge, helicopters began to fly in lower than permitted by city bylaws. Just as the police were preparing to call in to report the offence, several charges hidden on the bridge began to explode, bringing the convoy to a halt.
Dozens of armed men slipped down ropes from the helicopters, which promptly released the ropes and banked away. Police were gunned down by the heavily armed force in rapid succession, and the three criminals were soon freed. The ropes were used again to slip to waiting boats, and the escape was made official.
Police have no leads as to the identity of the mastermind of this caper, but speculate it had to be a person of great influence and power. Boats matching the description of the yachts used in the escape were reportedly seen near Wilson Fisk's sovereign island state -- Fisk Lagoon -- but authorities lack the jurisdiction to investigate.
It is reported that the song "Trust" by Prince has been playing almost nonstop since the arrival of these boats -- likely for ironic reasons -- and that the island state has been the site of constant and raucaus parties, with a great many beautiful indigenous women and locally grown liquor of indescribable flavor. Fisk has assured us that this is entirely a coincidence, and he simply enjoys his bachelorhood.
More on this story as things develop -- but for the time being, it looks like these infiltrating criminals have gotten away scot-free.
Black Cat (smashman90; SS-alligned cop) has been apprehended.
Venom (Nothing Rhymes With Circus; SS-alligned paranoid gun owner) has been apprehended.
Mysterio (Kirby King; mole-alligned lawyer/framer) has escaped custody.
The Spot (Chaco; mole-alligned bus driver) has escaped custody.
The Sandman (Ignatius; mole-alligned godfather) has escaped custody.
The Kingpin (Handorin; independent politician) has escaped custody.
Mafia/Jester/Politician win!