El!
El has been with the site for nearly two years now and has continued to prove her value. Currently, she is heading up our site event, Battle for Liberterram, on top of keeping up with her own personal plots.
CHARACTER
SPOTLIGHT
Peggy Carter!
Lux's posts are all wonderful to read. She has done a wonderful job of grasping the new universe and incorporating Peggy into it.
CHARACTER
SPOTLIGHT
Peter Parker!
It's good to see Spidey back on the site. Watching him deal with the universe shift in his own snarky way has been nothing short of entertaining.
THREAD
SPOTLIGHT
Eight O'Clock on the Dot!
El and Lux are making magic in this thread. Straight up fireworks, and the way they've played with drawing out the reveal is top class.
Two goons on the roof. The usual trash, Fisk's old empire had come equipt with it's own personal army, though how they kept replenishing their ranks Parker would never know. But he was certain he made it a difficult task. The roof he watched was that of a warehouse the new Kingpin had been using for trafficking the empire's various sources of revenue they liked to keep out the public eye. He had been watching it for weeks now, but tonight was special. The big boss herself was paying a visit. That gave the Spider a interesting opportunity. Tonight he'd finally topple the Kingpin. He had followed Fisk almost as long as he had been the Spider. When the original Kingpin got overthrown the shrew that took his place she became the new target in his case file. Admittedly she was a much more formidably adversary. The tub of lard she replaced was a hell of a lot easier to give a thrashing.
Moving silently the spider left his perch in the shadows of a rooftop across the way from the warehouse. Quickly clearing the street with a single bound he landed softly on the roof of the warehouse. Parker crouched and moved quickly across the tar, coming up behind his first victim. Standing behind the goon he reached his arm across his face, placing his web-shooter against the mans mouth and distributing a healthy amount of web to keep him from calling out. Catching the back of the mans suit Parker hoisted him around to get a eye on the other guard to make sure he hadn't been made. Assured he was clear he cast a wide net of webbing across the goon before tossing him from the roof, leaving a strand of webbing attached at Parker's feet to keep him suspended against the building. At least for the time being.
Without a moments notice he jumped into the air towards the second guard. Letting out a slight whistle as he cleared the gap the thug turned to see the source of the noise but was met with a face full of web as Spider-man landed heavily on his chest. In a panic the goon scrambled for the gun at his waist. Before he could draw the holstered weapon another shot of web glued the mans hand at his waist. Lifting his foot Parker drove his heel into the mans leg, a satisfying snap brought a muffled scream of pain before the man lost consciousness and fell limp against the tar.
Roof was clear.
Moving quicker now that stealth was no longer a priority Parker was at the roof access in a moment, lifting the hatch and decending into the rafters of the warehouse. The bright lights hanging below the rafters illuminating the large building. It only took a moment for the vigilante to leave the catwalk and take to the rafters. Watching the floor above as he scaled ceiling, moving quickly and quietly over his target. She wasn't hard to spot. She seemed to have inherited her former boss's taste in attire, the flashy suit was quick to spot if not for the silver hair atop the head of it's wielder.
Once he was satisfied with his positioning Parker flipped around, clinging by his feet to crouch before propelling himself at the Kingpin. Flipping mid air he kicked towards the mob boss.
Leaving her men stationed outside and making the proactive decision to kill the warehouse's security feed ahead of time, Felicia moved to the section of storage where the container in question was supposed to be. Pulling it forward on the overlarge shelf, Felicia popped the container open with a satisfying chnk. Inside of the container was a soft-foam inlay that housed a dozen chrome cylinders. With caution she lifted each of the cylinders and checked a small, embossed code on the side. No. No. No. With each serial code she felt her anxiety grow a little. Fisk's businesses ordered batches hundreds at a time, and so far not a warehouse of hers had anything within a hundred numbers of the stolen supply. Yet the number was certainly one of hers, suggesting an inside job that manipulated inventory since she had no proper home listed for the missing cylinder. Either one of her guys with talent had gone bad, a couple of them had, or someone was hitting her shipments before they were made. And since she couldn't rule out an inside job she was trying to suppress her knowledge of the conspiracy, which is why she hadn't taken anyone directly inside and had opted to choke security feed during the duration of her stay.
Unfortunately it left her like a sitting duck.
When the Spider's voice bounced off the warehouse walls, Felicia barely had time to step to the side and leap back, narrowly missing his attempted kick to the face. Every hair on the back of her neck was up on end as she felt her luck powers respond to her instincts and blast him hard with karmic recompense. Mmm. She had to say she never got tired of that rushing feeling of fate coming up to crowbar her problems in the knees. But just in case fate couldn't quite do the trick she pulled a gun from her hip holster and fired it off after him on his rebound. The gun's unique payload buried into the vigilante's bicep and plunged a murky fluid into his veins.
"Glad you could make it, Spider!" Felicia dove toward the nearest cover behind a separate set of massive shelving. "I had this made specially for you. Each round's loaded with enough CCs of neurotoxin to take down a horse. Probably not quite enough for you." She'd have to be sure and put a second round in him. Maybe three, and she'd try to make it quick. Not because she didn't want to see him die slow--with as many of her men as he'd put into the hospital or killed, she would have preferred that--but because she couldn't afford to keep him alive and running around free for long. It was either plug him or restrain him and have him under such heavy guard he couldn't hope to sneeze without getting his brains splattered along the wall.
Both were best case scenarios for tonight.
"And remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel?" Felicia referenced Princess Bride while she prepared for a possible round two.
Of course she dodged. He had expected that. Hardy was a proficient fighter if nothing else. She had always proven to be one of his most challenging adversaries time and time again. But there was something more to it. He could never put a finger on it. Some sort of factor that always made sure the odds were in her favor. It pissed off Parker.
Sticking the landing where his target had stood Parker quickly went into a back flip. His Spider-sense tingled as he came down on his hands to spring back into his landing a sharp pain shot from his arm quickly surging through his body. The pain caught him off guard. He landed heavy, only one foot landing steadily but easy enough to grip and regain footing.
He barely got a chance to assess his surroundings before the sixth-sense went off again. Parker went to roll out of the way though he found himself falling off balance. His superhuman equilibrium went out the window as he careened into a pile of boxes. He waited for whatever set off the sense as Hardy raddled on, though nothing came. That was when he realized what exactly it was she was saying. That bitch tranqed him, or poisoned him he had a bit of trouble making ends meet in his mind. His attention turned to his bicep. The dart was easily found in contrast to the red of his suit. It clicked why exactly his spider-sense was going haywire as the annoying tingle went off again. Reaching out a hand the Spider shifted to lift himself onto his feet though was surprised to find his left arm (now freshly numb) still lay against the rubble.
Well then...shit just got complicated.
"Well you know generally..." Pete awkwardly fumbled out of the rubble, using his one still good arm to pull himself to his feet. He didn't quite see where the Kingpin had gotten off to but he knew she certainly wasn't far off. "It's the spider dishing out the poison." The second half of the sentence came a bit slower than the first. He had to focus. The neurotoxin was a double edged sword, dulling his brain and frying his muscles. The smart thing to do would run. His legs still worked and with one arm he could at least sling his way out of there. But she would win, he couldn't bring himself to knowingly giving her the pleasure of him running off to lick his wounds. No way she was getting that satisfaction. Still unsteady Pete made his way into the row of shelving, using the boxes stocking the shelves as cover. His heightened senses on alert for any sort of sign to give up the Hardy's position now she had gone quiet again.
"Hate to be the bearer of bad news for you there Princess but it will take a lot more than that to shave a year off my life." The line had caught a bit of recognition. Figured that even in his drugged out state the pointless information still shined through. Typical Parker luck.
Felicia was glad to see the vigilante land in a heap of boxes. Hopefully one of them was a five inch splinter that went straight up his ass. She was pretty sure 'anal perforation' was the one Spider death that could top 'horrific neurotoxin poisoning'. Unfortunately, the mass of debris started shifting and she was left to conclude that he unfortunate wasn't hemorrhaging to death all ready. Oh, well. Guess she'd have to deal with watching him die from poisoning after all. Hopefully that would be enough to off set all of her lingering parental issues.
The mob boss was surprised to hear him try and crack wise. It happened on occasion but usually he liked to keep himself as unfun as they came. Apparently giving him a very real taste of death was the way to loosen him up. Which made it even more of a shame that she hadn't succeeded before now. Having him on the brink of death a handful of times prior could've really been the highlight of her existence.
"Don't try and grow a personality before you die, Spider." The woman replied before she began to carefully move a little at a time. Even if she didn't have the shiny suit at the moment, she still had all the training and skills. And even if he was dying from all the juice she had pumped into his veins, she wasn't stupid enough to discount him. He'd managed to salvage the game in the bottom half of the last quarter before. So everything was slow, careful, sure. While she couldn't try and wait him out on this, she still had time. He would get a little worse before his body started to fight off the effects, and hitting him near his weakest point was the best bet.
By the time he began to work toward where she was originally, she'd slipped back out of the shelves and was down and across, onto the next level of the next group of shelves. Unfortunately her current spot was very isolated and exposed, and if he managed to cut across the way to her in time, she was going to be trapped. She had to hope that he was or would be poisoned enough that that would happen. Taking a quiet breath, she lined him up and fired another shot into him.
"You're right. But I figure one more will do the trick." She lunged forward so she could hopefully bound out and away. "Maybe two."
Peter Parker YOU CAN HAVE HIM RUN UP AND TAG HER, IF YOU WANT. A SOLID HIT WHEREVER YOU LIKE.
Head in the game Parker. Drugs are making you sloppy.
She was right. It wasn't like him to crack wise on the job. Hardy was a deadly opponent who was more than capable of killing him in more than one sort of unpleasant ways. Especially in a weakened state he had to play his cards close to his chest. Like he didn't have a hard enough time with her as is. High ground was his best option. With his good arm he hoisted himself shelf by shelf. Watching carefully between the boxes for any sign of his target. This Spider Sense in the back of his mind was still going haywire. Reaction to the toxin no doubt. Made the whole thing useless. More of a hindrance than an asset.
It took him much longer to get to the top of the shelves than it normally would have. He realized once he got to the top that it probably wasn't his greatest idea. The room felt like it kept taking a dive on him. Luckily he could still use his grip to maintain some balance. A few short and sloppy leaps and he could see the silver locks making their way onto the next level. Moving his legs to give him a wider and more sturdy base to pounce from Parker took to the air, a thwip of web bringing him in to a low hanging swing towards her. His only real plan was to clear the distance. He hadn't expected her to fire another shot. As he came in for a hard landing against the metal shelves she bounced away.
His vision grew steadily blurrier as he looked down at his chest. His red and blue suit was freshly adorned with two more darts. Three? One, he confirmed as he reached up with his good hand and dislodged it. Staggering off of the shelf he stumbled a few steps towards the blur he figured to be Hardy before he realized he was too far gone. He needed to get out, the roof. No. Which way was up? He grew weaker, his knees buckled bringing him down to all fours. Looking up for a moment he glared through the mask at the new Kingpin. Too drugged to realize the severity of his position. Only a weak chuckle came through his mask.
"You know I hate your gu-" His voice carried off an as he lost full control, calling face first into the hard concrete. The last thing in his fading sight was approaching heels before it all went to black.
Post by Felicia Hardy on Mar 27, 2017 19:25:07 GMT
For a moment, Felicia was disappointed. While she wasn't some sadist that got all a-tingly at the idea of blood spilling, she wanted him to suffer. Instead the poison seemed to act closer to a tranquilizer. If he was in any kind of serious distress, she couldn't see it beyond the stumble here and there. Tsk. Oh, well. Maybe he'd been biting down on his own tongue to prevent a loss of grim 'n' gritty points? A girl could certainly hope. Just like she hoped that she hadn't expedited his death with a second dose.
Better safe than sorry my ass.
Despite her frustration with the policy, the Kingpin again implemented it and waited close to a minute before she approached. Even with his constitution and all that hate gnawing away at his guts, she didn't think he could rebound so quickly. Keeping her gun out and at the ready, Felicia closed the last bit of distance between them and gave him a hard kick to the shoulder.
Watching him slid across the poured concrete floor as if it were tile, she waited a bit after. When he seemed to move to cradle the wounded shoulder, she decided that he was close enough to dead to really cozy on up to. Crouching down beside him, Felicia pressed her gun against his throat and used her free hand to reach inside of the wrists of his suit to free the web shooters he had tucked away there. After those were taken care of, she decided to bite a major bullet and give him a brief frisk. As much as she hated to admit it, the man was full of ideas and any gadgets he had could offer a serious edge for her.
With everything sorted, Felicia moved to restrain him with steel cabling good for up to fifty thousand pounds. Then she suspended him from the manager's loft and let him dangle upside down over the concrete floor some thirty feet below. When it didn't seem like he was getting better, she decided it was time to check and see if he was even still alive. If he wasn't, she was going to feel cheated.
If he was, she was going to pull a few answers out of him before she took a normal gun to finish him off. Apparently the neurotoxin couldn't match the pain of a simple bullet to the foot.
Yanking off his mask, Felicia backed up and splashed him with a chilled water she'd swiped from the mini-fridge from the loft, along with a metal folding chair. The water seemed to do the trick, so the Kingpin sat back in the folding chair some five feet away, kept her gun trained on his head and offered a smile.
"I'd ask if your skin's normally this purple, but that probably has something to do with being upside down. Or maybe the poison. Or both. My money's on both."
It was a strange sensation waking up upside down. As Peter Parker sputtered and gasped for air through splashed water he struggled to recall where he was. The last thing Peter could remember was laying in his bed, May had just gotten done yelling at him for coming home covered in bruises. It was a long fight, May insisted that he wasn't being honest with him. Peter tried spinning a tale of getting mugged but that just scared her all the more. It was the early hours of the morning before he got to get out of his clothes and flop into bed. And that was it. He was out. He wasn't sure how long he was asleep but as he peeled opened his eyes he was surprised to find his whole world flipped on itself. The lights were blinding at first, the young vigilante could only make out a vague blurry figure before him.
"I'd ask if your skin's normally this purple, but that probably has something to do with being upside down. Or maybe the poison. Or both. My money's on both."
Poison. What the hell was she talking about? And that voice. It seems so familiar...
"I can't...poison?" Peter sputtered through coughs as he tried to get oriented. His throat felt dry and full of cotton, probably an after effect of said poison. "It that...the Cat?" It certainly sounded like the Black Cat. He had her voice running through his head enough as is to know it well. Or at least he thought she did, his head was still a little fuzzy. He tried moving his head around to get a better look though with no success. He could feel that he was in his suit...but no mask. Great. His arms were bound to his sides as well, his legs still dangled free above him. What the hell had happened? Why wasn't he home and in bed. Did he suddenly develop a habit of sleep heroing and fail miserably?
"What the hell is going on?! Let me out!" Glaring at the upside down blur Pete's breathing grew heavy as his head seemed to start swimming. Being suspended while recovering from neurotoxins was never recommended. Emptying out the contents of his stomach on the floor above him he started into another coughing fit. This was certainly not the best way to wake up.
Felicia Hardy sorry it's late and short but you know I'm sweet <3
Even after the splash to the face he was slow to rise. Not a problem she'd had with most men before. But then again... in his case she wasn't sure she'd consider it a problem. As long as he wasn't dead, him skating along the edge of agony was just fine. Hopefully there was agony involved, anyway. From all the little glances she'd stolen while she was making sure he was good and chained, it seemed like the poison barely ranked on the agony scale. She was going to have to help with that.
Keeping her eyes narrowed to little slits, Felicia scoffed.
"Wow, you already forgot, huh? The guys must've really dropped the ball when they cooked this up for me." Amnesia, but barely any pain? Where was the extremely labored breathing, the profuse sweating, the intense pain that they guaranteed? Shit. Must've been an unforeseen complication to whatever the hell let him skitter along the ceilings like a cockroach.
And then things got weird.
His inflections were all off, his tone was all wrong, and he called her by a name he hadn't touched in a long time. Felicia's expression became one of open, unabashed consternation at this point. What the fuck. Full amnesia might've explained the shift in his tone toward her, but it wouldn't explain how he still recognized her. She half-wondered if he was trying some completely stupid, but he wasn't the type to pretend he had memory issues. And he was smart enough that he'd come up with something better.
"Is this some kind of game? I unmask you and you act like you don't want me dead? Or like you think I've suddenly grown a conscience?" He'd never thought she had one, so why should she change her tune now?
And at last there came some vomit. Not that she was happy to see or smell it, but she was glad to know that the poison was acting right in at least some capacity. She didn't feel like her men had completely let her down.
Peter spit against the bitter taste in his mouth. Letting out a groan as a wave of pain rushed through his head to dull itself out again. The blurs were starting to gain shape. The woman didn't seem at all pleased with his confusion. Story of his life. Disappointing a woman and having no idea why.
"Well you can tell the chef I'll skip the next course. I'll swing by Burger King on my way home." Well at least his ability to tell a bad joke was still working. That was a close one, he could have been in real trouble there. He tried to get a feel for his surroundings, turning his head as best he could. The barely shaped blurs didn't offer much for his surroundings but he was fairly certain they were in some sort of utility building based on all the shades of gray.
"Want you dead?" The genuine shock of the notion was clear in his voice. There had been a few people that the thought had crossed his mind before in the past. His Uncle Ben's killer especially. But the Spider never wanted to resort to such cruel methods.
"You haven't given me reason to think you have a conscience so..." His vision began to clear up and the woman slowly came into view. Apparently his hopefully not overly creepy obsession with the cat burglar had been spot on in identifying. But she wasn't wearing the skin tight leather he had seen her in so far, instead opting for a pant-suit of sorts.
Damn
Though as he looked closer he realized she wasn't wearing her mask either. Her features came into focus and a gasp came from the now disturbingly red-faced man. It was the girl. The one that saved him from his self induced web trap. But...but that was the cat. Silver hair gave it away if her smoking body and charming demeanor didn't give it away. But what was that girls name.
"Felicia? You're the cat?" His voice rang with a clear confusion as he tried to process what was going on around him. "Have to say I prefer you in black. The Hilary Clinton look is far from chic."
Post by Felicia Hardy on Apr 20, 2017 21:25:12 GMT
And there it was, yet another one-liner. The Spider she knew would occasionally try and crack wise but now he was being prone to it, and being a little more flippant with his humor. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Instead of causing memory-loss, had the poison somehow attacked portions of his brain responsible for his personality? As far as out-there shit went, that was somewhere near the top of her list, but it was the best thing she had.
“Think you’d be better off with another helping of this,” she brandished the gun, not pointing it at him so much as turning it through the air. Reminding him that it was there. “I heard that a disgusting whopper was the reason some addict celeb finally decided to go to Rehab. Give that one a thought.”
Felicia’s brow rose. So, suddenly he didn’t want her six feet under?
“Oh? You decided you’d rather put me in the slammer for the rest of my life? That’s optimistic.” They both knew what kind of pull she had with the cops, how cautious she’d been so far. Maybe he’d managed to compile some kind of evidence on her during some of his activities against her before, but nothing substantially damning seemed to have gone missing. But there were other ways…
Didn’t matter. Whatever story he might’ve been coming up with to get her life behind bars was going to end with him. Here. Today.
Which he made a little easier.
“You’re right, I don’t. Killing you will be one of the easiest things I’ve ever done.” He didn’t even rank where some of the kills she’d been responsible for went. He was only above the ordered hits because he was going to be a first hand kill. Otherwise if you were talking about ongoing moral consequences, she thought she’d sleep better at night knowing he was dead instead of crippling or killing her men.
Felicia balked. He’d already known her name but he didn’t know that she was the Black Cat. She might have thought that one of her men had squealed but only now did he seem to make reference to that fact. And he sounded surprised as hell, like it was some kind of revelation. Stepping back, she canted her head a bit to try and look at his face again. He looked nominally familiar…
“Who are you really? How do you know I was the Cat?” … am the Cat. Despite her lesser activity since she’d stepped up as the Kingpin, she still managed some quiet jobs.
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