Two people sat opposite each other around a small dinner table in a small apartment somewhere downtown New York. The plate of cereal between them had long turned soggy with how much they spent staring at each other instead of eating.
Both highly dangerous women, in the same position but in different circumstances, were still having a tough time wrapping their heads around the impossibility that was sitting in front of them.
"Okay, we can stare at each other for as long as we want, but let's try and finish our food first, okay?" Yelena looked just about fed up and exasperated with the whole contest and wasted no time sending a relieved 'thank you' Natasha's way when she saw her slow nod.
"You won't believe it, but the cost of food keeps rising every single day." Yelena scoffed as she wolfed down her soggy grub. "Like we're the ones doing the heavy lifting, the least they could do is not let the price of food rise with every holiday." She snorted at the notion of politicians and the concept of 'doing-a-good-work' and how far apart it was in her head.
"I know," Natasha said as she looked down on her bowl of thick oatmeal. "I was in your position until a few weeks ago, remember?"
"Right," Yelena murmured. "I keep forgetting because I never remembered you being in my position."
She looked up at Natasha, not commenting on the guarded expression she was seeing her sister wear, with a shaky smile on her face.
"It's weird up here," she said, pointing at her head. "I remember everything I know about you, and yet I still remember living a whole life where you never existed."
"Well," Natasha started before taking a deep breath, "Who knew that would be the price of pissing off a Merchant."
"Yeah, that too." Yelena said with a chuckle. "I'm not going to apologize, you know. For living a life outside of that place. For living your life."
Natasha looked at her sister with an inscrutable look on her face but she was sure Yelena could tell what she was feeling inside. "I don't have a life, Yelena. Not anymore. As far as everyone else is concerned, I still don't exist. You don't have to apologize for anything."
"So you say but you still think I stole your whole life." Yelena looked at her sister evenly as she slowly scooped her food to her mouth. "You don't have a life, Natasha. What you call a life started a few years after you escaped. From what I know, Clint is your only friend and he still remembers you. I still don't get why you're moping."
It took Yelena a few seconds after she said that, a few seconds of her sister just quietly staring at her before she realized how she just fucked up.
"Clint's kids. They don't remember you." It was until she said it that she felt the exact impact behind those words.
"It's nothing," Natasha said as she got up with her empty plate. "It's just like you said. I don't have a life, so it's not like I have anything to mourn and moan about. Fury is expecting us in ten."
Yelena winced as guiltily as Natasha retreated in silence to get herself ready for the day. She hung her head and held a palm to her face that was etched with frustration.
"God, you're so stupid, Yelena. You and your big mouth." Whoever said living with your spy sister was fun deserved a bullet or two to their spine.
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...….
[Somewhere in New York]
The relationship between heroes and vigilantes was a very sticky and blurry one because as someone once wisely put it, heroes were former vigilantes and vigilantes were new heroes.
Of course that wasn't the clear cut image of these crusaders but it was the easy enough one to understand. Another wise man also said that the reason why some vigilantes became heroes while others couldn't was because of good PR and choosing the legal route.
Spider-Man was a vigilante that was quickly accepted as a hero, not because he had the best PR – kudos to J. J. Jameson – but because he adhered strictly to legality and due process.
An exemplary example of what a hero should be. Accepting everything that came with the title, responsibility and all, and also those random Saturday mornings social crucifixion.
Despite his short time on the scene, he was quickly becoming a local icon. An outstanding image of what a hero should be. He even had his own growing rogue gallery. (A merch line was recently released.)
Spider-Man was officially a New York City local Superhero.
Frank Castle was not.
He was more likely to shoot the person who calls him that than he is to save them. He was much closer to being a supervillain than he was to being a superhero. Being a serial killer does that to one's chances of being a hero.
Fortunately for Frank, he did not care about being a hero. Luckily for everyone else, citizens and criminals alike, The Punisher was not a hero.
Now what would happen when an exemplary hero meets a serial-killing-villain vigilante? The answer was obvious – a fight.
"Who the hell made you those guns!?" Spider-Man shouted after narrowly dodging an exploding bullet that carried the surprise package to his face. His eyes stung under his mask and his ears were bleeding out, but that did not stop him from swinging around in a desperate bid to not give out an easy target.
"Beat it, kid. This ain't your playground." The raspy voice of the Punisher echoed in Spider-Man's ears as he fought to stop himself from shivering when he heard it.
He webbed up the cut off end of a beam and threw it with enough dangerous force at the Punisher who simply punched the piece of metal away. "Did you practice those lines in front of a mirror?"
A small web bomb exploded near the Punisher who safely jumped away with a short spray that prevented Spider-Man from pressing his advantage.
"And don't think I didn't hear the kid part!" His voice was drowned in the cacophony of bullets going off. "It's not Spider-Dude! It's not Spider-Guy! It's not Spider-Lad, and it's definitely not Spider-Kid."
A delayed webbing caught the Punisher's hands when Peter pivoted in his direction. The other hand deftly pulled out another gun but never got to trigger it as the hand was caught in a tight grip as Spider-Man brought them face to face.
"It's Spider-Man. Get it right the next time. You don't see me calling you Casper, do you?"
"You talk too much." The voice, Spider-Man decided, sounded even creepier up close.
The Punisher did not panic and instead grunted in heavy dissatisfaction. "You talk too much."
"Communication is key." Came the retorting quip. "Which is clearly a social skill you're bad at."
"You talk too much." The Punisher repeated again, strongly this time. It took only a fraction of a second for Spider-Man to realize that the other hand was no longer webbed up.
He reacted instantly but somehow the hand was even faster as it jabbed into his shoulder and the area above his heart.
He froze and staggered as his entire nervous system was shut down for a brief moment. He watched silently, his entire body numb, as the Punisher raised a finger to his chest.
Despite the danger he was in, his mouth responded before his brain.
"T-the… one i-inch… punch…" He managed to get his last words out before the darkness took over.
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.... ....
Frank Castle wore a twisted expression under The Face of Fear as he secured the body of the masked hero – that was clearly a kid. A kid with a mean left hook – on top of a rooftop that would likely remain safe when the Kingpin's men start flooding the place.
He took one last look at Spider-Man and decided that he didn't really care that much what a mutant kid did in his downtime.
His mind went back to the fight as he climbed down the ladder and left the building. This was the first time since he started his nightly terror, especially after getting his new gear from the shady Merchant, that he was pressed so badly that he seriously contemplated retreating.
If he had been just a regular guy with advanced weaponry then he had no doubt that Spider-Man would have webbed him up and called it a day.
Studying and following the manual so religiously, down to the impossible diet, was slowly turning him away from what a normal human was. He had thought he was going crazy the first time his eyeballs moved on their own inside their sockets to track a bullet midtravel.
Even with his growing enhanced capabilities, the only way he could put Spider-Man down was to literally be tied down in front of him and being forced to use a dangerous paralyzing technique that he was yet to master. One wrong move and he could have crashed his entire nervous system, squeezed the heart, or suffocated the brain.
A random encounter with a hero that could almost perfectly read him.
He needed upgrades. The strong kind. The game changing kind. The obscenely expensive kind.
Frank cursed under the mask at the thought but it simply came out as a chilling rasp. If he wanted to keep handing out his punishments then he would have to up his game to contend against those who would inevitably stand between him and those undeserving scum – the heroes.
All it would take was for one person to find out about the true nature of the shop and blab it to every criminal out there, and then he would be in a losing arms race. Already some mutants and some suits had figured out the game. It was only a matter of time now.
Without even looking up, he fired his pistol at a wall and it ricocheted into the head of an idiot hiding behind a window.
Right. The only way was forward. And he would take that step tonight by killing the big fat blob that called him the Kingpin.
He almost laughed at the thought that a hero like Spider-Man really thought that finding enough evidence to put Wilson Fisk behind bars would really do anything. Sending him to prison, if he even succeeded in finding said evidence(Frank snorted), was no different than putting him on house arrest.
Two bodies dropped as soon as their heads peeked out their covers, and the third idiot who thought it would be wise to sneak up on him from behind instantly found out what it felt like to die due to shattered ribs.
Ghostface entered the building. The only direction left was up. Already he could feel the bare traces of fear in the floor above. That was a bad sign. It meant that they were still confident.
It was time to change that.
He slung off the gun that had been hanging off his shoulders, even during his fight with Spider-Man. This gun was what fear meant. The same gun that made someone call him a demon to his face the first time he fired it.
—Wedding Invitation (Borderlands): An elemental sniper rifle of fire and ice in all unholy matrimony.
This stunning beauty of mass destruction, in the hands of a true marksman, on critical hits, creates a fiery explosion that ricochets a cryo projectile into nearby enemies and also returns the ammo back into the magazine. More successful critical hits massively increases the range and elemental splash damage.
If you don't say the vows, this gun will. Till death do us part.
The compact and sleek make of the gun lied about the atrocities it could commit.
What followed immediately after was a catastrophic wedding of fire and ice where Fisk and all his men were invited to. Things like walls and obstacles meant nothing as every shot simply passed through all of them to get to their targets and turned them into either a molten wax or a frozen mannequin.
The wave of fear that hit Frank when he stopped for a second to realize that the entire building was on fire was like nothing he had ever felt.
This wasn't the smell of Fear or Terror. No this was something deeper and sacred. They were Haunted.
He looked at the last melting wax that once used to be a terrifying mercenary with an accuracy fetish. He thought knives and bullets would help him. They didn't.
The burning door in front of him crumbled with a kick and in front of him was the sweating fat figure of the mad and raving Kingpin.
"You think you're some demon. You don't even know what you're doing! Kill me and even worse monsters will take my place! This world can't survive without people like me!"
The head popped like a watermelon from a single shot but Frank's eyes had caught the terrified eyes of the man when he realized he was dying in the next second.
If there was a devil in Hell then Frank would make sure that he no longer had a reason to remain lazy.
"Let them take it then. Their end will be the same as yours." He calmly climbed down the burning building, not at all worried about the flames that were hungrily devouring everything it could.
He took one last look at the building as it slowly collapsed.
The punishment had been completed. Another one had already taken its place.
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A/N: This chapter was supposed to be a Doom interlude of him parading through Hell in a selfishly righteous crusade but I hit a snag while writing it so I put it on pause and decided to write this one out instead.
I'm still working on it so it might be the next one or the one after.
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