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#5
APR 13 |
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The Joy of Capekilling, Part Five:
“Assault on Fort Raymond”
“Assault on Fort Raymond”
Mimic and Constrictor’s Room – 06:58
When the Constrictor awoke in the morning Calvin Rankin made sure he was waiting for him, and he set his bloodshot eyes on the man with a wild glare. It took the criminal a moment to realize that Calvin was glaring at him. “What the hell do you want?”
“Why the hell did you attack me last night? I haven’t done shit to you.”
Frank rubbed his eyes as he glared back at Calvin. “Decided to try and grow a spine, huh? Didn’t I show you who top cellmate was?”
“You attacked me in my sleep, you showed me nothing but how scared you are of me,” Calvin spat, his overgrown hands bunched into fists.
“Scared of you?” Frank smirked. He had slept in his costume, just in case Rankin had been stupid enough to try the same trick on him. His coils slowly snaked out of their casings. “Why would I ever be afraid of you?”
Calvin smirked back. “Now that is an excellent question.”
Frank’s smirk suddenly dropped. What the hell was Rankin so confident about? Then his face changed to panic. “I can’t get up!”
“I know.”
“I can’t move my arms!”
“I know.”
“What the fuck have you done?!”
“Just a little warning to back the hell off before I decide to do something real nasty,” Calvin smiled confidently. What he didn’t want Frank to know was that it had taken all night of telepathically experimenting to figure out how to do it. This was the most daring thing he had ever done with his underdeveloped telepathy.
Hatred filled Frank’s eyes as he struggled to break Rankin’s hold over his body. S.H.I.E.L.D. themselves had set up psychic barriers in his mind years ago and he had some experience in breaking mind control, but nothing he did seemed to faze Rankin. “Let me go,” it came out of his chest like the rumbling of a growling beast.
“Not until we’ve made a little agreement.”
“The hell do you want?”
“Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone,” Mimic stood up and advanced on Constrictor. “Otherwise next time I’ll have to remove the feeling in...a different limb…permanently.”
“Son of a...” Constrictor hissed. He made another futile attempt at breaking Rankin’s control but when all he could do was thrash his head about he stopped. “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“Fine, I’ll leave you the hell alone. Now let me go!”
Calvin let him go, but kept his telepathy alert. Constrictor thrashed his arms aggressively as he glared at Calvin, but the ex-X-Man wasn’t intimidated. Constrictor pounced to his feet, but stopped short of retaliating against Rankin. “You better hope I don’t find out a way around your little trick,” Frank spat, his coils whipping about, showing his frustration for him.
Calvin just smirked back. He had been to prison before he knew he had to establish he was a fighter or things would only get worse.
Fort Raymond – 14:28
Eric O’Grady stood at his post, bored. Nothing had happened but a few of the usual scientists passing in and out of the door behind him, just like the day before. He was going to hate his job for the foreseeable future. A glimpse to the left caused him to straighten his stance and pretend to be more alert, and was he ever glad he had. Carter rounded the corner and eyed him suspiciously. She always looked at him as if she was expecting him to screw up the next second.
“Change of plans, O’Grady,” she barked. “You’re going to be pulling a double.”
“What?” Eric was outraged.
“Don’t ask me,” Carter shrugged. “I wouldn’t trust you in front of that door a second longer than I had to. Orders came in from above.”
“Come on.”
“Don’t know what they’re thinking, as if they know what’s better for day to day security operations here than me,” she mumbled more to herself than him as she walked on. Eric’s shoulders slumped as he watched her walk away. At least she had a nice ass.
Fort Raymond, Midnight
Most activity on the base ceased at night, though far below Goddard was hard at work on his latest and greatest experiment. Otherwise the night was quiet, with just a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on outer guard duty and the usual contingent making their rounds inside. Too few guards outside.
A sudden explosion ripped through the main building, shaking everyone awake. Fires had already begun and rapidly spread. Thick, choking smoke boiled through the halls, robbing the agents of their sight and sense of smell. Most places under such an attack would have erupted into more chaos than a hornet’s nest, but for the most part the agents remained focused enough to reach for their weapons and duck low.
Where the entrance once stood was a gaping hold choking with thick black smoke and floating cinders. Through that smoke walked Joystick with a compact gas mask over her face, though once she passed through the worst of it she ripped it off.
“Hey boys, I’m back for a second play date!” she shouted, though all she saw was some woman S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with teal hair. Behind her followed Griffin and Spider Woman. They smiled at the damage they had already accomplished.
“Hey, you, Agent,” Joystick activated one of her batons and pointed it at agent Barrows. “Where do they house the Capekillers?”
“We’re not here for that,” Spider Woman hissed, gliding closer to her.
“Maybe you’re not,” Joystick replied. “Answer me.”
Agent Barrows stood from where she had been crouching, loading her pistol. She aimed and fired, a little too hastily. The bullet grazed ever so slightly the energy baton and glanced off of it and, instead of inserting itself into Joystick’s skull, it grazed her left cheek.
“You little bitch!” Joystick screamed as she manifested her second baton and slammed it together with the first. An energy beam sent agent Barrows flying back into the concrete wall behind her. She fell limply to the floor.
Joystick walked forward and crouched down to stare Barrows in the face. “I’m giving you one last shot at life.”
Barrows spat right in her face. An enraged Joystick brought a single baton down with all her strength, killing Barrows instantly.
“We aren’t here for your petty squabble with the Capekillers, we’re here for one of their little experiments,” Spider Woman reminded her again.
Joystick turned on her, baton in hand, but then continued on deeper into the base. “We’re just a distraction anyway.” Joystick remarked.
Elsewhere . . .
Blue Streak was speeding through the corridors his new boss in his arms. Hood was making them both invisible, the secret to his appearing and disappearing act he pulled. Only Blue Streak knew his little secret, that he was also the only one that knew the Hood’s limit on making people invisible was two. And also that the Hood had to hold his breath for the entire time, or at least not take one in unless the spell was broken.
“Here!” Hood gasped out as they passed a guard agent. Blue Streak screeched to a halt. The red-haired S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent had felt them pass and had been smart enough to be watching in their direction with his standard-issue pistol at the ready.
Blue Streak set the Hood down, and the Hood must have drawn a breath because they suddenly became visible, causing the Agent to gulp and stumble backward in shock. Blue Streak snickered, though no one heard it underneath his usual gas mask.
“Agent O’Grady,” the Hood pronounced as he drew one of his pistols and pointed it at the young man. “You’ve not been much of a hero up until now, so I suggest you don’t start trying now.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“That’s not your concern, now drop your weapon, as my friend here could kill you before you pulled the trigger; he’s a speedster after all.” That was a lie, but more than likely O’Grady had no idea that it was. How had the Hood known the agent’s name?
“All right,” O’Grady slowly put down his pistol. “There’s no need to hurt anyone here, least of all me.”
“That’s the O’Grady I know,” the Hood smiled as he began punching in a code into the terminal. The door surprisingly opened for him without any kind of scan. Blue Streak quickly streaked in to take out any guards that might be inside.
Seeing his chance, O’Grady lunged into the door himself and slammed it shut behind him. Then he spun and broke the panel with a well-placed kick. The Hood wasn’t going to enter a code and get in now. One problem, the Blue Streak was in the lab with him. All the scientists were either knocked out or dead and Blue Streak was quickly hacking into a computer.
O’Grady heard the ping of bullets bouncing off the bullet-proof door before he charged the blue-costumed criminal, but just as he was about to hit him he zoomed away with a mocking laugh. O’Grady cursed as he pounded the floor in frustration. He would show them all just how wrong they had been about him.
“Stop already,” Blue Streak laughed mockingly at him. “Don’t you realize you’ve screwed up enough? I have their little experiment, I’ve wiped their hard drive of all their research and I’ve planted a virus for which I have the only copy.”
Blue Streak waved a little flash drive at him, and it had to be advanced tech to fit all that research and design on it. O’Grady glanced around trying to find something he could use. The bullets stopped, but something else took their place, something explosive.
It still wasn’t enough.
O’Grady snuck behind a lab counter so that Blue Streak couldn’t see him, and proceeded to use bodies and debris as cover to sneak around to Blue Streak’s left side, just out of sight.
“You already had a bad reputation here, and after today I don’t see how you will ever work in espionage again,” Blue Streak taunted as he faux-casually searched for O’Grady.
O’Grady launched himself once more at Blue Streak, not really knowing what else to do. He was sure they had taught him in training but he hadn’t been paying attention. This time he was successful and collided with super-criminal, knocking loose both the flash drive and the safe box that contained the Soldier Ant experiment.
“You stupid–” Blue Streak growled as he pummeled O’Grady at a rapid pace.
O’Grady however, got one good kick in, right to the criminal’s balls, before they stumbled apart. O’Grady stumbled up to keep up the attack but Blue Streak was already up and quickly fleeing to the locked door. It was easy to unlock from the inside without the electronic lock. O’Grady raced over to stop the speedster but he needn’t have bothered.
Just as Blue Streak began to unlock it the door ripped open from the outside. Behind it stood Porcupine and Griffin, both of them breathing heavily from their effort. Hood stepped through, looking pissed. O’Grady tried to stop his forward momentum but he slid toward the criminals. The Hood raised a gun and shot him, knocking him backwards, where he lay still on the concrete floor.
“I’ve got the Soldier Ant files, Boss, but I’m still looking for the experiment,” Blue Streak reported.
“Forget about it,” Hood eyed the prone O’Grady as blood began to seep to the floor. “It wasn’t what we were after anyhow. They placed O’Grady on the wrong experiment. He proved to be a bit more annoying than promised.”
The villains filed from the lab and headed down to the next experiment.
Outside the Toxin lab – 00:07
Agent Mulligan stood half hidden behind an office plant about two inches taller than he esd. It was the only hiding place he had been able to find. He wasn’t hiding out of cowardice like that worthless O’Grady but so that he could surprise any attackers who were coming his way. The electricity had gone out less than a minute after the explosion and then even the generator had been cut. Something was seriously not right.
For some reason the radios were dead silent and no one seemed to respond to his call either. He kept his pistol at ready. He had long ago grown accustomed to the feel and weight of it in his hand, first as a police officer now as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent.
He had to protect the lab.
Mimic and Constrictor’s Room – 00:02
“Does this happen all the time?” Constrictor asked of the blackness.
“No, never, even when we might have a power outage we have a backup generator.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“No kidding.”
“Do one of your magic telepathy tricks and find out what is going on then.”
“All of the guards within my range are wearing psi-wear,” Mimic lamented.
“We have to get out of here,” Constrictor decided. “If something happens to all of those S.H.I.E.L.D. agents up there it could be months before we are found. No one but them knows we are here.”
“Oh come on, surely there is some record of us being here.”
“I used to be in S.H.I.E.L.D. so, trust me, no one else knows we are here.”
“Help! Help!” Mimic shouted.
Agent Crowne’s Quarters – 00:02
“What the hell . . .” Crowne mumbled as he stumbled out of bed and flipped on the light. The light didn’t respond. “What the . . .?!”
“I swear if it is Mimic or that new guy I will kill them myself,” Crowne grumbled as he shuffled across his room in the pitch dark.
He finally opened the door and pulled in a breath to shout but paused when he heard screams and explosions. Something serious was going on and he wasn’t one to go down lightly, no matter the enemy. He dove back into his room for his gun and his knife.
Fort Raymond – 00:07
While everyone else had been having fun blowing the crap out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, Porcupine had been put on sabotage duty and used his explosive quills to cut off their electricity and, when the generator kicked in, he had taken it out with some acid quills. He had more tricks up his sleeve than any of his predecessors and was determined to step out from their shadow.
After that he had joined the Hood at the lab door and weakened it with more of his quills until Griffin showed up and the two of them together tore the door from its hinges. Now they were searching for their ultimate goal, whatever that was. All Porcupine cared about was the money that would come with it.
They had basic floor plans that all of them had stared at for an hour before attempting their assault. They knew their information was incomplete, but it was complete enough for what they wanted. Hood, Blue Streak, Griffin and he were stalking down the hall and they all knew that they would have to take the next right to get to the lab they wanted. Joystick and Spider Woman were keeping the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents busy and focused on them.
Blue Streak should have been heading the line but he complained that the dead S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had hurt his ankle so Griffin took up the lead. Just as they turned a shot rang out and Griffin came stumbling backward, a bloody wound in his shoulder. That didn’t stop the raging villain as he just leaped back to his feet and roared even as the agent hit him with another round in the forearm. It was a good thing for Griffin that he had a healing factor.
He charged the agent and smashed him aside, one last shot ricocheting wildly off the walls. Griffin stalked forward to finish the agent off.
“Griffin! Open the door!” Hood commanded.
Griffin snarled in response, but after a second he turned and reached for the bullet-proof door, once again joined by Porcupine. They grunted in strain but it didn’t seem to budge, until Hood lit one of his hands on fire and blasted the sides of the door. The door came flying off immediately after.
“What is it they say about when you want to get something done?” Hood asked with a glare at his two muscle men. Griffin’s lip curled in anger, but Porcupine’s face remained hidden by his mask. Hood walked inside, followed by his fellow criminals.
“There,” Hood pointed at a large cylinder in a glass cage. Inside swirled a red and black substance unlike anything Hood had seen on this Earth, though in fact there were a few other samples of what sat caged before him. “Get it, Griffin.”
With another snarl the Griffin launched itself into the air with a flap of its blood-red wings. Numerous scientists shouted out in shock and horror at the sight of the villains intruding on their lab. “He mustn’t have the sample!”
“Too late,” Hood laughed as the Griffin smashed open the glass cage with one swipe of his large paw. “It’s already mine.”
Griffin tossed him the cylinder filled with the mysterious sample. That was when something unexpected happened. A bruised and bloody agent Mulligan intercepted the pass and crashed to the floor, breaking the cylinder.
“No!” Hood shouted in alarm. “It can’t be let out yet. Stop him!”
Griffin, Porcupine and Blue Streak charged toward Mulligan as he scrambled backward, the red and black substance clung to him as if for dear life. Blue Streak reached him first, of course, but just as he reached for the strange substance a fanged face formed on its surface and lunged toward him. He paused in his tracks causing Griffin to smash into him and send the both of them tumbling down. Porcupine leaped right over them.
Mulligan stopped scrambling away from the villains once he realized he had something much more dangerous to worry about already on him. He tried to brush it off, but instead it clung to his fingers and sleeves. He got to his feet and tried to kick it off his legs, scrape it off with his boots, but all to no avail. The symbiote, for that is what it was, stuck to him all the tighter.
Porcupine fired some regular quills at the assaulted agent. Again a face formed and somehow without lungs it hissed. Even Porcupine paused at that. What exactly was it that they were trying to unleash on the world? For the first time he began to wonder. Practice kicked in and he shook his head and resumed his attack as Hood joined his side.
“Try your acid quills,” Hood ordered.
Porcupine unleashed a few at Mulligan who was scrambling behind desks struggling to rid himself of the alien goo, but it was a rapidly losing battle for him. The quills stuck and injected the acid as Mulligan fell to the floor, out of sight from the criminals.
“What are you waiting for?” Hood asked as an angry Griffin and a scratched up Blue Streak joined them. “Kill him.”
Elsewhere . . .
Crowne followed the sound of shots and shouting. He saw S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, including Harrison and the rest of the non-criminal Capekillers , firing down to a standstill Spider Woman and Joystick. Immediately something didn’t smell right to him so he rushed to Harrison. “Where are the Capekiller suits?” he shouted over the gunfire. Surely they had thought of bringing them to fight.
“In the shop after the extra hard practice you put them through,” Harrison shouted back in-between firing off a couple rounds.
“Where are your criminals?” Crowne kept thinking.
“In lockdown in their room,” Harrison grimaced as a venom blast glanced off a desk right next to his face. “Should I send for them?”
“No...” Crowne hesitated. “No, we can’t trust them against their own kind when we are so outnumbered.”
“We need something, sir,” Harrison growled.
Crowne raced from the firefight to a nearby office and dialed in an extension. “Hello? Goddard, are you all right? Why shouldn’t you be? Well up here...listen, is he ready for simple combat yet? Are you sure? We need him now. Fine, just lock up down there and don’t come out until I call you.”
Crowne sighed as he hung up the phone. He had to think of something, what little standing he had left as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent was crumbling down around his ears, almost literally.
Elsewhere . . .
Griffin lunged over the counter and suddenly went flying back. An ear-splitting screech caused the rest of the villains to clap their hands over their ears. From behind the counter emerged a creature of rage that reminded the Porcupine of Spider-Man but red and black and mean. Its face, though, was anything but human with large black fangs and a blood red lashing tongue.
“You picked the wrong time to attack, you should have never attacked during my shift,” the creature hissed. It swiped a clawed hand toward the gang. They fell back, barely avoiding being gravely wounded. It leaped toward them again, but Porcupine let of a furious barrage of quills that embedded themselves in the creature’s chest.
The symbiote staggered for a second and looked down until the quills just fell from its body and it returned its attention to them, Porcupine specifically. With a deep-throated roar Griffin landed on the floor in front of the new Mulligan. He lashed out with his claws, opening a few wide gashed in the creature’s ever-moving flash.
Mulligan screamed and returned a slash toward Griffin, who caught him by the wrists. The symbiote hissed and ooze formed from its chest and slapped itself on Griffin. The villain growled in response but kept pressing against Mulligan’s newfound strength. He didn’t notice as the tendril grew and slowly slimed itself upward until it was already at his throat, choking him.
In surprise the bestial villain immediately let go and Mulligan sent him flying away with a symbiote-enhanced punch. Blue Streak and Porcupine looked at each other uncertainly. Griffin was by far their biggest hitter in the room. The symbiote didn’t give them much time to think about it as he charged toward them.
Porcupine let loose with a few of his acid quills, though if he didn’t conserve them he would run out as they were harder to build than regular quills. As before the creature screeched in pain and paused its attack as the two criminals retreated.
“We can take it, come on, millions is enough for a little risk,” Hood barked. The two hesitated and the symbiote was on top of Hood in a flash but the criminal let loose with another blast of super hot fire. The creature screeched and leaped away into the shadows.
Elsewhere . . .
“Something isn’t right,” Crowne frowned as his Agents poured lead at the two powerful women who were still at a standstill. “Why are they just standing here fighting us, with their speed and abilities they would at least be trying to make their way toward their goal?”
“What?” Harrison asked between barking orders at his men.
“These two would never work together voluntarily either,” Crowne took a second from the distracting thunder of gunfire. “The experiments.”
“Capekillers, with me!” Crowne ordered, alarm causing his voice to crack.
“We’re kinda busy,” Cancino shouted back at him.
“Get over her now, we have more important things to protect!”
“Capekillers, let’s go!” Harrison shouted with a wave of his arm, and his men followed.
Elsewhere . . .
“I don’t care if he was the goddamned Boogey Man, get in the dark and find him!” Hood shouted at Blue Streak.
“What am I supposed to do with him? Race him?”
“You can be bait.”
“Screw this,” Blue Streak turned to skate away.
“You bail on me and I swear I will put a bullet in your brain!”
Blue Streak stopped mid-stride and turned to glare at the Hood. Before he could say anything a shadow suddenly shifted behind him and, with a split-second scream, he was pulled into the shadow. Another scream saw him, face covered in blood, fly into a concrete wall and slide down it.
“Get him!” Hood shouted at a recovered Griffin and Porcupine. “I’ll check on Blue Streak.”
The two slowly advanced into the shadow, never venturing far from each other. Hood ran back to Blue Streak and found the man bloody but conscious. “Well, it looks like you couldn’t handle him after all, Blue Streak.”
“Told ya,” Blue Streak retorted, groaning.
“It does, however, look like you’ve outlived your usefulness,” the Hood fake-sighed as he drew a pistol and pointed it at Blue Streak’s head.
“What! No! He only broke my nose, I swear!”
“I’m sorry, but you know too much.”
BLAM!
Hood turned back to the rest of his little group; he had a mission to complete. Before he could even ask how their search was going a flurry of claws and fangs went tumbling through the air in front of him, a few quills following its wake.
A victorious roar split the air and Hood sprinted over to its source, hoping beyond hope that it was Griffin letting loose the unearthly scream. It wasn’t. The creature turned its attention to him and smiled as its red tongue slowly licked its ebony fangs.
“I’m going to enjoy ripping off your arms,” the creature said, it’s strange voice sounding like two different voices in one.
“You have no idea the power I have behind me,” the Hood retorted, drawing his second pistol. “And I am not talking about my financial backers.”
“You talk too much,” it hissed before lunging at his again.
Its long claws nearly grazed his throat before he let loose with another fiery blast. The creature screamed its alien scream and disappeared again in the shadows, sizzling.
“Porcupine, where are you?!”
“Over here, Hood.” Hood could tell by the sound of his voice that something was wrong. He drew in a deep breath and went invisible. He had been right, Agents Crowne and Harrison stood with their little contingent of villain-catching agents behind them. They all held weapons trained on Porcupine. Hood considered leaving Porcupine behind but he was already one member down and he needed the extra firepower if he was going to catch the symbiote-enhanced Mulligan.
He snuck behind the Capekillers and jabbed one as hard as he could in the kidney. “Son of a . . .!” Hunter cried out as he dropped to his back, holding his kidney. The rest of the Capekillers turned in alarm. Porcupine saw his chance and took it, unleashing a volley of quills. Before they could recover Hood shot fire at them to cover his and Porcupine’s escape as they raced away.
“Time to go, girls,” Hood yelled into a radio, turning visible again.
“But I haven’t had my chance at the Capekillers!” Joystick argued.
“You will, Joystick!”
“Fine!”
Neither of the villains noticed a shadowy figure following them out of the lab that they had destroyed. The Capekillers, singed and scratched up, stood and followed after, but they were too beaten, the villains had already escaped.
As Crowne watched them go he knew that his career was over.
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To Be Continued...
Next: In Capekillers #6: It’s time to pick up the pieces but several agents are missing and some are dead and Crowne won’t rest until he redeems himself. The mission: Extract the Toxin
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