Nick Fury's words, spoken with the bark of a cantankerous old hound and through teeth clenched about the stub of a dirty cigar, but no less astute or fundamental for that. It was some of the best advice a young Steve Rogers had ever received, and even though those words had been spoken a long, long time ago, they remained meaningful even now.
The man on the rooftop smiled briefly to himself then raised his binoculars once more.
Observation.
On the street below, a woman was on the run. Pursued by eight assailants, she sprinted along the labyrinthine alleyways of one of Hell's Kitchen's older districts towards St. Clementon's Square and the aged clock tower at its heart. The woman was Latin American, her shoulder-length black hair marked with a distinct magenta streak to the fringe. She was tall and lean, dressed in jacket, blouse, skirt and nylons. She'd ditched her heels a while back, allowing her to run faster. Hair streak aside, she possessed the air of a businesswoman, but the real story was in the way she moved, not the artificial appearance she'd cultivated.
She was a superhuman. You could always tell if you knew what to look for; it was in the ease and velocity of movement, the lack of fatigue after prolonged physical exertion, and the speed and intuition of reflex. Her pursuers were enhanced too, but their costumes of scarlet and midnight blue broadcasted that fact in advance. In contrast, up until being attacked, the woman had been attempting to blend in with the public. That notion had already been shot to hell by the time the woman reached the clock tower and immediately began to scale the outer wall with her hands and stockinged feet, entering the building through a narrow first floor window.
The man with the binoculars frowned. There'd been more than one Spider-Woman – or, specific codenames aside, females with spider-based powers – in operation over the years, but this was a new variation. The woman's assailants, however, he recognized through their familiar costumes. He'd once fought a villain named La Tarantula, a hired mercenary from the small and tumultuous South American nation of Delvadia.
Here were eight Tarantulas, hot on the trail of an unknown woman with similar powers to their own, scuttling through the gathering dark of a New York evening. Steve Rogers nodded solemnly, setting his binoculars aside and grasping his gleaming, circular shield of red, white and blue. More than enough motive for Captain America to get involved, he reasoned.
And then he smiled again and hurled himself off the edge of the roof into thin air, a colorful beacon against the indigo-black of the dusky city skyline.
Not that he'd ever needed much of an excuse…
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#2
OCT 11 |
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“Night of the Tarantulas”
The interior of the clock tower was dark and forbidding, a surreal landscape of shifting shadows cast by the repetitive movement of gigantic cogs and chains and intricate, copper-plated mechanisms. The air was thick with the scent of rust and hot oil, and resonated with a motorized thrum and rumble and click that wormed its way into the unconscious mind.
This would be a wretched place to die.
“You’ve led us a merry dance, Maria,” declared the man in the dark blue facemask, his heavily accented voice echoing eerily about the walls and narrow, precarious walkways that were threaded among the outsized cogs. “But you know there’s nowhere left to run.”
“Is this where you tell me that you’ll favor me with a quick death if I surrender?” a woman’s voice retorted from some indistinct location.
Her pursuer smiled grimly. “On the contrary, mi corino,” he breathed. “I plan to make this last as long as possible…”
In the gloom, one shadow separated from the rest – a lithe flicker of a silhouette – and there came the faintest pad of foot tread and the rustle of cloth. The man grinned, his mouth cruel beneath the fine bristle of his pencil moustache and his eyes narrowing behind the slits of his mask. There you are.
The Tarantula stepped forward, nimble and slender, his costume a scarlet slash in the darkness. The enormous cogs loomed on all sides like crocodiles with blunt iron teeth, and the air rippled with their steady turn. Somewhere overhead, bats fluttered. The man paid them no attention.
He saw the slightest curve of the woman’s body directly ahead, tucked in behind the distinct outline of one huge, corrugated wheel. Not hidden enough. He scurried forward, readying one leg for the killing strike. His boot, the same midnight blue as his mask, was fashioned to a particular design – heavily weighted at the heel and ankle for balance but delicately styled at the toe where it narrowed into a wicked six-inch spike. The point of that spike was tipped with a steel needle that was primed to automatically administer a deadly poison when it penetrated flesh, and the man was well trained in how to angle his boot and flick out a precise kick to achieve that very result with the minimum of effort. It was an unusual but nonetheless thoroughly effective method of murder, as the elusive Maria Vasquez was about to be reminded…
The Tarantula slid forward, twisting his body with all the elegance of a dancer and whipping his boot spike towards the place where he’d gauged his victim’s nearside hip to be.
But there was no woman behind the cog. Her jacket, yes, the one she’d been wearing when she’d entered the clock tower through a window four flights of stairs below, but there was no longer a body inside it; instead the jacket hung from a convenient iron chain-hook, creating the illusion that Maria had been standing there all along…
…when instead she was suspended above the man’s head, reaching down for him even as he hesitated for a fatal second, confused by his enemy’s subterfuge.
“Forgive me, Sebastién,” Maria breathed as she stabbed the spike on the back of her gloved wrist into the man’s neck, releasing a rush of her own poison. “Unlike you, I prefer the succinct approach.”
The man spasmed and then fell with a strangled cry, his body already stiffening as the toxin took hold of him. He’d be dead within a minute but Maria wasn’t planning on waiting around to watch. There were still seven more Tarantulas on her trail, after all, and by the sound of their rapidly approaching boot steps it was going to take all her guile to survive any longer than the man she’d just sentenced to death.
Maria grunted and flipped away to one side, darting not across the floor where the masked Sebastién lay twitching but instead skittering along the wall behind the immense clockwork apparatus that towered above her, her gloved hands and nylon feet adhering to the surface just like a spider, which was only natural: Maria herself was a Tarantula, her biology augmented through the same processes and serums that had created the small private army that was now hunting her down. Once upon a time she’d been one of them and she knew their capabilities…and that was why she was terrified.
When a spiked boot suddenly flashed out of nowhere, sweeping past her head and stabbing into the wall inches from where her face had been a half-second previously, close enough that she could smell the acrid tang of poison, it demonstrated why her fears were justified.
Maria screamed and recoiled, losing her grip but recovering instantly as she fell. Unfortunately, that moment’s loss of control cost her and the next strike was even closer than the first, brushing along the length of her outer thigh and shredding her nylons and skirt – but not the flesh beneath, thankfully.
One wound, Maria knew, and it was all over.
She tumbled and spun, arching her back, then landed in a crouch, her eyes flicking left and right. Not one attacker…two. She was flanked. She spun away, brandishing her wrist spikes in threat and seeking the one avenue of escape open to her…
…but in that moment she realized she’d been deceived, and that her third attacker was waiting in the shadows ahead of her, anticipating her flight to perfection.
There was a glint of metal spike and Maria gasped and pulled back. But it was too late. Far too–
K’TANG.
Maria flinched in expectation of a spike in her gut, but in place of that soft and terrible SHUK of point sinking into flesh there was instead a ringing sound of metal impacting upon metal. Maria saw a whirl of bright colors, the circular spin of a flying disc, and she heard her attacker cry out in pain as he fell backwards, clutching at his lower leg. She saw the man’s foot bent at a sickening slant on the swing of his ruined ankle, his toe spike now useless, and her eyes flew wide. How…?
“I’d advise you to step back from the lady and stand down,” a deep and unfamiliar voice commanded, “but I’ve been in this game long enough to recognize a bunch of mutton-headed mules when I see them. Am I right?”
Maria turned to look upon the man who’d positioned himself in the heart of a shaft of sunlight as if it were a spotlight, not – she instinctively knew – because he was attention seeking but because skulking in the shadows simply wasn’t the way he did these things. That was the role of the costume he wore, wasn’t it? The purpose of that distinctive red, white and blue design, that timeless array of stripes about the abdomen and that star upon his chest, sheathing a lean yet muscular body honed to the peak of physical excellence.
The ultimate athlete. The perfect man. And, Maria noted, he was even more impressive in real life than the media could ever capture even on the most clinical, high-definition footage.
Captain America.
Maria raised an eyebrow. The Captain lifted his hand and caught his shield, the spinning disc he’d dispatched a few seconds earlier to cripple the man who’d been intending to stab Maria in the gut. This shield was a beacon to the citizens of the United States, the people he represented; the Tarantulas, in contrast, didn’t represent the people of their own country, Delvadia. They weren’t even a symbol of the nation itself. They were the private mercenary force created, trained and employed by Delvadia’s ruling government; they represented a regime, and a perennially corrupt one at that.
The Tarantulas were the antithesis of everything Captain America stood for. And showing bullies, political or societal or otherwise, that the common majority always had the capacity to fight back…well, that was what he lived for.
“Ma’am?” the Captain asked, cocking his shield at Maria and then gesturing towards the scarlet-and-midnight-blue costumed soldiers-for-hire who were now surrounding them both. “Do you mind?”
Maria smirked, her dark eyes shining beneath the careless lick of her black fringe with its hot magenta streak. “Oh, by all means,” she said, with a huskily accented purr. “Be my guest…”
The Tarantulas spat and swore and attacked as one, converging from all directions with flicks of their spike-tipped boots. Captain America met them all with a stern confidence that bordered on nonchalance, sweeping his shield down at knee-height in a low, sidelong arc to deflect a volley of kicks on one flank whilst skipping over the stabbing blows raining in from the opposite side. In the same movement he lashed out with a gloved fist and smashed one of the Tarantulas square in the chops, angling the blow so that his enemy was thrust backward into his nearest fellow and their heads cracked together like masked coconuts. The Captain then swung his shield and whacked the second Tarantula across the jaw, rendering him as insensible as the first, before shifting his weight from one hip to the other and allowing his attack momentum to carry him clear of the melee.
Reaction is instinct, but the key to successful initial action is observation.
In the heat of the battle Captain America trusted his instincts implicitly, aided by his superior reactions and dexterity, both enhanced by the super-soldier serum that he’d been endowed with as a frail teenager back in World War II. His ability to read the attack of the Tarantulas, however, stemmed from the fact he’d studied them briefly before engaging them. His adversaries’ fighting style was based heavily on savate, the distinguished art of French kickboxing most commonly employed by the Captain’s long-time enemy Batroc the Leaper, and it was all about angling the body’s weight and direction to administer savage jumps and kicks. A Tarantula didn’t rely on upper body strength or brute force but instead upon elegance and balance, like a dancer, and powerful abdominal and leg muscles. Their equilibrium was key therefore, and their center of gravity different to that of a standard fighter; once the Captain had determined that, and had judged the Tarantulas’ specific techniques, it was far easier to upset that balance with his own method of movement and to dictate the conflict on his terms.
The Tarantulas were damnably fast, however…
The Captain whirled as he glimpsed one of his enemies launch at him from the side, one leg outstretched and the other tucked beneath him. He ducked sideways with teeth gritted, refusing to flinch as a deadly steel spike whistled past his ear and he smelt a flash of poisonous odor, then whipped his shield up into the back of the Tarantula’s tucked knee as he rolled beneath the man’s weight. The Tarantula screamed and twisted in mid-air, and then received the flat of the shield to his face a half-second later.
Another Tarantula, a female, danced in and kicked out with one leg and then the other, swearing relentlessly in Delvadia’s particular Spanish dialect. Captain America deflected one kick with his shield and then blunted the other by grabbing the woman’s ankle and shaking her to the left, directly against the pivot of her balanced poise and causing her to stumble. She still attempted to lance him in the shoulder with her free boot spike but she didn’t have the necessary angle, instead succeeding only in driving herself into the side of a gigantic cog and knocking herself senseless.
There were three Tarantulas left and two of them were concentrating on Maria, believing – hoping – that their fellows would be able to take Captain America down and allow them to deal with their main target. Inspired by her new comrade, however, Maria launched herself into the fray with renewed gusto. She feinted away from one side kick intended to spear her through one side of the head and out the other, slipping deftly beneath the heel of the offending boot and stabbing up through the Tarantula’s ankle with her wrist spike. She then spun on one leg and lashed out with the other, at the same moment that her second opponent did the same.
Two legs clashed in the air, one sheathed in ripped nylon and otherwise barefoot, the other clad in a spiked boot of leather and steel. Maria’s intention was clever, however, in that as soon as the two limbs locked she curled the inside of her knee about her enemy’s thigh and then shifted her weight, pushing outwards with all her strength to cause the man’s femoral head and thigh bone to pop noisily from its socket, a full dislocation of the hip.
Like her fellows, Maria had been trained in the arts of savate and other martial disciplines; unlike the majority, she’d paid as much attention to simple debilitating techniques as she had to any killing strikes.
Maria turned to see the final Tarantula clambering over Captain America’s back, one leg coiled about his neck and shoulders and his other boot spike perilously close to finding the right trajectory to stab into the Captain’s spine. It was an unorthodox approach, which was probably why the Captain had been taken by surprise, but he was still wily enough to keep shifting his body in such a way that the Tarantula was struggling to execute a clean strike. It was like watching a snake try to get the better of a wild boar.
The scuffle was concluded when Captain America suddenly stiffened and released his shield, hurling it toward the blunt jut of a nearby cog, where it rebounded without so much as a tremble and passed back at high speed just a few inches shy of its original course. Perfect angle, perfect weight.
The Tarantula pulled back his boot to administer the fatal stab but instantly he was culled, the edge of the gleaming shield slamming him forcefully in the mouth and filling the air with a mist of blood and teeth. The Tarantula twitched and fell, his leg sliding away from the Captain’s neck as he crashed to the floor, one hand swatting uselessly at his ruptured jaw.
Captain America looked down, the set of his own mouth almost apologetic beneath his half-mask. He was about to say something when Maria appeared at his side, her eyes narrowed darkly and her wrist-spike extended, the toxic point angled toward the fallen Tarantula’s heart.
The Captain reached out and grabbed her arm. She was strong, stronger than he’d anticipated, but he was stronger still. She tried to shrug him free but couldn’t.
“That’s enough,” the Captain murmured. “He’s down. They all are.”
His eyes in the holes of his mask were bright and clear, and very blue. Maria found herself staring at him, half angered and half mesmerized. Then she saw the man’s gaze flicker toward her wrist spike, a smooth barb of bone protruding from just past the base of her palm and she saw his disquiet.
She let her arm sag and, when his grip loosened in kind she immediately pulled away and stepped back from him.
“Don’t go,” Captain America said, his voice deep and even. “Please. I want to help. Why were these men after you? You’re from Delvadia too, am I right? I can–”
“No!” Maria snapped. “You can’t help. No one can. I’ve been running and hiding so long, but they always find me. Always.”
“If you’re in trouble, a fugitive from the Delvadian regime…”
“Please, forget you ever saw me,” Maria breathed, taking another step backward into the shadows. “Thank you…for tonight. And it was a pleasure to meet you, Captain. Genuinely. But you must forget me now…”
One of the Tarantulas on the ground grunted and flicked out a leg, half-heartedly. Captain America stepped away from the boot spike aimed at his calf and swatted it rather irately with his shield, but that moment’s distraction was all that Maria Vasquez needed. She disappeared into the shadows and the Captain grimaced as he watched her depart from the corner of his eye.
He could follow her, apprehend her even if that’s what it took, but that would mean abandoning the Tarantulas. He needed to ensure they were taken into custody even if some form of Delvadian diplomatic immunity prevented the authorities from taking any further action over having them deported. However, he wasn’t willing to simply respect the wishes of the mysterious woman with the magenta streak in her hair. Because Captain America wasn’t the kind of man who could just forget. Not when someone was in trouble.
He glanced down again at the nearest Tarantula, the only one of the seven who wasn’t incoherent but was rather just dazed. He smiled grimly.
“Okay, friend,” he declared. “If the lady won’t tell me what’s going on here, it looks like I’m going to have to ask you…”
“Unsuccessful?”
General Guilivar Pirez turned upon the soldier before him, his expression one of genuine disbelief. “An entire Tarantula Squad,” he said, slowly, in Delvadian Spanish, “in pursuit of one female, and they’re unsuccessful?”
The soldier swallowed, his head bowed. “There…there was interference. The team leader was able to place a coded telecommunication from where he was incarcerated. He said–”
General Pirez raised a hand, stilling the other man’s wheedling voice. He then picked up a machete from a nearby table and angled it so the heavy blade caught the light streaming in through the doorway of the hut where he and the soldier were conversing. The machete gleamed.
“I don’t much care for specifics, Eduard,” Pirez murmured, his eyes catching the reflected sunlight like black pearls. “Failure is failure, whichever way you cut it.”
The General sighed. Then he flicked out his arm, rigid at the wrist, and he decapitated the soldier with a single measured swing, guiding the machete blade through flesh and ligament and bone without flinching. The soldier’s head spun, dark and heavy. Blood glittered in the sunlight.
Someone gasped.
General Pirez turned and stared at the one other man in the room, a thin and ragged fellow secured to the far wall of the hut with lengths of rusted chain. The man was naked from above the waist and his emaciated body showed signs of extended and brutal punishment, particularly his face. Five days into captivity and this fellow was already unrecognizable from the arrogant, rebellious cur who’d defied his master’s orders and allowed the girl to escape.
“Ah, Ferdinand,” Pirez sighed. “Who would have suspected this daughter of yours could cause so much trouble?”
Ferdinand Vasquez glowered up through blackened eyes, trembling with pain and starvation but defiant even now.
“I told you…you stupid bastard…” he lisped, through ruined teeth. “Maria…is the best of the Tarantulas…”
General Pirez cocked his head and smiled. “Second best,” he said, quietly. “You forget, old friend; your greatest accomplishment was always the Wolf…”
The chained man froze then, his jaw slack. “You…you loosed that abomination…on American soil? Are you truly mad…?”
The General admired his reflection in the bloodied blade of the machete and grinned, revealing a cluster of rotten teeth. “Why yes,” he said, now advancing upon his helpless captive with intent. “Yes, I think I am…”
In the shadows of the city, the beast stirred. And he was a beast, for he was as much arachnid as he was man.
The Wolfspider.
He had her scent, of course. Maria Vasquez, the one who’d spurned him before he’d been fully… augmented. She couldn’t hope to escape his web now. And thus he would succeed where his less talented brethren had failed…
…regardless of any unfortunate who stood in his way.
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To Be Continued...
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