Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.
Chapter 22– Bad Meeting.
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It has been a few days since I cornered that young man and managed to force the information about the mob boss meeting from him. After that, and after I realised someone had taken one of my batarangs and I had no way to know who, I left to track down the man in the suit that took the package.
Long story short, it was just another Friday night, and I found a drug den though it was a lot more organised and professional than the usual run-of-the-mill operations. That didn't mean it was any tougher to take down. In fact, I might even say it was even easier due to the scheduling and the literal rota I found in their base that told me where they were all stationed that day. The package was actually just instructions for the next supply being delivered, though it was written so that I could not interpret it correctly.
After that, I just did what I usually did and terrorised as many ne'er do wells as I could and rinsed them for information. Then, using that information, I kept hitting numerous places, breaking in, kicking ass and shutting them down hard. But the one piece of information that kept coming up consistently was that the mob bosses were going to have a meeting, and I quickly got the date of the meeting, but the location and time were not revealed to me.
I kept running through the lowlifes on the street but never got any accurate information, so I decided to go up the ladder. Not using force or power since that wouldn't work in this situation, I used subtlety and stealth. Finding out the location of a member higher up in the organisation, I snuck up to him when he was alone and used my extraordinary fear tactics on him and derived the location and time of the meeting out of him.
I didn't worry about the guy letting loose that I knew or informing the bosses to stop the meeting or change it, I was told of the details, and those details would remain the same. In a workplace environment like the mob and other criminal organisations, letting people know that you talked, even if you tried to rectify it after the fact, is a one-way ticket to sleeping with the fish. You can't be trusted, you have loose lips, and therefore they will become dead lips.
With that information, I have been preparing in whatever ways I can, such as stocking up on and improving upon my equipment. I also kept up my normal activities since I didn't want to tip anyone off by acting differently, and I was also checking other sources and confirmed several times that my information was correct.
And so, here I am, returning home after doing my daily activities and relaxing because now it is closing in on the time of the meeting, and so I have to go and scope the place out. I have already done so several times, but as far as I have seen, it is a random run-down building in a very secluded area. This is most likely why they chose it since it has no affiliation to them, and so they can have their meeting away from wandering eyes.
Walking through the hotel hallway on one of the highest floors, I reach into my pocket and take out my room key while sighing to myself. Honestly, in the beginning, I was kind of happy to finally have the place in my name, and so I wouldn't have to keep sneaking into the home and never leaving through the door. But now I miss it, the sheer amount of time I have spent in boredom coming through the hotel lobby, spending ages waiting in elevators that are sometimes too packed and then dealing with all of the staff.
Opening my front door, I can't help but miss those times when I could just ignore people knocking at the door and not worry about anything but playing my video games. I had been working my way through the Yakuza games and was now on Yakuza 4. I genuinely envy Felicia, who doesn't have to deal with any of that, though I suppose she doesn't have time to take advantage of that since she is being worked to the bone.
And speak of the devil, as I enter the penthouse, I spy Felicia sitting on the sofa in her Black Cat costume though it is hard to make out in the darkness. She hadn't even taken notice of me coming into the room, just sat there, her face highlighted by the bright, harsh light of the television, which was constantly flickering. I can see that she is sitting there quite listlessly and absent-minded, as if there is something that has taken up much of her thoughts, and she is in deep thought about it.
Curious as to what is taking up so much of her thoughts, but not wanting to get too involved or sucked in, I decide to just skirt by her and go to my room. I don't have time for any of this right now. The time of the mob meeting is coming up soon, and if I don't leave now, then I will be arriving very late, and I don't know how long this thing will last, and if the slightest thing goes wrong, they could all run off. So I want to get there early and set up inside, so I won't have to bypass any security to eavesdrop on the meeting since I will already be inside the building, probably in a vent or something.
Moving silently, I try and slip by behind her and just slink into my room. I go slowly and surely, keeping an eye on her as I do so, trying not to rouse any attention. I am skirting by behind her when I chance a glance at the TV, and I can't help but pay attention to it as the show that is on is one of my favourites. The Office is on right now, and truthfully I can not in the slightest understand how Felicia is ignoring it because one of the funniest moments of the show is on television right now.
It is the episode where Stanley has a heart attack because of Michael, and Michael gets scared, so he brings in a CPR teacher, and they all start fucking around with the test dummy. I got here just in time for the instructor to tell Michael to do CPR to the beat of the Beegees 'Staying Alive', and he got it wrong and started doing it to Gloria Gaynor's (I think) 'I Will Survive.
"First I was afraid I was petrified- No, it's ah, ah, ah, ah stayin' alive, stayin' alive" He is corrected by the instructor, and then with some stuff said by the other characters, he starts to do it again to the correct song. Damn, this episode also had a brilliant cold open. The one where Dwight locks all the doors and windows and then simulates a fire breaking out and making a lot of smoke, making everyone panic and freak the fuck out, driving Stanley to a heart attack.
"Ah, ah, ah, ah stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Ah, ah, ah- Oh, you can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man, no time to talk. Music loud, women warm, been kicked around since I was born. Oh, it's all right, it's okay, you can look the other way" Michaels starts performing it correctly, and then Andy suddenly jumps in and starts singing it and dancing, and then the rest of them start joining in as well.
"Yeah, okay, you didn't maintain 100 beats per minute, and the ambulance didn't arrive because nobody called 911. So you lost him." The instructor shouts, annoyed with them all.
"Okay. He's dead. Does anyone know what we do next? Anybody? Rose? I have no idea- We bury him." Michael says, clearly not understanding that the practice is finished and keeping it going, and someone replies with a sensible option when Dwight speaks up.
"Wrong. Check for an organ donor card. If he has one, we only Have minutes to harvest." Dwight says, absolutely serious. "He has no wallet. I checked. He is an organ donor.- he is? - yeah." Creed answers him, and then Michael makes the executive decision that the dummy is an organ donor, and Dwight runs away with it.
"Give me some ice and a styrofoam bucket. Here we go. - Oh, my god!- Dwight! Dwight! What are you- What are you doing?!- We search for the organs. Where's the heart? The precious heart." Acting quickly, Dwight pulls out a knife and ignores everybody screaming and stabs the dummy through the chest and starts to cut it open, and I can't help the snort of laughter that escapes from me. Immediately I noticed my blunder since I was trying to be silent and escape Felicia's attention. Still, it was just so funny that I just ended up standing there and watching it, completely forgetting my surroundings and ending up laughing, which you will always do when watching The Office. It is inevitable.
"Huh- Oh, Ben..." Felicia's head suddenly jerks up at my sudden laughter, and she twists her neck around to spot me standing behind the couch right behind her, which would be pretty creepy, all things considered, so I quickly go to answer her.
"Hey, Felicia. I was just on the way to my room, but I had to stop for a second to see this bit." I say, explaining why I was lurking silently behind her all this time. She doesn't say anything to my explanation and instead looks to the TV to see what I am talking about before nodding her head. I guess she was in such deep thought that she wasn't even aware of what was on the TV. Usually, she would be very aware of her surroundings and the going on, but for her to be this lax, something must be wrong.
"Oh, yeah, this is a funny one. Haha..." Felicia says to break the silence but just enhances the awkwardness instead since I really don't know how to act around her since that day in the mall. I know she is thinking about something, and I care. I really do. But I can't afford to care as that will just keep me in this troublesome city, especially not right now when I need to go and crash the mob boss meeting.
"Yeah... Well, I have something I need to get to. It is quite urgent, so... I'll see you later?" I end questioningly, and not waiting around to see the results of the stupid words I just said, I resume my walk to my room to change into my Batsuit.
"W-Wait, Ben! I actually have something I want to talk to you about. I have some news, and I-" She starts to say, standing up and turning towards me to keep the conversation going. Getting a bad feeling that she is trying to talk about the mall, and about emotions and our relationship going forward, and desperately wanting to void that, I speed up my gait.
"Sorry, Felicia, but I have a mob boss meeting to drop in on and crash. It's happening soon, and if I don't leave right now, I might miss it, so I will see you later. We can talk then, yeah?" I push her off and open the door to my room. I know that I will probably have to deal with this at a later date, but I am going to push this off as much as possible and just hope all the problems will be solved before I have to confront it.
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"Ah, wait, Ben! You don't have to! I have-" I slam the door shut behind me and quickly walk over to the walk-in closet to start changing. I can sense Felicia outside my bedroom door and saying something. Still, I decided to ignore whatever she was talking about entirely and focus on changing as fast as possible and then running the hell out of there.
Used to putting my costume on by now; it doesn't take me more than three minutes to suit up and boot up. Walking over, I open my bedroom window instead of leaving from the balcony like I usually do since I don't want to interact at all with Felicia at the moment. Then I jump out the window, completely ignoring Felicia, who is still outside the door, trying futilely to talk to me.
Falling through the air, I take a minute to just enjoy the wind whipping in a frenzy all around me and just forget about everything. Falling through the air, the gusts of wind rushing past me and barraging my eardrums, and I think about absolutely nothing as I plummet to the ground. And then I spread my arms wide, activating my wings and catching the air behind me, giving me a lot of momentum to level out in midair and start travelling forward, even rising in height as I do so.
Onward to the meeting, I go to put my foot in Wilson Fisk's ass.
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Gliding through the air, I spot my destination in the distance, and it seems I am pretty early. The area is still quiet, with no one in sight, so I should be able to set up and hide in a safe spot before the meeting, preferably inside the building. A lot of thugs that I had collided with in recent times have been talking about this meeting, and all the higher-ups I beat the crap out of all gave the same exact location and time of the mob boss meeting. Which is in a half hour, so I have enough time to properly get myself in the ventilation shafts.
Of course, the fact that they all gave me the same information after a bit of pressing was suspicious as fuck. Why do all the grunts need to know that there is going to be a meeting? Why do some lieutenants know the time and location when they are not even attending? It stunk of a trap, and there was about a fifty percent chance that it was for me. I am not the centre of the universe, and I am aware there are others out there causing him trouble as well.
It is why I am not going straight to the location and am instead positioning myself at a vantage point to watch over it and see exactly who is arriving, if anyone at all is. Trap or not, this is an opportunity. I will watch from afar and make observations, and if I judge it acceptable, then I will crash the party.
Still, I don't just want to rush in and potentially ruin my advantage, and I want to make sure of the situation first and maybe even try to derive some information out of this. I need to make sure Wilson Fisk actually attends this meeting before I start going all gung-ho. Otherwise, I will just be involving myself and making a bunch of enemies that will get in the way of my true goal. I need to remember that I am not an actual superhero, just a pretender using the title to bring down Fisk, and once that is done, I will shed the identity and skip town.
I have even thought about the current situation and how to bring down Fisk in the most effective and time-efficient way. Because when I say bringing down, I am not talking about his empire, his organisation or anything else. I am talking about the man himself, and there is more than one way to bring down a man. Right now, my current plan, which I thought up after finding out about this meeting, is to cut down the man in front of everyone.
Since this is a mob meeting, not a single one of these guys is going to trust anyone else, and that's why instead of all showing up at separate times, these guys are all going to turn up within seconds of each other, almost precisely at the time scheduled. These are bloodthirsty criminals, all looking out for number one and just waiting for the chance to cut down their opposition, keeping an eye out for any little piece of weakness.
This is perfect, as these guys I can use to take down Fisk. My current plan is to wait for them all to get inside and into their meeting, and once they are all seated and Fisk begins the meeting, I will act. I will ambush Fisk and beat the shit out of him in front of all of them, all the while mocking and degrading him. I expect there to be some resistance, but I am going to brute force that shit and keep hammering on him. I will slap him to high heaven and make sure the rest of the mob bosses are watching, witnessing this mighty bull of a man be treated like a little bitch as I break him limb from limb.
And then I will leave. My part is done in this, and they will take care of the rest for me. With Fisk being utterly humiliated in front of all of the mob bosses, he will lose all respect, and the fear everybody had of him will be trained. These hardened criminals will look upon Fisk's beaten form and see opportunity, and being the greedy bastards that they are, they will all start to try and break up his empire and take what they can for themselves.
Of course, I don't expect things t go down that easy, but if there is one thing you can rely on, it is bad people consistently doing bad things. Either way, my beatdown on Fisk will result in him losing standing and taking significant losses in one way or another. I will stick around for a bit to make sure the damage sticks, and he will be so busy trying to keep his empire in one piece that Felicia will be left alone, and with that, my debt will be repaid, and I can leave.
Now, instead of daydreaming about that outcome, it is time to make it into reality. Dropping down to land on the top of a building overlooking the meeting location, I move to the edge and kneel down to get a good view of my target. The meeting place is a run-down building that hasn't seen use in many years, but it is still in much better shape than all of the other surrounding buildings that are health hazards.
I don't know what happened to this place, but my guess is that this was the setting for some big epic Avenger-level battle or something, way above my pay grade, and they raised this area to the ground. The only building around here that is still okay is the one I am currently on. All the others are missing their roofs and have no stable footing. This is the only place with a proper vantage point for the meeting, and- *SPIDER-SENSE*
*Beep* *Beep* *Beep*
I spring forward, chucking myself off of the building just fast enough to escape the epicentre of the sudden explosion that erupts on the roof I was just standing on. My spider sense alerted me as soon as the bomb planted on the roof was activated, but whoever planted it didn't want to take any chances, and the second it was remotely activated, it blew up with only three quick beeps sounding out.
I don't manage to escape from the blast fully, only just managing to get away, and the force of the explosion sends me hurtling through the air. My body flips and spins continuously through the air, the centrifugal force building as I am blown away. I can feel myself on a direct collision course with the concrete pavement, and so I automatically reach my hand out and press my middle and ring finger to my palm, forgetting that I no longer use web shooters.
My damn muscle memory and panic costing me precious seconds, I reach to my side and draw out my grapple gun and quickly point it out and go to shoot it to save myself and-
"Bang*
The boom is accompanied by something slamming into my grapple gun, the one that is still in my hand, my hand which is attached to me, and I am spinning way too fast through the air. The projectile blasted the grapple gun out of my hand. Not only that, but the shot hit at the perfect spot and at the perfect time to add to my centrifugal force and send me careening even faster towards the ground. I panic, trying to figure out some way to save myself, going through all my options.
I have no web shooters, my grapple gun is gone, there is nothing anywhere nearby for me to grab onto, and I am going too fast and spinning too much to gain some control over myself and try and land safely. Fuck, my cape is fluttering every which way, and the wind is too much for it to activate and allow me to glide, so that is out.
Whoever just fucked me over is damn deadly. They blew me up and then had the skills to keep a perfect understanding of my entire being as I spun through the air and even managed to fire a shot to rid me of my only means of saving myself, and they even did it in such a way that it propelled me even further to my doom. So what the fuck can I do to protect myself? There has to be something, some way, something in my arsenal that could help me.
I... I've got nothing.
*BOOOOM*
Immense pain courses through my entire body. A stabbing pain was shooting through the left side of my body. The air is forced out of my lungs, and I can feel the metal taste of blood as a fountain of it erupts out of my mouth. Then, everything goes bright white, and I black out for a second, a ringing noise resounding on the inside of my skull.
I force myself back into consciousness, knowing if I let myself drift off now, I would be in a bad position when I eventually woke up if I ever did. So, eyes wide open, I lay there, wholly dazed with no doubt multiple broken bones throughout my entire body, my breath harsh and struggling. I try to calm down and regulate my breathing, but I can't. It hurts, and the more I try to control it, the raspier my breathing gets.
*Clomp* *Clomp* *Clomp*
My alertness shoots up as I hear heavy footsteps coming towards me, my enhanced hearing picking it up even though it is still quite a distance away. I try to look in that direction and jerk my head up, but something jostles my insides, and my head immediately flops down as I grind my teeth to keep from shouting from the intense pain. I can hear the footsteps getting closer, crushing debris underfoot as it nears my location, and I don't want to help them find me faster.
Panicking slightly at the nearing menacing presence, I try and sit up slowly, but the pain spikes again. Whereas before the pain was consistent and throughout my entire body, when I move, there is shocking torturous pain in my abdomen. Instead of moving my whole body this time, I merely lift my neck up and try to analyse the damage done to my body and just what exactly is restricting my movement.
Well, that isn't good, is it... Fucking piece of shit, my name is not Rick Grimes, shit! At the sight of the steel piece of rebar piercing out through the lower left side of my body, my panic shoots up to the limit, and I can feel my blood start pushing even harder, which I know is worse because that means I will lose it as it seeps out of the hole going through the side of my abdomen. Not to mention the unknown assailant rapidly closing in on my position, most likely coming to finish me off.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! I fucked up! I wanted to get this over and done with as soon as possible, afraid of getting closer to Felicia if I stuck around too long. And so I rushed straight into a trap without thinking about it properly. It was suspicious that all those low-level mooks knew about the meeting when it was purely between the bosses. I acted like I was being cautious, but they were playing me, and I was happy to be led around by my own tail. And now I am about to pay the price.
I don't want to die. I didn't even manage to enjoy my life correctly; I purely focused on preparing for it and not actually living it. Reaching down, I grasp both of my hands onto the ridges of the rebar, ignoring my own bright red blood staining it and sticking myself to it firmly for better leverage.
With my hold tight, I start to pull myself up, gritting my teeth hard to stop any noise emitting and alerting my pursuer. Slowly reversing the penetration as I rise, it takes my all not to scream from the hellish pain, each ridge of the bar stabbing into my insides as I rise. The only sweet relief I get is watching the rebar slowly disappear, knowing that I am going to escape and get away-
"AGGGGHH!" I scream out as someone kicks me in my side, making me lose my grip, barraged by the sudden spike of pain that assaults my insides and the following torture as my body slides back down the rebar and my back crashes into the ground.
"Now, now. We can't be having that. Don't be trying to run away before even saying hello." The voice says, and I go to curse them before my breath is caught in my stomach as my eyes lock onto the symbol plastered across my opponent's head.
A Bullseye.