The scene: The Big Sky Billiard Room.
The time: Way after dark.
The occupants: No one you wanna know.
"Another."
Blackie Gaxton glided an empty (but not clean) glass across the counter, filled it, and slid it into an iron grasp that held the glass like it was a new born.
"Another."
"Last orders."
"I said another."
"Even pretendin' I 'ad enough left--"
A heavy fist ploughed down through glass and the solid wood of the counter.
"I rebuilt the place, didn't I!?"
If the Spider and the Goblin hadn't made Gaxton flinch, Hammerhead was just a pixy banging against a window.
"This ain't about Montana, mate. But it's way past a quarter to three, so either you pass out before I can get you 'ome, or I do. An' who'd fill your glass then?"
Ball bearing black eyes glared into the limmey's eyes…then, grumbling like a rusting battleship on the verge of collapse, the former right and left hand of the Big Man Of Crime slapped half the contents of his wallet onto the bar with enough force to shatter a man's kneecap and slouched towards the stair well.
"Customer's always right." Glaxton drawled (quietly) to himself. "Mostly."
He wisely resisted the urge to tell Hammerhead he was five cents short.
---
The third time with the pager. This was ridiculous.
Hammerhead stomped through the Midtown night, almost leaving cracks in the sidewalk as he went. Not a lot of people (if you could call the things living in this particular part of the city people) out at night, and that more than suited him just fine. It was one of the few things tonight that did.
Two weeks. That's how long it taken him to take down Silvermane, the Master Planner and the Big Man himself. In the four that followed he's heard nothing from the Goblin. Nothing from the Big Man either, and that was worrying since he was technically out and about. Under surveillance yeah, but what exactly did that matter? Stare the city right in the eye and if you had the right kind of eyes it melted.
He avoided looking in his own as he past a grimy window. He didn't have the right kind of face for that, but he'd spent most of his life under one Big Man or another. He knew how to rule. He had the right look for it. The right look to intimidate. Just not to get everyone to drop to their knees and hand him Manhattan and all five boroughs. Maybe even Jersey. He'd done good work in Jersey.
The only way he'd rule was if every other king fell. He kinda figured that would be how it would go if he played them all against each other, then brought the endgame to the Goblin himself, laying low for a while until it'd be enough of an event that some one took the little troll down.
And then the Goblin disappeared. Not even a vapour trail. His moment never came. And here the city was, a silently roaring vacuum beneath it, waiting for the underworld to tip in, collapsing the entire city down into it. With no one king on the board it'd make the Vegas Thirteen look like mugging a blind guy in a field.
Fourth time with the pager.
With no real big push to prove himself (and even though he'd never admit it, totally uncertain if he'd have survived if the Goblin had shoved back) he'd gone for the next best thing. After the mess with the Molten Man he'd sunk a cool million into building that sinkhole The Big Sky back up. It was a simple enough quick fix, give the pond scum back their precious watering hole then put the word out that he was looking for a little get together with what was left of the Gob Squad and anyone who hadn't been stupid enough to run around with a pumpkin on their head. Discuss terms, put a gang together to take what the super villains thought they could just snatch with no problems.
No one showed.
Most of the competition missing or in Vault, and the only real threat under house arrest and he barely rated above the likes of Marko and Ohirn. He was about half million bucks poorer, two, maybe three guys after his hide and the highlight of his night had been sitting in a bar with, at best, fifty guys who hated each other more than they feared him and a million ways to smuggle in all kinds of weapons for all kinds of grudges.
But if you were good that didn't matter.
Apparently he wasn't good enough. No one showed. Not even Patch.
Fifth time with the pager, so hard it almost snapped in half. Finally his Bentley, the one beautiful, and up till now, reliable thing in his life, slid around the corner. He flopped in, grunting at the mysteriously uncomfortable seat, and tried not to think about the kind of problems he'd have if the New Enforcers found out not just about the gold job bust but the fact he'd paid for their place. He distracted himself buy glaring at he blacked out partition that separated him from the driver.
"Don't make me fire you. You'd fry."
And that was when his arms snapped up fast enough to break and more than tipple the car battery's voltage shot through him.
---
He came too probably because of the noise. Cars were going nuts outside, the interior of the car lurching, almost pitching him out of his seat, the street lights outside going past far too fast to be safe. He tried to get a look out the window, figure out where he was, calculate how long he'd been out, but he couldn't move his head. Going this far this fast they were probably almost in the middle of the city.
He recognized a battery hot taste somewhere under his tongue.
Magnetized. Real cute. Someone was about to loose a face.
Under the seat. Gotta be. He could feel the rough stitch work through his suit. He tried forcing his arms (which were starting to sting) down, but they wouldn't move either, his knuckles almost pushing clean through into the back of the seat. If he kept at it for a while he'd either break free or loose an arm.
"Happy anniversary Hamster."
The partition glided down, streaming light bouncing of silver hair. Not that it was necessary. The eyes glinting in the rear view mirror told him all he needed to know.
"Sable." Hammerhead growled.
"Aww, you do remember."
The roaring world outside whip cracked to the left as she swerved around an oncoming truck, mounting the sidewalk and scattering pedestrians like cattle in a thunderstorm.
"Yeah, I remember. The little girl from the old country with a new attitude and big ideas."
"And you the small time thug with not even a name, built up from nothing and heading for the big time, making the ultimate name for yourself. You know they actually said we were made for each other? You with all that steel shoved into you, me with all of Daddy's training to take over the family…I think they were trying to be funny."
A cop car trying to play Spider-Man tried to keep up and chickened out as Sable sent them tearing through an alley. What little he could make out from outside the car was starting to look industrial.
"Probably why daddy had me take care of them when I turned 19."
Something scraped against the back of the car, and she accelerated as they came to a crowded intersection. Cars and overloaded buses ground to a halt but Sable steered through the heard like a fish through a river. It reminded Hammerhead of that one time in Italy…
"You'd have been, what, 26 when we first met, right? That when you met Lincoln? How long did it take for you two to put that little plan together to break everything we had apart?"
A newly wed couple lunged back to the sidewalk as they dived through a red light.
"So much for gratitude."
Hammerhead launched himself as far forward as the magnet would let him, teeth bared, glinting metallically.
"It was always about respect! Always will be. Your old man put me back together and I'm grateful for that. But respect belongs to the guy that can keep it. That mess with the Bugle? He was gettin' sloppy an' you knew it! It was only matter of time before he went down, so what if I got one up on everyone else early? He was countin' on a name an' nostalgia, not respect! It took ten years in jail for him to realise that an' the bug put him back in about three weeks!"
They almost lost the right hand rear door as Sable swiped off someone's left hand side mirror.
"You had more than a little to do with that as I recall. And watch what you say. I haven't even forgiven you for the syringe in the neck!"
"So why not do me in while I was out? Don't tell me the Sable lost her claws."
The next swerve almost put out an eye. He'd have to watch that. They weren't steel plated.
"Do not distract the driver, Hamster. Can't drive and run you over at the same time. Mores the pity."
Hammerhead swallowed rusty tasting saliva at the back of his throat, thinking. Stalling.
"Where's…"
"Your new eye candy's whole, healthy and unconscious in the Big Sky's dumpster."
Violet eyes flashed to the rear view mirror.
"Was that what I was, Hamster? Something pretty to hang on your arm to show how far you'd come?"
His glare rebounded off of the mirror and into her eyes like a solid steel battering ram, so hard she almost blinked. Almost.
"Lotta reasons I don't talk about then. You're most of 'em."
She held his gaze, not even looking away as his eyes widened. The stream of desperate traffic parted as the biblical juggernaut the Bentley had become.
"Yeah. Almost got me there. Like you did thirteen years ago today."
Hammerhead hit the seat with a blunt metal sound as her foot pressed to the floor, almost pushing the accelerator down through the break lines.
"Then Lincoln came along and you slid out from under us, leaving us to fall."
"Just business. Even if it had worked out, you think the Big Man was gonna let Silvermane's daughter in? I got you an' yer dad outta there, no muss, no fuss before the feds picked him up, ain't that enough?"
"And you got to make it to the top all on your lonesome, huh?"
Silence.
"Huh. Except after you sold out lil' old Lonnie and the green goober became the new number one…I can't help but notice you weren't even number three."
Hammerhead began to growl, a heavy construction site sound from deep in his throat. She chuckled, a sound like rainwater running down a knife blade.
"Oh, enough with the look! You know it's true. I mean, you bring down the man who gave you everything and instead of scavenging everything for yourself…you pass it off to a guy you set up a decade later."
He…hesitated.
"Still. I think I know why. It's lonely at the top, Hamster." Her voice was soft for the first time in years. "So what do you say we get there together. Maybe even see if we can get daddy to settle down after we've done in Octopus and Tombstone. And see how we feel like dealing with each other when we're done?"
And suddenly the tumbler clicked like it had all those years ago and she was wide open to him. Not half as open to him as he was to himself.
"Yeah, thanks for the offer doll, but no deal. An' not just cause you hadda go an' rub my face in it."
"Oh?"
"Yeah."
For a full decade the underworld had torn itself apart silently with rumours about Hammerhead and Tombstone, who had taught who to smile, just like that. In all honesty? Some things you just had.
"'Cause it ain't me you're really mad at."
The eyes in the mirror were suddenly magnatized to him.
"Okay, maybe I ain't the new Big Man. Don't mean I can't try. But I am tryin'. You? How come it took till' tonight for you to track me down like this, huh?"
Silence. No sirens. No webs. Couple of horns. A smile became a sneer.
"I'm a shark in the whale shadows, Princess. An' without daddy, you ain't got a clue whether to sink or swim. You think you can dodge all that beating me down, maybe seeing what happens, testin' the waters, but the only problem you got is I already spent the past coupla weeks beating myself up over it. You can do your worse, an' if I know you like I think I do this ain't even close to it, but I already took the worst I had an' I'm still gonna be there when the tide wave hits this city."
Her eyes lowered in the mirror, almost half closed, then slammed back up, focused and hard. Her laugh was a lot softer now and a whole lot worse for it.
"You were the only one who understood, Hamster. I think that's why we were made for each other and why we love to hate each other so much. Because we both know the one secret that keep people like us getting up in the morning, to stay there and do allll sorts of things at night."
Hammerhead grunted, realising he couldn't hear the sound of panicking traffic, that what little was left around them was thinning out. The Bentley jolted as it crashed through a set of chain link gates, crushing metal paper thin as it rocked up an overpass.
Hammerhead bit back a Rhino like roar as Under Construction and No Entry signs smacked and cracked the windshield. The gates probably dented the front too. The thing was classic. This was barbarism. Up ahead the cracked high beams roared towards a kid's jungle gym of construction material yawning over a gap gorily shattered out of the worn stone.
"As bad as you think it is, there's always someone who's got it worse than you. And you can never let anyone else make you become one of those people."
His arm almost exploded as he fought the magnet, trying to tear it, the seat, the back of the entire stupid car apart.
"And you're about to have it a whole lot worse than I do."
She half turned in the driver's seat to smile at him.
"Race ya."
And then she was away, out through the door with snake grace and all her father's steel and bloodlust. A small, unassuming animal in the shadows. Waiting to get your attention.
A fist that could go through concrete like snow popped the re-enforced door out of it's housing, and shredding the remains of the backseat as he went Hammerhead dived to…not safety as it turned out. Huh. She really did know him.
She'd had no intention of actually crashing the car. That was just if plan A didn't work.
Plan A being the train tracks a couple of decreasing feet below him. With what was probably the late night cargo run from Sunnyside coming straight towards…
---
He came to, probably from the lack of movement. After tonight he hadn't expected that.
Apparently he'd misjudged the angel. Or maybe she had. Either way he wasn't about to complain too much.
He'd busted in through the roof of one of the freight cars. Couldn't tell what he was laying in but until he felt up to moving he was content to lay back and look up at the stars blurring by through the window. Some smog, familiar smell. Probably in the Jersey factory area. That was okay, he'd done good work in Jersey. Could maybe put a crew together. Probably a smart idea to get out of the city for awhile.
He was still here. Could still get back up. Way up.
Thing was…so could Sable.
Yeah. Well. Just have to maybe burn that bridge down if (when) they came to it. Maybe.
He closed his eyes and tried to liquidize into his bruises.
"Good talk."