I want to thank the wonderful reviewers that reviewed. Your reviews are appreciated and adored. Thank you.
Disclaimer : I do not own Newsies, Spot Conlon, Advantage, or Puck. Cobra, Bouncer and Tic, are mine and mine alone.
Chapter 1
A few hours later at the Brooklyn Docks .
Spot Conlon sat on his 'throne' of crates and half-heartedly watched his boys swimming in the river.
His right hand man, Advantage, sat below him watching everything with his cool gray eyes and a slight smile playing on his lips.
Spot wondered what he was thinking about. He was about to ask him but Ad alerted him to three strangers walking their way.
He smirked, it was his favorite enemy, coming to visit. Ad hadn't been around the last time Spot's good friend had come to visit, so this would be a good test of Advantage's fighting skills.
He knew that Ad was a good fighter, lighting fast and powerful, otherwise he wouldn't be his second in command, but Cobra was more so.
Spot put on a slightly disgusted look on his face and glanced at Ad.
"Go take care of it, Ad."
Ad looked up at his leader, a bit confused. The only thing he saw was Spot leaning back on his crate with his eyes closed and a smirk plastered across his face.
Ad stood up, stretched, and walked toward the three strangers. Once he got closer, his eyes swept over them, taking them in.
What he presumed to be the leader, since he was in the front, was close to 6'4, and had golden-blonde hair. Ad absentmindedly noticed that all three had the same color of hair and similar facial features, he figured that they were brothers, or something, but the thing that stood out most, was the leaders eyes.
The one eye was a medium blue, the other one was unnaturally white. He shuddered slightly, as he neared, when he saw the reason for the white eye, a long scar that ran down and over the eye.
"Probably blind" he thought.
He was suddenly distracted from the eye, to the intricately carved bone dagger handle peering out of the top of the leaders waistline. It was a horse, it's head flung proudly up, mane flying, with the arched neck going into the hilt. For some reason, it reminded him of his girl, Spunk. Feisty and beautiful, in a wild, untamed sort of way.
He was quickly jerked out of his revere by a low, somewhat educated voice.
"Are you going to stand there gawking at my dagger, or are you going to take us to Shorty, before you have a very personal encounter with my good friend here?"
His voice was like silk, but it was lined with thunder as the tall leader's hand drifted to the dagger.
Ad searched the others eyes, but saw nothing besides a slightly bemused look.
"Who da heck is Shorty?" he wondered.
As if reading Ad's thoughts the leader clarified, who exactly Shorty was.
"I believe you know him as, Spot Conlon." The two boys in the back snickered. Ad was rather shocked.
"If Spot had heard that, this guy would be toast."
"Spot ain't seeing anyone today, whatever you got to tell 'im, you got to tell me first."
Ad crossed his arms and glared at the other boy, daring him to do something about it. By this time he was aware that most of the other Brooklynites were out of the water and watching intently. They all knew what was going to happen, it happened to all of Spot's second in command at sometime or another.
Ad smiled inwardly when the other boy seemingly backed down from the unspoken challenge. His smile broke into a grin when he saw that the others fingers were twitching madly, he was nervous, or so he thought.
Spot smirked when he saw the rapid twitching and the air grew tense.
"Here it comes." he said to himself.
The tall boy turned as if to go, but suddenly came around with a roundhouse swing and made contact with Ad's shoulder with a sickening crunch.
Ad felt like a train had hit him. He threw a slug lighting fast at the other boys face but somehow, he punched the air.
It confused him and knocked him off balance, and in a instant he found himself on the ground, due to a smashing blow to the ribs, which temporarily knocked the wind out of him.
Advantage noticed when he was down, catching his breath, that, his opponent favored his right leg, it was barley touching the ground, as he stood there waiting for Ad to get up.
He struggled to his feet, and fiercely punched the other boy's jaw, causing his head to snap back and to stumble slightly.
While he was getting his bearings, Ad came in from his blind side and rammed his foot into the bad leg.
A general gasp ran through the crowd and Spot's mouth dropped.
"Ad's a dead man, nobody kicks Cobra in da bum leg and lives." Spot thought.
Ad heard a violent hiss from his opponent and then he noticed briefly that the pant leg on his foe was now soaked in blood.
"How can dat be? I only kicked hi.."
He never got to finish his thought, because a fist slammed into his temple and dropped him like a brick.
Spot pushed through the crowd, sauntered over to his fallen second in command, bent down, and felt his pulse.
"He'll be fine, just knocked him out." Cobra said through clenched teeth as he rolled his pant leg up and looked at the freshly re-opened wound that was oozing blood.
Spot glanced briefly at the wound and leaned on his cane.
"Wonder why Cobra let Ad off so easily? Or did knocking him out count as punishment for kicking him?"
Cobra could be so confusing sometimes. Spot shook his head and focused on his friend.
"So how've you been, Cobra? Haven't seen ya 'round in a while."
Cobra looked up from tying the bit of rope that one of his boys had provided for a tourniquet and grinned wolfishly at Spot.
"Not much, Harlem is giving me trouble, again. The Bronx hasn't been bugging us too much. Queens is, well, Queens. How's Kelly? We don't get much news from 'Hatten, no thanks to Harlem."
Spot knew that Cobra was just itching to have a go at Jersey, the Harlem leader, (so named because he was from New Jersey) and possibly take over Harlem completely.
Spot slightly rolled his cyan eyes,
"Oh, Kelly's fine. What are you doing over here anyways, Cobra? You don't normally make calls without a reason."
Cobra glanced down at Advantage, who was slowly coming around, before looking back at Spot.
"Well, we were actually on our way to Sheepshead, but…." He suddenly glanced down the road in Queens direction, squinting before spying a small figure kicking up a cloud of dust heading their way, "…but from the looks of things, that won't be happening."
The figure, which turned out to be a girl, with long, curly, light brown hair flying every which way, sped up to Cobra's brother, Bouncer, and breathlessly, demanded, that she see Cobra.
He pointed to where he was, and she flew over, but tripped on her overly long brown pants and crashed into Ad, who was awake more or less, causing him to yelp in pain, for her elbow jabbed into his sore ribs. Cobra's eyebrows raised a bit, and he sighed in defeat.
"What am I going to do with her?"
By now she had got off of Ad and was standing in front of Cobra panting from her long run and jabbering so fast that he could not understand her.
"Puck! Slow down, I can't understand you under normal circumstances!" Cobra put his hands on her shoulders and bent his 6'4 frame down to be at her 5'4 level and so he could look her in the eyes.
She stopped jabbering and looked at the ground, Spot Conlon's eyes weren't the only
ones that couldn't be met. After she had calmed down, Cobra went to interrogating her.
Spot and now standing Advantage watched with interest, Spot had never seen Cobra interrogate anyone, although his 'little birdies' had given him vivid descriptions of it when they had been caught inside of Cobra's territory.
"Ok, Puck," He absentmindedly brushed her hair back, he liked his gang to be neat,
"Can you tell me in short, slow, clear sentences, what is so terribly wrong, that you ran all the way through Queens from Sugar Hill to tell me?"
Puck looked at him, and swallowed.
"Well, from what I heard, before they told me to come get you, is that two Mad Hatters (Cobra's term for newsies from Manhattan) were chased into Harlem by a guy who saw that they were selling fabricated headlines, well the Harlem boys chased them and beat them up, and some how they got chased up into the Labyrinth (Sugar Hill), and Willow has a group out looking for them, she's the one who sent me to get you. And then those stupid Queens boys chased me all the way to the Brooklyn border. Jerks."
Puck's usually cheerful face was creased into a upset frown.
By this time Cobra's temper was fully up and he wanted nothing more than to fight, but you couldn't tell by looking at him, he was calm and collected, he never let anger drive him. He stood up and Spot watched him, waiting to see what he would do.
"Two of Kelly's boys, wonder which two. Up toward Harlem is usually Skittery's and Spec's area. I'd better tell Jack, he'll be worried if they aren't back by tonight."
"Cobra? Do you want me to send a message to Jack?" Spot asked.
Cobra turned and stared at Spot coldly, but he was so flustered, he wasn't speaking English.
"Ja, det er god." (yeah, that would be good.)
Spot was confused, he didn't know that Cobra spoke a different language.
Before he could say anything, Cobra was rattling off in Norwegian, to his two right hand men, Bouncer and Tic (also his brothers, Ad's guess was correct).
Ad, who was a tad confused, quietly asked Spot to tell him what was going on, Spot said that he would tell him everything later, but right now, Harlem and North Harlem was looking like they were going to war. Ad seemed satisfied with his answer.
A few seconds later, Cobra had said goodbyes, apologized to Advantage for clobbering him, and him, Bouncer, Tic and Puck, were headed back to North Harlem……………