Chemical Attractions
The Steranko Scientific Symposium could have easily been explained away as the bastard child of a charity ball and a science fair with a Stark Industries sponsored liquor bar. CEOs, socialites, geniuses, and everything in between dotted the floor, all dressed in their Sunday night best, each with their own goal in mind. Some were there to snap up promising and, more importantly, unaffiliated talents for their R&D departments, some were there to test each other's math over martinis, and others were there because there was simply no other fun to have on that particular Sunday night.
Ben Reilly was part of a fourth camp; the entourage. While the Fantastic Four were regulars at these kind of events, tonight half of the team had front row seats to a Knicks game. Which left the spare ticket – Johnny Storm was banned from the event this year – to Reed's newest assistant. Which had meant… shopping, because saying 'why don't I just borrow something from Johnny's closet, I'm sure it will fit' was as close to blasphemy as one could get in the presence of Susan Storm.
Now wearing a slim-fit suit with a price tag that had likely outstripped the sum earnings of every job Ben had held to date – not counting the extremely cushy paycheck that came from being Reed Richards' longest lasting organic lab assistant to date –, he was following a few steps behind Reed and Sue for wont of anything better to do. Once the punch bowl made its location clear, he'd be hovering over by that and attempting to disappear into the wallpaper.
"Reed."
Ben snapped out of his thoughts at the sultry voice. It wasn't directed towards him, but it was difficult to ignore that plunging neckline.
Reed, to his credit, only coughed once before riveting his eyes to the brunette's face. "Alyssa." He said.
Susan's grip on his arm visibly tightened. Ben wondered if he should step back or grab some popcorn. "Susan." Alyssa Moy said smoothly. "Still modelling? I would think it would have been difficult to top that Playboy cover issue back in…" She tapped her chin. "2005?"
"It was the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue in 2007, Alyssa." Susan smiled, an expression that looked as welcoming as a bouquet of poisonous flowers. "How are those student loans coming along? I wouldn't know, since the modelling paid those off years ago."
Reed carefully extricated himself from his girlfriend's grip, tip-toeing away… at which point he ran into an invisible force field and pulled back into the middle.
Ben Reilly turned away, only to bump into Tony Stark. The billionaire playboy philanthropist looked over the scene. "I've got to say, Reed, when you organize a catfight…"
"I did not–"
Stark ignored him. "… you can really pick out the kittens. Meow."
Two sets of eyes turned to fix on him with greater annoyance than they had held for each other. Without a twitch, Stark raised his glass, knocked back the rest of his bourbon, deposited the empty glass on the serving plate of a passing waiter, and held out his arms.
"Do with me what you will. I regret nothing."
At the behest of his spider-sense, Ben scuttled out of the blast zone.
Norman Osborn – Ben would be hard-pressed not to recognize the man, different hairstyle aside – looked over the scene with a sneer on his face and a full glass of bourbon in his hand. "I'd swear, these people act the same age as my son." He muttered, before noticing Ben's presence. "I don't believe we've been introduced. I'm –"
"Norman Osborn, CEO of Oscorp." Ben said, carefully accepting the handshake. While there didn't seem to be a Green Goblin in this reality, he was never going to fully relax around Norman. "Ben Reilly. I'm Dr. Richards' lab assistant."
"Really? I'm always looking for fresh talent myself…"
"Looking to replace me already, Norman?" A tall, sallow man with shoulder length black hair asked as he walked up behind the businessman, a sprig of celery standing at attention in the center of his Bloody Mary. He nodded at Ben. "Michael Morbius."
Ben smiled. "I've heard about you. Didn't you win a prize for your work in biochemistry?"
"Yes, a Nobel prize." Morbius said. "I work hard, and that hard work was rewarded. Such is the way of science."
"Generously, I might add." Norman said, though he was ignored as Morbius wandered off to talk with an attractive blonde.
Ben held up his hands. "I'm perfectly happy working for the Fantastic Four, thank you very much." He said. "Do you know where the punch bowl is? Every drink I see in here has been alcoholic, but…"
Norman smiled. "But you aren't the type to partake?" When Ben shrugged, the businessman gestured to the east end of the ballroom. "I believe the non-alcoholic fare is that way, Mr. Reilly. And, please, do keep my offer in mind."
Oh, he would. He'd keep it in the corner of his mind that was home to the rest of the various offers given to him by countless other supervillains over the years, tucked right in between 'we can rule together' and 'I can give you what you want so long as you look the other way this one time'. For now, Ben Reilly just smiled. "Thank you, Mr. Osborn."
The businessman nodded and disappeared into the crowd, once more on the prowl for promising talent. Ben let his smile drop, rolling out his shoulders as he turned in the offered direction…
Only to find himself being studied by a tall black man whose presence was only made all the more jarring by complete lack of formalwear – was that this universe's version of the S.H.I.E.L.D. standard spandex? – and a long leather coat. The eyepatch and the scars radiating out from under it only reinforced the warning bells his spider-sense was ringing.
"I'm just running into all kinds of scary people this evening, aren't I?" Ben asked.
The man cracked a small smirk. "Smart kid. So you work for Richards."
"Always with the note of surprise. It's not like I'm fifteen." If he wanted to get technical, Ben was only five. Just one more benefit of Miles Warren's cloning process.
That got him a snort. "Sure, sure. If you're under thirty, you're a kid to me."
"Fair enough." Ben said. "Now, if you don't mind, I have a punch bowl to lurk by until this party is over."
The man stepped to the side, allowing Ben to pass under his watchful eye. Ben tried not to react to the attention focused on the back of his head, even as other party goers parted around him like he had just been marked by Death herself.
Ten minutes later saw Ben Reilly leaning against the wall, fifteen feet away from the punchbowl, waiting for a supervillain to attack the party so he'd have an excuse to leave.
It wasn't an unpleasant party. Curtis Conners had stopped by to chatter endlessly at him – apparently in this universe he'd taken up with technology and engineering rather than herpetology and genetics, and come out with a particularly high pitch brand of enthusiasm and both arms intact – before being collected by the eye-patched man from earlier, Tony Stark had proven himself to be entertainment from half-across the room, and the punch itself wasn't half-bad.
But in between those points of interest, there was nothing but awkward silence and waiting for Reed or Sue to materialize and tell him that they were leaving. So far, they hadn't, and Ben would catch glimpses of Susan chatting with other well-dressed women over champagne or Reed explaining some theory of his with exaggerated hand gestures – the fact that his powers lent themselves to cartoonish levels of such made it very easy to find the man publicly known as 'Mr. Fantastic' – while on-lookers either nodded or attempted to escape without being noticed. Neither of them looked like they were ready to leave any time soon.
A blonde girl – a shockingly pretty blonde in a deep purple minidress that was covered in a fireworks display of sequins and beads – took up position on the wall a few feet away from him. Ignoring the tickle of familiarity at the back of his brain, he glanced over to her.
A moment of silence passed.
"Nice dress." Ben said awkwardly.
"Thanks." She said, pausing just long enough to make Ben sweat. "I like your suit."
"It's Gucci." At least Susan had told him that was the correct answer to give when someone asked.
"You like the brand?"
Ben looked down at it. It was a slim fit, in mulberry red, and he hadn't worn a tie with it. He could probably pull off half of his usual moves in it, though the more extreme gymnastics would destroy it all. "I like that it has pockets." He said lamely.
"Always important."
"The price tag was kind of scary, but my boss insisted."
The blonde tilted her head. "And which of the big names do you work for, Mr. Bottle Blonde?"
"Well, this is about the twentieth time I've said it tonight, but I work with Reed Richards."
"Reed Richards, the modern absent-minded professor, made you buy a Gucci suit."
Ben smiled ruefully. "Did I say he was the boss? No, Susan's the one who insisted on Gucci."
That earned him a laugh. "Smart and funny. What's your name, faux-blondie?"
Ben stuck out a hand. "Ben Reilly, FF lab rat. What's yours, Miss Legally Blonde?"
She shook it. "Gwen Stacy. Oscorp intern."
The View From Shadowland
The city sparkled like a cache of scattered diamonds, perfectly cut and polished, in a black velvet jewel box, strands of find gold chain marking out streets and rings the odd turn around while other larger stones marked out places of wealth and substance. New York was a treasure trove, one just waiting to be plundered by the right kind of thief.
A large man with a subtle hand certainly qualified for the job.
Wilson Fisk was never a small man in any sense of the word. He was huge, almost as wide as he was tall, which was large enough to make entering the average house an exercise in impossibility, with hands the size of manhole covers. This fact, due to a combination of luck, genetics, and years of rigorous physical training that turned every ounce of baby fat into pounds of solid muscle, was one of his greatest weapons.
The other, and the far superior weapon of his arsenal, was his mind.
People, Fisk had found in his years of experience with the breed, had a tendency towards the lazy. Mentally, physically… if there was a shortcut they could get away with, they would take it. In a physical field, this would make for shoddy workmanship, poor product. Mentally, it meant that as soon as an acceptable answer was reached, that train of thought would be dropped.
Certainly, there were those who bucked the trend, the exceptions that proved the rule, but the masses liked neat tidy answers that didn't strain their brains.
That was why image was important. That's why controlling one's image was important.
The public face of Wilson Fisk was carefully constructed. A no-nonsense businessman who had a soft-side for the hard-working everyman and those whose fates had conspired against him. A man who hid – it was an art, hiding the charity donations in such a way that they were uncovered with just enough effort to make his initial concealment look like an honest effort – his good deeds. A family man.
The best lies had kernels of truth in them. Wilson Fisk was a businessman in all things, especially in his… primary field. The charity donations were real enough, interspersed between his other, less shining monetary transfers. And family was, in fact, a small treasure to him.
His wife, anyway. His son was a small viper. Useful, if aimed well and handled carefully, but also a danger that Fisk held close to his chest. An inevitable liability.
For now, he was a tool to be turned upon tasks befitting his talents.
"Superheroes are the latest fashion." Fisk said as he looked down at streets below through the main window of his office. "They creep around this city, my city, like a spreading disease, disrupting the natural flow of business."
Fisk turned, trading his sweeping view of his city for the sight of his seven lieutenants, all gathered in front of his desk. Hammerhead, Tombstone, the Big Man, Mr. Negative, the Hood, Crime-Master, the Rose.
The fact that more than half of them were wearing masks wasn't lost on Fisk.
"The nature of the game has changed." He said, pulling a folder out of his desk. "Superpowers are easy to come by these days. As many of you already know."
The man beneath the Hood snickered, but didn't say anything. Parker Robbins was the least disciplined of the lot, and correspondingly the newest. Another viper, just like his son Richard, but completely removed from the very idea of subtlety, a rattlesnake to Richard's cottonmouth. Not surprising, considering that he was only a street level hood before he somehow – Fisk was still trying to locate some scrap of information on what happened, but only the information he had was that Robbins had been the only survivor of an event that had not only involved some kind of cult, but had killed every other person but Robbins at the scene – gained two rather interesting powers; the ability to walk on air and the ability to fade out of sight and grasp for – Fisk had timed it – as long as he could hold his breath.
A minor, but still useful talent, if used properly.
The folder spilled its contents over his desk, a pool of glossy photos. Blurry shots of costumed figures in various dynamic poses, throwing around street level thugs like it playthings. "Daredevil. Spider-Man. Cloak. Dagger. Anti-Venom. A dozen others that I can't be bothered to remember the names of. Your men bring tales of them, descending on robberies before the police are even in their cars, disrupting deals between the suppliers and the dealers."
"Vastly inconvenient." Mr. Negative murmured, his burning white eyes flashing from one picture to the next, finally fixing on the clearest shot of Anti-Venom. Not surprising, considering that particular super's unnatural ability to track the transfer lines of Negative's goods and apparent wiliness to skim a little off of the profits.
Martin Li, if that was his real name – Wilson Fisk very much doubted that –, was more of a mystery than Parker Robbins, with not a single scrap of information pertaining to his existence previous to his arrival on America's shores. He had experience as a criminal, that much was obvious, but it was a matter of symmetry that had brought Mr. Negative to Fisk's attention.
Mr. Negative was the de-facto drug lord of Chinatown, dealing in every mind-altering substance known to man and a few more that weren't. Within the same city, Li opened an out-reach program, using powers – healing powers hadn't been what Fisk had expected from a villain, not until he saw the catch – to endear himself to the mutant masses of Alphabet City. He was one of them. He was safe. And then, like a twisted display of Jekyll and Hyde, it changed. Li would slip into his Mr. Negative mask – figuratively, as the man's transformation into a photo negative version of himself appeared to be entirely natural – and suddenly, every person he'd touched would be dancing on his string. It was an effective set up.
Accordingly, Martin Li was not allowed within fifty feet of Vanessa under any circumstances.
"Indeed." Fisk said, before continuing his speech, folding his hands behind his back. "The stakes have been shifted. Up-and-coming gangs are staking out the campus that is ours, thinking that we're weak. The cops are getting confident. People are questioning 'why' we are at the top of the food chain."
"And youse want us to give 'em a little reminder as regarding to why you're called the Kingpin o' Crime." Hammerhead said, cracking his knuckles for emphasis. The Big Man tilted his head in a silent request for confirmation, the expressionless face of his mask giving away all of nothing while the Rose and Crime-Master hovered at the edges of the room, watching. These ones were normal human beings, so much as Hammerhead's steel plated skull counted as 'normal'. They'd earned their way up the ladder through smarts, planning, and no small degree of bloody-minded ruthlessness.
Men after Wilson Fisk's iron-lined heart, really.
Fisk smirked. "I don't see why you can't rip their little aspirations to shreds. Tear off a few heads while you're at it. The ones that show some promise…" He looked back at the city below. "Feel free to make them the newest cogs in our murder machine."
The unspoken dismissal was not missed, and all the men save one filed out the door. Tombstone lingered, an albino ghost in the pale moonlight that leaked through the windows.
Tombstone, known more publicly as Lonnie Lincoln, was one of Fisk's oldest lieutenants, having worked with him almost as long as Hammerhead had. It had been interesting, molding the moody, street fighting teenager into a cold, calculating mobster who easily hid himself under the face of a soft-spoken philanthropist, but in doing that, Fisk often wondered if he had molded the very tool of his destruction.
"Your thoughts, Tombstone?" Fisk asked.
"You really think that this will escalate into a proper gang war?" He asked.
"It's not an unlikely outcome." It would be inevitable if one of the heroes managed to properly cripple a gang through their antics. As soon as blood was in the water, the resulting feeding frenzy could tear the city apart if not carefully managed.
Lonnie's shark-like smirk was almost audible. "I'm looking forward to it."
Fisk smiled. "I would be worried if you weren't."
Wow, I just reread my last chapter and Taskmaster did smirk twice within the space of three lines. How embarrassing. That'll be corrected if I ever to do a rewrite (let's hope I never do because that usually means that I give up within a few chapters). But the smirking itself was deliberate. He's in the mercenary business not just because it pays well but because he enjoys the 'game'.
Fury cracked the screen of his phone (and possibly the casing). It's a common problem for him, between his constant having to deal with bullshit and his own strength.
Most of the content of the fic is derived from either the MCU or various tasty details of the main continuity, with other ideas from other continuities salted in for flavor.
I couldn't figure out where I was going with this, so I decided to slap two unconnected events (as in, the View From Shadowland has been complete for over a week, but I didn't know where I was going to fit it in).
Thank you all for the compliments and the feedback, and I'll try to keep the updates regular.