Civil War – Casualties of War

01 Helicarrier

January 18, 2015 – 11:35 AM

While the Gifted and civilian populace was bracing for the civil war that had just erupted in the cities below, within SHIELD, they were celebrating. It couldn't have possibly gone any better. One of them had even died, which was even better. They had no idea about SHIELD's involvement, and wouldn't until it was far, far too late to do anything about it.

The agents themselves were also pleased, though some for different reasons. Agent Eric O'Grady, for instance, was happy that someone like Octavia Sanders was happy. A woman with her cup size deserved to be happy. The jiggle from those extra peppy steps of herself sent O'Grady into a tizzy.

O'Grady was a lot of things – perverted, disgusting, self-centered, a jerk, lazy, self-serving. What he wasn't was cognizant to the truth behind SHIELD. Not that it mattered to him. All he was concerned about was the abundance of beautiful women that SHIELD employed. Sanders, Morse, Hand, Johnson, Carter - both Sharon and Peggy. Especially Peggy - Welles, Simmons, May. Heck, he even had fond memories of Hill and Romanoff from when they still walked this Earth.

But, instead of enjoying his copy of the Women of SHIELD calendar, he had to run maintenance on Ultron. He hadn't been this disgruntled since Stark called him out for playing Galaga on the main deck of the old helicarrier.

"Sandy, what's shaking?" he asked the female guard stationed in front of the door leading to Ultron's bunk, throwing in a flirtatious wink for good measure. She scoffed with permeable disgust. She digs me. He slid his ID card in the card reader, then walked through the sliding doors. And right into Ultron's unyielding chest. "Ow!"

Ultron paid him no mind and strode quickly down the hall.

"Hey! Where are you going?" he called after him.

Ultron stopped suddenly and did a half-turn to face him. "To prepare to eliminate humanity's biggest threat."

Something about how he said that sent chills up his spine. Or, maybe it was his voice. "Oh? What's that?"

"Nothing for you to worry about, human." With that, he turned back around and left.

"Hey! That was racist!" Yeah, it was definitely the voice.

O'Grady could have gotten angry and followed Ultron. He could have told Trent and/or Hand that Ultron had just up and left. He did neither. Not when there were ladies in the shower and women's locker room that were calling his name. Who knew? Maybe Hand and Sanders were getting it on.


Queens, New York

In just thirty-five hours, the number of registered heroes skyrocketed to over ten thousand. After the display of power SHIELD put on after the easy and brutal apprehension of Prodigy, those heroes that had been on the fence were convincingly pushed onto the pro side. In many ways, he was a martyr. He was the example set for the entire country; the example of what was going to happen if they continued to defy the law.

No one knew what happened to Prodigy. In many ways, they didn't want to know. Prisons were a boogie man – those that had never been had every kind of wild theory about what went on there, and those that had been brought back terrifying stories about mistreatment – from the inmates and the guards. The very mention of prison was enough to scare wayward kids back onto the straight and narrow.

Those were normal prisons. Gifted prisons were much different.

The Raft was like the Wild West combined with Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. Only the strong survived there, while the weak were killed off and eaten to sustain the strong. Unregistered heroes weren't sent to the Raft. Rumor had it that they were sent to the 42 in the Negative Zone. The mere time difference - one day in the Zone being equal to 27.5 seconds on Earth - was enough to drive even the strongest willed man insane. Most didn't doubt that the registration side was planning on making life as difficult as possible for their prisoners, to break them.

Or, that was the rumor, anyway.

Whatever the case was, with SHIELD enforcing the law, many would never see the inside of a cell there.

For others, it only cemented their already hard-line stance to not register. Their civil liberties had already been trampled on; the threat of prison time didn't deter them. In the eyes of their supporters, it was likened to such men as the founding fathers, who risked much to protect their descendants' rights. The heroes who stood in defiance of the registration act stood in defiance not just for their rights, but for the rights of heroes after them. SHIELD wanted to change the way super-heroics were done. Men like Captain America weren't going to let that happen.

A line in the sand had been drawn. Both sides stared at each other unflinchingly and dared the other to cross it, but both were prepared to do so themselves. War was on the very brink of spilling out, and it wasn't going to be pretty or end on good terms. Tension was so thick that it choked whoever was in the general vicinity. It seemed that time moved in slow motion whenever a hero flew by. People asked themselves if that hero was registered or if they were a vigilante.

So many risks were taken every hour since the deadline passed. So many that many heroes opted to just go on patrol in the dead of night. SHIELD knew that, and tripled their patrol at night.

For many like Peter Parker, it was a death knell. Peter usually patrolled during the day and sometimes at night. For him, not being able to swing around Manhattan in costume and save lives and stop crimes was like not being able to breathe. It was a part of him, and had been for four years. It would have been easy to just register for that sole purpose, but with men like Norman Osborn on that side, he couldn't.

His blood still boiled when he watched Osborn reveal himself as one of the most popular heroes in the country. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right that men like him were cheered and adulated, while men like Peter - honest men who actually cared for the people he saved - were called menaces and criminals by the media, and were jeered and booed by the very public they saved.

He could take the boos and the libel. It came with the territory. What he wasn't going to take was being booed while murders like Osborn were cheered.

Perhaps he had actually changed, as Mary Jane - his girlfriend - suggested. It was possible, but Peter dismissed it immediately. Men like Osborn didn't change, not completely. At best, it was a superficial change on the surface. He was still the murdering little slime-ball that killed Gwen last year, and Peter knew it.

It was why he was never going to register. They could throw him in prison and throw the key away, and then keep him there forever, but he wasn't going to capitulate. He was never joining any side that Norman Osborn was a part of. No one knew about the Green Goblin, so he wasn't going to begrudge anyone else for signing up. But, as for him, it was renegade for life.

It was comforting to know that none of the other New Avengers were signing up, either. Or, at least he thought none of them, until he saw a short woman with a short bob haircut walking out of a sign up station. Was that Janet? "Hey, Jan!" he called out when he got close enough. His suspicions were confirmed when she turned around and then immediately turn back to vanish in the crowd. "Hey, wait up!"

"Oh. Hi, Peter," she said demurely.

"Surprised you would show your face out in public. I'm sure SHIELD has its eyes out for celeb heroes like you." He grinned, but it lost its luster when he noticed that she was hiding something behind her back and was acting unusually guarded. "What's that?"

"Nothing." She tried to slip it in her coat pocket, but he quickly snatched it from her hand. "Hey, give that back!"

It was a registration slip, one given to Gifted's after they signed up for registration. Peter wasn't angry or even sad. He was disappointed, and his face showed it. "So, what Jen said means nothing to you? This law being illegal doesn't matter?"

She tried to snatch it back, but he jerked it out of her reach. "I did what I thought was right."

"That's fair," he admitted. "But, you have to admit that this whole thing doesn't seem like a fair deal for us. Forcing us to register? When has that ever ended well?" He handed her back her registration card, which she quickly pocketed. "Look, I get that you want to do the right thing. But, so do I. So did Prodigy. So do all the heroes being persecuted for doing what they believe in without signing up first. I get that we all need some accountability with someone, but this," he turned toward the sudden battle between an unregistered hero and a team of Apprehension agents, "isn't the way to do it. There's another way. A fairer way. There has to be."

"It's the only way they've given us, Peter," she remarked.

"Doesn't mean we should take it, just like that, Janet. Look, it won't be long before they make you guys hunt us down. Is that what you want? To be forced to hunt your friends down? To arrest the same people you saved the world with a year and a half ago?"

Her eyes cast down toward the pavement, her lips drawn down pensively.

"Didn't think so. If this is what you think is best, then so be it."

"It is," she answered immediately, though not convincingly.

"If you want to be a government stooge, then that's you," he ribbed playfully.

"If you want to be someone's prison bitch, then that's you," she ribbed back, a smirk growing across her lips.

"Let's call it even, then."

She nodded and took a quick glance at a nearby clock. "I have to go get this authenticated at SHIELD. I'll see you around, Peter." She turned and walked away.

"I hope not," he said sadly, just loudly enough for her to hear.

Her steps faltered noticeably, then she vanished completely into the thick sidewalk crowd. He followed her as long as he could until she was completely swallowed by the impatient New Yorkers. Slowly, he turned around to watch the Gifted be taken down by the SHIELD force, then her teammates. It was quick, but very brutal.

This was only the second day since the deadline passed. Like everyone thought, SHIELD was relentless in their pursuit of unregistered heroes. Peter meant what he said to Janet. It was only a matter of time before they made registered heroes to take down unregistered heroes.

The only thing that would come from that was war. Civil war.

The Bronx – 8:22 PM

Spider-Man glided gracefully above the streets of the Bronx, a webline in one hand and his other hand positioned to fire another one. It felt great to finally be back in costume and back on patrol. It didn't feel like a job, it felt like he was back into his usual routine. It had been so long since he first started this, it was second nature.

It was the second night he had patrolled exclusively at night. It was what SHIELD manhunts had driven him and other heroes to. He hated it. It wouldn't do any good because SHIELD had increased their patrol during at nights, and villains were then starting to commit crimes during the day, more than they already were.

It made him sick to read how the Sinister Six got away with three bank robberies today, all because heroes were too busy registering or running from SHIELD.

Actually, come to think of it, Ultron was supposed to pick up the slack, but he wasn't. Neither him nor any of his drones had been anywhere to be found over the last few days. One would expect that, with the increase in lawlessness, he would have been kept busy keeping the peace, but it was as like he couldn't have been bothered to do his job.

That was both hilarious and horrifying at the same time. Unless he just didn't want to, SHIELD was busy planning something with him. Something that Peter didn't think any of them were going to like. What other explanation could there have been?

He didn't want to give it too much thought. Thinking too much about the future, near or far, distracted him from the present and made him too paranoid. Besides, in times like these, it was best to just roll with the punches as they came. Anything close to trying to plan for any and all eventualities was a waste of time. There were too many things that could have gone wrong at any moment to try and plan for all of them.

A scream jerked him from his thoughts. He turned sharply and swung quickly in the direction of the scream.

If it was trouble, then he was going to resolve it, regardless of whether SHIELD was nearby or not. He wasn't worried about the drones. Kingpin's right hand man, Alistair Smythe, sent drones his way every other Thursday, so he had plenty of experience with drones. And those agents weren't close to fast enough to deal with him.

When he landed on the building across the street from the commotion, he saw a pair of Gifted's in a fist fight.

One was named Bantam, dressed in a gray and red costume with a cutoff gray hoodie over it. The other was Thunderclap, dressed in blue and silver, with a pair of silver gauntlets on his hands that were connected to his shoulder pads by a pair of metal coils. Bantam was registered. Thunderclap was not. They had, apparently, been punching each other for the last half hour over what was, essentially, a difference in ideology.

This was what the heroes feared would happen. Once heroes began hunting down other heroes, war was going to start. It had started a few days ago when Prodigy was taken in. It was going to be ramped up to another level once heroes began fighting.

"You're messing it up for all of us, Thunderclap," Bantam said with clenched fists. "Finally, I get a chance to do right, and you gotta step in and not register? I don't think so."

"Well, color me unimpressed," Thunderclap replied. "It's got kind of a greenish hue, a little lighter than She-Hulk." He spread his arms apart, as if about to slam his fists together, when Bantam dashed forward and threw a right hook for his jaw.

"You're going down!"

Peter watched them come to blows again with a disappointed frown. This was only the beginning. If these two were fighting, then a lot more hero on hero battles were going to erupt over the next few days.

Thunderclap dodged Bantam's next punch and spread his arms apart.

Peter's Spidey Sense® went into hyperdrive. He looked and noticed that Bantam was standing directly in front of a tanker full of gasoline. "NO!" He shot a pair of weblines to pull him out of the way of the explosion. They were a second too slow.

Thunderclap slammed his fists together, unleashing a wave of concussive force that drove Bantam into the tanker with enough force to dent the truck and knock the two parked cars beside it askew. Gas began to leak from a puncture hole. That relatively small leak was lit aflame by the smallest spark caused by two pieces of metal scraping together. The spark was small, the explosion that resulted wasn't. The ground shook from concussive force of over four hundred gallons of unless fuel erupting into flames. Fire spewed from the truck like a geyser, engulfing Bantam and knocking anyone nearby back a ways.

"Oh God … what have I done?" Thunderclap asked himself, his voice barely a whisper that wouldn't have been audible even if the roaring flames and screaming civilians weren't drowning him out.

"Everyone back! Get back!" Police officers hurried to direct people away from the flames and firefighters rushed to put the fire. Bantam's screams had been easily heard over the flames, but they had since died down.

Peter watched as though he was someone watching it on TV. He felt detached from the situation, as if he wasn't actually there. As if he couldn't have heard the dying screams of a man in agony. As if the smell of burning flesh and gasoline wasn't about to choke him. As if the screams of many frightened civilians weren't deafening.

Paramedics rushed in from the crowd and did their best to save him. "I can't see what I'm doing! Move him into the light!"

"Dammit, I need a throat pack! Tell Paul I need hespan!"

Their efforts were admirable, but futile. Bantam's life had come to an abrupt and violent end. His death marked the moment when war turned to a civil war.

War wasn't personal. Soldiers went to war and looked at their enemies behind the scope of a rifle. They pulled the trigger, felt bad for ending another anonymous human life, then moved on to the next one. They didn't feel the guilt of killing a friend or compatriot.

Civil war was personal. It was always friend vs friend, brother vs brother. The man looking across from you, trying to kill you because you had a different opinion than he did was your countryman at best and you own flesh and blood at worst.

Thunderclap was a good man.

So was Bantam.

Peter hadn't worked with Thunderclap, but he knew that he was a good man. He had to be to fight for what he believed in so vehemently.

He also hadn't worked with Bantam. All he knew about him was that he had moved in from LA just a year ago and was trying to turn his life around. That desire was what led him here – as a registered hero, being thrust into the side of a tanker, then engulfed in flames.

"I don't… I didn't mean… it was an accident," Thunderclap stuttered. Tears dripped from his eyes and splashes against his blood soaked uniform - some his, some Bantam's. His boots scuffed against loose gravel as he slowly trudged away from the scene. Police were too busy with crowd control and, oddly, SHIELD was nowhere to be found, so no one thought to stop him.

No one ever meant it. It was always an accident.

It didn't matter.

A hero had just killed another hero. Accident or not, that was a cardinal sin that few, if any, would ever forgive. The fact that it was an accident did little to change that. Thunderclap had been driven to kill Bantam. Not by anything either man was doing, but because of the law that had drawn a line between them.

War wasn't personal. It was two sides fighting for their beliefs and killing the other side for theirs. Sometimes, there was hate involved. Sometimes, the two sides were bitter rivals that wanted to end each other purely because they existed. But, at its essence, it was still two sides of anonymous men and women trying to kill each other.

Civil war was that, plus the bitter feelings of betrayal that made every death so much more painful to stomach, because the casualties were brothers to everyone. They were friends to everyone on both sides, whether they knew them personally or not. If killing a fellow hero was a sin, intentional or not, what was going to happen if it happened again? What if it happened every time two or more heroes battled for their ideologies?

The registration act was designed so that all those ideologies were the same. It was clear after tonight that they weren't. Two sides, both bitterly devoted to theirs, had lined up across from one another. Two had crossed that proverbial line in the sand and clashed. One died.

It was always death that drove men to war. Bantam's death was going to be what ignited this war. People had been choosing sides for days, weeks, months. Now, it was time to defend that side, possibly to the death.

Peter wasn't going to let this sway him. He didn't know Bantam, but he felt his death resonate in his heart. Even still, he wasn't going to register. His belief in his principles wouldn't allow it.

Janet had, meaning that they were on opposite sides of this war. Meaning, if she was made to, she was going to try and arrest him for being in violation of the act.

She had become his friend, after a rough start. He had been keeping abreast of her heroic exploits on the news, and had seen firsthand how competent she had become. He was proud of her and how far she had come. He didn't want to fight her, but he knew it was coming. If not him, then one of the other New Avengers.

He knew it was coming, and he didn't know how to stop it.

He didn't want what happened to Bantam to happen to her. He cared about her too much to even ponder the possibility.

Bantam's death wasn't going to go unpunished, even though it was an accident. Even though Thunderclap meant to attack him, it was an accident. An accident from the desperation that the registration act was driving unregistered heroes to. He was going to be hunted and punished for his crimes.

That didn't sound right. This law had turned everything upside down. This wasn't a battle of good vs evil. It was a battle of right vs wrong.

Right and wrong weren't ambiguous sides blended together by some murky gray area. They were clearly defined and separated by a thick, bold line that everyone, no matter what side they were one or how close to that line they stood could see. Anyone who said differently was on the dark side and didn't want to admit to themselves.

Obeying the law was right. Disobeying it was wrong. These truths were simplistic and almost always absolute. But, what if the law that one had to obey was, itself, wrong? What if the law was corrupt? Did that make the people obeying that law, who thought they were right, in fact wrong? Did the fact that many people thought that this corrupt law was right, despite it being wrong, change any of that?

Bantam was registered. He thought that what he was doing was right.

Thunderclap was unregistered. He thought that what he was doing was right.

Two men on opposite sides of the same law both thought they were right, though, logically, only one of them could be. So, which one? Was it the one who wanted to be trained as a hero and held accountable to the public for his actions, or the one who only wanted his rights as a US citizen and a human being respected?

Two sides of the law who thought, who knew in their hearts, that they were in the right, were going to fight to defend their rightness and to prove the other side's wrongness. When two sides thought they were right, the fighting wasn't going to end until the last man fell, lifelessly clinging to the last vestiges of his rightness.

Whichever side that man fought for didn't matter, because they all were going to lose. Both sides had powerful reasons to fight, law vs principles. Usually, the two sides worked hand in hand to maintain peace and order in this chaotic world. This time, they were at the stead of a bitter war that was going to tear an entire community apart before it united whoever was left together.

If there was anyone left and if those people even wanted to be united after all was said and done. Civil war brought the worst out in people. Secrets were exposed and flaws expounded on and capitalized on. Before this was over, wounds were going to be suffered.

The kinds of wounds that never healed.


A/N: Hope you enjoy, and don't be shy about dropping a review. Any word of encouragement is greatly appreciated. And I know this Civil War isn't as personal for all of us due to Tony and Steve not going head to head, but I hope you'll bear with me.