Part 55

Why The Punisher Is Overrated

Or

Erik Kills A Lot of People In This Chapter. I Mean It! He kills Like Fifty On The First Page! He Kills Like a Thousand In the Whole Chapter!

By BobCat and Ash the Wanderer

Meanwhile, back in Bludhaven…

Erik was purchasing some junk food and a few cartons of grape juice at the 7-11 he had located when the three guys ran into the store and started shooting at him.

He had read their intentions a second beforehand and had dived under the counter. The store clerk wasn't so lucky and got riddled. Erik felt a terrible surge of guilt as the body fell next to him. He's dead because I was here…

Grief turned to rage, and Erik grabbed the shogun under the counter (how clichéd was that, anyway? Well, cliché didn't change the fact it was a weapon). He armed it and waited until the three paused to reload. Three shots later, and two were dead and one had no more guts. He groaned as Erik hopped back over the counter and yanked him up.

"Why did you shoot at me?" he growled. He figured he already knew, but best to be sure…

"Money…1,000,000 big ones…uh." And then there were none.

A quick search of the punks turned up a picture of him on the glider. He growled and crumpled it up. Karma was paying him back. He had gotten lucky by finding Blockbuster back in his office, and now Blockbuster had gotten lucky and managed to recover one security camera's image (how could any cameras have survived the damage he had caused via his blast?). In any case, Blockbuster had looked at the situation and had decided quantity would be better then quality in eliminating him and had placed a million dollars for his head. And if those punks had charged the store, which meant people knew where he was. One innocent man was already dead because of that.

A screech of brakes, and Erik knew he'd better get moving, or there would be more. He ran out of the store. He found the source of the noise: a car piled with gangbangers was driving up the street towards the store, already shooting at him. One look confirmed there were seven of them, and none were Pure.

Erik thrust out his hand and fired off a blast, and the car blew up in an explosion of fuel and body parts. But Erik could already hear other cars coming, and decided to make himself scarce. A few seconds later he was on the roof again…

And five more people were shooting at him. Erik cursed and dove for cover. I screwed up royally. A lot of people want that money, and all of them are trying to figure out my moves. Which means they'll have the rooftops staked out. Looks like it's the shadows for me…

Erik dealt with the shooters, killing four of them and relieving a very frightened teenager of his weapon. Erik hoped he had scared him straight and headed off the roof.

And right into more people with guns and a desire to do him harm. Three minutes later Erik had a bullet crease across his shoulder, 16 more bodies to his count, and was fleeing back onto the roof as still more people came for him. Fortunately, it seemed most of the people staking out the rooftops had decided to be close to his first reported location, and he only had to dispatch one more as he ran across them. But the shot alerted others, and Erik eventually dropped into an alleyway. Gotta think…

CLICK.

Erik found himself staring into a gun barrel. Some lucky punk in the alley had had his quarry literally drop into his lap, and he knew it was the wide grin on his face.

"Ho yeah. 1000000 bucks!" he chortled. Erik only frowned. Then smirked.

"Just a point buddy. You fire that weapon, 20 other people who want that million are gonna hear it."

The punk thought that over for a second, then smiled again as he pulled out a silencer and screwed it on, keeping the gun on Erik. Erik grimaced.

"Well hurray for the sounds of fucking silence!" Erik cursed. The punk just squeezed the trigger…

And Erik kicked, whacking the gun aside at the very last microsecond.

"The foot is quicker then the eye!"

Erik followed it up with another vicious kick.

"The bitters of de-feet!" Ye gods, I can't believe I just said those horrible puns. Erik hopped up and grabbed a fire escape above him.

"This is my spot to sing "Swing Low!'" Erik said, and swung, kicking the punk into the wall. He stumbled back and Erik twisted his legs around his neck and snapped it. He dropped down. Who needs enhanced reflexes and cybernetic strength when you have bad puns? Soulfire must have infected me somehow…

"There he is! Get him!" and other voices sounded at the end of the alleyway. Erik cursed under his breath, and took a look. Lots of them. And no Pure. This really is a dirty town.

"Someone cue up the fat lady…" he said, as a tube extended on his lower forearm and began depositing grenades in his palm. He waited until he had four and then armed them with a computer command. He tossed them on the ground and ran for it.

A large group of money seekers ran after him, and were untimely cremated as the grenades went off. Erik got smacked by the shock wave at the end of the alleyway and rode it out, flipping up and out across the street. Thank god Paul told me to stock up fully before I tested the Gateway. It's really coming in handy to have all my equipment.

No one else attacked him, and Erik headed back out onto the roofs. He realized he'd left Ecks' food behind and groaned inwardly. Now he had to…

"HELP!"

Erik turned to the voice.

"HELP ME! HELP!"

Erik located the building where the cries were coming from, a large brick building with several large doors to admit cars in it, at the end of the street. Garage. Or chop shop. In any case, trouble!

He located the nearest window and swung for it, crashing through as he tried to spot who was screaming.

It wasn't until he landed until he realized how royally he had screwed up.

Blockbuster was feeling quite pleased as his helicopter flew across the streets of Bludhaven. He had just gotten a call that the man who had called himself Sai had managed to snare Vengeance in his trap. So simple, really. He had just had a woman friend of his scream for help and the vigilante had come running. Sai had assured him he would not escape and had given him the location where he had laid the trap. And he knew Blockbuster would be very displeased if he was lying about having Vengeance. Just to be safe, Blockbuster was going to stay on the outskirts, away from the battle, until someone dragged out the insect's corpse. He was not sure if Sai would be able to kill him, but he had dozens upon dozens of helpers and aids waiting, a good many of them armed with guns. There was no way Vengeance could escape this time, for sure…

"We're here Mr. Desmond."

"Good. Keep current altitude. We shall wait."

Everything Blockbuster knew, Erik was finding out.

He had guessed that something was off when he had come crashing through the window: the place was dark as pitch. He nearly landed on his face as he came down, his feet unsure of how the ground was shaped. His balance was regained in seconds.

The lights flicked on.

Guns. He was surrounded by guns. Pistols. Shotguns. Machine weapons, both compact and high-impact. Enough ordnance was around him to start a Third World War. A patchwork quilt of faces were behind those guns, but they all had the same intention: His death.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the punks who were armed were back up by other punks who didn't have guns but had other things. Knives. Bludgeons. Even a blowtorch. And that was another thing. This place was clarified as being a chop shop, but Erik wondered if they were trying to be a gas station at the same time, as there was fuel all over the place. It lay on the floor and was lined on the walls. Some punks sat on it and some beat on the containers like some urban kind of war drums. Not just gasoline either. Erik could see propane tanks, engines up on blocks, and even some lighter fluid. Like they plan to have some kind of massive barbeque. And I'm the main course.

Erik took this all in within five seconds, and his mind went to work formulating a plan. He knew he had to be quick, or even he would get shot full of holes.

His eyes strayed onto the lone female he could see. She saw him looking at her, smiled, and then screamed. It was the scream he had heard before. A damn decoy. God damn it Ravensky.

"Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly." Said a voice, as a figure shouldered his way through the gunmen, entering the circle where Erik stood.

He was big. Bigger then Erik, standing a good 6'9, a huge black man with a closely cut haircut and a nose squashed flat from being broken so many times. He wore a long treanchcoat that kept the rest of his body hidden, but Erik could tell he was in shape.

"And who might you be?" Erik asked, paying not so much attention to the man as he was to the gunmen surrounding him. His mind kept twisting and turning.

"I call myself Sai. But after this is done, I will call myself rich. You have a high price on your head, and I intend to collect it."

Erik smirked.

"Get real buddy. What makes you think all these men with guns will let you? It's a lone reward, jackass. Only one man. I could bet any sum everyone in here wants to have that money as well."

"True, but I am no fool. I will personally rip the life from your body, but all these helpers of mine will all have a hand in it. So they will all get some money. I am a generous man, and they all realize that a sure $10,000 is better then a hard to obtain million."

Sai shrugged off the jacket. Yep, he was in good shape, and Erik could see where he got the name. Clutched in one hand, the points sticking out, was a sai, a three-pronged dagger preferred by the old Japanese ninja. What Erik didn't know was that Sai had gotten the weapon, and his name, by killing half a dozen armed Yakuza by himself. They had had the weapon in their possession, and he had taken a liking to it. Afterward, he had used in his own way, and the nickname had followed.

Erik wouldn't have cared even if he knew. He was still working on a plan.

And Sai appeared to have a problem with that, as he lunged at Erik. Erik dodged aside and promptly got bashed in the back by four different weapons. Erik grunted as he was shoved forward, into Sai's fist, knocking him down. It hurt, but not much.

Sai stabbed down at him. Erik rolled away and leapt up. He dodged another sai stab but failed to dodge the follow-up punch. He fell again, near the edge of the circle, and another five or six punks began kicking and stomping at him. The place was filled with noise, laughter, war whoops, drumming, banging, and even a gunshot or two.

Erik rolled away and got to his feet again. He dodged three more stabs and took the physical blow again, avoiding the circle's edge. Sai looked arrogant, sure he had Erik where he wanted him.

He only thought he did. If Erik had wanted to, he could have torn Sai's head off before the gangster leader knew what hit him. But Erik had needed more time to figure out how to get away from the guns, and had let himself take the blows, thinking all the while.

But his thinking was at an end, as he glanced upward. The ceiling only had a few beams, but one was all he needed. He looked back down as Sai charged, planning to finally get in a killing blow.

Erik caught his hand, and in a blur of motion, a sick snapping noise, and a spray of blood, Erik removed the sai and most of the fingers Sai had from him. Sai screamed, as Erik twirled the weapon and brought it up.

"THIS, is how you use a sai!"

And Erik slashed out, his arm blurring across Sai's face in an ultra-quick series of jerking movements. Sai's scream was abruptly cut off with the bottom half of his face, the muscles cut away with the skill of a surgeon, leaving only the bloody jaw. Various punks gasped at this sudden turn and gruesome injury. Erik whirled, twisting the sai back up as he cocked back his arm.

"Well shut my mouth and call me Ricky!"

And he buried the sai in Sai's head, all three pointed blades going in up to the hilt. Sai gurgled and pitched back, hitting the ground with a thump. Blood began to pool around his head as the light left his eyes.

"Eat your heart out, Raphael." Erik muttered.

The punks stared in horror, the shock keeping them from shooting for a few seconds.

That was all Erik needed, as he aimed and shot his grappling hook up, wrapping it around the beam he had chosen.

The shock was over. Now that their leader was dead, every man for himself set in and everyone pointed their guns at Erik.

And Erik yanked himself up, just as the shooting started. He timed it perfectly, as each part of the circle found themselves shooting into each other. The air was filled with sudden screams as bullets blasted through body parts and blood filled the air.

Erik pulled himself up and thrust out his hand, firing a blast at the wall. He wasn't aiming at anything, he was just trying to push himself backwards. The blast did so, as the surviving punks below recovered and aimed up.

Erik swung forward and let go. The circle had pretty much broken up into two sides as he had predicted, and his observations had shown which side had the lesser amount of firepower. He tucked into a roll and landed amongst the punks, leaping up and behind a car.

The side he had leapt into turned to fire at said car, as their unarmed companions scrambled to get out of the way.

And the other side opened fire, trying to get Erik behind the car. The fact that there was a bunch of their fellows-a-couple-of-seconds-ago between them and Erik's hiding place no longer mattered. The closer group of gunmen went from trying to get Erik to trying to get away with their lives. But, as Erik had observed, the farther side had better and more guns. Within seconds, all the gunmen closer to Erik were dead or dying, along with all the unarmed gangsters who hadn't managed to get behind the better armed men.

One part down. One to go. Erik thought, as a special grenade slid into his hand from the tube in the lower part of mechanical forearm. All the fuel in here made him very leery of using any incendiary devices (and all the bullets flying around couldn't be good either, but Erik could worry about that later), so he had selected a non-flame antipersonnel device, one filled with sharp metal shrapnel. He'd gotten the idea from a movie, and dubbed it his Assassin's Grenade.

Erik tossed it over the car and hoped the vehicle would have enough metal on it to protect him from his own weapon.

The gunmen stopped shooting as the grenade hit the ground, rolled, and then launched itself into the air before detonating. Erik heard the screams as metal shards tore through the gunmen and anyone else close enough. He waited until there were no more quick KA-CHACKS! that signaled his weapon firing and leapt over the car, finally going on the offensive.

A good many of the remaining gunmen were already dead, and most were wounded. Erik flew into their midst, a one man army, as he cut down the rest of them in a series of vicious slashes. Blood soaked the floor.

Within seconds, all the remaining gunmen had been disabled. The firearm section of Sai's gathered minions were neutralized, nearly all of them dead and the rest in no condition to fire a firearm.

Erik finally let out the breath he had been holding and raised his eyes to the punks who were left. There were still a lot of them, and more were emerging from the shadows and crannies they had hidden in the brief firefight. But none of them had guns.

Blood and gore dripped from Erik's talons.

"Ok people…we are gonna play a game here…it's called…Who Wants To Be A Survivor. There is only one rule: Is anyone here smart enough to take a hint from what you just saw?"

There was silence.

"GET HIM!"

Men and women charged from all angles, some even trying to pick up the guns of their fallen companions.

"I guess that is your final answer. And your final ANYTHING." Erik sighed, and lashed out, disemboweling the first punk in a spray of viscera.

Blockbuster was not sure what was happening. First he had heard a commotion from the chop shop, which sounded like a crowd observing a sporting event. Then he had heard gunfire and a lot of screams. Now he heard nothing.

"What is going on?"

"I don't know Mr. Desmond. I cannot see."

Then the building erupted with noise again. A few seconds later, a body flew out the window. Blockbuster didn't have to be close to see how badly mangled it was.

"No…impossible…" he whispered.

"Sir?"

"Stay here, even if you have to hover here all night!" Blockbuster bellowed, and with a growl, turned back to watch the building. The racket continued. It is impossible…

His angry gaze stayed on the building, only faltering when blood began to flow out from beneath the garage doors.

And kept coming.

After five minutes that had seemed like an eternity, a lone figure stood in the chop shop, taking long breaths and trying to will away the pain in his muscles.

Erik was covered in blood and gore, soaked in it. It dripped from him in thick splatters and ran down his face. Before and around him was what remained of Sai's grand army, now just a whole lot of body parts. He raised his talons and watched as chunks of bloody flesh dripped from them.

"Did I…just take out…a whole warehouse of thugs…a good many of which armed with guns…and suffer nothing more then a few bruises and a ruined outfit?" Erik said, seeming to ask the claws themselves the question, as if he couldn't believe it.

The talons were silent, but the mess dripping from them was all the answer he needed. Erik smiled to himself.

"I swear, is my name Christopher Ravensky or Harry Stu?" Erik said, looking around at the abattoir he had transformed the chop shop into. "Yeesh, even the movie Blood and Guts didn't have this much blood and guts."

And gas, Erik realized. He could see it, rivers of fuel amongst an ocean of blood, and even if he couldn't he could have smelled it. Looks like some bullets and some gas cans had had an up close and personal encounter after all. Erik was lucky he hadn't been fried.

Faint moans came from around the room. It appeared not all of Erik's victims were dead. He glanced over at one gangster, pinned to the wall with three sharp blades fired from Erik's arm and with a still lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Erik strolled over, dripping the whole way, and plucked it from the body's mouth.

"Shouldn't smoke these buddy. Hazardous to your health."

The noise had stopped, and all Blockbuster could hear was the whirring of the chopper.

"It appears to be over." Blockbuster said to himself. At last, the vigilante had succumbed, but not without proving once more his sheer viciousness and brutality. If he hadn't been set on destroying Blockbuster, the giant man mused, he would have almost wanted the man as one of his own workers. But that was the way fate went…

One of the garage doors opened. Blockbuster peered at the figure who emerged, but he was in shadows and Blockbuster couldn't make out his exact features.

"Sai?" he asked/yelled at the figure. No answer, although the figure seemed to be looking at him.

And then Erik stepped forward. Blockbuster was stunned.

"Sai?"

"Anora." Erik finished, and flipped the cigarette behind him. Blockbuster saw a line of flame sprout up behind Erik and…

WHA-BOOM! Blockbuster recoiled as the whole warehouse went up in flames, all the different fuels igniting almost at the same time. The helicopter lurched as flaming debris rained down. Blockbuster steadied himself and looked again, trying not to believe what he had just seen.

But the vision stayed the same, as Erik walked without fear as fire burned all around him, Blockbuster's personal demon rising from the depths of hell, his eyes locked with Blockbuster's.

He was smiling.

Rage filled Blockbuster, greater then any anger he had ever felt.

"SHOOT HIM!" he bellowed.

"What?"

"This vehicle has weapons! SHOOT HIM!" Blockbuster roared. The pilot complied, twisting the helicopter around and trying to get a bead on Erik. Blockbuster leaned out of the chopper, trying to see Erik through the smoke. He was still standing there, seemingly unbothered by the intense heat.

The pilot squeezed the trigger and twin guns boomed, firing twin lines of bullets into the ground towards Erik. He didn't move. Instead, he just raised his right hand and gave Blockbuster the finger.

The bullets swept past him, one row missing him by inches. Somehow he had known. Blockbuster gritted his teeth so hard he feared they would break.

"SHOOT AGAIN!"

"Aye aye sir."

Black energy exploded on Erik's hand, and he twisted his arm. Blockbuster watched him do this as the pilot prepared for another blast of bullets.

"NO! EVASIVE MANEUVERS!"

"Kaboom." Erik whispered, and thrust out his hand.

Blockbuster saw the blast fire from Erik's hand, and then he was airborne, leaping out of the helicopter. The pilot just screamed.

The blast struck the helicopter and it exploded, falling down to the ground in flaming scrap.

Blockbuster landed on the closest roof, grunting as his legs absorbed the impact from the considerable fall. He slowly rose to his feet and once again looked at Erik. Anger burned in his heart as he glared at the vigilante standing amongst the flames.

Erik met his gaze.

"That was it Blockbuster. The gloves are coming off! You wanna play dirty, I'll drown you in mud!" Erik yelled.

And then he was gone, turning and losing himself in the smoke. Blockbuster stared at the space he had been for a moment, and then he threw back his head and roared to the heavens.

They stayed silent, almost as if they were mocking him as well.

Some time had passed, and Erik was not feeling well.

The relentless pace he had put himself at since he had arrived and realized how Corrupt the city of Bludhaven was finally catching up to him. The fights, the running, the constant exertion was finally taking a toll on him. But he couldn't falter now. There was still much to do. He could rest when it was done.

He had broken into a YMCA and used their showers to clean himself off (he hated to think about what some poor soul was gonna think when he saw the Norman Bates-esque mess he had left, but oh well) and had thrown out his ruined outfit, replacing it with the spare he carried. (Thank god for micro-minimization technology). He had gotten more food, and with that done, he had headed back to Ecks. He could rest there and fine tune his plan. He headed up the stairs and opened the door. Ecks looked up at him expectantly.

"Sorry I took so long." Erik said as he headed into the room. "I…"

A small round metal object that looked like a short pole suddenly flashed out of the shadows, bouncing off the chair and hitting Erik across the face in a perfect ricochet.

"UGH!" Erik cursed, dropping the food. A second later Nightwing leapt out of the shadows and kicked Erik across the face as hard as he could, sending him out the lone window in the room with a muffled curse.

"GO!" Nightwing yelled at Ecks, and leapt out the window after Erik. He didn't need to tell Ecks twice, as she ran out of the room. She found her equipment in the next room.

"This is Ecks! Transport for one! HURRY!" she yelled into the watch. When the portal opened, she couldn't go through it fast enough.

End Part 55