The Juggernaut

Bruce Banner had been a bright boy, but he was too big and too slow, always the butt of the joke. His mother left when he was nine and his father died when he was sixteen, leaving Bruce the old junkyard to look after.

He kept it up to snuff, but it never got much traffic and soon that traffic stopped entirely because who wanted to do business with a brooding giant of a man? Who wanted to be near someone with green-tinged skin? He heard the rumors in town, saw the way people averted their eyes just like his mother used to.

One day, Bruce Banner snapped.

It started on the winding road that leads into the junkyard when he found a woman walking along the path, her thumb stuck out and her eyes hopeful. He pulled over and she didn't hesitate to climb into his truck, smiling sheepishly as she explained that her car broke down.

"The junkyard is closer than town," he said as he started to drive again. "You can use the landline in my office." The woman chattered all the way there, her smile grew brighter and brighter until she had the phone against her ear and realized there was no dial tone. Her eyes moved from the cord dangling from the phone and followed it to the frayed wires that ended just shy of the wall jack.

The dawning horror is what Bruce grew to love, the widening of eyes and a scream perched on the tip of their tongues. The first woman is killed fast, a broken neck that's hidden when he shoved her in one of the trunks of the many cars.

It was the start of something, a wonderful sort of stress relief that made his heart pump and his cheeks flush. Hitchhikers weren't a rare thing; he started picking them up once every other month and then sooner and sooner. The cars near the gate were full by the nineties.

Ten years after he first started, a swat team and a whole squad of police officers swarmed the junkyard, tearing the office door off its hinges and firing round after round into the hulking man. In the end, it takes fifteen bullets to bring Bruce to his knees and he still takes half their team down with him.

The remaining police found a wallet tucked between the center console and the passenger's seat of Bruce's truck, it was old and frayed and belonged to a woman that was reported missing in 1984. Her name was Betty Ross.

The Psychic

Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid

Tony jerks when his earbuds are ripped out, shrinking further in the passenger's seat of the Rolls-Royce when he spots his employer's glare. Obadiah Stane is terrifying at the best of times, but it's even worse when he's actually in a foul mood and seems to have been talking for a good five minutes before realizing that Tony can't hear anything over the Buffalo Springfield song.

"What's up," he asks, pocketing his phone. "Are we here already?" Tony leans forward as far as his seatbelt will allow and glances past the rain misting against the windshield, spotting a derelict junkyard with towering piles of cars on all sides. One strong gust of wind could probably cause a lot of harm in a place like this.

"No, Anthony," Obie remarks dryly," I've decided to make a pit stop."

"Wouldn't be the first time, big guy. You've got a bladder the size of a corn kernel." If possible, Obadiah's frown deepens, and Tony fights the urge to make himself small. He's a strong independent psychic who don't need no abuse. He's also broke as all fuck, so he does need a paycheck if he wants to keep binge-watching Scream Queens. "Right, you're not in the mood. I'll just…." He gestures at his door, flailing to get out of his seatbelt. "I'll find us a bloodthirsty ghost."

"How considerate." He ignores the sarcasm and scrambles out of the cramped interior, taking in a deep breath of air that doesn't carry the scent of Old Spice. Tony takes a few steps away from the car, wincing as a migraine begins to build behind his eyes, a steady pressure that foretells nothing good. Obie rounds the car to stand slightly in front and to the right of him, dressed immaculately in a dark suit that emphasizes the wide breadth of his shoulders.

Tony rolls his shoulders and his neck, trying to force the spasming muscles to relax before the real onslaught begins. Tonight is going to royally suck and he's glad that he'd snuck his Hydroxyzine in his pocket before he left his apartment. What Obie doesn't know won't get Tony's ass kicked. He reaches into his jeans pocket, pulling out the prescription bottle and popping the cap off.

He lets out a wail as the bottle is knocked out of his hand by the iron-tipped cane, little white pills scattering over the muddied gravel.

"Goddammit," he hisses, dropping to his knees to pick them up. "I just need a little help!"

"You need to grow a pair and do your job without getting high," Obie shoots back.

"Hydroxyzine just helps with the anxiety! It doesn't affect my job!" The bald man gives a disgusted scoff, grabbing a handful of Tony's shirt and hauling him to his feet. "No touchy."

"You better keep that attitude in check, Anthony, because I'm not in the mood. Your mommy's not around to protect you from the big bad world anymore." It has the effect Obie is going for, Tony flinching back and hunching his shoulders. His mother is a sore spot and has been since he was a teenager, more keenly felt than the loss of his father. Obie prods at the scar whenever he wants to make the psychic more manageable.

"It's just bad tonight is all." He lets out a shuddering sigh, dropping his chin against his chest.

"Well, work through it." Obie steps out of Tony's personal bubble, careful not to let any touches linger lest he trigger a vision. Tony would say it was a kindness, but it's more likely that he doesn't want the skinny delinquent to know his secrets.

Tony hunches over as a flash of memory hits like a sledgehammer to the back of his head, vision turning blue for a moment as he sees a young woman standing on the side of the road, her thumb sticking out and a hopeful smile showcasing a pair of dimples.

"Obie, maybe we should leave this one alone."

"Is that your professional opinion or just your yellow streak?"

"Honestly?" He straightens up slowly, rubbing at his stomach and willing his grilled cheese to stay down. "It's a bit of both at this point." Obie snatches a photograph out of his assistant's hand, holding it out for Tony to take from him. Tony doesn't move for a moment, his own personal rebellion against the man that had been put in charge of him after his parents died and failed miserably, but one dark look from Obie has him taking the photo. It's an aerial view of the junkyard, fairly decent work and showing all the nooks and crannies hidden while on foot.

"Anytime now, Anthony."

"Don't rush me." He studies the photo for a few more seconds before kneeling again, hand shaking as he lets it hover over the damp ground. It's been raining on and off all day and misting enough to have Tony cold even beneath the hooded sweatshirt he's wearing. With a last deep breath, he touches the ground.

Pain lances through him like a bullet, white-hot and spreading through his head as he crumples forward. The visions come individually, quick flashes of broken limbs and blood splattering over rusted out cars; screams piercing his ears as people are shoved in trunks, eyes glazed over and unseeing as the lid comes down to bury them.

Tony jerks backward, picture fluttering to the ground as he fights to get air into his lungs, aching for his inhaler and unable to make his limbs work.

"Forty," he wheezes," there's…." He trails off until he's sitting up against the car, massaging his chest. "There are forty people here! You said he only got nine!"

"Then he's added a few since his death," Obie says, all cool nonchalance. "Where's he hiding at?" Tony rubs the grit off his face using his shoulder, looking forward to the hot shower he'll be taking later. "Anthony!" Tony matches his glare, half-tempted to say nothing and let the Hulk tear Obie to pieces.

"Far enough away not to worry, but close enough to make my head feel like someone's hitting it with a hammer." He stands on shaky legs, pointing farther into the scrapyard towards the northeast. "Happy hunting, Obie. If you don't mind, I'll just wait in the car." He's halfway through turning when a meaty hand grabs the back of his sweatshirt to haul him up and around like he's a little boy that's attempting to run into traffic.

"All teams, switch over to Alpha," Obie barks through the comms. "Assemble the cube!" Tony winces at the sudden shouting, bringing a hand up to rub at the ear closest to Obie.

"Do you have to yell all the time? People would like you better if you used your inside voice."

"Says the man without a boyfriend."

"A conscious choice, I'll have you know. Boyfriends mean having to go out on dates and I prefer to spend my free time lounging around my apartment in boxers and drinking milk straight from the carton." Obie makes a face, looking torn between not acknowledging Tony's life choices and criticizing him until he's a sobbing mess. Well, joke's on him because Tony only cries during sad movies and Adele songs. Obie rolls his eyes so hard that Tony's only mildly surprised when they don't pop right out and roll across the muddy ground like a pair of dice.

"Remind me why I put up with you again."

"Because I can read and write in ancient Egyptian, decipher hieroglyphics and hieratic, and well, I am the only person within five thousand miles who can properly code and catalog this library, that's why." And that probably proves Obie's internal monologue about why Tony should be locked in the looney bin, but there'd been a Mummy marathon on TNT last night and Tony couldn't pass it up.

"I should've just let you die in that alley three years ago." Tony doesn't flinch away from the barb, his hand coming up to cover the inside of his right elbow where track marks had once marred the tanned flesh there. He knew it wasn't smart even when he was floating high on Ice, but it kept his personal brand of psychosis and clairvoyance at bay.

Instead of rising to the bait, Tony moves a few feet away and watches the team assemble the rest of the cube; Latin inscribed glass sheets slotting into place with aluminum piping and metal panels. They've sped up the assembly time, which isn't surprising since this is the twelfth time they've done it in the field. Other men are setting up the floodlights, the artificial light glinting off rusted metal and the broken pieces of taillights that glitter on the ground like drops of blood.

They'd better hurry, Tony thinks as he looks back towards the northeast, the keening howl drifting closer. The Hulk's not slowing down, and he'll be here in less than ten minutes at this rate.

He'd gone into deep research mode after he got the call two days ago, digging into local folklore and a few police files that he'd hacked his way into. He liked to think of it as not letting his skills go to waste even if he's only using them to break into things rather than furthering the family business of creating weapons of mass destruction. Plus it's another way to give his father the finger. And Obie. And his high school guidance counselor. Fuck all those guys.

Tony shakes his head, grasping onto the tenuous threads of his sanity as he fights to keep the visions at bay.

The Hulk—one Bruce Banner if anyone is actually interested—had been screwed from the very beginning; a giant compared to others his age even as an infant, he'd been raised by his father and snapped when the old man died a few years ago. When the loneliness became too much, he'd find himself a female hitchhiker and tear her apart with his bare hands once he got them back to the junkyard, relishing in the warm blood that pulsed over his fingers. It took an entire SWAT team to kill him and even then, three of the officers had their innards used as fertilizer.

It's a shrill howl that drags Tony's attention back to reality, the sound of metal and glass being compressed too quickly and buckling under the weight. He rubs at his temple, staring at where the sound had come from. The team of workers ignores it easily, working away like diligent little ants while Obie stays firmly in the center of the makeshift hub.

"Tony," he calls over the noise. "Let's take a walk."

"I'm not gonna end up dead in a trunk, am I," Tony asks suspiciously. Obie gives him a severe side-eye, not answering as he starts walking in the direction Tony had pointed out earlier. "That's great, Obie. Very reassuring."

They're about a yard out from the others when the groaning of metal gets louder, a car toppling off a pile and crashing to the ground a foot away from the two men.

"I hate being rushed," Obie sighs dramatically.

"I don't fancy being a pancake." Tony heaves out a breath, fingers going to the crook of his elbow and scratching absently at the tattoo there. It's nothing intricate, just an upside-down triangle with silver lines running over it in places, such a pale blue it almost seems to glow, and the word Arc beneath it in hot rod red. The Arc Home for Recovery is what had really saved Tony's life three years ago, the tattoo helps him remember why he keeps fighting.

"Anthony." He glances away from his arm and into Obie's hard eyes, glinting like ice chips in the harsh glare of the lights. "Are you sure you're not high?"

"I've been sober for three years, I'm not gonna fuck it up now." Then, under his breath so that Obie doesn't hear him," Pepper would kill me."

"What was that?"

"I said this guy might be a little more than I signed up for."

"So I'll let you have some extra cash from your inheritance this month. An extra thousand."

"Wow, I can buy gourmet instant noodles after I pay my bills. What about your Chessmen? Do they know that they may be dying in the next…." He trails off, eyes squinting as he does the math. "Oh, about eight minutes?"

"They're well-paid."

"Which doesn't mean shit if they're dead." Obie shrugs one thick shoulder, grinning. It's a cold and emotionless thing, the grin of a dead man. "Why do you want these ghosts so bad, huh? What are you up to?"

"Careful, Anthony. Curiosity killed the cat."

But satisfaction brought it back. He's careful not to say so aloud, to voice it means being jabbed in the chest with that damn cane that Obie totes everywhere. Tony hates that thing, hates the cold feel of it when Obie presses it under his chin, or the bruises it leaves against his back when he makes one smartass remark too many and Obie just snaps.

"Sons of bitches!" Tony and Obie both jerk around to see the source of the noise, finding a small group of men forcefully escorting a couple towards them. The man is tall and skinny and distinctly English while the woman struggling beside him is lithe with cropped blonde hair and a snarl. Ian Boothby and Justine Hammer. Because tonight just needed even more drama.

"Wonderful," Tony grouses, scratching at his tattoo again. "The Ghostfacers have arrived. Did you bring those stupid flares again, Ian?"

"How can you justify what you're doing here? It's slavery!"

"It's just business," Obie says, almost looking amused. These so-called ghost liberators are only flies to a man like Obie, a little irritating as they buzz around his head but easily swatted away. "What about you, Justine? Still carrying around that cute little spellbook?" He prods the tip of his cane against the satchel bumping against Justine's hip with her movements.

"These aren't animals you're capturing," she snarls. "They're human beings!"

"Last time I checked, they were crazed murderers," Tony remarks dryly. "If you'd like us to lock you in here with this guy and see if you can tame him, then be my guest. I'll bet Obie would give you half a million bucks out of my inheritance if he comes back and you're all singing Kumbaya."

Obie actually chuckles at that, a dry sound that isn't heard all that often. He's in a good mood tonight. At least, he is until Justine spits on his expensive shoes and the dead man's grin drops away to reveal the usual blank-faced anger. He's always angry, it rolls over him in black waves that never seem to let up. One day that anger and arrogance are going to get Obie killed.

"Who are you to play God," Justine demands.

"Playing's for children," Obie says, stepping uncomfortably close to her. Tony's never liked Justine, she's too squirrely, too fake. She's good at pretending to be passionate, but it falls flat somehow. At the same time, he knows how it feels to have Obie all up in his personal space like that, hot breath that smells of cigar smoke and the nervous hammering of Tony's heart in his chest.

"Delusions of grandeur aside, you'll never pull off what you're planning without the right spells," Ian says, smug. "And you still need the thirteenth ghost, Stane."

"Throw them out of here," Obie barks. "They've already wasted too much of my time." He turns away, striding toward a precarious pile of crushed cars. He doesn't hesitate to start climbing them like a kid on a jungle gym, but Obie is no little kid. He's got to be at least two hundred pounds of pure muscle at this point and it'll be a miracle if he isn't buried under those cars.

"What did he mean about a thirteenth ghost," Tony calls after him.

"Get the cube into position," Obie says, voice echoing through the comms.

"Obie, you said we only needed twelve! This is number twelve! I'm done after this! You promised!"

"And how will you survive if I decide to cut off your monthly payments, Anthony?" He's at the top of the pile now, a King surveying his kingdom. "You will work for me until I say you're done. The time for arguing has passed. I suggest you get somewhere safe." His next words go out through the comms, the words doubling like two TVs when they're on the same channel just down the hall from each other. "Release the bait!"

"What bait? We've never needed bait before."

"You said it yourself, this one is different." There's a rumble of a diesel engine firing to life and gravel crunching under heavy tires, Tony suddenly remembering the old tanker truck Obie had decided to bring along. The truck trudges into his line of sight, the hoses on either side gushing out blood on the rusted-out cars and ground, heavy blasts of red that fill the air with the scent of copper.

"You've gotta be shitting me…." Tony shakes his head and takes two healthy steps backward before turning tail and sprinting several feet behind where the cube has been set up. The truck stops less than three feet away from the glass and metal, the headlights illuminating the droplets of red sprayed across the front of the glass.

"Power up the cube." The doors of the cube slide open as a light flickers on inside it. "Start Transmitting." A male voice chanting Latin blasts through the speakers, the drawing spell forcing Banner out of hiding deep in the junkyard. Tony can hear metal crumpling and another howl that seems to split the night sky, a thundering boom.

"We haven't recalled the teams yet, Obie! They're gonna be trapped!" He gets no response from Obie, the only sounds being the wind and the continuous chanting. He presses a button on his headset, yelling through the comms with no care about eardrums. "All teams return to base! I repeat all teams return to base!"

Men begin to sprint for the lights and some of them even make it; one man is bent at the waist and shoved through the jagged remains of a car window, sliced up like a Christmas ham. Others are just as unfortunate, bent and thrown away like broken dolls.

Tony slides on the spectral viewers—just fancy glasses with a small light on either end—watching in horror as the newly revealed Banner tears his way through the junkyard. Piles of cars topple over, glass exploding, metal splinters flying. One man looks behind him as he sprints, not even noticing that he's sealed his own fate until he runs face-first against the cube. Banner follows him inside just before the doors slide shut, tossing the man against the walls like a ragdoll.

"No," Tony shouts, beating his palms against the glass. "Let him go! Put him down!" The man is already dead when Banner drops him, turning to face Tony. He's broad and ugly, malice burning bright in his eyes as he glowers down at Tony. I'll remember you, that expression promises. You're next. Tony steps back, shoes sliding against the wet grass and sending him sprawling.

"Somebody help us," Justine screams. Tony turns, finding the woman cradling a dead body in her arms. There's so much blood that Tony doesn't even recognize the corpse at first, not until he sees a dead flare in what's left of its hand. "Ian, stay with me! Please, somebody! Help!"

"I hope you're happy, Obie." Tony stands and winces at the growing stiffness in his knee. "You got your twelfth ghost and you butchered at least half a dozen people in the process." He turns toward the pile of cars where he'd last seen Obie and draws in a sharp breath.

Obadiah Stane lies in a broken pile, a shard of glass torn through the meat of his throat.


When Bucky got a phone call about a rich uncle that had passed away and left him an inheritance his first thought had been that he could pay his kids' tuition, his second thought had been the overdue hospital bills left over from his wife's treatment, and his third thought was that he should probably say something before the man on the other end of the phone wondered if Bucky had died of a stroke.

"Uh…." Oh yeah, Barnes, that'll reassure this guy that you're not incompetent. "I'm sorry, are you sure you've got the right guy? I don't even think I have an uncle."

"You are James Buchanan Barnes, right," the lawyer asks, beginning to sound skeptical. "You live in the Riverwalk apartment building in Brooklyn?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"Then this is your uncle, Mister Barnes. Are you able to come to my office to sign some papers?"

"No, I'm sorry. I've got two kids to shuffle places after school and my housekeeper isn't very useful at the best of times." Clint's head snaps up from where it had been bent over a saucepan filled with cereal. Honestly, that was just proving his point since all their bowls were stacked in the sink.

"That's fine. Name a time and I can meet with you at your apartment to play the video he left you." Bucky hesitates a moment, running his fingers through his hair. It was shaggy now that he didn't have Natasha to cut it, brushing his broad shoulders with some of it tucked behind his ear. "Mister Barnes?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, yeah, that sounds fine. Is eight alright for you?"

"That works just fine. I'll see you in the morning. Have a good day."

"You too." Bucky sets the landline down on the kitchen table, scratching absently at his beard as he tried to remember any uncles that had been alive until a few days ago. The one he had on his mother's side had died before Bucky was born and his father…. Oh fuck. It was that uncle, the one no one talked about at Christmas dinner.

"What's up," Clint asks around a mouthful of Trix. The sight of a grown man with his cheeks puffing out should make Bucky roll his eyes, but the familiarity of it helped settle his nerves. When the phone first rang this morning, he'd been sure it was more debt collectors and his heart had threatened to explode.

"My uncle's dead…."

"Oh man, that's a bummer."

"Yeah, I guess." To be honest, Bucky wasn't sure how he felt about it since he'd only met the guy when he was a kid. Hell, last time he saw his uncle Obie was when Bucky had fallen out of a tree trying to rescue his mother's cat; he'd been nine and had broken his arm in the fall, but he remembered the hulking form of Uncle Obie looming over him like some kind of wraith.

"…Funeral if you want."

"Sorry, I was kind of lost in my head for a second. What were you saying, Clint?"

"I said I could keep the kids if you wanna go to the funeral."

"He was cremated, I think. The lawyer wasn't very specific about anything in particular."

"Well, what'd he say?"

"That my dead uncle left me an inheritance. He's gonna swing by tomorrow morning with a video or some paperwork. I'm not entirely sure." Clint nods understandingly, reaching out his free hand to pat Bucky's arm.

Even if he wasn't so good at doing the thing Bucky hired him for, Clint was great when it came to the touchy-feely stuff. Steve got beat up again on the playground? Clint swooped in with superhero band-aids. Darcy's having boy troubles and doesn't want her over-protective dad coming up with colorful threats that all end with disembowelment? Clint pops up with the latest edition of Cosmo and a tub of ice cream. He's like Mary Poppins on speed or something.

"We're gonna have company in the morning," Clint asks.

"Uh-huh."

"In this apartment?"

"Yeah."

"Where Stevie's Nightwing boxers are strewn across the furniture like doilies and our dishes are basically one big game of Jenga?"

"Yep." Clint develops a blank expression that Bucky knows well enough by now, it's the look that means he's trying to calculate if the work is actually worth the effort. The left corner of his mouth twitches downward as the pros begin to outnumber the cons, but then his head tilts to the right and forward as he thinks of a good reason why cleaning isn't in his job description.

"We won't let the fancy lawyer in the kitchen and we'll just shove the underwear under couch cushions until he's gone."

"You do realize you were hired to help keep the place clean?"

"Last time I tried to clean, your favorite pillow caught on fire."

The First Born Son

Peter Parker was a cute kid with negligent parents and a young aunt that blended into the woodwork. Despite all of that, Peter was an out-going and happy kid that had no problems with making friends.

He developed an obsession with cowboys after watching McLintock with his babysitter. May settled with just reading a book, but Peter dove into cowboy lore headfirst; he skimmed the books, watched any movies he could find, and bought a slightly used costume on eBay using his mom's credit card.

Peter drug his friends into his cowboy frenzy, forcing them to play along. The next door neighbor fell in line easily enough, taking on the role of a skeezy landowner. They played in Peter's backyard every day after school, they chased each other around until supper and an hour after that until it was time for their baths.

One day, Peter came out with a plastic tomahawk he'd bought online. The neighbor brought out an authentic bow and arrow his dad used for hunting. The afternoon started like normal, the boys running around and squealing with laughter. It was when they went back out after dinner that things went sideways. The skeezy landowner put an arrow between the cowboy's eyes, a spray of blood made the landowner vomit out the treehouse window.

The babysitter called nine-one-one, but Peter was already dead.