Adrian looked over the wings for the fourth time that morning. He knew it was just nerves, but who wouldn't be nervous in his shoes? How many people could say, even on a good day, that they felt they had what it took to pick a fight with an Arleigh-Burke class Naval Destroyer.
Otto had been kind enough to go spy and identify the type of ship that was sitting in the Navy yard. Naturally it was a Destroyer. When Adrian had asked Otto how many deck guns it had on it, he'd scoffed and said deck guns were the least of his worries.
"It's some real pre-'boohoo weapons kill people' Stark Industries shit. Before he started being such a bleeding heart." Otto muttered distastefully. "These boats have a lot of missiles on them...and I know I've said this once, but I'm just gonna say it again. I really don't think it's a good idea for you to go by yourself."
Adrian had rejected the idea then, and he was gearing up to do it again as he pulled on his pressure suit. He could hear Otto and Aleksei speaking loudly to each other as they walked toward the helipad deck. The two emerged just as he was clipping the thin body armor around his torso.
Looking up, Adrian saw there was a third man with them, one he didn't recognize. He was hanging behind Otto and Aleksei as they yammered on. The man looked to be in his mid to late 20's, with light brown skin and a clean shaven head. Tattoos ran along one side of his scalp, moving down his neck and beneath his collar. He carried himself with an apathetic swagger that one could only own if they absolutely meant it, and he meant it. He cast the briefest look at Adrian's wings, which sat on their standing harness, black metal feathers splayed out far and wide. Whoever he was, he didn't seem terribly interested in them.
Aleksei quieted down as Otto gestured back and forth between Adrian and the newcomer.
"Adrian this is Max. Max this is Adrian. Aka THE Vulture himself. Pretty cool, huh? It must be like meeting a celebrity or something."
Max looked over at Adrian, his hands in his pockets, stifling a yawn. "Feels more like meeting some old guy, but whatever."
What a little shit. Adrian liked him already.
"I hear you're the one to solve our Arc reactor questions?" Adrian ventured, leaning his head down. Aleksei had begun to fix a black armored collar around his neck and clip it into place behind his head.
"That's the story." Max sighed, a hint of worry moving across his face.
Otto laughed nervously, slapping Max on the shoulder. "Well you better Max because Gargan will literally, completely, 100% kill the both of us if you don't."
Max grimaced, crossing his arms. "Yeah, yeah, I got it. Fuck. I'd rather be back working up on the poles than this shit." He paused, looking up at the others, "Power poles."
Aleksei helped Adrian into the remaining pieces of body armor, finally stepping back once the man had pulled on the talon gloves. As he finished testing the talons to ensure they worked properly, Adrian caught Max staring at him.
"What's up?"
"You're taking down that big ship that's in the harbor, right?" Max asked, glancing back at the wings again, then at Adrian.
"That's the plan."
"Alone?"
Adrian grimaced and looked back at Otto and Aleksei. Neither of them looked happy with the situation, and Adrian had already been through several rounds of arguments.
"Otto's rig and the Rhino suit just aren't good choices to try and take on a boat with. If Rhino or Otto are knocked overboard or an explosion happens below deck, they'd drown because of the weight of their tech."
"Suit has eject system!" Aleksei interjected loudly.
"You still need to unbuckle yourself from the armor, and you could be knocked unconscious." Adrian countered. Aleksei went quiet with an angry grunt afterward.
"My arm rig is-" Otto began.
"Your arm rig isn't going to do me any good if you're riddled with bullets. I won't be able to keep you protected and raid the boat at the same time." He snapped. Quickly shut down, Otto grumbled angrily, and crossed his arms.
"You are sure Kravinoff won't join?" Aleksei asked.
"He doesn't strike me as someone who likes to repeat himself. He said 'no' once and I figured that was that." Adrian pulled his helmet on, flipping a switch along the back that brought up the HUD.
Walking toward the wings, he looked back at Otto as the young man followed him, helping him into the flight harness. It still irked Adrian that he needed other people to help him get fully armored and into the larger wings, but it wasn't like he could even begin to take care of them on his own either. They were just high maintenance, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Once he was strapped in, he activated the turbines, allowing them to begin a warm-up cycle and performed a quick systems check. Lists of systems within the wings checked off one by one in his visors HUD.
"I added more." Otto said, voice slightly muffled through the helmet.
"Hm?"
"I added more countermeasures. They'll probably let out a lot of payload at you before it's all over. I put in as many as I could."
Adrian caught Otto's unease. The kid wasn't good at hiding his anxiety, especially in his voice. He brought a hand up, resting it down on Otto's shoulder. Black crescent talons dug into Otto's jacket and skin.
It was all Adrian could do for him. He tried to think of something to say, but he couldn't find anything at this point. His mind was either on Liz and Doris or on the utter confusion he now held about Gargan. But those thoughts were for another time. He knew he needed to focus on the mission at hand. If he couldn't complete that, then none of the inner turmoil would be worth the pain, because he'd be dead at the bottom of the East river.
"Do a round for me." Adrian rasped, voice made rough and crackling through the helmet's air filtration system.
"We do two!" Aleksei shouted, slapping Adrian's armored shoulder roughly.
Adrian gave them a thumbs up, the men stepping away as he began to rise up and out of the wing stand. Turbines at full power, he leaned forward, speeding over the helipad.
This whole time he'd thought that he wasn't afraid to die. Not since the 2nd incident. Not since having to slowly digest either or both his wife and daughter could be dead. Not that he'd wanted to die – he'd gotten close, but some part of him always kept fighting.
But he'd never felt afraid to dive, afraid to fly toward danger, afraid to take on any number of whack jobs with guns when there was something waiting for him at the other end.
Soaring between the empty skyscrapers, dropping into steep dives toward the pavement then swooping up just moments from impact, ascending back into the air in graceful loops – Adrian realized he was afraid. Even after losing so much, he still had more to lose. There would always be something for him to cling to, there would always be something for him to fear losing. Wasn't that a kick in the teeth.
Good time to have this realization that he really wanted to not die just as he was soaring straight towards a Navy battleship to pick a fight.
"You needed to take a left back there!" Otto shouted.
"I know where I'm going!" Max snapped back, speeding the car down an emptied out street. A few abandoned cars were all that remained on the road, the streets otherwise devoid of life.
"I'm still worried," Aleksei muttered from the back seat, hunched forward in the small, compact car. "You sure Gargan won't be mad that we took gasoline for this?"
Max scoffed. "We'll siphon out what's left in the tank when we get back and put it back into the cache. I doubt he's gonna notice five miles worth of gas gone."
"This is way more than five miles because the ship is in the Brooklyn Navy yard and you're heading towards Soho you dumb shit!" Otto barked. "We need to get to the bridge – Williamsburg – just turn around here!"
Aleksei sighed, tuning them out as the two argued. He knew Otto was right, he'd actually gotten quite acquainted with the city, but arguing with two loud, angry, fast talking young men who were fluent in English wasn't something he felt up to right now.
He'd agreed to come along because he just felt the need to see if Adrian would be able to do it. If Adrian was going to be shot down and fall into the water in a scorching ball of fire, he'd want to be there to witness it. Not because he wanted to see the man die, in fact it was quite the opposite. No. Aleksei didn't want him to die alone, for his final moments to only be remembered by the ones who shot him out of the sky.
It seemed remarkably unfair, but – if life had taught Aleksei anything, it was that absolutely nothing was fair.
Otto and Max continued to bicker for several more minutes until the bridge came into view, and Max entered a bitter silence, which lasted about three seconds.
He shot up in his seat, pointing and shouting. "Oh fuck me, they've already started!"
Aleksei leaned forward, trying to wedge himself between the two front seats to see. The sun was rising ahead of them, but distant, spotty clouds stopped the brightest of it from blinding them. Still, the sky was changing from dark navy to light blue, and the tall cranes of the navy yard were lighting up in bright gold and crimson as the sun struck them.
The Destroyer sat in the east river, exposed and out in the open. It was outside of the protective basin that Otto had said it was hiding in a day prior. As Aleksei scanned the sky above of the ship, he could see why.
Flashes lit up the deck of the ship as missiles launched from the surface. They streaked through the air, tails alight, spiraling toward their target.
Adrian was hard to spot at first, moving as fast as he did. A blinding eruption of white flares drew all eyes toward him then as the first round of countermeasures flew out of the tops of his wings.
"He's using them! YES!" Otto shouted, fist pumping as he sped along the bridge. Once they reached the best vantage point to the battle they could, he slowed the car and ran out to the rail guard, leaning forward.
The missiles struck the countermeasures as intended, exploding in the air as Adrian flew around the boat in a wide circle. Aleksei could hear sirens coming from the boat, different tones and pitches indicating different warnings. He'd hoped that because of the huge loss from the 2nd incident, and the rise in chaos and disorder – that this ship wouldn't have been armed to the teeth. But it was.
Missiles flew out of the deck, one after another. Adrian had to swoop and dodge and turn and dive, releasing the countermeasures sparingly, and only if he wasn't able to outmaneuver the missiles. If this had been fifteen years ago, it would've been different. Most of the missiles, if Aleksei had to guess, were Hammer Industries. Hammer tech wasn't as polished as Stark tech, but Stark wasn't in the weapons business these days either. People could joke about comparisons all they wanted – at the end of the day, 90% of the time, Hammer tech worked, and right now the missiles were visibly wearing Adrian down.
"Why isn't he attacking the ship? They're just gonna keep firing missiles at him!" Max asked. Aleksei could hear the clear frustration in his voice.
"There's two deck gunners...and..." Otto was squinting through a pair of binoculars, "They have guys on deck with machine guns too. The machine guns wouldn't give him too much trouble on their own but – so many at once, I'm not sure. Plus the deck guns, those are huge – then if he gets too close he wouldn't have the room to maneuver from a missile."
"So what then?" Aleksei finally ventured, squinting as he watched Adrian circle around the boat, skirting just above the waters surface. The deck gunners were good. They were on Adrian the split second he was within range, and they were accurately guessing his flight path. More than once Aleksei could see Adrian wobble during a pass then suddenly tear away and fly upward, ascending to a safe distance to prepare for another pass.
"He's just gotta bleed them dry." Otto muttered.
Bleeding the Destroyer dry took hours.
More than once one of them had to go and find a spot to relieve themselves, but they didn't dare leave. As early morning turned to noon, Aleksei could tell that the Destroyer was taking its time to make more precise, calculated shots. He could also tell that Adrian was worn thin. He'd never ridden in the wings before, but Aleksei was sure that all of that rolling and maneuvering would wear anyone down after several hours.
Once the machine gunners on deck had finally run out of ammunition, Adrian began to strafe with his Chitauri-rigged pistol. Aleksei didn't need the binoculars to see the purple lines of light cutting across the deck and slicing through anyone unlucky enough to be caught in their path.
It was more of the same after that. Dive after dive, sometimes he would shoot, other times he'd duck and swerve at the last moment, scraping the tips of his wings across the deck to try and cut any remaining sailors down. The task was exhausting, and Aleksei knew that Gargan had sent him on this mission as some sort of punishment.
Adrian did a steep, quick dive, then swung back up into the air. Watching the deck, Aleksei noticed smoke beginning to emerge.
"Is ship damaged?" He asked, looking over at Otto.
The young man shook his head. "He threw a smoke grenade below deck. He's tryna coax the rest of the crew out. I think they're done for."
"Bout fucking time." Max huffed, laying on top of the car. "He's gonna die of old age if he doesn't wrap this up soon."
Several more smoke and tear gas grenades were thrown below deck, into the innards of the ship. Aleksei eventually wrestled the binoculars away from Otto and watched with rapt attention when he saw a group of shapes emerging out onto the deck.
"What's going on?" Otto asked anxiously, trying to grab the binoculars from Aleksei. The larger man easily shoved him off to the side.
"Men are unarmed – looks like surrender." Aleksei muttered, his attention entirely on the sight before him.
The remaining crew had mustered on the deck. Aleksei estimated around fifty remained, all of them covered in sweat and blood from the few injured they'd been able to drag down from the top deck.
Adrian circled over the ship several times before finally gliding down to the deck. He hovered there, wings spread wide as one of the crew stepped forward and spoke. Aleksei couldn't make out too much, but he saw a few hand gestures pass between the two men, then Adrian simply turned and rose back up into the air.
"What's happening!?" Otto demanded.
"Crew is abandoning ship, I think." Aleksei finally handed the binoculars over to Otto.
"You really think they would?" Max asked from his spot on the roof of the car. "I mean...it's a big fuckin' ship."
"Already lose half of entire military. Probably not keen to lose more." Aleksei grunted.
He watched as the crew, now just tiny dots on the gray and red-splattered deck of the Destroyer, gathered around the lifeboats and began to prepare them to go into the water. Adrian remained high up in the air, constantly circling over the Destroyer.
"He should've just killed them all." Otto grumbled. "Gargan's gonna be pissed if he finds out Adrian let some of the crew live."
Aleksei grunted in agreement. It seemed excessive, but they couldn't take those kinds of chances anymore. Gangs were one thing, the military was another.
"We should call in some guys to make sure those sailors don't get out of Brooklyn." Otto said, reaching for his comm device.
"Wait," Aleksei grunted, pointing to the two lifeboats as they bobbed toward the Naval yard. He'd seen Adrian adjust the feathers on his wings a moment before. It was just the slightest change in angle and tilt, but it meant something. Aleksei had begun to notice it just before Adrian would go into a hard dive.
Otto looked at him questioningly, but Aleksei just stared as the lifeboats made their way across the water. They were almost to land, heading straight for the South Williamsburg ferry landing.
Aleksei couldn't imagine how they must've felt. They were so close. After such a long fight, the men and women on those lifeboats must've been exhausted. Covered in the blood of their dead or dying comrades, half blind from tear gas and smoke grenades. Hours of trying their best and only ending in hard fought failure. Now they were so close to land, close to cover and safety, where they could rest.
It was cold blooded to the core, but Aleksei knew that Adrian wouldn't have been able to finish off the rest of them if it hadn't come to this.
Adrian dove. The lifeboats were just yards from the ferry terminal – just moments from land, from cover, from a safe place to hide. If nothing else, the Chitauri gun did its work quickly and Aleksei was spared having to watch any of them struggle in the water once it was all over.
Otto lowered his binoculars, grimacing.
"Damn." Max chuckled as he sat up on the roof of the car. "That old dude is a fucking douchebag. He let them get so close too. That was mean."
"No place for playing fair in this life." Aleksei responded, moving back to the car.
He gave one last glance back to the floating remnants of the lifeboats. The water was awash with blood and sliced up life jackets, some still with their occupants floating inside of them. A loud roar caught his attention, and he quickly looked up.
Adrian had shot tow lines from the base of his wings down to the deck of the boat. The jet along the backs of his wings was roaring at full blast, turbines spinning madly in tandem.
"Is he tryna lift that thing!?" Max exclaimed, snatching the binoculars from Otto.
Otto snatched them back. "No you idiot – he's just tugging it across the river to our side. Jesus, you gotta start thinking about stuff before you just let it come out of your mouth."
"Tugboat! Tugbird!" Aleksei shouted at Adrian, even though he knew the man couldn't hear him.
It was clear that the wings were struggling with towing the huge boat. It was an arduous grind. Inch by inch, foot by foot, it took Adrian nearly an hour to tug the Destroyer across the river. Once it was finally dragged up near a fire boat house that sat along the river's edge, Adrian secured the boat lines down and flew to the small park nearby.
He needed to use the bathroom badly and his stomach had been growling for two hours straight, but Adrian desperately needed to let the adrenaline rush wear down before he flew back to the tower.
It was ugly business, the whole affair, and he didn't feel like that had been much of a victory. He'd been just about ready to cut the damn boat in half and leave it at that until they'd finally surrendered.
Now he had the deaths of nearly a hundred and fifty sailors on his hands.
Gang members, Spider-man, other criminals who got in his way – the occasional hoarder of supplies who wanted to be a tough guy and try to pull a gun on him – they deserved it. But this didn't sit well with him. Not that he'd ever been a gung-ho military kinda guy, but he'd seen their faces up close when their captain had offered a surrender. Most of them couldn't have been too much older than Liz. Early 20's maybe, scared out of their wits but putting on strong faces.
They'd survived the 2nd incident, probably watched a lot of their buddies turn into dust, lived through the months of hell that followed as the world fell apart – then were just unlucky enough to be on the wrong boat in the wrong harbor. They were barely adults, these were just kids to him.
So was Peter Parker, a voice reminded him in the back of his head.
Well, he had to justify to himself, Parker had decided to get his hands in his business. He was just protecting what was his. This mission – this whole takeover of New York – this was Gargan's deal. The blood was ultimately on Mac Gargan's hands for this massacre.
...No.
It wasn't.
He had to accept that at this point, it didn't matter what kind of justification he could make up in his head. There was no going back to feeling like any kind of a good person.
A car honk drew his attention, and he reached for his pistol, turning toward the sound.
Aleksei, Otto and Max waved at him from the nearby highway, shouting and hollering and giving him applause.
"Tugbird Boat-slayer!" Aleksei shouted, cheering for him.
Adrian hovered a few feet across the grass, leaning down in the best imitation of a bow he could muster while stuck in the harness. He decided it was time to return then, and began to ascend toward the skyline.
As he flew back, he had to wonder. Did Mac Gargan really think he'd been entirely capable of doing this? Or was it just a punishment and he expected word of failure? Adrian wasn't sure.
In due time he'd face him again and then, regardless if his intentions, if Gargan was true to his word, Adrian would get the chance to finally see if Liz and Doris had made it.
But they probably hadn't.
Author's Note: Apologies for this story being such a mess. I honestly hadn't meant for it to be this long. It was meant to be a series of vignettes, but, well, here we are. I didn't really plan for any character arcs, and I've had a lot going on irl so I haven't been doing a lot of behind the scenes work in terms of keeping characterizations on point like I should. If motivations seem all over the place, I apologize for that. I really appreciate if you've made it this far. I'm going to try and cap the story off at 15 chapters.
