Dirty Work
Night fell over the New York sky. But that never stopped the city from staying awake and the people from walking amongst the endless streets. Two figures walked alone down a dark silent street, their footsteps hardly audible. They stalked down the concrete like black phantoms. Then at that moment, one of them disappeared, almost as if they flew into the air. The other kept on walking down. Once they reached a certain point, the figure stopped, and looked up to a window on the side of an apartment building.
Inside was a Caucasian male wearing a black jacket and jeans and some combat boots. He began scrimmaging through stuff as though he were in a hurry. He paced over to his bed and pulled a glock from underneath his pillow. He checked to make sure it was loaded. He was obviously anticipating some sort of threat. He knew. He was informed on it. His fellow agents discovered something suspicious after having heard no response from their previous member. They knew he was done for. Everyone else was warned as well. No one was safe.
Then he heard a thumping noise nearby. After being momentarily frozen, he ran over and turned his lights off, then crouched over by his bed. They found him. He was next. He wasn't quite sure exactly where the noise came from. It may have been outside his window or just outside his door. Either way, he was to stay put right where he was. But once three light knocks sounded from the other side of the bedroom door, he felt he had no other choice but to pull the trigger. Odd how they decided to just casually knock on the door as though they were a welcomed guest; why not just do what they came to do and end it now?
The bullets ripped through the wooden door, leaving clean busted holes scattered randomly around it. Almost wasting his entire clip, the man halted, assuming the intruder to be dead for sure. But of course, he couldn't be sure. Not with them, anyways. He rose from behind the bed and slowly approached over to the door. After making it about a few feet away, he stopped, and kept his gun raised, never taking his eyes off of the area. He wouldn't be surprised if he heard more noise coming from around the apartment due to the disturbingly loud sounds of gunshots. People were probably concerned as to what was going on. Any minute someone would probably contact the authorities and tell them something terrible must've happened.
His heart was racing faster than his bullets, and the sweat from his pores ran on down like they had nowhere better to go. He trained for situations like this, and this isn't the first time he's been in such situations similar. However, not exactly one like so.
"You missed," a voice from behind came.
The man jerked himself to face his window, his gun still raised, to find a woman, at first appearing as a vaguely lit silhouette, but starting to become ever more distinctly familiar, standing by it. He then realized who it was. Romanoff. The Black Widow. Why did he stand their long enough to try and figure it out? Why didn't he just shoot already?
With nearly no hesitation to pull the trigger, before he could fire, he found his gun magically lifted out of his hand and then somehow thrown against the wall beside him. But when he looked up he realized it was the doing of a sneaky shadowy figure hanging upside down directly above him. The figure peered into the man's eyes, paralyzing him with fear; its own eyes not even being remotely natural. They were crossed at irregular angles with sinister appeared to be written all over it. And given that it was hanging upside down, it's legs folded onto each other to make a triangular shape, made it appear all the more uncanny. But the man knew who it was. What it was.
The figure flipped down, knocking the man back in the process onto the ground with brute force, while it landed perfectly crouched onto the floor.
"Agent Land," Natasha spoke again. "HYDRA shadow agent."
"Romanoff," the man bitterly uttered.
"You guys don't forget to leave me out," said Spider-Man. "Since I'm ever so important to you all these days."
He specifically glared at the man known as Agent Land. Land was left defenseless, making him beyond intimidated at this point.
"What do you think I have?" Land spoke terrified. "I'm not in charge of this."
"But you are very much a part of it, aren't you?" the web-slinger replied.
"Now, I know HYDRA can't be any more organized than SHIELD," Natasha intervened, "which leads me to believe that not all of you are everywhere at any given moment. You have bases set about the globe. And you have certain groups scouted in cities, much like New York. So I'm going to make my question as clear and concise as I possibly can: Where are the rest of your pals?"
Land, still lying on his back, swallowed and tried looking through Natasha.
"Up yours, Romanoff," he said.
Natasha shook her head out of pity. Spider-Man's fists slowly began to clench.
"I don't think you wanna know what happened to the last guy who didn't tell us what we wanted to know," said Spider-Man. "Right, Natasha?"
"One of your teammates is gone," she said, looking at Land. "Not only did we get information out of him that led us to you but he's also been turned in as an enemy of the state. Now I'm not saying that we'll make a deal by proposing that if you give us what we need we won't turn you in as well, but we just might make an exception of killing you instead."
"At least I'll know I died serving for a better purpose," Land resisted.
"Okay," said Spider-Man, losing his patience.
The web-slinger grabbed the HYDRA agent by the throat and, with one hand, effortlessly slammed him against the wall, raising him a foot or two off the floor.
"As you may already know, I'm more than capable of breaking every bone in your body one by one, so not only will your death feel honorable, but slow and painful as well," said a much darker side of Peter.
Once again, the eyes of his mask peered through Land's soul. Without it, Peter would feel somewhat powerless. That simple mask gave him so much power than he could ever have. Every time he put it on, some unimaginable feeling rushed through him; it was like the final touch, the icing on the cake.
Seconds passed with Land still choking from Peter's powerful grip, not attempting to say anything.
"No pressure, Agent Land, but we kind of need you to hurry it up," carelessly said Natasha.
Then he finally gave in. At first the words sounded like gags of gibberish as he tried fighting through the pressure locked around his throat, but Peter finally dropped him onto the floor as he sporadically gasped for air.
"Run that by me again?" Peter demanded.
"They're meeting . . . at a warehouse . . . on Grand Cloud View Street," Land desperately tried spitting out, struggling between taking breaths.
"You're certain of this?" said Natasha.
". . . Yes."
"Let's hope you are," Peter added.
"When?" Natasha asked Land.
"Around midnight or something," he said, still recovering from his blocked airway.
Peter took two steps forward.
"I don't have a specific time! That's all I know," Land shouted.
The two stood there for a moment and then decided to start making a move.
"Fine," said Natasha. "If we find out you were lying we will find you."
Her words came loud and clear. Land understood them. Natasha made her way towards the window, and Peter followed along, leaving one last deathly glare at the defeated agent.
"And this place is a mess," Natasha commented on her way out.
An abandoned warehouse sat along the shore filled with a single dim light to set the room in a manner as though it wished not to be seen. There were around 10 or so people standing in a circle around the light, having some sort of meeting. They were all dressed in black, whether it was a leather jacket, black hoodies or anything. All of them were armed with handguns and other sorts of weapons such as grenades and pocket knives. One of the men, being the tallest of the group, began to speak first.
"So, obviously Miles isn't here, but he told me to deliver this message to you all. The operation is not to be taken lightly. We're aware of HYDRA's many other objectives throughout the globe, but its best we start one and finish it as soon as possible. Inefficiency is not an exception."
"Well from what I've been told Miles said it was Strucker's decision to lay low on the whole operation," objected another member in the circle.
"Whatever Strucker told Miles was surely in good intentions," the first man retorted. "Are you questioning his authority?"
The other said nothing.
"I hope not," he went on. "And besides, what Miles informed me now is what Strucker updated him most recently. So maybe at first he didn't have a fixed head regarding the op, but perhaps now he appears to have his mind set on what needs to be done."
"If we can't catch the son of a bitch now there's no telling how long we'll have until he gets off the radar," another intervened. "He already knows we're on his ass, and apparently he's gaining assistance from Romanoff."
For the other few never aware of that knowledge, some small chills went up their spine. They knew what Romanoff was capable of. If only she were on their side still they feel a little more secure.
"It's all of us against an ex-SHIELD agent and a kid with powers he can barely control," the main speaker reassured.
"From what I've heard he seems very in control," opposed yet another.
"Yes, he's eliminated a few of our comrades, and some turned in for so-called war crimes. However, might I add, he didn't do it alone. Had Romanoff not been there, he'd be dead already. So our best bet is to get rid of both of them."
"Isn't that what Operation Arachnid covered?" one of the previous ones asked.
The man smiled. "That's what it originally had written in it. That's what they didn't tell SHIELD. That's what we knew. However, Pierce saw things differently as far as how to carry out the plan."
"Screw Pierce, he never knew how to do things the right way," another remarked.
"We were going to do this from the start," said one of the others.
"Exactly. Which is why it's about time we finish what we started."
Outside, there were five men on watch, four guarding the different sides of the warehouse and one on the roof. They were armed with heavy rifles, and nearly hard to see as they blended in with their dark gear. The one at the back, watching coldly into the distance of the nebulous water, reflective of the sky above, paid only attention to what was ahead of him, but not what was behind. He was taken off guard as two legs constructed around his throat, gripping extremely tight. The force of the grip was so strong, that he had no way of calling for help, and no way to fight back. He then found himself slowly ascending off the ground as he continued to suffocate. On the other side, a guard is electrocuted and immediately taken out. Two others remaining on the ground hear this, along with the one on the roof, and rush over to investigate. The guard facing the shore has passed out finally, and the legs lifting him up carefully drop him down. The silent assailant then makes its way up to the roof. That guard facing down from the roof aims his rifle downwards at an angle, looking and seeing only his two other comrades doing the same. But no sight of any intruder, only the fallen guard. With that, the one on the roof is caught in a chokehold in the blink of an eye, not expecting it. The hold is too powerful for there to be any struggle of any sort. The two at the bottom, still clueless as to what happened and where the intruder was, noticed a small pellet thrown onto the ground between the two of them. With no time to react, the pellet emitted a smoggy gray gas that knocked them out in an instant. The guard on the roof was done for. All of them were.
The assailant responsible for the knockout gas walked out in front at the entrance and looked up to the roof at their partner. They nodded to each other.
"There should be no excuses if we can't manage to find a way to carry out the mission; no excuses whatsoever," the man inside the warehouse continued speaking to everyone else. "Strucker expects nothing less than perfection in covering up the incident. He will not have disappeared, but have been assumed to have been killed in action. Romanoff on the other hand can be left to burn."
Out of nowhere, from the dark corners where there was no light to be seen, two small discs slid across the floor and towards the circle. Once they came to a halt in front of the group, they set off a bright flash which stunned nearly all of them, but a few who anticipated and saw it coming. Then Spider-Man dropped from above them all, like a bat out of a cave, and instantly took out the first man below him by crushing him onto the floor from the weight of his fall. One of the few HYDRA agents not affected by the flash pulled out a handgun and fired rapidly at Spider-Man, but to no avail. All of the shots missed as Spider-Man avoided every single bullet and slid towards the shooter in a fast motion and tripping them up, giving them no time to anticipate it all.
Black Widow emerged from the corners and leaped on top of one of the men and jabbed her electrical bracelets into his head, sending thousands of volts of electricity into him. She then backflipped off of him into the air, kicking another HYDRA agent in the face while doing so. Spider-Man jump-kicked a few agents across their face, all of them still quite stunned by the flash. As more of the agents began to regain their vision, they started pulling out their guns as well. Another one of them shot at Black Widow, but she rolled out of the way in time to dodge the bullets. The string of web shot from Spider-Man pulled the gun out of their hands, and he quickly spun while swinging the gun with him to club the agent in the back of his head. Another agent tried knifing Spider-Man from the behind, but found himself flipped over completely, landing on his back. The web-slinger then spun down and swept his leg under another agent caught off guard, then spinning off the ground with a kick to another's face.
Widow took out three agents attempting to surround her by easily throwing an electrical disc at one, leaving them on the ground jerking about, countering one of their attacks to rush her by flipping over them and swinging around while managing to lock her feet around the other's neck, then rolling her body sideways while flipping them both onto the ground like a steamroller. As she rolled up, she pulled her pistol out and shot another down with perfect aim. One other agent tried to stun Spider-Man with a small taser, glowing with blue strings of electricity at the end, but the vigilante shot an entire full body-sized web that swallowed the entire man. As his arms were constricted against himself from the wrapping of the web, his own taser ended up turning onto himself, leaving him unconscious.
The main HYDRA agent, the one who spoke most during the meeting, tossed a metallic ball object into the air, which divided into numerous hovering discs with sharp ridges at the end. At random, the discs flew at the pair. For Spider-Man, it was no problem, as he swiftly flipped and spun about like a skilled acrobat, managing to miss every single blade coming his way. Black Widow managed to miss a few, except for one that skinned her on the shoulder, ripping through her leather. She hissed in pain as she pressed her hand against the cut.
The agent pulled out two pistols from both of his holsters on each side of his hips, and shot ferociously at Spider-Man, nearly ignoring the distracted spy. Spider-Man easily dodged this as well and shot small web bullets at muzzles of the guns. They then restrained any more bullets from firing, but that didn't stop the agent. Stupidly, he fired, making the restrained force of the guns from firing explode in his hands. He screamed in pain as the burns from the gunpowder seized his hands.
Peter stood momentarily staring at the agent as he struggled with his pain. At this point he normally would have just ended him already, but for some reason he wasn't acting. To see him be the cause of another man's agony and suffering – it was far different than what he does on a regular basis. He didn't torture. Natasha saw all this, and at first was thrown off by his hesitance, but then saw too the reason why (or at least his reason). She got up and stood by him.
"You've done your part," she told him, trying to calm his nerves.
With that, she roughly kicked the agent straight in his face, knocking him out cold onto the ground. Natasha looked back at him.
"We're finished," she assured him.