All of the Crimebusters were startled by the sudden appearance of an intruder crashing through the window. Even Northstar stood up and posed defensively with his bowie knife.
What do you want?" Carlie demanded of the intruder.
The person who had invaded the library window was a very pale, tall, muscular man in a poison green spandex suit with a black skull and crossbones. He looked like a jack-booted thug.
"I am the Punisher MAX!" He declared. He pointed a machine gun at Carlie and the others. "Now, spill the beans! I am here for an amulet, heads and jocks and nerds! Can you dig it?"
"What amulet are you talking about?" Kitty asked in confusion.
"Don't be a bunny!" Punisher MAX retorted. "Here's the skinny: I am in your crib for a heavy glow worm!"
"This is enough!" Carlie put her foot down. She wasn't going to let anyone point a gun at her or her friends. She hadn't had much of a chance for friends at her old school, Midtown Magnet Manhattan High School, largely because she was busy as Spider-Girl, solving crimes and taking down villains. Also, she had been too deep for most of the kids there to understand, and most of the girls had been really jealous of how pretty she was. She once almost gotten a boyfriend, a sweet guy named Peter Parker, who had been into science, like her, but his stupid girlfriend Mary-Jane had been totally jealous and had gotten in the way. Gwen had been her only true friend, and now Gwen was dead.
Because of her. It was all her fault. Her best friend was gone.
Tears welled in Carlie's sapphire blue eyes and dripped down her lovely, dramatic cheekbones, one teardrop trailing inward along the gorgeous plain of her face to fall upon her full lips.
No. She wasn't going to allow anyone to hurt her friends ever again. Perhaps that was her flaw- she was violently protective of her friends. She would destroy anyone who tried to hurt them- be it a villain, Rogue, or this Punisher MAX, and she wouldn't regret it at all because they deserved it.
Deftly, she extended her graceful, lean arms, allowing the webbing to shoot from her wrists and wrap around the Punisher MAX.
Carlie stalked up to the immobilized man; though her every moment was agile with a sinewy finesse, it was obvious to everyone that her demeanor was angry and determined.
"What is this amulet you're talking about?" She inquired, her mellifluous voice hard with contempt.
"Zoinks!" The man exclaimed. "You don't have to get zappy! I'm not here to hurt anyone!"
"Why are you here?" Scott folded his arms over his chest.
"You all stop jivin', youngblood!" The Punisher MAX said. "Don't be trippin'. I contract with a tubular homie known as W. Fiskie, or the Criminal Kingpin. You happen to posses the shizzle that he wants: a snazzy amulet that holds the key to the secret of life. Now, be totally munga and hand it over!"
"I don't think so!" Carlie replied.
"What you be smokin', cheese weasel?" The Punisher MAX inquired. "Dontcha you know, what W. Fiskie wants, W. Fiskie gets, or my name ain't Ra's Al Ghul! If the Kingpin Criminal thinks that you are breakin' foul on him, he'll set Daredevil, his top enforcer on you, and then it's black saber!"
"So Kingpin is after this amulet . . ." Carlie mused. "I wonder what he wants with it."
"What is this, a psycho convention or a confab?" The Punisher MAX queried. "Would y'all do me a favor and cut me down from the ceiling?"
"All right, here's what we're going to do," Carlie decided. "We'll cut you down from the ceiling, but you have to tell the Criminal Kingpin that we won't give him the amulet."
The Punisher MAX laughed. "You be gettin' psychedelic, hep-cats? The Criminal Kingpin won't appreciate your bogus diss!"
"Well, he's just going to have to deal with it!" Carlie fired back. "I've devoted half my life to defeating criminals, do you think that I'm going to broker a deal with them! The Kingpin is head of a criminal organization, he's no better than the Green Goblin! The Green Goblin is a symbol of white supremacy and he's a terrorist! He's a murderer, too! He killed my best friend! I would never, ever, in a million years, endorse either of those people! I won't even buy a poster of myself fighting the Green Goblin, even though they're all over the place, because I don't want to have to look at an image of him everyday! And I would even contemplate doing something more serious and permanent, like getting a tattoo of him! I wouldn't get a tattoo of Spider-Man, either, because he's just a poser who's trying to copy off a my success!"
The Punisher MAX rolled his eyes. "Sure, whatever cuts the mustard for you, primadonna. Are you sure you aren't huffing the 'shrooms?"
In anger, Carlie grabbed Northstar's bowie knife and cut her webbing off of the Punisher MAX. "Get out of here, you filthy degenerate, and don't ever return!" She yelled, throwing him back out the window.
He landed in a heap outside. "OOooff . . . ow! That chick's gone radically ziggy! Word up!" He got up and dusted himself off. "Well, now I can go harass the Pride's kids, even though that one purple-haired girl is dead and the blonde boy who was her beau has gone insane and struck off on his lonesome." The Punisher MAX set off on a journey.
Inside, Carlie had a few moments to calm down. Her friends were very supportive of her actions. Northstar stood off to one side, reading a book about black magic sacrifice and rituals.
"Don't worry, Carlie," Lance reassured her. "You did the right thing, and you did it better than any of us ever could."
Northstar sidled up and grabbed the metal blade that she had kindly borrowed from him. "I don't appreciate people who are hypocrites," he told her.
"What are you talking about?" Carlie demanded, an angry frown on her face but no less pretty because of it.
"Yeah, what's your deal?" Jean chimed in.
"You know what I'm talking about," Northstar informed Carlie emotionlessly.
Selene burst into the room. She was wearing a sleeveless, colorblock woven dress that featured a surplice V-neck and ruched shoulders with a stretchy, knit skirt, with a wide, black leather belt covered by a sheen of golden beads. Her heels were very cool: floral wedge sandals with a bow accent and an ankle strap with a buckle closure. Her long black hair was loose, framing her face and accented by her earrings: a pair of dangly, elegant, teardrop earrings with aqua-colored beads in between the filigree. "No time to argue! Professor Xavier has been kidnapped!"