(A/N) Hey all, time for another update in the X-Ray and Vav saga, as they finally take the attack to the Community, thanks to the information received from Denecour, the Screen Looker. We'll be updating this fic hopefully on every Thursday for the rest of the summer, and I hope you'll all keep reading it! As I did with our updates for Phase Two: Betrayal, and Grifball: Running Rampant, I'd like to give a big shout-out to our very own Jerem6401, the writer of Pennsylvania and Maine in our Freelancer fic, and one of the writers in this fic, who's spent the last few days working in Achievement Hunter, building some Minecraft Let's Plays, and appeared in the last AHWU! As you can imagine, we're all very proud/jealous of him! Big congratulations to him for living the dream!
Now, without further ado, enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Seven – You Can't Beat Wall Street
Ray Narvaez Jr / X-Ray
Written by NicKenny
"Sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right." ― Sherrilyn Kenyon
"You think he was making it all up?" Vav asked, causing X-Ray to sigh and place his hand over his eyes, thumb and forefinger massaging his temples.
"For the last fucking time, I don't know!" X-Ray growled, crying internally from sheer frustration. "I swear, if you ask that one more time, I won't be responsible for my actions."
Vav settled back against the wall he was leaning on, frowning at his partner's rebuke. They had been waiting for hours, surveilling the area that Denecour had passed onto them earlier that day, and so far that section of the docks resembled a ghost-town, minus the traditional tumbleweed. And, you know, there were piers and stuff, instead of saloons. And water, instead of desert and open plains. Actually, it wasn't really like a ghost-town at all, but it was really fucking empty.
X-Ray himself was having his own doubts at this point, but he was determined to hold the course, as Denecour's information had always been on the level beforehand. Or, well, almost always. He couldn't quite shake the memory of the time he and Vav has fought their way through a gang base, bullets raining down on them, after Denecour had tipped them off on a huge cocaine depositary, and all they ended up finding was a small cash of stolen televisions.
J-Roll, having brought in a lot of police presence, and a couple of FBI SWAT teams, after Denecour also claimed that the gang was involved in kidnapping and human trafficking, was not at all pleased. Agent Burns had gloated over it for months, and X-Ray had seized most of Denecour's secret marijuana supply as a result.
And he had totally, totally, turned it all into the police.
"Just blaze," Vav murmured next to him, and X-Ray started, turning to his partner in surprise.
"What?!" he asked, wondering if Vav had just developed telepathy, and sincerely hoping that he hadn't. That would be the last thing that the world needed.
Vav blinked at him in confusion. "What? I didn't say anything!" He paused for a second, looking at X-Ray with his eyebrows raised in honest confusion. "You okay man? You're not looking that great."
"I think you're pretty too," X-Ray replied gruffly, looking back down on the area below them. "I'm fine man, don't worry about me. If Denecour was screwing with us about this drop-off, though, then he's the one you should be worried about."
However, as though the world had been waiting for him to make that threat, the area was suddenly light up by headlights as several cars pulled up, their engines running silently – electric cars, Ray guessed. Clever. Four black cars and one black truck, their windows tinted, making it impossible to see inside. He felt Vav tense next to him as the doors opened, and X-Ray held his breath as he waited to see whether or not all their waiting would bear fruit.
The men exiting the first three cars and the truck were all unremarkable, and X-Ray, making use of his enhanced vision, didn't recognise any of them. However, one of the men from the final car – the driver – got out and opened the door behind him, inclining his head slightly as the final passenger climbed out, and X-Ray heard Vav's intake of breath, and smiled slightly.
He was unmistakable – the gleaming bald head, the black eyepatch covering his left eye, the handlebar moustache above a stiff upper lip, standing almost seven feet tall. The Corpirate was here, and he had no idea that X-Ray and Vav were onto him.
X-Ray took a brief moment to hope that he'd remember to thank Denecour at a later point, but he fully acknowledged that he probably wouldn't. Oh well.
"So, what're we gonna do?" Vav whispered, ducking out of sight behind the ledge of the building.
X-Ray grinned, and looked down at his friend. "We're gonna wait 'til the delivery drops, and then we're gonna take that son of a bitch down."
"Just us, or did you let J-Roll and the others know that something was going down?"
"Just us, of course. You know J-Roll refuses to support our actions on any information Denecour's passed onto us, since the Blazes fiasco! I'll give him a call, but I'm gonna guess that this delivery is happening soon, since the Big Boss is here. But hey, they'll arrive to see everything already wrapped up for them in a neat little bundle. Maybe we'll get a medal, this time."
Vav smiled at the thought. "I got a medal, once," he said, almost dreamily. "It was one of those little brass things that were painted to look gold, but the paint peeled away after about a week. Everyone on the team got one, after we came last in our soccer league. Good times."
His teammate stared at him for a moment, eyebrows furrowed, before deciding that trying to understand simply wasn't worth the effort. "Come on," he finally replied, shaking his head slowly. "Let's go kick some pirate ass!"
The boat finally pulled up, a small dinghy, laden with crates of various sizes, and the Corpirate's men quickly swamped over it, carry the crates over to the truck and placing them inside. One of the men leant on one of the remaining crates in the dinghy, pausing for a moment to regain his breath, when he heard a muffled thump behind him. He turned around, frowning, and looked about for one of the others, before something caught his eye from the corner of his peripheral vision.
He leant to his left, walking around the crate in front of him, and realised that what had caught his eye was the gleam of wristwatch. A wristwatch belonging to one of his compatriots, who was currently slumped against the side of the dinghy, an open gash across his left temple, unconscious.
"Shit!" he exclaimed, removing a pistol from his waistband, and turning towards the truck. However, a hand clamped down across his mouth as he did so, cutting off his air supply, and he bit down, only to taste the soft leather of his attacker's blue gloves. He struggled for a moment, but was held in a vicelike grip, and after a minute or so everything faded to black.
"Son of a bitch tried to bite me!" Vav exclaimed, gingerly placing the now-unconscious man onto the ground. He straightened up and shook his hand, glad that he had taken the gloves when he first decided on his superhero costume. Wasn't the first time someone had bitten him, as X-Ray and Vav had a strict no-kill policy, and since he didn't have laser eye-beams, he had to get up close and personal to take a bad guy out.
"Oh, stop being such a baby," X-Ray replied in a hushed whisper. He clambered off the dinghy, using the night to creep through the docks, passing by two more of the Corpirate's men, who he assumed Vav would be more than capable of dealing with. At the very least, he'd provide a good distraction while X-Ray took out the Corpirate.
However, he froze as another voice rang out throughout the darkness, its accent unmistakably Southern. Wait, that's not right. That's a pirate accent, Ray thought, shaking his head slowly. "Jeez, I'm really not on top of my game today, am I?
"Jones, what's takin' yer so long? We need ter get this booty out of here, unless ye've forgotten that. Get on up 'ere, double time!"
There was a brief moment of silence, as the rest of the Corpirate's men joined the first two by the pier next to the dinghy. Thankfully, the darkness made it near-impossible to see, so it'd take them a while to find their men. X-Ray could see the Corpirate, standing next to two black-clad men wielding SMGs, right on the edge of a pier. A good optic blast could blow that fucker out into the ocean, and he'd be the one sleeping with the fishes.
Then, like a god looking down upon them and deciding, quite happily, to fuck up X-Ray's day, a voice replied to the Corpirate's call. Not for the first time, X-Ray wondered why on earth he didn't run solo, why he went around with Vav at all.
"For the last time, sir, it's Jo-en-es! It's a common name!"
X-Ray could have facepalmed. He would have asked himself why Vav had chosen to answer, but he had known the Brit long enough to know the answer: He had panicked. He never was very good at improvising, if anything in the plan went awry.
Another brief moment of silence, while the Corpirate processed the reply. "Jones, what the hell are ye talkin' about? And since when are ye British?!"
Well, fuck, X-Ray thought, and leapt over the wall he had been hiding behind, hand raised to the side of his glasses, already firing off several optic blasts. The two men with the SMGs went flying, the blasts sending them sailing into the sea behind them, but the Corpirate was already throwing himself to the side, dodging the blast levelled his way, which, instead, hit another on of his men in the chest, he was thrown back onto the dinghy, rolling off it into the sea without a word.
The other men spun around, hands going to their sides and coming up with a lethal mix of weapons, the variety of which was quite impressive. He took down three more before they had a chance to fire – one with an Uzi, the other two wielding pistols – and then Vav made his entrance, leaping off the dinghy into a man who had produced a sawn-off shotgun from the inside of his jacket, which did him little good as Vav's fist crashed through his face.
Strangely, the Corpirate just stood and watched as his men fell all around him, leaning back against one of the black cars, a smile on his face. As the last man fell – while trying to reload his AK47 – he finally straightened up, cracking his knuckles and neck simultaneously, as the two heroes regrouped, making their way through the groaning bodies of the Corpirate's fallen escort.
"Ah, X-Ray and Vav, I've been expectin' ye," the Corpirate chuckled, and X-Ray frowned, slightly concerned by the lack of any discernable fear in the villain's voice.
"It's over, Corpirate," he said, his hand hovering over the button on the side of his glasses, just waiting for the giant to make a move. "You're coming with us, one way or another, and you'll answer for your crimes. You'll even receive a fair trial, which is more than the people you killed ever got."
The Corpirate stared at them for a minute, seemingly silenced by X-Ray's speech, before throwing his head back and laughing throatily, his entire almost seven foot frame shaking. "Hehehe...ye think ye can beat me?" he asked, wheezing slightly as he recovered his breath, the mirth still evident in his voice, although it gradually began to change into something darker, more sinister. "Ye think ye can beat me?!"
There was a brief pause, and the heroes glanced at one another, wondering whether or not this was a rhetorical question, or if the Corpirate was waiting on an answer. Vav raised a questioning eyebrow at his partner, who merely shrugged, equally confused.
"Ye–" Vav began, before the Corpirate interrupted him.
"Well I have a message for ye, so harken to me now! YOU CAN'T BEAT WALL STREET! YOU CAN'T BEAT WALL STREET!"
With that, he threw himself forward, moving faster than X-Ray would have believed possible, crashing into him before he could react and fire off a blast. He went flying, sailing away from the Corpirate and crashed against the truck behind him, falling to the ground with a groan.
Vav, thanks to his enhanced reflexes, had already moved out of the way when the Corpirate attacked, and responded by throwing a right hook to the side of the Corpirate's head, something which would have concussed a normal man, knocking him out almost instantaneously, and probably knocking him through a wall or too. However, much to the hero's shock, the Corpirate's head merely jerked back slightly, then turned back to Vav, malevolence in the villain's eyes.
"Well, that's odd," Vav said, before the Corpirate threw a punch of his own, and he was forced to duck under it, but as he did so his legs were kicked out from under him. He landed hard on the ground, winded, and just about managed to roll as the Corpirate stamped down hard on the patch of ground he had previously occupied, leaving a crack in the tarmac.
He got to his feet slowly, only to receive a kick in the ribs that threw him into the truck, where he landed next to X-Ray, battered and bruised.
"This isn't going well, is it?" Vav noted, wheezing, as the two helped each other to their feet, aware of the Corpirate slowly walking closer, evidently confident that the heroes posed little to no threat to him.
"Not at all," X-Ray agreed grimly, firing off an optic blast at the Corpirate, who's grin spread as he dodged the attack with Vav-like reflexes, and stopped in his tracks, motioning for the heroes to come at him with a simple gesture.
"Well, it's a good thing I've got a plan, then, isn't it?" Vav said, smiling to himself. "I just need you to distract him for a few minutes, and everything will be ok. Trust me on this."
X-Ray nodded, and slowly moved forward, having not entirely recovered from being bunced into the truck. A year or two ago, he probably would have asked Vav what he had in mind, but their years of teamwork had taught X-Ray to trust him in these sorts of situations. Well, as long as he had a plan. As he had mentioned earlier, improvising wasn't something that came naturally to the Brit.
He fired off another half-dozen blasts, one actually managing to catch the Corpirate across the arm, but it was shaken off, a mere annoyance to whatever their opponent was, as X-Ray harboured no doubts on him not being entirely human.
He didn't have a chance to fire another blast, however, as the Corpirate closed the distance between them, and he seized X-Ray by the throat, pinning him up against one of the metal containers in the loading bay by the dock.
"What part of 'You can't beat Wall Street' did ye not get?" the Corpirate asked through gritted teeth, his fingers tightening around X-Ray's windpipe, cutting off his air supply. "It's game over for ye, kid. Say hello to Davy Jones for me, if ye'd be so kind."
With that, he released the hero, only to punch him in the stomach, sending him flying back into the metal container, which he smashed through, bursting through it due to the force of the punch, and falling into the sea behind it.
He fell into the sea with a loud splash, filling his lungs with air the second before he took the plunge, but he was already seeing black spots dancing before his eyes, and knew that he didn't have long before he'd pass out.
Come on, Vav, he thought wildly, attempting to struggle against the water, but finding that his body was too exhausted and beaten to do anything more strenuous than sink, and he had time for just one more thought before blacking out.
Take that bastard down for me.