I'm back, bitches!

I was taking a break. Couldn't take a break from work for the holidays, soooo... I had to take a break from something.

Here, enjoy. And absolutely do enjoy Hogwarts Legacy. Great game.

As it would turn out, Abomination removed whatever choice I would've had the moment I stepped out.

But let's step back a bit.

Before opening the door and possibly slaughtering my way out, I closed my eyes and focused my Senses, hoping to get a measure of anyone lurking outside the door. I then cursed immediately as I finally learned something new about our aerokinesis the worst way possible - in the open, it seemed I could sense movement and pull off some aerokinesis in a radius of about a quarter of a mile, but for some reason, if I were in a room, I couldn't sense or manipulate the air beyond it, not as precisely as I could inside the room. As it was, the only impressions I got were 'corridor', which I knew, and 'thick walls and doors', which I also knew. Scanning for any human activity or cameras simply gave me inconclusive results.

Fuck. I groaned drunkenly in exasperation. Great time to learn about this weakness. I'll have to figure out ways to compensate for it, otherwise it'll bite me in the ass in future...

...And it doesn't make any sense! Why would my abilities be hampered by a wall? What is this, 2007 Bluetooth?

I huffed and stumbled for the door. Nothing for it but to go for it. I opened the door a crack, slowly, peeking out. I focused, and my results were a little stronger.

No human activity. But I couldn't tell if there were cameras or not.

Emboldened, I opened the door wider, feeling my Senses embrace the corridor, opening (or re-opening) a deeper - but still limited - world of information. No humans in the corridor, conclusive and confirmed. Two cameras on either side of the corridor. Active, problematic. Not for long.

I focused, sharpening the air, and severed the camera to my left, then the other. I wasn't good enough to do both at the same time, and to be fair, I hadn't exactly had the opportunity of using my powers as anything beyond glorified AIRDAR. Practice would iron that out, though. I just had to get away from -

Another thump and explosion from beyond the building, and a capriciously ugly roar made it in here.

Right. I just had to get away from HYDRA and Abomination.

I safed and holstered one of my pistols - and not without a shudder of disgust for the unprofessional risk I was taking - in the back of my waistband. I'd have to find where they might've stashed any spare holsters since the ones behind me were quite bloody, purely for the sake of not risking the gun randomly killing the safety, going off and lodging a bullet down my ass. I'd heard the horror stories in my old life, and a certain version of Daniel Hebert from Worm had gone into a beautiful tangent about the risk of this stupid gangster-style holstering - beyond that, I had to get the hell out of this place.

I peeked out the door, covering myself with a pistol following my line of sight. There were two doors to my right, and a sign at the end of the corridor leading to swinging doors confirmed that was the exit. My eyes lit up - since I'd severed the left camera first, hopefully that'd throw anyone off the trail about my power for a bit.

I exfiltrated and fell into the Weaver gun combat stance with the ease of practise and training - the best stance for an active combat situation, but at the moment, a bit shaky due to the tranqs. My steps were silent, my breathing muted, my senses as focused as they could be, my gun ready.

I moved past the first door without fuss, but the second was a concern. It was slightly open - a very small crack, but enough to raise concern. I frowned, taking a moment to decide whether to spring the obvious trap or not. I blinked heavily, shaking off the lingering effects, and shook my head. Then I remembered. The tracker. Fuck. Gotta get rid of these guys, then. I can't be rid of HYDRA as long as I have this stupid thing in me.

I inhaled and moved in, gun away from the door, making as if I hadn't quite noticed that particular detail. As I was close to the door, it opened, wide enough for a hand to slip through. It slipped a bomb - a flashbang. Oh, hell no. My eyes widened and I moved up as soon as I saw the hand with the grenade - the idiot, for some reason, had used his left arm, making his throw a little awkward. It dropped right at my feet, at the perfect angle, and I kicked it back in with the inside of my foot without hesitation - a picture-perfect pass that would've made Thiago Alcantara proud - and made it right in the door just before the goon closed it.

I waited for the bang - the curse beforehand was gold - and moved in at the exact moment it went off. I barged in, my Sense filling the entire room. Four men, some strange box on the wall, no camera - yes! - two by the wall on my left, two behind the door right in front of me, one of which I'd clattered in the face when I barged in, all affected by the sudden flashbang reversal. I aimed my gun at the one guy to my left and shot him in the head without looking, then shot the other guy in front of me - same headshot - and attended to the second guy on my left as the first fell over. The last one had recovered just enough to know I was somewhere in front of him, and raised his gun to shoot. He was too close. I stepped inside as he fired one off wildly to my left. Ignoring the sharp noise, I grabbed his arm and pistol-whipped his wrist twice, hurting and shocking him enough to force him to let it go. I felt his free arm move to grab me, and I lashed back, hitting the inside of his forearm. Not wasting any more time, I shot him on the stomach - even if he was wearing a bulletproof vest, the impact of the shot would wind him, and thus free me to move the pistol up and give him a final lobotomy. I let him go as I shot him in the head, and he fell back stiffly, in the way only a human shot in the head would.

I raised my pistol and shot each of them in the leg, stomach and wherever else I could get them, making it look sloppier but still dead-on, then policed all the brass. Hopefully, I'd muddy the waters that way, though I was certain they'd know I'd gone rogue. I just needed to delay that conclusion for as long as I could.

I safed and sheathed my pistol. Then I gave it a second thought, extracted both pistols, and looked at one of the dead goons. Thigh holster on the left, waist holster on the right, a couple of knives next to his hands and sheaths for them on his torso - more of a close-range combatant, I concluded. He had what I needed, either way. I scanned the room again. It was some small, makeshift medbay, not richly furnished, but it had a first-aid box mounted on the wall, two gurneys, and another couple of kits on a table, on which one laid my raven mask. That's fucking convenient. But I shouldn't take it.

I nodded with satisfaction; the looting was quick and efficient. Then I took one of the knives and wrapped the handle with some bandage and stuffed it in my mouth, then I took the other to cut myself open - I would've used the scalpel, but the tracker was a bit on the big side and I didn't have the time or level of pain tolerance to make that sort of clean cut - switched to a reverse grip, and steeled myself.

The knife was sharp, and the even sharper agony from my stomach forced a drawn moan from me. I cursed underbreath, then extracted the knife and reached for the tweezers. I moaned as I dug them inside, reaching for the foreign object lodged in the side of my stomach. Pulling it out hurt, dragging at my insides like a grater,but I couldn't afford to do it slowly. Backup might be in the area at any moment; with that in mind, I inhaled and pulled it out, dropping it in a tray. It was no bigger than a shotgun shell. I swallowed a pair of painkillers, sprinkled alcohol into the wound - that drew me into a whole minute of agony, and the grip of my teeth were so vicious I was a little surprised I hadn't broken my teeth or the handle - then patched it up with gauze and bandage, and taped it to keep the bandage in place. Hopefully I wouldn't lose too much blood. Or do anything strenous for a few days while the wounds healed up (thank God for that weak Super Soldier Serum HYDRA gave me after their tool had kidnapped me and killed Rod's mom in the process. It didn't make Captain America or the Winter Soldier out of me, but it did bring me up to peak human strength and some much faster healing than a baseline human. Less Wolverine, more Spider-Man, but only three quarters that speed).

Or - and this was important - be anywhere near someone telling jokes. That'd bring a whole new, unlikeable meaning to split sides.

"Stab wounds still suck," I hissed. "You'd think they'd suck less since I've already been stabbed at least six times."

I looked at one of the dead bodies, then glanced at the tracker, then my borrowed knife, then the raven mask.

I nodded as the plan formed in my head. "That should work."

Four minutes later, I was out the door and into the streets of Harlem.

"Oh, come on!" I groaned.

The fucking Abomination's rampage had actually started a bit further away, to the left of the door. About a couple blocks, couple blocks and a half. He'd been busy. The streets were smashed up and getting even more smashed up, people were fleeing pell-mell or getting crushed underfoot, under sharp elbow, or under a flipped car. The fucker was laughing, enjoying his newfound power and the Rampage moment he was having.

Because of fucking course it was, his rampage was headed towards me, and fast.

"Is your stash there?" G asked.

"10-4," Peter confirmed, digging his bag out of the secret little compartment he'd built for it half a year ago. Nobody really bothered to look for it in the time he'd built it, and luckily, that still hadn't changed as of the previous week when he'd updated his stash, and even right then and there as he was digging out some extra heavy duty web-shooters, made by his Girl in the Chair (because he didn't want them because they were too expensive to build and she went and made them anyway), just in case of some intense fight, falling debris, or Iron Man shenanigans. He was having an expo in the next couple of days, after all - one never knew if his recent recklessness would spill out into the streets.

The heavy-duty web-shooters forewent the traditional wristwatch scheme entirely - they'd both blatantly made gauntlets with self-reloading webs, a much thicker variant of the webs, easily equippable by double-tapping his wrists against each other, and inlaid knuckle dusters in case he'd need to go into fisticuffs with something like that guy in that Oscorp Rhino suit from last year. Or the Hulk, but he'd much prefer not to fight that guy. Very high-quality, and again, very expensive. She wanted to build a full suit of similar quality for similar purposes, but her budget wasn't quite that big. "Everything's here." He equipped the shooters, stashing the cartridges in his belt. "Everything's equipped. Seriously, how much did these cost you? We still have to talk about a repayment plan."

"You can repay me with a date," G said. "This Monday. I did it for you, that's that. Get moving, Webhead. Harlem won't hold out for much longer."

"I'm not sure a date will actually cut it, but sure, we can do that. For now."

"Shut up and get moving."

Peter shook his head, but he closed everything up and got moving, as ordered.

I had three options. All of them sucked.

Option A: Go back in the building. That would not do; while I wouldn't mind whittling more of HYDRA's ranks, I'd just be getting the foot soldiers and letting the higher-ups know way too easily that something was fucked. No, I'd need to be a lot more strategic in how I went about utterly and permanently dismantling these motherfuckers. Besides, even if I disregarded whatever was left of the sedative in me not quite having any real effects on me any longer, there was still the fact that I was injured. I stabbed myself, even if it was to solve a worse problem. I wasn't the Wolverine - I couldn't just go from that to killing HYDRA goons straight to fighting fucking Emil Blonsky after he'd juiced his ass all the way up.

Option B: Run in the opposite direction. Not feasible - he'd catch up. Besides, traffic was bad and there were unfortunately no convenient side alleys I could just squeeze between. Not to mention the risks.

Option C: Run towards him, strafing the sidewalk, and hope his rampage would continue on right behind me.

I had no idea why I chose that one - I'd probably justify it as it being too late to make any decisions, but I'd commit to it. If I was lucky, I could avoid fighting him altogether, and Banner would take care of him. I just wasn't in the shape to take on him properly at the moment.

"WHERE'S BANNER?!" he roared - and God, he roared. His voice was as loud as a metal concert, and sharp as a gunshot. I cringed as I snuck past him on his right, using a parked car as cover. I glanced through the windows, watching as he kicked the car and put his head on a swivel, and started moving on. He grunted in annoyance as he found a car in his way, and instead of jumping over it, he picked it up and tossed it back carelessly.

"Fuck!" I cursed quietly as I stopped moving, realizing the trajectory of that car would end somewhere in front of me. My eyes widened further when I saw a lady in front of me - she saw the car, too, but unlike me, her decision was to freeze.

Oh, bloody hell, just my luck! I reached out with my power and cupped my hands, imagining not a blade, but a padded platform, something like a beanbag chair, and conjured it behind her. I pulled, and she jerked forward, squealing in surprise and then horror right as the car missed her by inches. I let go, and her momentum carried her tumbling on the ground. I grunted at the resultant twinge of pain - my wound did not like that bit of movement one bit. I had a feeling in my gut this night was really not gonna end cleanly for me. Then a familiar voice roared for Banner's name, accompanied with a burst of expletives I mentally filed away.

I peeked out the car for Abomination again. He'd slowed, and was getting impatient, which did bring up a good question - where the fuck was Banner?

"All right," Abomination declared, "if he ain't coming, EVERYBODY DIES, TONIGHT!"

I stilled. He wouldn't do it, would he? Damn, he'd totally do it. He'd totally force my hand -

"We gotta get outta here," a feminine voice told me, and I turned - the lady I'd saved just a moment ago.

"I'll be fine," I told her. "You get outta here, call 911 if it hasn't been done already."

"Look, kid - I can't just leave you here -"

"I saved you," I hissed. "Shut up and get out before you get us killed."

She grabbed my arm. "Kid -"

I reflexively turned on her and punched her in the forehead. She went out like a light. Uh. Oops. Fuck. Damn these reflexes. "I'm sorry," I whispered, laying her down. "No time."

I turned back to the action, moving to the left and sighed. Great, he's got himself a hostage already. Should I... fuck. I already know the answer. Goddamn it.

"Now what do I do with you...?" he sneered at the hyperventilating victim. "Ah, fuck it, we all know how this'll end anyway. No point dragging it out. For every thirty seconds Little Green's not here, somebody dies."

He started squeezing, and his captive started screaming. Fuck.

I conjured a blade, the sharpest I could make. It would cut what I wanted it to cut. It would be slowed by nothing. It would flay skin and bone like melting butter. I aimed it at Blonsky's right Achilles tendon, and swiped my hand forcefully. Just as well, because I met more resistance than I'd hoped. It was enough, though, I made a dirty cut, and the bastard roared in annoyance and pain, and dropped his victim. Hopefully not too bad a fall. Keep it up, Johnny, pile on the pressure!

I conjured another, and cut well into the tendons behind his left kneecap, but I couldn't chop off the entire leg like I was hoping to. He roared in pain again. But it wouldn't incapacitate him for long - the Achilles tendon was already healing up.

"Where are you?!" he roared. "Come out, you fucker, so I can reduce your tit-sucking coward face to ribbons! And I'll strangle you and Banner with them -!"

The National Guard momentarily shut him up with a case of .50 cal to the face. Fabulous. More than anything, it served as quite the annoyance, and he threw a car at them, and that was far more than an annoyance in their case. Not so fabulous.

Tch. Engaging with this guy would not end well for me. My abilities were good, but if I couldn't cut his leg off, I had no hope of having a go at his head. I had to retreat, but not without one last gift...

I mustered a blade, easier now with the practise I was having recently, and aimed for his neck. Had to cut the vein, give him five seconds of panic...

He dodged it.

He dodged it!?

His sudden evasion was clumsy, making him stumble and fall onto his side. Inexplicably, his positioning was so contrived that his head was aligned in my direction, and thus naturally, he made eye contact with me as my arms were up, in the middle of conjuring another blade. What the fuck?! My eyes widened. His narrowed dangerously. Then he sat up, looked around, found a blue Mini Cooper next to me, and all the while I was frantically abandoning the blade and picking up the lady I'd rescued and knocked out. I was in no condition to fight this guy up front. Not in anyone's fucking dreams.

Why did I assume I was gonna be lucky here?! Fucking Marvel Universe!

There was a gut-wrenching roar, and I grunted as the Mini crashed right on top of the car I was using as cover.

Project Arachas will return, next Monday.

This...

Um. Not sure. But it'll return when it returns.

Let me know what you think, and I'll see you guys later!