It has never been this cold in New York before. Granted, Peter was drenched by a freezing fire hydrant a couple hours earlier, but still. He was pretty sure this might be the coldest New York winter in modern history.
After his GED class (bless his teacher, she went and got him a vending machine hot cocoa when she saw how soaked he was), Peter was looking forward to going home, having a long hot shower, and sleeping until work tomorrow. It sucked that he had to swing home in his damp suit, but it was his best option for speed. The cold had a bite to it, and he seemed to not be the only one to notice.
Seeing the City That Never Sleeps hide away from itself was disconcerting, to say the least. Even on a cold night like this, people used to be all over the place, bustling around the city as if it had the weather of the Bahamas. Those 5 years must've changed a lot, since Peter barely saw a soul on his swing home. Hopefully criminals and the Maggia took the hint and stayed in tonight too.
Shit. The Maggia. Peter groaned. He completely forgot.
When Peter busted up a bunch of lower level goons last night, he overheard them talking about the dons doing something in the upper west side tonight. It was really important, and the whole reason why a bunch of them got together last night. Mr. Foswell had been tracking it, and he texted an hour ago about the meet up, asking Peter to be there as his camera.
He seriously doubted some shitty weather would dissuade either the Maggia dons or the stubborn Foswell from the meet up. So, with only a healthy amount of hesitation and a few seconds to check that he had his camera, Spider-Man changed his trajectory and headed uptown.
Peter begged God, Thanos, or whoever was listening to stop the temperature from dropping anymore. It would make this mess of a day that much worse.
"Okay. Okay." Karen muttered as she looked over the files spread out all over the floor one more time. "Okay. I think I've got it figured out."
"What do you mean, Karen?" Matt asked, stopping his hands as they drifted over a sheet of braille.
"I mean," She sat criss-crossed in the center of the web. "I think I've got a good map of his movements made up. We can pin down what he's done so far, starting from when he woke up to his coma. And with a little bit of luck, we can go all the way up to now."
"And with even more luck, we can figure out what he's trying to do next." Matt slightly smiled. "Bravo, Ms. Page."
Karen wiggled her hair around. "I try my best. Now, both of you, c'mere…"
Matt stood from where he was and stepped over Karen's carefully mapped out trail of destruction. Foggy - who Karen banished to his office since he stepped on her work three fucking times - stepped into the main room, carefully walking the perimeter of the paper. When he and Matt reached each other, Karen did a satisfied nod and turned all of her attention back onto the case.
"So, obviously all three of us know what happened with his family, his first bout as the Punisher, and when he went to prison and Fisk got him out. We were all there the… the first night Elektra died?" She turned around, head tilted to the side. "Sorry, Matt. Is that the best way to say it?"
Foggy scoffed. "It's the only way to say it. Keep going."
"Right, so," She turned back around. "After that night, I saw him a few more times. For coffee and whatnot. Some times, he just needed a friend. Other times, he needed help." She picked up a piece of paper and briefly scanned through it. "As the Punisher, he was looking into an incident where a gang jumped a friend of his. Doing what he did best, Frank killed the gang. But it was all caught on video and lorded over him, so Frank came to me to help him find the guy with the footage.
"He called himself 'Micro'. Frank gave me a few clues to dig into, and after a bit of searching, I found him." She handed the paper to Foggy. "A former NSA cyber-security expert and family man, David Lieberman. He'd been fired from the NSA for going against orders, and I'm not totally sure why he wanted dirt on Frank. In any case, Frank went completely off the grid after that. He wouldn't return my texts, and I had no idea where he went until he got arrested again. And when I tried to visit him, he busted out and disappeared."
"And Lieberman?" Matt crossed his arms.
"Swore off what he was doing and got a job at a private security firm. And when his wife Blipped, he moved out of the city," Foggy answered for Karen. "So that lead's dead."
"Sure, that one. But I did see him again, just one more time. It was only a week or two after Father Lantom's funeral."
"And you didn't think to tell us this?" Foggy deadpanned.
Karen shrugged. "He asked me not to. He was under arrest, in the hospital, and said it brought back too many memories from The People v. Frank Castle." She picked up a folder and rifled through it, handing one of the last pages to Foggy. "Anyway, he and I spoke in the hospital, and one of his friends ran in, claiming that he was being targeted by hitmen. They broke out while myself and another woman went to the hospital morgue to figure out what happened and why he was arrested. Blah blah blah, cleared his name, blah blah blah, didn't see him again. I presume he kept up the Punisher stuff up until Thanos came to Earth."
"And he Blipped, right?" Foggy handed the papers back to her.
Karen took them and reorganized them back into her pile. "Right. So, for 5 years, he wasn't around to be a problem. But then he and you and everyone else Blipped back, and judging by this pretty blank record, crimes with his M.O. stopped until just before the Mysterio incident in London."
"Mysterio?" Matt cracked his knuckles. "Does Spider-Man have anything to do with this?"
Snow had begun to fall just as Spider-Man reached the address he scribbled down. It was quiet in a way he wasn't used to. For some reason he couldn't quite place, it felt eerily similar to what he thought the city during the Blip was like. Quiet, cold, with a hint of melancholy that drained the soul. In a more familiar sense, this was what it's been like the past few months for him.
Losing basically everything in his life right before the holiday season sucked ass. Even though he lost people on a constant basis - Mom and Dad and Ben and May and Tony - it was the first time Peter had to be alone during Hanukkah. 8 whole days of cold and silence, broken only by the occasional shift at FEAST. To his meager luck, though, Jameson took pity on him and had Peter over for Christmas dinner.
But for each day he was alone, he'd go out as Spider-Man and try to do some good to block out the darkness in his heart. Except, for the most part, people kept inside on those days, celebrating in the warmth with their loved ones. Oftentimes, it would just be Spider-Man, sitting there in the cold, watching through the window at the love and laughter.
Except this time, instead of watching a family exchange gifts and eat way too much through the windows, he would see a dark and decrepit warehouse where some of the most powerful men in New York's underworld were about to meet up.
The classic guitar strum of Back in Black started playing. Peter landed on a nearby seven-story building and pulled his phone out of his backpack.
"Hello?"
"Ah, Peter! Thank God!" Foswell chirped over the line. "Are you on your way to the meet-up site? I could really use the back-up."
"Don't worry, Mr. Foswell," Peter pinned the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he dug around his bag. "I found the perfect vantage point so I could get some good pics without getting in too much trouble." He found a secure, secluded part of the ledge to web his camera to. He began fiddling with the shutter settings.
"Perfect! You're a God send, kiddo!" There were some cracking noises on Foswell's end.
"Are you alright, sir?" Peter began searching the ground for Mr. Foswell, but nothing was happening.
"Don't worry, Pete. It's just some friendly fire between a couple Maggia lieutenants inside the warehouse."
Peter blinked. "You're… inside? How'd you get in there?"
Foswell chuckled lightly. "You keep your secrets, Pete, and I'll keep mine. I'll text you once the action starts. Keep your camera up!" The line clicked dead.
Somehow, despite every superhero he used to be acquainted with, it was Freddie Foswell who had the absolute worst self preservation known to man. Peter had to keep an extra eye out for him once the skirmish began. Speaking of which…
Spider-Man finished setting his camera and leapt from the ledge, flipping around and swinging himself to the building next to the warehouse. He bounded off that roof, quietly landing on the side of the old building and sticking himself next to a window. He took a quick peek inside; there were a few people standing defensively in the center, but no dons present, and no guns drawn anymore.
Peter settled in for the long haul. He's gotten pretty good at waiting these things out.
"Frank Castle is an ex-con with a ton of red in his ledger. How could he have possibly known that Mysterio was a fraud before the attack on London even went down?" Foggy threw his hands in the air, exasperated.
Again, Karen shrugged. "No clue."
"Maybe he developed a second sense for weird conspiracies?" Matt offered. He felt Foggy turn on him, but he played oblivious. He shrugged cluelessly, and Foggy rolled his eyes dramatically.
"Or…" Karen trailed off and got on her hands and knees, carefully crawling over to a pile of documents in the far corner of the room, barely hidden behind Peter's desk.
"Or?" Foggy took a step forward, but quickly retreated once Karen let out a strangled snarl once he got too close to the file. He held his hands up, palms towards her. "Karen, you can't just start a sentence and not finish it. Not in this kind of high-stakes situation."
"Just give me a second, Foggy!" She yelled before turning all of her focus on her papers.
Matt knelt down and drifted a hand a few inches over the nearest papers. He took a deep breath and poured all of his enhanced senses into his fingertips.
"Find anything good there, Padawan?" Foggy quietly joked.
Matt snorted. "Foggy, if anyone is a Padawan here, it's you. Do you honestly think you could find anything with this technique?"
Foggy squared his shoulders and stepped in line with Matt. "That a challenge, Murdock?"
"Only if you think you can handle it, Nelson." Matt smirked as Foggy knelt down.
Foggy mirrored Matt's actions, putting his hand just over the pile and closing his eyes. He slowly waved it through the air over their paper trail. Matt tried to continue with his own search, but with Foggy poorly mimicking him, it was hard to focus. He had to stop himself from laughing.
"That's right, Nelson. Just use the Force." Foggy whispered to himself, smiling. Finally, Matt dropped his hand and laughed a bit. Foggy cracked open an eye and laughed too. He lost his balance and fell right on his ass. Matt laughed a little harder.
"Whenever you guys are ready to act like adults, just let me know." Karen deadpanned. She was sitting back in the center of the circle, a packet resting on top of her knees. "No no, please. Don't let me stop you." She said sarcastically once they both looked at her.
Matt gulped. "Sorry, Karen." He sat down next to Foggy, who was dusting himself off. "Did you find anything?"
She breathed out harshly, but her heartbeat slowed down as she let that frustration go. "Before you two started dicking around, I managed to locate some financial records linked right to Quentin Beck's last business venture before his death."
"We have that?" Foggy asked, bewildered.
"I found it during the original case of The People v. Spider-Man, but the defense rebuked it. 'Multiversal cross-contamination' or some made up bullshit like that. But I held onto it, just in case it came in handy," She tossed the packet to Foggy, who began looking through it. Matt focused on Karen. "He claimed to work for a shell-corp called 'Platinum Lions', a research institution for cutting edge tech. But when I was researching it, I found nothing on them even though Beck and his associate's claimed the institution to be at the front of their field."
"That sounds fake." Matt huffed.
"That's cause it is. Turns out, Platinum Lions is a fake business, a front for Beck and his co-conspirators to plan the attack on London and build all their equipment, fully funded by one Silvio Manfredi."
"Silvio Manfredi? Silvermane?" Foggy leaned forward. "That Maggia boss who's had his thumb up the ass of Hell's Kitchen for the past 20 years?"
Karen blinked. "Weird way to phrase it, but yeah. That Silvio Manfredi. I'm not sure why, but he funded Mysterio. Best guess, he wanted Spider-Man out of the picture, so he gave someone who hated him and Tony Stark the tools to do it."
"So how does Castle fit into all of this?" Matt rested his chin on his folded hands.
"Like you said, he has a weird sense for conspiracies, and the biggest conspiracy in the city right now is the Maggia. Have you listened to that expose from this morning's Bugle yet?" She asked as she picked up her phone. "I'm pretty positive that somehow, Frank figured Manfredi out right before Mysterio happened, and he's been trying to take out the people who put that in place."
"But why get involved in a situation that he has nothing to do with?" Foggy tossed the packet back to Karen.
Matt shrugged and turned in the direction of his duffel bag. His Daredevil suit was poking out, ren horns all but calling his name. "Maybe he was more involved than we thought." He said wistfully as he stood up and walked into his own office.
It's been… what? 20 minutes? 30? More?
Either way, this got boring fast. And with him trying to be stealthy, Peter couldn't exactly get out his phone and play sudoku or work on homework. Until everything began, he had to wait here quietly, not let anyone know a superhero was waiting to arrest everyone.
He hoped Mr. Foswell was alright. Sure, Peter got himself into his fair share of trouble. But he was enhanced. He could run up walls and use his super strength and kick serious ass. As far as he knew, Foswell was just a dude with an advantageous curiosity. He couldn't exactly run from these situations the same way Peter could. Hopefully, at the very least, he had some self defense training.
Spider-Man checked through the window again. Literally nothing changed, though he had spotted the reporter on the other side of the room. He blended in well enough that if Peter didn't know him personally, he'd think he was just some other Maggia goon. That's probably how he got through stuff like this.
His spider sense began humming quietly. It was a lot like that feeling he got around Matt at the office, so Peter tried to ignore it. It probably just meant that someone with a decent amount of combat training was nearby, and given present company, it made sense.
But then it got a little stronger. It went from softly singing him a warning to blaring it in his head like he was standing next to the speaker at a metal concert. Peter looked around somewhat frantically before spotting a sniper setting up on the roof across the street.
It made sense that one of the Maggia families would set up this kind of offense before a big meet-up. He pulled out his phone and sent a quick warning to Foswell before crawling a little deeper into the shadows and jumping across the alley. It'd be best if he took out the sniper first before Spider-Man headed into the building. He wanted to keep as many people alive as he could. Hopefully, it would be everybody.
Instead of using his webshooters, Peter crawled around to the front of the building and flipped off, using a streetlight to propel himself to the building across, the one his camera was sitting on top of. He crawled up to the top and peered over the ledge, examining the sniper as he set up his weapon.
It was an arsenal. Along with the actual rifle, he had at least three visible handguns, a few hundred rounds, a varied assortment of knives, and a missile launcher. Why would someone bring one of those things to a place his boss would be in?
Peter could figure that out later. This guy was, by far, the most dangerous person present, and he had to neutralize him as quickly as possible. He took a few steps back before running and leaping off the building. He shot some goopy web traps at the missile launcher, the duffel bag full of rounds, and the sniper rifle. Despite his notorious luck, Peter managed to contain all of them, leaving only the man, his hand guns, and his many, many knives. This was still going to be really tough to handle.
"Hey!" Spider-Man did a couple flips before loudly landing on the roof behind the man. He did the classic superhero kneel and sneered at the sniper. "Nice toys! But I think you'll find that I'd rather play with my own!" He quipped as he aimed his webshooters. He was about to shoot when the man turned around. Peter stopped, his blood running cold.
The man with the sniper rifle, on the roof across from the Maggia meet-up was Frank Castle.
It was the Punisher.