Tuesday, January 30th, 2001
Fisk Tower, Manhattan Island, New York
Everything seemed entirely frozen, as I tried to comprehend the abject nightmare of a scenario that I'd found myself in…. For about a second. And then I was on autopilot. My arms swung up, gauntlets crackling with lighting as my capacitors charged to full. "HOW ABOUT WE DON'T!"
My voice was a roar, and the bolts flew. If it had just been a single pair of electric blasts, Kasady would have already dodged it. Hel, he started to twist and spin unnaturally less than a second before I fired… but these weren't just momentary blasts. A Cat 'o Nine-Tails of lightning whipped out from both my gauntlets, swiping at the crazed killer from both sides. He tried to go from a spin into a leap, but it was too late, and then Carnage was screaming as the bolts latched onto him like striking serpents. And in that moment, the previously lazily shifting and writhing surface of his Symbiote went crazy.
Smaller tendrils lashed out and flailed at the air from the much more quickly shifting surface of the living costume… reaching out with tiny pseudopod fingers to clench and grasp at the air in the same way that Kasady's normal hands were. And then there was the screaming. It was part scream, part laugh… like he was enjoying the pain. "AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA- sSSSUUUCHhh Aa BbBUMMERrR dDUUDEe! KYAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!"
One of his hands grew and flowed into the jittery, barely distinct form of an axe, which he launched at me. It hit square in the Mark IV's chest… and didn't even leave a dent. What it did do, however, was knock me back. Unfortunately for Cletus, I didn't let up, and he was only given a moment's reprieve before I lashed at him with lightning again. But this time, Herman charged forwards, raising up his gauntlets. "I ain't even got a one-liner for you, Jackass. That's Spider-Man's thing."
Herman's voice was cold. I hadn't ever heard him cut loose before now, what with the low energy of all of our jobs… but this was flat out murderous. And I couldn't exactly blame him. I'd lost friends during Maximum Carnage. Both to the merry band of Murderhobos themselves, and to the riots that Shriek had conjured up with her mind-warping soundwaves. Kasady had just a moment to stare at the Shocker before he was blasted by the twin roar of the shock-gauntlets. His blank white eyes went from widened… to the consistency of a partially-cooked eggwhite as patches of Cletus' skin were visible underneath. "Oh shi-"
And then, the building rumbled, as Aleksei charged. His battlesuit was fully active, face now entirely covered by a plate of clear material. He shouted something very loudly in Russian, before grabbing onto Kasady's face and slamming him into the ground head first. "BOTH OF YOU KEEP FIRING! I CAN TAKE LITTLE BIT OF LIGHTNING AND MANY SHOCKWAVE! HE CANNOT!" And without pausing, he began to beat on Kasady, hitting him with fists bigger than bowling balls, each blow shaking the entire room and making Carnage flail like a ragdoll.
Aleksei's roar was audible even through the pure noise of Herman's gauntlets, and the crackle of my lightning as neither of us wasted any time renewing our assault on the maniac mass murderer. Thankfully, the regular security had already started to shepherd the civilians(and disguised supervillains) out of the room, so there was much less chance of Cletus actually managing to grab anyone. Not that he didn't try. Even despite our onslaught, he somehow managed to slip free, and skittered along the ground on all fours towards the last few fleeing civilians… but Herman planted himself squarely in Carnage's path.
I was already firing my boot jets, and Aleksei had shifted from punching the ground to charging once more… but we would probably be too late and Kasady was already in melee range with Herman.
Only for the psycho to suddenly be hit squarely in the face with absolute Karma, as the moment his claws were about to make contact, the air just an inch off from Herman's suit rippled… before exploding outwards, like Cletus had decided to punch the reactive armor of a tank. The rebound was so powerful that the Symbiote was blasted clean off of Kasady's right arm, and the man himself was sent flying across the room, partially splattering a lot more of the mass of the Symbiote against the big arch window at the back. Kasady twitched, trying to pull himself free… only for me and Aleksei to spin around and charge him simultaneously. Despite my boots going full blast, Aleksei was easily keeping stride with me so that we hit Carnage simultaneously.
Fun fact about the Crimson Dynamo Mark IV. It's got absurdly big shoulder pads, for a very specific reason. And that reason is so that the pilot has the ability to ram Iron Man head on. Cletus Kasady was many things. As durable as a suit of Iron Man Armor… he was not. And especially not when he was being hit at over a hundred miles per hour by an angry Rhino Man and someone in power armor.
The window, obviously, broke first, and then all three of us were in freefall. Well, Aleksei and Cletus were. The gyroscopes and angled thrusters in my suit meant that I caught myself mid air… and realigned so that I had both fists pointed directly at Kasady's chest. "EXPRESS TRIP TO THE GROUND FLOOR YOU MOTHERFUCKER! THIS IS FOR MARTY! AND KELLY! AND DAVID! AND VERONICA!"
My fists crackled with raw, elemental lightning as I slammed them both square into Carnage, making him scream again as we plummeted even faster towards the street. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You're kKilling my Vibes Dude! I THINK iMMA KILL'YA FOR THAT!"
And then we both hit the street, the pavement cratering from the impact. Cletus tried to swipe at me, and then realized that his arm wasn't working properly. It flopped bonelessly at the elbow and shoulder, obviously dislocated. "Wh-wha? Why am I not healing fast enough? What have you done to me?"
Behind my faceplate, I grinned. "Carbonadium Matrix Alloy. Mildly radioactive. Completely harmless if you don't have a superhuman healing factor."
And then I started to beat down on him. My fists crackled with electricity, and each blow made Kasady actually genuinely scream this time. Over and over and over, until his working arm shifted into a hammer and managed to batter me off of him, knocking me into a nearby parked car.
"KkkkkkKkkkKILL YOU YOU FUCKKkkkKkING BITCH!" Kasady roared, standing up and shifting his hand into a wickedly serrated sword. "Gunna… ffffucking gut you…".
Herman landed silently next to him, dusted off his still mostly mint condition fancy suit… and decked Carnage in the face with a sound like a full battery of battleship guns laying down a broadside.
Kasady stumbled back… and bumped directly into Aleksei. "Sh-shit…. Dudes, can we talk this over… Maybe go off and kill a few people together? Blow off some steam?"
"Step away from my Boss." Aleksei rumbled… and then grabbed Cletus' lone functional arm… before wrenching it a full 360 degrees with a horrible sliding crunching snap. Kasady shrieked with agony… before the Symbiote went into overdrive. Dozens of tendrils exploded out of the shoulders of his living costume, wrapping around his busted limbs and getting them moving again. Kasady let out a frankly demonic howl of pain and rage, before hitting Aleksei with a literal double hammer blow that sent the larger man stumbling. Cletus leapt on him like a rabid animal, trying to tear into his suit even as Herman blasted the madman unrelentingly with his gauntlets… at least, until Kasady threw a blade at Herman's feet, the sudden detonation of his protective field sending him up on an arc to crash down into a nearby bus.
Things… weren't looking great, even as I got back to my feet and raced over to where Aleksei and Kasady were madly grappling, trying to blast Carnage with more lightning that only seemed to make him latch on harder…
And then I heard it. My audio input was fairly well tuned. It wasn't very good for isolating specific sounds, but even still, I could hear the noise from a block away. And it was getting closer.
Thwip.
Thwip.
Thwip.
I knew that sound. Every New Yorker did. Everyone had heard it at one point or another. Hell, this wasn't even the first time I'd heard it this month. But it was the context that mattered. So I put my back into my grip on Kasady, uncaring of the sharp tendrils trying ineffectually to slice through my armor. The servos and hydraulics contracted, pitting mechanical force up against liquid pseudo-muscle. And in the end, Cletus' weakened arms were what gave out first. He let go of Aleksei, leaving the big guy pretty much unscathed, and was now flailing in my grasp, shrieking his head off. I didn't give him any time to get a line off before I Tossed him into the air. "YO SPIDEY! CATCH!"
Kasady flailed in mid-air, trying to launch a web line to save himself… but it was too late for him. A blur of red and blue swung in from between two skyscrapers, kicking Carnage in the stomach at full speed. "Hey Cletus! You're up late. What's wrong? Someone making sure you go Murder-Cold Turkey?"
"AAAARGH. Shut the fuck up Spider-dude! You're harshing my melody even worse than these bozos." Kasady growled, arms popping and cracking as he stood from where Spidey had kicked him, and more tendrils wrapped around his limbs to support and reinforce them. "You've RUINED EVERYTHING! I WAS GONNA HAVE A GREAT NIGHT! Y'know, just murder a bunch of shitty bigwigs, make gore-angels in the viscera while playing heavy metal. It woulda been a great fucking time! But noooooo. No. Some fucking D-Lister jackasses gotta ruin my fun, and now YOU'RE HERE! SO DO ME A SOLID, AND JUST DIIIIIIIEAIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-"
Before he could actually do anything with the hands that had shifted into axes, Cletus let out a screech of pain as Aleksei rammed his horn into his back. While it didn't pierce the suit, it still sent him flying directly into Shocker's fist. "Oh hey! You guys are here. Heard you went legit Shocker, Rhino. How's that going?"
Spidey kicked Kasady in the face, while Aleksei hit him in the back of his head with his elbow. "Is paying quite well! And I do not have to worry about face being punched by you on the regular. My dentist is coming down with case of depression! HAHA!" Aleksei was grinning behind the clear plate covering his face. It was almost like Spider-Man's presence had ratcheted the tension down several notches.
"Oh, it's been great so far. I'm actually ahead on my rent for once." Herman chuckled, body-blocking another one of Cletus' axe-strikes, his Shock-Field blasting the maniac back… and this time letting me grapple onto him with both hands sparking. Cletus screamed as lightning ran across his body while Herman blasted him with shockwaves.
"Oh hey! That's pretty great. Hey Cletus! Guess what?" Spidey waved at Cletus, who was currently sputtering and spitting up Symbiote fluid as his living costume was falling more and more into tatters.
"FffffffFFFFFFFFFUUUuuuucKKKKKKkkkkk Yhhhhhuuuuuuuu…." Cletus looked up… and realized that Spider-Man had pulled an old-school boombox out from behind his back. His eyes went all egg-whitey again. "Shit."
"Courtesy of the Hypno-Hustler. I've made some modifications juuust for you. Hey Silver Centurion, got a request?" I blinked, and then realized that Spidey was talking to me. But at the final question, a grin formed under my helmet. The final stroke.
"Hey Spider-Man. Play Freebird." Kasady let out a scream of abject, total horror, as Spidey pressed a button on the boombox… and one of the greatest guitar solos in history, which happened to be one of Cletus Kasady's favorite songs hit him as physical force. The soundwaves that beat down on Kasady made the Carnage Symbiote scream and lash out at the air… but he wasn't beaten down enough. Because god-damn, if anything admirable could be said about Carnage, it was that he was a fucking cockroach. At least, until Herman let out a frustrated shout… and turned his gauntlets up to maximum settings, and then a click beyond. The resulting noise and shockwave joined with the equally loud riff of Freebird… and also kicked up all the dust on the street, blanketing everything in smoke.
There was silence, as the smoke and dust settled, the only sounds being some car alarms that had been set off by the blast… and the sputtering crack of Herman's gauntlets exploding from the overcharging he'd just done. "Did we get-"
I couldn't finish what I was saying, before Aleksei held up his hand and shook his head. "Do not finish. Is bad luck."
"That's fair." I replied as the smoke cleared fully, revealing Cletus Kasady's unconscious body, laying in a crater in his boxers. "Oh GODS ABOVE! I did NOT need to see that."
I recoiled, and turned away from him, even as Spidey emptied all of his web cartridges to wrap Kasady in a full cocoon. "Ew! Ew! Ew! Ewwwwwwww!"
Despite the danger we'd just been in, despite everything, I could hear Aleksei, Herman, and Spider-Man laughing.
"Well, at very least, we know he is not your type! You are better than creepy fangirls!" Aleksei chuckled.
"Shut! SHUT! He's so pallid and noodly and ICK!" I waved in their direction with mock anger as I started to hear sirens off in the distance. Thank the gods, this was over.
"Obviously, you must like big strong men better. I have cousin in New Jersey who is champion weightlifter, I can introduce you." We were all laughing when the cops finally arrived.
Kasady ended up being carted off in a secure ambulance belonging to the Ravencroft Institute by armed guards. Did I regret not doing the thing that a lot of people wanted to do, and taken his head off while he was unconscious? I was ashamed to admit to myself… that I did. Well, ashamed wasn't quite the right word for it.
I wanted to kill Kasady. It wasn't just because he was a malignant tumor in the comics, the Me from this world... I'd known no less than four people, all of them friends, who that psychopath had butchered, who had died horribly during... during what my original world had called Maximum Carnage. I felt… disconnected from the memories much more so than any of my others. Seemingly, the me of this world had disassociated from them to a degree.
Marty Tellerman, this version of me's first boyfriend. Spine ripped out during Carnage's attack on a museum that Marty's class had been on a field trip to.
Veronica Evans, a friend from back when we were kids. Beaten to death during one of the riots that Shriek whipped up.
David Michaels, another childhood friend. Rotted into a corpse by Carrion.
Kelly Vernon, a girl that I'd had a crush on, the first girl this version of me had ever had a crush on. Burned to death by Demogoblin.
I wanted to kill him. I wanted to put him in the fucking ground. But also… I didn't. I knew it wouldn't accomplish anything. Cletus would be back. He was one of the ones who always came back. It might put him down for a few years, but he always came back. Like a bad, cursed fucking penny.
Some doomsday cult would want him for their antichrist, some dark god of the ancient abyss would want to use him as a pawn to reawaken. It was always something. Thus… well, better he be in prison or an asylum, and I'd be able to know near immediately when he'd gotten out…. Than him being dead, with nobody knowing when he came back. And besides. I didn't want to be weighed down by the paranoia that came with trying to put Carnage down for good.
These dark, intrusive thoughts were clouding my mind as I was sitting on a bench near where Aleksei and Herman were giving statements to the police, helmet popped open. I'd already given my own statement, but Aleksei liked to talk, and Herman was trying to keep him in line. I was feeling a deep sense of depression and exhaustion worse than anything I'd felt since my arrival in this world. And then someone sat down next to me.
"You alright?" Spider-Man asked. I realized that I was crying.
"No. No I'm not."
"I kind of figured." Spider-Man… no, Peter Parker's voice was warm, and calm, and friendly. It was the voice of a man who has fought a great many battles, and come through all of them… not quite entirely unscathed. Battered, but victorious. "You lost someone didn't you. To one of his rampages?"
I nodded, removing my gauntlet so I could properly wipe my eyes. "The Week of Hell. Eight years back. Boyfriend… and some other friends."
Peter put an arm on my shoulder. "You wanted to kill him, didn't you?"
I just nodded again.
"I'm glad you didn't." He sighed. "He's not worth it. He's not worth anything. Don't let it eat away at you."
I could tell that he was smiling behind his mask. "Someone really important to me once told me, 'With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility'. Sometimes it's a gift. Sometimes it's a burden. It's up to you to decide. And honestly? With everything you've done in this short time? You should be proud. Keep up the good work."
I was smiling now. I couldn't help it. This had gone from one of the absolute worst days… to one of the absolute best. Spider-Man got up, preparing to swing off… but I called out first. "Wait!"
He turned back to me. "Huh?"
I got up, and firmly placed a card in his hand. "If things ever get too rough for you… just give me a call."
Spider-Man stared at the card for a moment, with the Maverick Solutions name, address, and number printed neatly on the front. "Thanks." Then, with another thwip, he swung away, leaving me feeling a lot better once again.
Despite all of the chaos and devastation, and the three people who ended up dead due to Carnage's entrance from the ceiling… We were still getting paid. As it happened, people like Carnage were a bit of an exception to a lot of rules. When a major league psycho like him shows up… it was expected that people would die. In fact, it was expected that a lot more people would die. Cletus Kasady just showing up usually had a body count well into the double digits.
Three people dying was horrible… but it could have also been so much worse. Richard Fisk thanked us for our brave work protecting the guests, and for taking down a madman like Carnage. He didn't mention Spider-Man at all. Nobody did. Not a lot of people in these sorts of circles liked mentioning Spider-Man.
I got more than a few thanks from other people who'd been at the Gala, passed around a few more cards, and got some in return. Not all of them came immediately either.
After we finally left Fisk Tower, the three of us immediately headed to the Bar With No Name, and announced the mostly successful job. Almost everyone bought us drinks. As it happened, and as I should probably have expected, the news coverage on Cletus' attack had been fairly thorough… and nobody in the Bar liked Carnage. As a matter of fact, pretty much everyone was scared shitless of the man. After all, Cletus Kasady had a body-count well exceeding ten thousand… that most people knew of. That the public knew of.
Fred Myers, better known as The Boomerang, noted to me that Kasady probably had killed well over a hundred thousand people with his bare hands(and Symbiote). And I believed him as well. Kasady was a monster in nearly all respects.
But, for now, he was battered, broken, and locked up. And tomorrow I was going to finish sorting out pay details. All of the employees of Maverick Solutions were now several million dollars richer… and that wasn't even getting into the amount that I had to spend on the business itself. It was going to be the first day of us fully stepping out of the various shadows cast over us. We had money. A lot of money. We'd just saved around two-hundred people from Carnage! We'd beaten the tar out of Carnage!
And best of all, I'd been given The Speech. The one that every kid who grew up with any version of Spider-Man, be it Paul Soles, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Yuri Lowenthal, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland, or any of the other various Spider-Men knew that speech. The Uncle Ben Speech, even though it hadn't originally been told by Ben Parker. It was the thought that counted, and it just felt so… right. It didn't matter that sometimes Peter Parker was slightly hypocritical about the whole "Great Power, Great Responsibility" thing, he always pulled through in the end.
It filled me with such a childish sense of glee that it had entirely blasted away all my earlier negative feelings and larval depressive slump, leaving just hopeful optimism in it's place. I felt absurdly happy, and on top of that I had free whiskey!
Life was good, and no matter what happened in the future, I had this victory to look back on happily. And I could just tell, that this wasn't going to be one of those comic runs. Garth Ennis and Mark Millar can lick a fucking goat.
