1963-06-03 - A Crime Demolished
Summary: In which Spider-Man, the Hulkling, and the Punisher, foil a plot.
Related: None
Theme Song: None
peter castelione teddy 


A little after the witching hour, the streets of Harlem are growing quiet as people seek shelter from the night. As usual, there's a little gang activity here and there, mostly punk kids squabbling over a small stretch of turf that amounts to a single playground in a run down apartment complex, but there's nothing to really draw immediate attention to what is just another night in New York City.

Peter sits on the ledge of one of the old brown stone apartments with his feet dangling over the edge, his mask rolled up off his face so that he can eat the sandwich packed for him by Aunt May. It was suppose to be his lunch, but between class and going out to swing his way across the city shortly after school, he hadn't had a chance to enjoy it until now.

What nobody knows, what nobody could possibly know, was that a group of men were arming themself for a late night smash and grab on a local mafia front. Shotguns held in dirty old trench coats, wearing ski-masks over their faces, a couple have pistols, as well. "This should be an easy score.. Joey 'By the numbers' says the guards are gonna be minding one of the warehouses, so we should only have a few mooks to deal with.. Kobi-" A large black fella smoking a cigarette in the driver seat of the van perks his head to look in the rear view, "You come around with the truck once we've got the doors open.. grab as many of the crates of cigarettes as we can, then we're outta here… everyone understand?"

He's here looking for trouble. Let's be honest about that, at least. He totally came here looking to find trouble, because that's what superheros DO. It's what Hulk would do. Teddy's dressed in a pair of baggy jeans, and a New YorK Yankees t-shirt that's several sizes too big for him. He hasn't bothered to disguise his looks, so he's got this clean cut, All-American look to him, and he walks with a cocky sort of stride that isn't afraid of anything. All the more likely to attract trouble, right? Right. He happens by more trouble then he counted on, but does not immediately notice. Of his superpowers, perception is not on of them. Brash bumbling into danger is more his style.
Teddy says, "Yankees have been in NYC since 1903. I looked it up to be sure."
Teddy says, "NOTE TO SELF: EDIT PREVIOUS COMMENT BEFORE POSTING"
The thing about criminals is that they were predictable, greedy ones even more so then the run of the mill thug. It was a lesson that Castelione had learned back in the summer of 35 and he'd never forgotten it, not to this very day. It'd taken some time and some money but he'd managed to track down one of the men connected with that little hit on his family. Down to this small time mob operation in Harlem.

Harlem was the kind of place the Punisher thrived in. A place where many of the lamps were busted or smashed the world locked into a seemingly black abyss as the deaths of a thousand prostitutes and victims lay strewn about through the years.

In the dark of an alley a familiar sound rings out. The sound of metal meeting face, a pair of thick custom fit brass knuckles wrapped around leather gloves making impact with the nose of a made man. The splatter of blood falling to the ground dripping down from the gaping wound. Yet when all was said and done, a simple twist of the neck was enough to send the man off this mortal coil.

Castel had gotten everything he needed from the man, leaving behind the empty carcass a something of a necessity that he'd come to except. Things like empathy and compassion had always come back to bite him in the back. There was no place for either on his crusade. Dressed in pure black he seemed like little more then a floating skull silently running closer and closer a walking arsenal in the night.

The group gearing up for a small scale war on a mostly undefended storefront were unaware of the encroaching menace that well soon find them in his crosshairs. They might see the young Teddy strolling up the street prominently sporting his Yankee shirt, but they've dark deeds in mind and they cannot possibly see the Spider-Man sitting on the ledge of the building a little ways down the street. Even if their inclination was to scan the rooftops.

Which it never is.

Peter finishes his sandwich and rolls his mask back into position over his face while he chews those final bites with a delighted grin on beneath. "Note to self: Thank Aunt May." A few hours late is better than never, right?

The back doors of the van burst open and six men spill out as it peels away to circle the block. The first amongst them levels a sawed off shotgun on a doorguard of the ratty old grocery store and blows him clean out of his shoes through the glass window with a double barreled blast of packed bird shot. He's not specifically dead, but at this range, it wont be long before he is… The others rush in with pistols swinging around.

They lack training, cohesion, or even combat experience.. but what they lack in, they make up for with brute force. "EVERYBODY ON THEIR FACES!" The group of well to do mobsters, roughly four, all start to go for guns in their suit jackets and drop behind cover in what is going to quickly devolve into a protracted gunfight in the middle of the street.

Pete perks his head up at the sound of explosive shotgun blasts and leaps off the ledge to swing towards the store with a frown replacing his earlier grin, but Teddy and Castel are there moments before he can come on the scene. "Oh great, so much for a quiet night in Harlem!"

Oh. Whoa. TROUBLE. Teddy positively grins, when he finally notices it. The change is immediate, from one step to the next he's a good foot taller then he was, and that loose Yankees shirt is now filled out quite tightly. With all the lights broken, his green skin isn't so obviously green, but it is an odd hue, and neither is the fact that his body is suddenly covered with these thick, hard plates made of what is ostensibly skin but bears a resemblance to that body part only residually. He looks over, and notices Spider-man, giving a blink, "You're Spider-Man!" With a very, very broad grin and a very deep voice, which considering his introduction is a little lame, doesn't really phase him at all. He points towards the mobsters, "Bad guys." he announces, his deep voice rumbling with both a question and a suggestion, somehow the implications rolling together into one. He looks to the Punisher, but he doesn't recognize this fellow, but does recognize someone that looks dangerous. "Bad guys?" This time its a question. Its not exactly his habit to sound like a dolt, but he wasn't expecting company. He's star-struck.
The Punisher moves fast his silent run bringing him right up to the scene in no time, he takes his time slowly climbing up a rusted ladder on the back of the building. He's moving fast as he can, getting right to the top of the rather stout building across the street in seemingly no time flat.

He's in the dark, and holds the element of surprise. Walking up to the edge of the gas station with care and attention he pulls something very large off of his back and sets it up into position. He's just brought an M2 Browning to a gun fight. Working quickly he begins pulling out a belt of munitions from his pack throwing it down onto the ground. With the care and attention only a soldier can provide he loads in the fresh belt.

And Spidy arrives just in time to see the .50 caliber rounds start flying at the poor boys down on ground level. Belting out 20 rounds per second as he just holds down the trigger leveling it down to make them dance. He doesn't care much for the city, this is a warning and a message to both parties, and he doesn't care who gets in the way.

"Oh, hey a fan!" Spidey says to Teddy down on the ground in the middle of chaos! Though, to that moment he's been smiling beneath his mask. Which all changes when the nerves in the back of his skull start tingling like they're ignited beneath an electric current.

"Get down!" He shouts, cutting out of his swing angled towards the window, to bowl into Teddy to tug him down and out of the way of the browning's automatic fire. The brunt of the landing, hopefully, absorbed by a spandex clad back sliding across asphalt.

Then he's up again, bouncing to his feet to right Teddy, adjusts his shirt, fix his collar. Spidey jumps to pat him on the head, turns mid air, and fires off a webline towards the window to slingshot himself inside. "Nice scales, but I think you'd look better in meuve! Be right back." He's trying to pretend like he didn't see that Teddy was green and covered in scales.

His body literally twists around the bullets fired from the gas station across the street, both feet planting right into the center of one thugs back to shove him into another pair so that all three are knocked out of the path of the bullets. "S'cuse me." He flips, grabs a cross beam rafter and gainer flip kicks another over a counter so that he's out of the way as well, "pardon me." Webbing fires at a gun, held in one of the suited mafiosos, to pull it wide. The bullet is headed towards the gas station, but has zero shot of actually hitting the Punisher. "You guys need to learn to play nice! What do you think this is a Korea?"

Teddy appreciates the thought of Spidey— Spider-Man! Hey!— trying to save him, and perhaps its surprise that gets him bowled down, because he wasn't expecting to be the one saved here. But then he's up again, shirt corrected, and he grins in a way that is all friendly and not at all afraid. And the not afraid bit carries through as he marches into the fray, not paying attention to the fact that someone's shooting bullets and is indiscriminate at which side gets hit. "They're -ridges-." he declares loudly to no one in particular, though probably Spidey, even though his eyes find the nearest goon that he can loom over. "Hey!" This is more of a growl as a bullet hits him in the arm and is ground to a halt on the skin-ridges, bellowing, "Do not shoot me, that will piss me off!" To whoever it is that's shoot him. He's not entirely clear at the moment, only that shooting is happening. He takes a moment to watch Spider-Man flip here and there with open admiration, then casually punches that bad guy nearest to him square in the chest. At full strength. That's probably not a pretty outcome for him. "I think we are forgetting who is on whose side!"
That lone bullet whizzes past the Punishers head flying through and slamming into the wall behind him. A small shower of debris falls down from the wall slamming down to the floor, or rather the front window of a rather beat up looking rust with a little car on it. A spiderweb pattern on the surface of the car already on cinder blocks.

As the punisher continues to fire he purposefully aims over the head of the green scaled man making sure not to hit direct the moment he realizes they aren't exactly trying to work with the mafia. Though he doesn't have to be happy about them saving lives. Hundreds of rounds whizz into the side of the building literally shredding the storefront and everything in it. This is about sending a message, and he's doing one hell of a job of that.

In the midst of the bloody brawl, Spidey can feel things getting well out of hand. Not because of his or even Teddy's involvement, but that of the gunmen from somewhere across the street who has positional vantage on the storefront like a shooting gallery. It really is a sniper's delight. Which doesn't stop the Spider from webbing men out of the way, dodging beneath swings of a shotgun, or bouncing around like a kangaroo as he flips and spins across the enclosed battlefield as if he's got pre-cognition.

Seconds before someone tries to pistol him, he dives into a roll between Teddy's massive legs, "Oh, well… ''ridges'' it is! Is that your name?" Spidey asks, ducking beneath a punch, webbing the arm that swung on him to the wall across the room, and jumping up to double drop kick the entangled mess of a masked goon through a case of three day old bananas, "Because that would be a… okay I got nothing."

"Excuse me!" He shouts out the broken window, "We're trying to carry on a civilized conversation in here? Do you mind?!" Presumably, that's for Punisher, but he still can't quite get a bead on where the browning is firing on them ''from''. Again ducking a milisecond before someone nearly takes his head off with a baseball bat.

Between the three of them, however, the group really isn't doing so hot… both sides. Punisher has killed four, Spidey has disarmed or disabled another four… and Teddy, well:

"Ridges." Teddy considers this philosophically, even has he stomps over towards a goon taking cover from the Punisher's shots, "I can see the appeal. But, no! I am the Hulkling! Hulk. Ling. Not ing. This has been a problem!" And he reaches down a large hand to grab the goon, ignoring a couple shots that get off and embed into the thick layers of pseudo-skin that enshroud his body, and then lifting bad guy with ease that one lifts a feathe. He very carefully bashing him in the head. Well. Relatively carefully. A jaw might have been broken but Teddy is pretty certain he didn't crack the skull or bounce the brains around. Too much. People survive massive concussions all the time, right? Disinterested when the guy is insensible, Teddy— ahem, the Hulkling— drops the guy and looks around. "Yes!" he shouts, "Spider-Man is right, this shooting is NOT HELPFUL towards the conv— hey! Stop that!" Another of the bad guys turns his gun on him, not particularly effective as before, but inside, the green giant is a fairly intimidating sight, even if Spidey is proving more effective. So, darkly, he stomps towards the newest foe.
That M2 fires and fires until the barrel starts to melt. Punisher grabs hold folding up the supports as he slings it back onto his backside. That rooftop machinegun sniping position now covered in shells from the m2's seemingly endless firing. Moving quickly he runs back to the rear side of the gas station before dropping down. His quick movements allowing him to blend back into the darkness vanishing from sight.
Castelione has disconnected.

The room is deadly silent without the cackling call of machinegun fire from across the street which leaves only Teddy and Spidey amidst a pile of unconscious, wounded, and a couple dead mafioso… For his part, Spidey is kneeling beside one of the dying men trying to plug a wound in his neck with a finger, "This got way out of hand…" He says in a mournful tone, Teddy effectively scaring the remaining men into submission less they be assaulted under his unstoppable fists.

The masked man turns towards the sound of sirens off in the distance with a little frown beneath his mask. Only now is it apparent that there are a number of gashes in his suit, beneath which, show lines of red where bullets grazed him in the constant spray of ammunition… but he hardly seems to notice his own wounds in favor of those on criminals. "Nobody needed to die…"

"I had intended to knock them insensible, but whoever that was that just opened fire— at first he didn't seem to care the least who he was aiming at— made it worse." The big green guy grunts, not seeming happy, looking over those who were wounded. He walks over to that first guy he punched, really hard, and winces, patting him gently on the head. That full on punch probably won't survive, which leaves some guilty looks on him, "Err, I hit him harder then I intended. The shooter nicked me and I was distracted." He's bleeding from several gun shots, but they're oozing, not like any injury that penetrated deeply. "Sorry, Spider-Man. I'll try to do better next time."

"Huh?" Spider-Man glances up when his name's called, turning so his big bug eyes are facing Teddy. His costume isn't fancy at all, not nearly as fancy as the pictures in the tabloids make him out to appear. It looks more like someone sewed together a couple of different diving suits with a makeshift spider pattern. It's far removed from it likely will be, but it serves its purpose just fine for now. The mask, well… that's more comical. "You did al- oh wow…" The goons chest is all broken looking, "Well… I guess you could use a lesson or two in pulling your punches."

The police are still a little bit away, maybe five or ten minutes, and already Spidey is looking a little antsy. "Hey, I don't want to be a party pooper, but I don't suppose you want to stick around and give a report? Make sure these guys get into custody?" He thumbs over his thin shoulder towards the blue and red lights flashing a little ways down the street, "They aren't fans…"

He's still green, and his body seeming covered by layers of armor that are somehow skin, but Teddy shrinks down into a more managable form as he moves to the exit and looks around, "No, no, sorry. I don't do /cops/. They just don't at all have a cool vibe, you know? Not fans, right. They ask way too many questions." So dense looking but human shaped, he tugs his shirt over his green ribbed form, and as he does so in the alley, wings just sort of sprout out of his back. They grow and spread until they're several feed wide, each longer then he is tall. He beats these wings, gusts of air him, "So like, its great seeing you, Spider-Man! I'd get your autograph cuz I've always wanted to meet you, but you know." A gesture to the sound of the sirens, and then those wings flap powerfully, and a huge gust of wind pushes swirls around the alley and pushes him up, then another gush, and another. That's flight, but there's nothing elegant about it. Its sheer wing size and strength. "Need anything and I'll come help!" he offers with a shout over the noise of his flight.

Spider-Man isn't dumb to the fact that Teddy is huge and green, but he's trying to take that in stride. Besides, he's just a teenager who got bit by a radioactive spider! So what's he gonna do? Be the pot calling Mr kettle black? Not tonight, not with so much carnage weighing on their conscience. Instead, he nods solumnly and looks to the horde of men laying in mixed groaning and silent husks about the store with a little frown. "Next time we'll do the autograph thing… and oh wow, so you got wings too?" Spidey does not have wings, he has webs. At least once he reloads the cartridge in his right wrist mounted launcher he will, anyways. "yeah, bad fibes.. they're not hip to our jive at all." Immediately he realizes how uncool that sounded coming out of his mouth, but doesn't stick around to be mocked! OH NO SIR! He webs away after a running start and three quick leaps rise him up to nearly the second floor in the final, third, great heave of his powerful legs. Then he's sailing away on the wings of a spidery angel!

Next time! There'll be a next time! And Spidey will give Teddy an autograph. The Spider-man might elegantly web off away, but with his heavy wings fighting through the air, Teddy rises and gains wind, and flies away. All pleased with himself. He was totally cool with Spider-Man. Yeah so he broke a guy more then he intended but whatever, right? In the sky, his wingspan lengthens and catches the air more strongly, and the Hulkling flies away, pleased with his day. This was totally cool.

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