Post by Rift on May 13, 2021 13:10:12 GMT -7
Just Before Kaine's return to NYC
Crouched atop a building near the bus terminal, Kaine Parker scanned the streets, looking for any sign of trouble. Given the number of times someone had taken a shot at collecting the price on his head in recent days he expected to find an assassin or two lurking in the crowds below. Most hired guns were not brazen enough to try and do a hit in broad daylight let alone with plenty of witnesses, but the Assassins Guild were not most killers. The best of the best, each with abilities well beyond those of normal human beings, each wanting to impress leadership by being the one to take down Kaine. The fact he had insulted the Guild was bad enough, but now that someone had given them them the promise of a huge payday meant they were eager to exact revenge and make bank for doing it. Just who it was financing the Guild's renewed interest in his termination was as of yet a mystery.
Unfortunately if he was ever going to have peace he was going to have to return to NYC, the furthest he'd been able to track the money trail. It was not a place he ever wanted to revisit. The Big Apple was a place filled with bad memories. It was where Ben Reilly, the first and far better man to be called the Scarlet Spider died. It was where he had been created by Miles Warren, the mad scientist known as the Jackal. And it was where his template, Peter Parker the Amazing Spider-Man lived. That was to say nothing of the unfinished business he'd left behind, business that had earned him the ire of several outside his typical circle including the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.
All of that though meant little in the grand scheme of things. What he wanted and what was seldom matched. His new life as Houston's would be costumed vigilante was at risk as long as whoever put the hit on him remained above ground. Just as he'd been ready to believe he'd deserved a second chance it was at risk of being torn away. So he was going to return to the place of his creation, slip past his do-gooder template and all the other spandex wearing nutcases that lived there, put the money man six feet under, and be back in Texas before the week was out.
Who knows, maybe I'll finally stick with my initial plan of toes in the sand and drink in hand on the shores of Mexico. But either way this has to be done, he thought.
If he had any doubts about returning to the life of a killer they vanished when he noticed a man with dreadlocks across the way, flashing a fake badge to the woman selling bus tickets. He recognized him as one of the Guild's best marksmen just as he recognized the small girl who looked like she stepped out of an Asian ghost movie pretending to wait on someone's bus. Just as he'd thought the Guild had all exits out of town covered.
Don't need Peter's Spider Sense to know how dangerous this is. I've spent enough of my life being hunted. By Jackal, by Ben, and the law. I'm not spending the rest of it running.
A short time later...
The assassins remained at the terminal, checking in with the people they had covering exits and looking at security feeds. They had no sign of Kaine, never saw him board a bus or even arrive. Then again they also hadn't checked under the vehicles or else they might have noticed the slight shimmering of displaced light where the second Scarlet Spider clung to the bottom of a bus, survival and murder on his mind...
Crouched atop a building near the bus terminal, Kaine Parker scanned the streets, looking for any sign of trouble. Given the number of times someone had taken a shot at collecting the price on his head in recent days he expected to find an assassin or two lurking in the crowds below. Most hired guns were not brazen enough to try and do a hit in broad daylight let alone with plenty of witnesses, but the Assassins Guild were not most killers. The best of the best, each with abilities well beyond those of normal human beings, each wanting to impress leadership by being the one to take down Kaine. The fact he had insulted the Guild was bad enough, but now that someone had given them them the promise of a huge payday meant they were eager to exact revenge and make bank for doing it. Just who it was financing the Guild's renewed interest in his termination was as of yet a mystery.
Unfortunately if he was ever going to have peace he was going to have to return to NYC, the furthest he'd been able to track the money trail. It was not a place he ever wanted to revisit. The Big Apple was a place filled with bad memories. It was where Ben Reilly, the first and far better man to be called the Scarlet Spider died. It was where he had been created by Miles Warren, the mad scientist known as the Jackal. And it was where his template, Peter Parker the Amazing Spider-Man lived. That was to say nothing of the unfinished business he'd left behind, business that had earned him the ire of several outside his typical circle including the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.
All of that though meant little in the grand scheme of things. What he wanted and what was seldom matched. His new life as Houston's would be costumed vigilante was at risk as long as whoever put the hit on him remained above ground. Just as he'd been ready to believe he'd deserved a second chance it was at risk of being torn away. So he was going to return to the place of his creation, slip past his do-gooder template and all the other spandex wearing nutcases that lived there, put the money man six feet under, and be back in Texas before the week was out.
Who knows, maybe I'll finally stick with my initial plan of toes in the sand and drink in hand on the shores of Mexico. But either way this has to be done, he thought.
If he had any doubts about returning to the life of a killer they vanished when he noticed a man with dreadlocks across the way, flashing a fake badge to the woman selling bus tickets. He recognized him as one of the Guild's best marksmen just as he recognized the small girl who looked like she stepped out of an Asian ghost movie pretending to wait on someone's bus. Just as he'd thought the Guild had all exits out of town covered.
Don't need Peter's Spider Sense to know how dangerous this is. I've spent enough of my life being hunted. By Jackal, by Ben, and the law. I'm not spending the rest of it running.
A short time later...
The assassins remained at the terminal, checking in with the people they had covering exits and looking at security feeds. They had no sign of Kaine, never saw him board a bus or even arrive. Then again they also hadn't checked under the vehicles or else they might have noticed the slight shimmering of displaced light where the second Scarlet Spider clung to the bottom of a bus, survival and murder on his mind...
