Chapter 41

Chapter 41

The Fastest Man Alive

Edited by: Joe Lawyer

 

 

Harlem

Luke Cage

Ladies Man, Power Man, Handyman, Bar Owner.

Ex-Police Officer, Ex-Soldier.

Luke looked down at his phone, deep in thought, as he sat in the barber chair, contemplating just what he was going to do with the information Jessica had just given him. Looking up, he noticed Pop was finishing up with his last young customer of the day. Debra, the boy’s mom, was dressed as delectable as ever and continued to send flirty looks his way. Luke remembered the last time he had walked them home, down the block. It ended with her son being plopped in front of the TV with Debra’s legs wrapped tightly around his waist as he held her up in the air and plowed her hard, since the woman’s bed springs liked to creak.

“Alright, young blood, you been moping long enough tonight,” Bobby called out from his location near the window. Bobby Fisher was a longtime friend of Pops, but his day job was being the neighbourhood’s tax man, the local pseudo accountant who helped people and local businesses with their tax questions and filings. Right now, though, Bobby was just another patron and longtime friend of Pops, a man that was known to give great advice when you just didn’t know what to do. That wisdom and advice was something that Luke would surely need this night.

Luke watched Pops close the shop’s door then turn over the sign, from open to closed, before locking that same door. Before Luke knew it Pops had turned around and took a seat directly across from him.

“Alright, let’s hear what’s going down,” Pop rumbled as he leaned forward in his seat, ready to dole out wisdom. Bobby had already put away his chess set and had also taken a seat closer to Luke’s location.

Luke frowned for a moment as he tried to order his thoughts.

“Jessica was on a missing girl case. She found the girl, but what she found wasn’t pleasant,” Luke began as he mulled over the rest of the words.

“Okay, Jess found the girl and is getting her looked at I hope?” Pops replied as he listened, with Bobby nodding along with him.

“Yeah… Jess brought in some of the best doctors around,” Luke replied. His hand had unconsciously crushed the hand rest of the chair he was sitting in, when he thought about the state that girl was found in. The damage to her body could be healed in time, but the mind was a very different matter.

“Then what’s the issue? The girl’s been saved,” Bobby asked, obviously trying to get to the point.

“Jess told me that there were a few other girls there, ones that she was unable to get out,” Luke replied as he looked between both older gentlemen. “I want to go there before they can get the girls moved somewhere else, but I don’t know if I should or not.”

“Then go be POWERMAN,” Pops replied instantly, his mouth set in a thin line.

“As long as I have known you Luke, I have never seen you suffer from such indecision, especially in a situation like this,” Bobby started, now leaning forward in his seat. “You have the power to save these girls, so go save them. No need to be here worrying about what-ifs with us old people. Life’s too short for regrets like that.”

“Exactly what Bobby said Luke. Remember that you have people that will cover for you,” Pops reminded him with a nod of his head. “It’s time you suited up, POWERMAN.”

“And give that cute detective that you used to date a call,” Bobby added, as he placed a hand on his chin. “I bet whoever the guys that are behind this must be wanted by someone and Misty would want to take them down.”

“Are you saying that she will help me if I gave her a way to bring these guys down?” Luke asked, suddenly looking very interested by the idea Bobby was sharing.

“Of course, young blood. It’s not like you have a van to take the girls you rescue away. Hell, I bet you’re about to find yourself a drug den, or a stash house,” Bobby supplied as he started to take his phone out of his pocket.

“Don’t call her with your real phone, Bobby, she will know who is calling. Let me get to one of the pay phones by the corner bodega,” Pops admonished, as he got up from his seat. Pops was halfway to the door before Luke called for him to stop.

Luke had gotten up and gone to the back of the barber shop where they had the fridge that held snacks and juice for the little kids. The back of the shop also held a small table and a pullout couch that turns into a bed for any of the kids that couldn’t go home because they had abusive parents or were drug addicts that would routinely forget to feed them. Yeah, Pops was a man that took care of the kids that lived in the neighborhood, no matter the situation, and he was loved for it.

Putting all those thoughts out of his mind, Luke pulled the minifridge out from where it was located while also bringing over a small ladder for him to stand on. With the ladder under him Luke reached up and moved the ceiling panel that was above the fridge. With the panel moved Luke pulled down a briefcase that he was really hoping would not have been needed for a long, long time, if ever. Life often had other plans, it seems. With the fridge placed back in its normal spot, Luke called Pops and Bobby to the back so that they could see what he had and brainstorm some ideas.

Placing his open palm on top of the case, it began to scan his fingerprints and other unique biometrics before a loud click sounded, letting Luke know it was now unlocked. The top of the case opened to show Luke the suit that Ben had created specifically for him. The first thing to greet Luke were the two vambraces that were made for his wrists. The vambraces were a gunmetal grey and sat within foam inserts within the case. Luke noticed that on top of both sat a clear screen, of some sort, that displayed information that Luke didn’t even know he had access to. The left bracer showed nearby police vehicle locations, including what calls they were currently responding to, and the right showed locations of heros that were available to help, if called upon to assist.

Taking a closer look now, Luke also noticed a tool/utility belt and he couldn’t stop from shaking his head in disbelief. The shirt was a polymer weave, comprised of microfiber adamantium coated linked braids. He remembered Ben talking about how adamantium was the strongest metal that could be found on earth and that this was an alloy creation of sorts, to give it a few more useful properties. Now Luke had pants, a shirt, and all his tools made out of the hardest substance on the planet. Putting aside the combat pants, Luke pulled out a half face mask that covers his nose down past his jaw and neck, leaving his eyes uncovered.

Pops chuckled at the sight of an all black pair of sunglasses in the case, with labels informing the user that it was coated with a nano-synthetic adhesive that would also double as neural connectors when worn. From the note, Luke knew that the glasses contained smart lenses that were connected to the mouth guard covering.

“Seems you’ve got everything you need to ‘suit up’, POWERMAN,” Pop stated with enthusiasm and good humor as he looked over all of the rather impressive looking gear Luke was pulling out. If Luke was going to play the hero, having the right equipment would certainly help both do the job and keep him alive.

“You heard the man, suit up. I’ll see what I can do about getting you a ride across town, the usual ‘no questions asked’ variety,” Bobby said as he pulled out his phone.

“That will not be necessary, Mr. Fisher. One of the available battle tanks in the area are enroute with stealth engaged.”

“Okay, who just said that?” Pops asked as he warily looked around the backroom.

“I did,” replied one of the gauntlets that Luke had within his briefcase. On top of the gauntlet was a small holo-projection of a spider, the name ‘Alfred’ floating underneath.

“Ohh, well, hello there?” Pops spoke in an odd questioning manner as he looked down at the gauntlet.

“Good evening, sir. I would like to inform you that transportation for POWERMAN is enroute, ETA is 93 seconds,” Alfred informed the group of open mouthed men, as the holo-image changed to show the stealth vehicle’s real time location, as it raced through the streets of New York on a virtual street map.

“Umm, thanks,” Luke answered as he watched the progression on the mini-map, fascinated. Taking a deep breath, Luke went to change.

Tonight New York would welcome its newest hero.

POWERMAN

O.o.o – o.O.o – o.o.O

Bar Sinister

Natalia aka Black Widow.

Doting Mother, Lover, Fighter, Assassin.

The night was dark and the chill in the air was more than enough to set the appropriate mood for Natalia as she scaled the nearly sheer cliffside to her target. It had not taken their analysts and data miners long to find the location of Bar Sinister once it was taken from the head of the clone. With the location on file, Natalia had ordered a flyover of the area with the satellites and found the island underneath its cloaking field, exactly where they were told it would be by the clone.

Natalia hoped that this would be the location of the real Sinister, because chasing him around the world did not please her at all. Putting those thoughts aside as the distractions they were, she climbed higher and higher.

“Blue Team in position at the docks.”

“Alpha Team in position at the southern escape tunnels.”

“Red Team in position for orbital insertion, just waiting on the shields.”

“OverWatch in position for any escapes; teleportation is disabled with quantum harmonic field lock.”

With a silent grunt, Natalia deftly rolled over the ledge onto her toes before launching at the wall above the ledge. Looking down below her position, Natalia watched a guard come out for his nightly smoke break. The guard had pasty white skin with a red diamond on his forehead. Something they still hadn’t figured out the purpose of yet, even with the clone brain’s help. Frowning at this potentially vital lack of information, Natalia turned around and continued her crawl upwards to the peak of the castle mountain.

From the satellite scans the top of the castle housed the shield generator that both cloaked and defended the entire island. Remove that protection and everything else came crashing down. Natalia climbed onwards, but came to a stop after a while. Before her was an active energy field that separated her from the top of the castle.

Relaxing back on her haunches for a moment, Natalia inspected the field before her. Pulling the scanner out of her handy tool belt, Natalia ran it over the force field before her. The readings came back zero point energy.

Not good.

After a few more scans on different wavelengths and using different methodologies, the readings that came back did not give Natalia any more cause to be happy. The force field was designed in such a way as to capture any intruder, then move them along the pointed protrusions that housed the emitters, like a relay handoff. With the emitters moving along the surface of the castle wall the captured prey would then fall into the dungeons to await the jailer. It made some sense. An infiltration would be infinitely easier in a small team, capturing that person or team alive would allow Sinister to figure out how his island had been found, where his security failed, and who ultimately was behind the intrusion.

Pulling out two shrunken stasis emitters from her belt, Natalia enlarged it back to their proper sizes. Placing both emitters three feet apart, Natalia took a step back then brought up her forearm vambrace. With a few taps on her personal computer, a line started on her left, rose up, then arcd over to land on her right. In front of Natalia was a clear hole in the defenses for her to go through. Walking through, Natalia removed the emitters and placed them back within her handy tool belt. As much as she’d made fun of Ben for being a nerd, this tool belt was certainly useful.

With a glance at her watch, Natalia took off at a sprint, trying to make up lost mission time. At the top of the castle there was a glass window pane that was four feet tall while three feet wide. Noticing the reinforced security glass, Natalia pulled out her laser cutter from her tool belt. With swift and sure movements, Natalia cut her way into the room adjacent to the shielding facilities.

Alfred would love this, Natalia thought to herself as she remembered the scans that she had taken of the outside emitter. She would have to shut the system down then lay traps in waiting. There was no need to destroy a perfectly fine zero point energy field emitter, especially one that her scans indicated likely had alien origins. You could tell a lot from a design, a non-human mind and culture was behind this one, from a very advanced tech base. With the window sliced out Natalia couldn’t help but shake her head at the situation. They didn’t even have basic heat and tremor sensors to detect people trying to break in or when a new heat signature might have teleported within the room. It was probably due to overreliance on this alien tech, and it’s supposed invincibility.

Placing those thoughts out of her mind, Natalia pulled herself within the room through the hole that she created. With a flip she landed on her toes balanced perfectly. The room she was in was dark as night with no lasers or defenses active, that meant nothing had changed from when she first checked. With a nod and a few mental commands the augmented reality feature of her goggles changed from the night vision with data points to echolocation. The echolocation feature was working just fine as the layout details of the hallway appeared in her view.

Looking around, Natalia located the door to the shield facility. The room was rather large, but it was L-shaped, placing the door further away from her location. Pulling out a multitool, Natalia checked the door for any alarms before working on getting herself out of her current location.

With the door clear, Natalia worked her way into the hall silently. A soft click made itself known before Natalia crawled her way up the wall then onto the ceiling while in complete stealth mode. There was a subtle shift in color hue that Natalia noticed coming from the room that held the shield generator, an oddity that caused her to immediately stop in place and go totally still. Unexplained oddities got you killed in this job.

Thermal vision scans showed nothing but the expected output of waste a heat a generator like this inevitably gave off. When that didn’t explain what she was seeing, Natalia checked all of the other scan/vision functions her HUD possessed, switching from one to the next, before stopping at a very particular mode that had only recently been added. In fact it hadn’t even been truly field tested yet. The vision mode that Natalia hadn’t used yet was for psionic emissions. From the reports that Alfred and Ben put together, the first version of this scan technology was only able to pick up the wavelengths of psionic energy from a person, but what was also picked up were undifferentiated emission waves, like free floating energy permeating a room in a cloud, allowing no clear designation of an individual person. which cluttered up the visuals. This had only recently been further refined to pick up emissions released from a person’s body, which shrank the visual down to a glowing outline of a person and cleaned out the clutter of everything else.

Turning this new vision mode onto the room she wanted in, Natalia noticed three people hidden inside. A string of Russian curse words silently flitted across her mind before a grim smile played across Natalia’s features as she noticed those that lay hidden in wait for her. Taking up a position on the wall directly across from the three in hiding, Natalia pulled out a molecular phase emitter, then placed it securely into position. With her dramatic entrance into the room set up, Natalia pulled out her favorite Ruger 57 combat pistols. Ben had modified these to work in conjunction with her powers, so that the pistols didn’t overload and blow up on her when she paired it with her bio-electric blasts.

Weapons, check, armor, check, and her stealth field was still up and effective. With a silent countdown, Natalia rushed through the wall, causing it to ripple as she passed through it, as if it were made of water. The first person went down permanently with a double tap to the head and one in the heart for good measure. The specially designed porcupine rounds did their gruesome job, horribly shredding the insides of her targets. The porcupine rounds were another advancement in munitions that Ben had made for special occasions, as he called it. The rounds would enter a body, but would never create an exit wound. This was because the body of the round would flair out with needles that would fly off once inside the body, destroying everything within its vicinity.

The black aura on her HUD confirmed the kill as she lined up her next shot. The second person also went down quickly, but the third had had time to dive behind cover. Natalia gave him little reprieve though as she ran along the ceiling itself. A few extra seconds of life was all they gained from diving behind cover, before Natalia gunned him down as well. A jump and a flip placed Natalia on the ground in front of the generator that was currently producing the shield that both hid and protected the island.

Before she attempted to deactivate the generator, Natalia noticed that none of the bodies had dropped their stealth field after their death. Now that was mighty interesting. She had assumed these three merely had or were granted metahuman powers by Sinister to hide them so well, that this effect survived death meant her initial assumption might have been wrong. Was the psionic invisibility technology based?

Pulling out three devices the size of hockey pucks from her pocket, Natalia enlarged the devices. These smaller ‘hover pucks’, as Ben had named them, enlarged to eight-by-eight inches. They were not only able to scan, but also upload that information directly to OverWatch on the island for real time review and analysis. Moving away from the invisible corpses, at least to the naked eye, Natalia turned back to face the main generator for the island. With a mental command through the neural link, the scan spectrum that she was using for vision changed. From the scans Natalia was receiving, she was able to deduce that the machine could not be turned off without the destruction of the main capacitor.

It would be a shame to destroy a working example of this extremely advanced technology, tech that could easily be used in a myriad number of ways, but with the deep scans she was taking, she was reasonably sure that one of the techs, Alfred, or Ben himself would be able to recreate it, and probably build it better. Then again why not just bring the whole thing home as her spoils of war, Natalia thought, tapping a spot on her chin.

“How does Ben like to put it? ‘You’re not trying hard enough if you don’t steal and improve your enemies’ technology’ or was it ‘if you’re not cheating you aren’t trying hard enough’.'”

With that thought, Natalia pulled out a device the size of her palm with two large buttons, one was red and the other was blue. She approved of such simple controls on field equipment. Placing the device on the side of the zero point shield emitter, Natalia made sure that the nano adhesive was fully secure. Once she was happy with that she pressed the blue button.

Shhhooooooooopphhhh

A fast sound followed the shrinking of the zero point shield emitter. Now she could bring a gift home for her son, Natalia thought, as she stashed the shield generator away in a handy compartment on her utility belt designed specifically to protect delicate technology during transport. She was interrupted from her musings, though, as her comlink activated.

“Ma’am, shields are confirmed down, we have motion. Permission to start the party?”

“Give the command then, OverWatch. Party is a go. I say again, ‘Party is a go.’ Happy dancing team.” Natalia ordered as she jumped to the ceiling, turning invisible mid flip. The soft sound of her landing on the ceiling was overshadowed by the guards that rushed into the room. Natalia wanted to frown at the heavy armor these guys were wearing, something that would have been a serious problem in the past, but then again, she was no longer the Black Widow that the Red Room had trained. Now she was a super assassin working with her family to better the future of the world.

Silently, two blades came out of her Widow’s Bite web shooters that Ben had reengineered for her use. Natalia waited for the guard on the far left to check behind the shelf within the room before she went for the silent kill. The sound dampener built into her suit took care of the muffled sound he made as her Widow’s bite sank deep into his jugular vein. The now dead body stopped struggling as she laid him aside and retreated back to the ceiling. It was amazing how few targets looked up for threats, something she had gleefully taken advantage of after her power up.

After her first kill of the new targets, explosions rocked the castle, causing the remaining combatants to stop and look at each other in confusion, but she paid little attention to that. Unfortunately, they were standing too far apart for her comfort, at least too far to get them both with a stealth kill. What made it worse was their posture and how attentive they were now. The explosions probably hadn’t helped in that regard.

They called out a few names, probably the invisible people she’d already killed in this room, and when no reply came, that was when she struck. Two blades came out of her heel at a forty five degree angle when her leg wrapped around the rear guard’s neck, the blades within her Widow’s bites sinking deep into the other as Natalia used her shifting body weight to pull her first dieing victim forward to slice into his partner. They both went down quickly and silently in a display of ruthless bloody efficiency. The random and rather silly thought that someone other than Ben was getting to touch her well moisturized thighs crossed her mind, but since he was now dead, he would take that experience to the grave. Somehow she doubted Ben would mind in this instance.

Turning around, Natalia flipped back to the roof in preparation to hunt down Nathaniel Essex, the supervillain known as Mr. Sinister.

O.o.o – o.O.o – o.o.O

Alias: Jason Todd aka Red Hood.

Real Name: Benjamin Blake.

Father, Lover, Fighter, Mad Genius.

Caution: Loves Maximum OverKill.

BEEP!

BEEP! BEEP!

With a grunt I slapped my hand down hard on the alarm that was causing such an unholy racket so early in the morning, crushing it. I was too slow stopping it, since my bed partner had started to grumble in her sleep. When Coulson had shown up at the end of the latest assassination attempt on Tony Stark last night, I gave him a short report before trying to decide whether to take Raven to a hotel further in town or just running us back to the island. Unfortunately, before I could decide, Tony had found out that his bedrooms had gone untouched by all of the carnage. I guess his paranoia meant that Tony had all the living quarters reinforced in case of attack. Even with Tony offering the rooms as a small thank you, Raven and I had decided on staying at a hotel. There was only so much Tony Stark exposure we could handle.

We were certain that Fury wanted Tony and I in the same place, but I was certainly not going to stay somewhere that had just been shot up like the Fourth of July. Ignoring the now crushed alarm and my slowly waking bedmate, I looked back at my data pad to once again go over the design for a more advanced quantum communications array that would be going into space soon. I knew that the Nova Empire, Shi’ar and the Kree had a linked network that allowed them to speak together. This link also kept the Galactic Bank the undisputed bank across the known Galaxies.

The satellites I had already launched into orbit were all far more advanced than anything any of the big seven currently used, but were still unsuitable for what I truly wanted/needed them to do. I needed something ultra advanced to tap into that galactic information network in order to learn the English equivalent of the galaxy, the commonly accepted basic language that bridged the most borders. That needed to happen sooner, rather than later, to help further my nation and plans for the future. Learning the galactic standard for mathematical expression would be the next vital and necessary step to take advantage of all the technological advances that had been made by these advanced races. Even their millenia old obsolete tech and science would be revolutionary for Earth.

The only two countries I was worried about competing against with my current satellites were Latveria and Wakanda, but we would not really know what those two countries’ capabilities in space were till we got a shuttle into orbit. Looking over my blueprints one more time, I made a few notes identifying systems that I wanted my scientists to look at more closely. The satellite, at its core, was built with rugged modularity in mind. When technological advancements inevitably came in the future we would be able to add on upgrades quickly and easily for years to come. For now, though, I would like to be able to get ‘Galactic basic’ to my people before we took the next step.

It was still surprising to me when Alex told me that we were picking up and getting intermittent glimpses of a complex hyper-communications network from beyond the stratosphere, though it was quite a while before we even realized what it was and began translating it into something our systems could use. To put it in recognizable terms, our current satellites were ‘accessing’ that network as if we were using an old dial up connection, one haphazardly cobbled together by a third world country who didn’t understand the tech involved. The download speeds just plain sucked and I was far too much of a first-world baby to have the patience for shit like that when the collective (common) knowledge of dozens of hyper advanced races and civilizations was right there for the taking. Of course this was stuff that was publicly available, but like I said, their obsolete millenia old shit was revolutionary to us.

The immediate hope I had for this satellite array was to improve those download speeds and build a better translation matrix to interpret and display the information, but ultimately it was to open a small window into the wider galaxy, even if we had no true way to explore it physically yet. Once the satellite was up and running we would need to get a list of materials that the rest of the galaxy valued, so if the opportunity to go out and explore a bit of the galactic community ever came, we’d at least have some ‘money’ to buy a few souvenirs.

That wasn’t bad for a good night’s work, at least now that I no longer needed to sleep. A hand snaked its way up my naked form as I sent off the last of my draft blueprints for a second opinion. Placing the holo-tablet on the side table. I looked down at the very naked form of my bedmate. Silky locks of luxurious wavy red hair were on the form of a blue skinned minx. Raven had snaked her way up and under my arm as she obviously sought my undivided attention, something I was only too happy to give her. With the tablet out of my hands Raven tossed a leg over my thighs to straddle my lap.

“How much longer will we be here in Los Angeles?” Raven asked as she leaned down to give me a kiss, grinding that amazing ass on my lap.

“Once we turn our after action report in to Fury, we will be leaving,” I answered as I allowed her to position my hand above my head. Hell, I was hard as a rock from the moment I noticed that she woke up, so I was certainly not going to stop her. She had passed out from orgasms last night, long before I was ready to be done with her sinfully beautiful body. Outlasting your bed partners was one of the downsides of unlimited stamina, I was learning. Of course, there were many more benefits.

I had no complaints as I thrust fast and hard up into Raven’s depths. The sharp gasp of pleasure that escaped her lips was worth far more than my minor issues. Her eyes fluttered for a moment and I took the chance to flip us both over, putting me back on top. The glazed look Raven gave me said it all as I sped up my movements, changing my angle and depth giving my hips some rotation. Her nipples, lips and collarbone, nothing was safe from me as I played with Raven’s body like a finely tuned instrument.

Raven’s well manicured nails dug into my back as her legs wrapped their way tightly around my waist.

“Hmm, you must like that,” I whispered into Raven’s ear as I thrust deeper into her and felt the resistance of her womb.

“Yess!” Raven moaned/yelled in pleasure.

Looking down at Raven, I decided to leave my personal mark on her flawless blue skin, no matter how temporary it might be with her powers. The first hickey went on her neck and the second one went on her right breast.

A crazy idea came to life in my mind then began to niggle at me until I finally gave in and indulged. Arms made of red and yellow energy appeared from my sides as I formed them from my aura, then willed them into tangibility with force of will. The first set of arms broke Raven’s vice-like grip on my back then trapped her hands above her head. Her ineffectual struggles were delicious, obviously having no experience with a bed partner being able to overpower her with her powers being what they were.

Then the left arm from the second set undid the legs that Raven had wrapped around my waist. The right arm went around her waist and held her there while my normal hands held Raven’s face so that she could look directly into my eyes as I dominated her, demonstrating that I was the master in this bed, no matter her age and experience.

Each of Raven’s arms and legs were locked in position. Raven had no leverage to move as I fucked her hard. Her eyes dilated and her pussy spasmed as she came again and again, but I kept up a punishing pace. Raven has been trying to seduce me ever since our first introduction. I had allowed her a reprieve after she passed out from our first session last night, but she would not escape my attention that way this morning.

My being blazed with power, tapping into the speed and strength force, as I drove into her again and again. Lightning enhanced flesh met the silky walls of a blue metamorph. I soon noticed the drool as I allowed my aura of power to envelope Raven when I came. Instinctively, somehow I felt her energy levels rise once more and I met her at the crescendo of her climax, releasing deep within her.

“That… that was… I have no words,” Raven breathed harshly from atop my chest, her head resting above my heart, as I had flipped us over at the very last moment.

“Hmmm,” I rumbled as I relaxed with Raven on my chest. I was already ready to go again, but there was far too much to get done. There would be a time to truly indulge in endless pleasure, but unfortunately it would not be today and would likely require a group to truly wear me out.

O.o.o – o.O.o – o.o.O