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Chapter 36: The Flash!?
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[Productions! Please lower Fisk and Hydra's IQ to the negatives!!]
[Wait, Adam, lower Fisk's IQ.]
[True, Adam, curse the ball of flesh! Make him a true muscle but no brain kind of guy!!]
Adam let out a chuckle. The plan wasn't a total failure. The Maggia family, now believing Fisk had murdered one of their captains, would be gunning for him.
And Fisk, armed with Hydra's support and a perfect pretext, would seize the chance to crush them and consolidate his power.
Adam had merely handed him the match and pointed him at the powder keg.
Even if he knew Adam was baiting him into the war, he would still take it, because in his view, it's only benefits, and no harm.
Adam stroked his chin in the back of the car, a thoughtful frown on his face. "Unfortunate though," He mused silently.
"I didn't want to use the nuclear option so soon. But well, you gotta do what you gotta do, and it's unstable anyway… better to launch it now than let it explode prematurely."
[Nuclear option? What nuclear option?!]
[He has a nuke?!]
[Nuke.jpg]
The past week had painted New York's news channels in shades of red.
It was framed as an unprecedented surge in gang violence, a brutal territorial war.
But the story ran deeper, a poisoned river with a single source. The body count was overwhelmingly one-sided: the Maggia family.
They were caught in a pincer movement; systematically dismantled by Adam's information-led strikes with Frank and Domino, and simultaneously crushed under the deliberate, overwhelming force of Wilson Fisk's expanding empire.
Fisk, the Kingpin, was no fool. When a rival family was mysteriously hamstrung, their leadership decimated, their safe houses compromised, he moved.
He absorbed their smuggling routes, their gambling dens, their illicit networks. These were the true prizes, not mere cash.
Adam had no organization to claim such spoils; he was a scalpel, not a conqueror.
Fisk was the sledgehammer, and he swung with Hydra's silent backing. It's almost as if Adam was serving his best interest.
[Fisk is playing both sides! He's using Adam's chaos to get richer!]
[Adam is basically doing all the hard work, and Fisk is reaping the rewards.]
[Well, that's confusing. The only thing that could explain Adam's illogical actions is the unknown nuclear option. The fuck is it?]
The Maggia's reach extended beyond New York, but their branches were fiercely independent.
They wouldn't normally abandon such a valuable territory, but Hydra applied pressure in the shadows; political leverage, financial sabotage, and disappeared loved ones.
New York was becoming too hot, and the message was clear: cede it to Fisk.
From his penthouse, Wilson Fisk pondered the enigmatic Adam Cypher. What was his endgame?
Did he truly believe toppling the Maggia would somehow topple the Kingpin? Fisk was an institution, a bedrock of the criminal underworld, now reinforced with Hydra's resources.
He saw himself as a player in a larger game between two shadowy factions; S.H.I.E.L.D. and this "Hydra." It mattered little.
He would take the opportunities presented, but he was a man who seized the initiative, not one who waited for it to be handed to him.
And tonight, he had. He had sent his best weapon.
The air was thick with the coppery stench of blood and the acrid tang of smoke.
Frank Castle, the Punisher, stood like a monolith in a charnel house of his own making.
The warehouse was a landscape of fallen Maggia soldiers, dozens of them. Blood dripped from his chin, his knuckles, his vest.
It was not his own. He had bathed in the blood of his enemies, a crimson baptism that fueled his rage.
He breathed heavily, the adrenaline a thunderous drum in his veins. This was his purpose.
Adam's schemes were a means to an end, a way to find the scum he lived to exterminate.
But the night was not over.
A figure stood silhouetted in the flickering firelight at the other end of the warehouse.
He was lean, almost casual in his posture, dressed in a sleek black combat suit.
A playing card danced effortlessly over his knuckles. His face was split by an amused, predatory grin. This was none other than Bullseye.
[OH SHIT! BULLSEYE!]
[Frank is exhausted and he has to face BULLSEYE?!]
[This is a nightmare matchup!]
[Fuck, things are going horribly wrong.]
[U kidding? This is the Punisher. he will win somehow.]
Bullseye was a psychopath of the highest order, a man who claimed to have killed his own mother in high school.
His talent was unnatural: perfect aim. He could turn anything; a paperclip, a toothpick, a playing card; into a lethal projectile.
He was Fisk's master assassin, and he was here to clean up the mess.
The tension snapped.
Both men moved simultaneously, raising their pistols. The roar of gunfire eclipsed the crackle of the flames.
Frank, a tactical beast even in his fury, didn't charge head-on. He broke into a lateral sprint, a guttural war cry tearing from his throat as he dove behind a stack of crates.
Bullets chewed the wood to splinters around him.
Bullseye advanced, his movements fluid and unnerving. The way he fired was inhuman; he ricocheted shots off steel beams, the rounds zinging at impossible angles to force Frank from cover.
Frank responded with a smoke grenade, the canister clattering and spewing thick, grey fog.
In the obscuring cloud, an explosion roared as Frank tossed a frag grenade toward Bullseye's last position.
Bullseye was already gone, having seemingly anticipated the move. He launched a playing card, its edge hardened by his will.
It sliced through the smoke and embedded itself deep in Frank's armored vest, not piercing through but somehow delivering a sharp, jarring impact.
Frank grunted, returning fire blindly.
It was a deadly dance. Both were closing the distance, but neither was making it easy.
Frank used forklifts and shattered concrete as cover, his military mind calculating angles and fields of fire.
Bullseye used the environment as his arsenal, kicking a loose piece of rubble and sending it flying like a cannonball with a perfectly placed bullet, the impact staggering Frank for a crucial second.
Then, they collided.
Frank erupted from the smoke, a battering ram of pure rage. He led with a brutal rifle butt aimed for Bullseye's jaw.
Bullseye flowed under it, his body a coil of reactive muscle. He drove the heel of his palm into Frank's elbow joint, a sharp, debilitating strike.
Frank roared through the pain, ignoring the numbness shooting down his arm to grab Bullseye's wrist and twist, aiming to snap it.
Bullseye used the momentum, spinning into the hold and driving his own knee into Frank's already bruised ribs.
The air whooshed out of Frank's lungs. He responded by slamming his forehead into Bullseye's face.
Cartilage crunched.
Bullseye laughed, a spatter of blood flying from his nose, and drove two stiffened fingers into a pressure point on Frank's neck.
Frank saw stars but held on, his other hand coming up to clamp around Bullseye's throat.
They were a maelstrom of violence.
Frank's style was raw, efficient army combatives; eye-gouges, throat strikes, joint breaks.
Bullseye's was a twisted martial art, every move designed to create an opening for a kill shot, even in melee.
He broke Frank's hold with a sharp twist and slammed a playing card, held like a blade, into the gap between Frank's vest and his shoulder. This time, it drew blood.
Frank backhanded him, the force of the blow sending Bullseye stumbling back.
But the assassin was already recovering, a shard of broken glass in his hand.
He flung it.
Frank twisted, but the glass sliced a deep gash across his cheek.
The exhaustion was setting in; Frank's movements were a fraction slower, his reactions dulled by blood loss and fatigue.
Bullseye pressed his advantage, a whirlwind of sharpened objects and precise, bone-jarring strikes.
[Frank is getting worn down!]
[Bullseye is too much for him in this state!]
[Where's he?! Adam, do something!]
Suddenly, Bullseye's eyes twitched. He didn't hear it; he just felt it, sensed it.
He launched himself backward into a desperate, acrobatic leap.
The concrete where he had been standing erupted in a shower of sparks and a deafening CRACK that echoed a second later.
A sniper round.
They had fought their way outside, into a debris-strewn loading yard, clear of the burning warehouse's obscuring walls.
Bullseye landed, his grin wider, manic. "Trying to bait me out into the open, Castle? Did you think I wouldn't notice?"
He taunted, wiping blood from his lip. "You wanted me clear for your friend. But I was baiting him. By now, two of my associates should be paying your sniper a visit. How does it feel to be the bait?"
Frank's expression darkened. He had feared this. Adam's plans were intricate, but the enemy was adaptable.
It didn't matter. He had already achieved his primary goal. Killing this psychopath would be a worthy epitaph.
With a final, bone-deep roar that spoke of a lifetime of pain and rage, Frank Castle charged.
Bullseye laughed, leaping backward again, a fresh playing card poised in his hand.
He was toying with a wounded animal, his senses hyper-alert for the next sniper shot.
The Punisher was no longer a threat, just a finale to be orchestrated.
Then, the world turned white. It was a Flash.
It was a silent, overwhelming presence of light. A train of incandescent blue-white plasma, thicker than a man's torso, tore across the night sky.
It moved not at the speed of a bullet, but in a terrifying, almost instantaneous line.
It was so fast, so utterly alien, that Bullseye's ludicrous senses had nothing to process.
There was no whistle, no crack, no time to react.
His eyes had just registered the impossible light when it reached him.
The plasma beam, fired from The Harvester far away, passed through Bullseye's torso.
There was no explosion, just a brief, sun-hot flash.
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