"I don't mean to be rude, but I have no idea what you're talking about.." He looks on at the container. "But if you need any help all you need to do is ask."
--
"The Punisher.. I've heard of him. He deals out his own justice on criminals they never see the inside of a jail cell when he's after them."
Napalm takes the mangled laptop and looks it over. "Maggie and I might be able to figure it out. Certainly it would help to have the SHIELD resources."
"Add this to the list too." He picks up the cell phone and tries to access it to see what numbers may have been called recently. He also checks for any SMS.
"Check the papers too. If The Dragon had any notes for his gang or about the Punisher, they could be useful."
On a metagaming level, Lucas would love to find a formulae book!
Ebon looks around at the papers, unable to help with laptop of phone. "Let's gather up all this stuff and take it with us. We still have the body down stairs we need to identify, that could give us more information and we should report it to the police then." He says gathering up papers.
Gingerly, the group makes it's way back down into the basement, steeling themselves to face the grisly scene they know to be down there.
And, right enough, when the door is pushed open the bagged body is as horrific as you remember.
Napalm gags as the stench overwhelms him. "Ugh, should we pull it out of there?" He swallows and then darts into grab the bag and try to pull it out of the room.
Lucas begins gently unwrapping the bags from around the body's face, for some reason terribly afraid, as though this thing may leap upon him at any moment.
It doesn't.
But what it does reveal is the body of an orc, brutally beaten. The head is all but unrecognizable, a partly hairy sack of smashed bones and pulped flesh. One of the arms is broken as well and pinned to it's chest by an 8 inch military-style knife is a bloody note, now almost crumpled beyond legibility.
Lucas tries his best to unpeel it without corrupting the scene too much.
It reads;
This guy was looking for me. I found him first.
Ebon recoils slight at the utterly mangled body. "It seems the Punisher likes to stay hidden. Quite a brutal message to send." He says with his hand over his mouth and nose.
We should leave this scene to the investigators...
Midnight starts, before realising Lucas is too intent on his own investigations to pay her any heed.
Let's try not to step in any of the fluids...
she advises.
Well the Punisher's methods appear brutal and direct, but only aimed at criminals. At least at face value. However he is still breaking the law...
She stares at the remains of the orc
They might terrorise those weaker than them, like any petty criminal, but there is a lawful way of addressing their actions
She tilts her head
There is a fine line between vigilante and hero, costumed or not, I feel murder, especially brutal murder like this, is way over the line...
"And us?" He looks over to Midnight. "I think we knew we would be confronting the Dragon when we came in here. Did we leave those orcs up there in any better shape?"
The group surveys the grisly scene in which violence is demonstrated beyond the experience of most of them.
From somewhere upstairs you hear a heavy door open, and then the sound of several pairs of boots walking into the building. It's hard to say, but it could be six or seven.
He then suddenly hears a large door opening and footsteps upstairs. "This will have to wait. We have company.. six or seven pair of boots above us."
As if in response to Connie; gruff, raised voices can be heard upstairs as well running footsteps now, all around the upper level.
Napalm grabs his last two grenades. "Get ready! We need to hit them hard before they overwhelm us!"
Ebon attempts to keep a straight face as his continues to hold his chest in pain. "I can't take another fight.. we have the laptop we have the papers lets just get out of here through the sewers. We will live to fight another day."
hp-3/15
It could of course be the peace officers, however I think in any case we are best served by vanishing... quickly...
Unless there is dissent, Melania will usher the others out and keep rearguard to ensure no-one chases the team.
As the footsteps above become accompanied by shouting and the crashing of doors, the group takes what they can and escapes through the same way they came in.
Steeling themsleves for another trip through the sewers, they plunge back into the fetid darkness and run from the dilapidated theatre, one-time Lair of the Dragon.
After what seems like forever headed this way and that, they find a ladder leading up to a grate and upon pushing it open, clamber out onto the street. Except they are not in the street, but actually in the middle of Central Park, the stillness of the air quite startling to the sound of their own footsteps splashing in the darkness.
Ebon sits down on the path taking in the clean air. "We should report this now. This involves The Punisher, Shield should know about it." He says still wincing at the pain in his chest.
Lucas crawls out of the hole. "Right. It's only a matter of time that the Punisher starts killing again. And there's no guarantee that innocents won't get hurt eventually."
"Let's get back to SHIELD. We can have them take a look at the laptop and then discuss how we ought to deal with him. We may also need to see what happened with The Dragon gone."
Unsurprisingly once you get to SHIELD HQ, you are stopped at the reception area by the night desk staff, a male and female agent toward the rear of the lobby looking on at you in thinly veiled disgust.
Can I help you? the receptionist says, impeccably professional despite the filth you are covered in and the stench you emit from your time in the sewers.
Lucas suddenly realizes they've probably tracked filth through the lobby Don't look back. Probably nasty footprints all the way back to the elevators...
He holds up his SHIELD ID and tries to read the receptionist's nametag. "Hi, uh, Nora, is it? Yeah, I have something for the lab. I was also hoping there were showers we could use to clean up. And, do you know if Agent Angstrom is in?"
Ebon moves in standing behind Lucas, feeling like a hundred people have eyes on him. [b]"I was hoping I could see a doctor about my injuries too.[/b He speaks up showing the large semi healed gash in his chest, just above his large tattoo.
Jesus, are you kidding me? You crawled through or sewer or something with that!
The receptionist looks even more disgusted.
Showers in the gym, rec area, level 4. Medbay is on level 2. I'll page Agent Angstrom.
When eventually you make your way to the sprawling gym area, complete with pool, firearms range, even a running track and a highly secure area signposted as meta-human training area, though your access chip don't appear to allow you to enter that.
The showers however are hot and wonderful and you feel you could stay in them for hours if only you had the luxury to do so.
Fortunately Lucas has the presence of mind to grab some training gear from the lockers and, dressed in standard oversized grey tracksuit pants and running tops - and looking fairly ridiculous for it - you are at least clean once again.
Melania nods her thanks to the receptionist and agents, heading straight for the showers and luxuriating in a cold shower.
Bedecked in grey tracksuit trousers and matching tank top, she looks bemused as she sits down at a table sipping a glass of water.
So I'm not a hundred percent here, we're asking SHIELD to do something or just providing them intel and thinking they might act on it?
She shrugs
This has gotten bigger quite quickly, a couple of hours ago we were just having food together and thinking about doing a good deed, now we're neck deep in underworld politics...
Ebon bows and thanks the medical staff for fixing him up, he heads towards the gym area getting a little lost while taking in how massive the place is. He finds the showers and takes his time cleaning off the filth of the sewers.
Stepping out of the showers in tracksuit bottoms with a towel around his neck his large tattoo of a black dragon on show. He sits down with the others. "Those showers are something else.. the temple only has bathes, such comforts I could get used to."
He then listens to Midnight. "I want that laptop looked at, if we can get anything off it we will be acting on it. We wanted to help and I'm glad we're finally doing something big again."
Lucas emerges from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. You can see the gray mottled skin over most of his body. The chemical burns left him scarred and portions of his skin even look dead. He seems to have no hair on his body. Over his chest, he has an elaborate tattoo which seems to have a mix of Chinese and Indian design. You realize the design has a focus over his heart and seems to radiate out towards his limbs.
"I'll take the laptop down the lab. No idea if anyone is there this time of night. I suppose I could call Maggie, but I thought I'd let her sleep. This thing was used by a criminal thug, I doubt it has NSA-level safeguards. I just need to extract the hard drive and set it up on another machine. Even I can do that."
"I asked for Angstrom because I thought he might want to know about the Punisher and the criminal underworld. If he's putting the squeeze on them, there could be other ramifications."
He grabs a tracksuit and departs momentarily to change. When he comes back he says, "Damn, these things are comfy."
The tattoo design and Chinese writing seem to indicate healing and stability.
He then listens to Midnight. "I want that laptop looked at, if we can get anything off it we will be acting on it. We wanted to help and I'm glad we're finally doing something big again."
Don't get ahead of yourself Ebon. a voice says from the doorway of the dining hall that adjoins the gym. It is mostly empty at this time of night although half a dozen agents or more help themselves to juice and fruit from refrigerated units.
A couple of them acknowledge Agent Angstrom as he enters and takes a seat with you.
He looks as strange in his jeans and plain white t-s$@+, leather jacket over the tops, as you do in your all grey sweatsuits. You still note the 9mm handgun strapped at his waist.
I was at home when I got the page, figured when it was you I had better come in myself. I heard something about The Punisher? Whatever it was, you'd best get any thoughts you have of going after him out of your heads rights now.
The Punisher has evaded capture for years, and killed.... if you went to the 40th precinct station and asked them to show you the Punisher cases, they would take you to a basement, lined floor to ceiling files and boxes. says Angstrom.
He is a one-man army, an absolute terror to the criminals in New York.
Trust me, they are relieved that it's Spiderman or Captain Marvel who bring them in and not the Punisher.
If this Dragon was planning to go after him, it wouldn't have worked out well. But one day, the Punisher's luck is going to run out and I just hope he can be brought in without a lot of good people losing their lives.
Akio spots the tattoo covering Lucas chest, its design and writing stand out as Chinese. "I don't mean to pry, but I noticed your tattoo it has sayings that mention healing and stability in chinese how did you come to have such an intricate tattoo?" He leans back to show his own large tattoo of a dragon "I have quote an elaborate one too."
--
"I mean what I said. No matter what we can't descend to the level of criminals, he may thinks hes doing good but where does it stop? The Punisher goes out there killing criminals. They then bring bigger guns and more deadly measures tell more innocents get hurt in the middle of this fight." He tenses his fist thinking about it. "I don't expect to go run him down and take him down, but if we can atleast do something about this if we can find his target... he must be after someone we find out who and take them down first."
Lucas looks at Akio's tattoo. "Wow, that's pretty cool." Lucas unzips his tracksuit and shows his tattoo. "When I was recovering from my incident, they tried several things to keep me alive. That included some Chinese and Indian mystics who did the design. It's supposed to enhance my heart and ward me from danger....I guess we'll see if it works, eh?"
-----------------------------------------
"Has anyone been able to confront the Punisher? Or try to bring him in? It sounds like he's former military. Would he submit to a chain of command?"
Once. Angstrom says grimly. Agent Taylor led a Punisher taskforce and after months they actually managed to catch up with him in a warehouse on the lower eastside.
A full assault team went in there, made up of the best of the best SWAT officers from across the city. 9 of them spent a month in St Judes. The man is a law unto himself.
Director Fury pulled the funding after that. I think he was quite pragmatic about it, especially after the Incident and figured that as long as the Punisher continued only targeting criminals, SHIELD had bigger fish to fry.
Listen, forget the Punisher, seriously. St Jude's is nice but you don't want to spend a month there. Or worse.
He turns to Lucas then and says;
Why don't you take that laptop to the Cyber Intelligence Lab? If there's anything to find on there they'll extract it. In the meantime, just keep doing what you've been doing. Keep your ears to the ground, keep an eye out, but if there's anything you can't handle just get out of there. You can't do any good dead.
He gets up and turns to leave. As he gets to the door of the canteen he says;
Good work tonight by the way.
"I didnt expect to see something like this from you, you seem... more new aged more technology driven." He smiles. "There is power in symbols, it looks to be working your standing here now after everything you've been through." He places a hand on the Lucas shoulder and squeezes it gently.
---
Akio takes a long drink, not willing to accept everything hes told. "I guess we'll see what's on the laptop. It was good to get out and start taking on some bigger criminals."
Lucas nods. "Message received, Angstrom. We'll let you handle the Punisher. I'm going to check out this laptop." He smirks.
Heading down to the lab, he continues his earlier conversation with Akio. "It wasn't entirely my idea. You know, when you're clinging to life after being drowned in a vat of dangerous chemicals, there's a lot that can happen. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Maggie's grandmother...She brought in a Hindu yogi and a traditional Chinese medicineman. Herbs and poultices, stuff like that. I barely remember it. But they designed this tattoo to open up my 'chakras' and increase my 'qi'." His tone indicates he's skeptical of the alternative medicine.
"But maybe it worked. I started to heal and my heart got stronger. Who knows, maybe I owe my life to this thing." He smiles and shrugs.
Melania frowns
One man? One man did all this, has this legend, is unstoppable?
She shakes her head, standing up from the table, hands down and leaning over it.
So that's it? This man breaks the law, again and again, and because his lawbreaking suits the powers that be most of the time, he's to be left alone!?
She slams a hand down on the table
Vigilantism and being a hero are dangerous bedfellows, and there is much debate to be had there, but that is not the issue I speak of. I find myself drawing the line at cold-blooded murder, irrespective of the nature of the target. Why are not others as aghast as me!?
She locks Angstrom with a furious gaze, her hair now billowing of its own accord, and a breeze has appeared impossibly in the small room.
Why has not someone with the appropriate training, ability, authority been tasked with bringing this criminal down?
She points a finger at the Agent
Or is it simply a case of might makes right? 'He can't be stopped, he's too strong'. Shall I too begin targeting those on the Agency's most wanted list? Would you step in to stop me?
She throws her hands up, the air still dancing around her, albeit slightly less agitated
It isn't right agent, not right at all... leaving him alone goes against what you seem to stand for here...
I'm not saying it's right! Angstrom says darkly. But I've got a boss and he's got a boss and if the man says leave it alone we leave it alone.
Punisher has tangled with Spiderman, Hawkeye and Black Widow, Gambit, even Wolverine for Christ's sake! All of them have tangled with the Punisher at one time or another to varying degrees of success. One day either us or one of them will finally get the best of him and he'll get what's coming to him. In years to come he'll just be a footnote.
But sometimes the hard call - but the right call - is to do nothing.
There is something here that makes you think Angstrom is not at all comfortable with the metahuman/vigilante situation the world finds itself in. In fact, he seems furious about it.
Of course that's a concern. he answers Connie plainly. It always is when new metas show up. The last thing we need is another Doctor Doom or Loki on our hands.
I don't know how else to explain this to you. SHIELD isn't letting him get away with anything. We are government funded. And we have to put that funding to the best use. People who get paid a Hell of a lot more than me make that call and I follow the orders passed down.
If things were different I'm sure Captain America would have brought Punisher in by now. But he's gone. And with god-knows-what arriving here or coming through interdimensional portals - no offence Ms Mezzanotte - a thug like the Punisher was not a high priority for Director Fury and have no orders that lead me to believe he is for Director Hill either.
"Technology is strong, but there is still power in the old ways. There is a lot you can do with training like mine, it's all about the connection with the world it is about unlocking your chakras and focusing them on your task." He taps his chest. "This helps me focus even more, it was a mark given to me by a very old master. Maybe when we get a little time we can do some training help you with your chakras."
--
"We've got it, he's bad.. I might have been a little over eager to rush out and track him down. But I still don't want to just forget him and hope it works it's self out his war against criminals will spill over to innocence some day." He sighs. "We should continue patrolling the streets for now. The laptop might just hold some more information i'm sure its not all just about The Punisher, it could give us some leads on the dragons partners."
"I think Director Hill is right. We fight the fights that we can. Maybe this will give us a chance to keep tabs on the Punisher, but if we sent half of SHIELD to their deaths to bring him in, what position would we be in to tackle the next threat? Besides, as far as we know, the Punisher is a seriously skilled human, but he's still just a human, albeit exceptional. No alien tech, no super powers."
"Not that we shouldn't be concerned, we should. But it's a slightly different category of danger from Loki and his staff."
Melania offers Connie a brief smile as she supports her point, but the breeze in the room subsides almost completely as Angstrom sticks to his guns, patiently explaining the way things are versus the way they should be. Melania nods in approval of his opinion.
I can appreciate there are... limitations, and of course SHIELD is not an enforcement agency, technically the Punisher's crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the NYPD
She indicates Lucas and Akio
...and indeed, I'm sure there are other things in this mess we can concentrate our efforts on to be constructive
She sits down again, then almost immediately stands.
Well I cannot assist with the laptop, but I need to do something or I'll end up 'biting someone's hand off' I think you say...
she moves to the door and points at the newly constructed metahuman area
So Angstrom, who do I have to lean on to get access to your secret training room over there?
She stares cooly at the layout with appraising eyes.