Knowing Blanche is the lesser of two evils here Frank attempts to grab Darque before she escapes to wrought vengeance or worse...
Dottie dances with the leader of the roughnecks, dodging his attacks before lifting her pistol and firing toward him. But instead of actually aiming for the roughnecks, she aims for the control that lets a nearby boom swing.
Striking the switch, she uses the roughneck's shoulder as momentum to flip herself over the crowd of men and the swinging boom, so that she's on the other side as it swings forward to knock into them... and hopefully knock them into the sea.
Constrictor's coil wraps around the Doctor as the two boys decide that discretion is the better part of valor and move into the open hatch. Water pours into the shaft, drawing them toward it as they approach. The boy with the darkforce daggers surrounds his hand with the dark energy and rams it into the door frame with one hand, grabbing his bald companion with the other hand. The boys cry out as they try to resist the force of the miniature waterfall as the ocean forces its way into the interior of the structure.
The bullet slams into the control panel, the crane boom swings across the platform as Dottie throws herself into the air over the swinging frame. She lands, pistol ready, to find that only one of the men remains, the others having been swept into the air over the Atlantic.
As the crane boom shudders and metal groans, he looks in awe at the waves below, then back at Dottie, making no aggressive moves, raising his hands in supplication.
Darque struggles to escape, but fails.
Dottie smiles at the remaining roughneck, though it is concealed by her face scarf. "I think I saw folks running to evacuate on the level below. How about you use your muscle to join them and get into the ocean the safe way?"
She then scampers off and leaps for the nearest staircase to head for the heli platform and rejoin Silhouette and Lainia.
As his coils hold Darque, Frank grimaces and shouts to the boys;
"Go! Get out of here! Ride the water and make an exit... Find my partner, Dottie... she's with the other kids! GO!"
As he shouts, the enforcer's fist clenches and his thumb depresses the trigger within his glove - sending green energy pulsing from his chest plate to the trapped Darque;
The water continues to rise, up to Frank's abdomen. It might be rising faster now.
The boys disappear into the dark opening of the elevator shaft as the green energy illuminates the inflowing ocean and the ceiling and bulkheads.
Darque convulses as the energy of the Constrictor suit overwhelms her nervoous system.
Far above, War Widow's opponent drops his tool heavily to the deck and turns to get to the bright orange life boats.
The Widow makes her way quickly up staircase, ladder, and platform, eventually throwing herself onto the platform where the girls wait at the helicopter.
The dark haired woman, seeing her security partner and her boss in trouble with with The Constrictor, chooses to move to greener pastures. She follows the boys into the shaft.
At some unseen command, the shaft door slams down, leaving Frank, Blanche (the blonde) and Darque in darkness mitigated only by red emergency lighting. Blanche held above water in one coil while Darque struggles in the other.
The good doctor convulses in the coil and salt water, hanging limply in the Constrictor's grasp.
Dottie launches herself toward the helicopter, though even in her speed she is looking out for (a) trouble, and (b) the hapless pilots she stole the keys from. She's more than happy to let them take the pilot's chair as long as they take her and the girls with them.
Also if she sees (c) Duke, she will shoot him on sight.
If there is nothing of interest, she enters the copter first, to be sure there's no one lying in ambush, and then pulls the girls in.
Frank shouts to Blanche as Darque goes limp;
"Listen, this doesn't have to go down like this. Darque is done. We could try and get out together..."
He grimaces trying to keep the mercenary above water, while not loosing his own footing... all the while buying the boys more time to make it topside... and maybe Dot.
"No strings. No rematch. We go separate ways. You ain't dumb Blanche, you'll find work just like I did... What ya say? We drowning together... or surviving together?"
Dottie finds the girls lying low behind an storage locker at the edge of the helipad. The pilots are nowhere in sight, and Duke is regrettably also missing. She opens the door and slides into the pilot's chair, the girls following. As she begins flipping switches in her pre-flight check, she sees two boys pour our of elevator shaft below. They wear the same hospital attire as the girls, and are no doubt also subjects of experiments.
Blanche stiffens as she sees Darque go limp. Now chest deep in the freezing North Atlantic water, she rotates her chin like Murtagh from those Lethal Weapon movies. "Sorry, bud. I can't let you take Darque out and walk away. She has toon much on me. It's going to have to be drown together..."
She swings a brick-like fist at Frank's head protection.
Frank takes the shot well...
... blinking though water spray and the sting of Blanche's shot he nods knowingly with a hard smile.
"You hit hard, I'll give you that. Fair play too on the loyalty, in our business its often a rarer than hen's teeth."
Soaking he shifts, trying to plant his feet as the water wants to make him rise with it.
"Won't be enough... So we all stay. You, me... an' the Doc."
His coil tightens round the limp Darque, plunging the villain under the water. With his free coil Frank launches a vicious whip seeking to down the amazonian merc as quickly as possible...
Dottie's flicker toward the movement from below. She sees more youth in test subject garb. She waits. Ten seconds. Ten years. No Frank. Her expectant expression drops into something blank. "Silhouette, those boys. Go to them and bring them here."
While Silhouette does her thing, Dottie flicks her switches, hoping that helicopter technology has not dramatically changed in the 20 years or so since she last had to control one.
While the rotors warm up and Silhouette returns with more refugees and they get buckled in with headphones on, she attends to something else important.
The helicopter is one of those ones, much like a police copter, equipped with a megaphone system. Perhaps it's to issue evacuation warnings during emergencies, perhaps it's for publicity stunts. Should it be on this particular kind of transport copter? Possibly no. But, as though it were convenient for some kind of tv show or something, there is conveniently an external speaker system and there conveniently is a CD deck attached to it, and there is also, extremely conveniently and ridiculously coincidentally, a CD that Dottie recognizes. She first heard the song blasting from a petulant teenager's bedroom in one of Howard's mansions in 1990, and she appreciated the clearly communism-inspired ditty so ironically coming out of the capitalist nest. She, as the kids would say it, mashes play.
And so as the helicopter lifts off, industrial dance rhythms echo over the platform, and the voice of Trent Reznor mocks the fleeing personnel:
God-money I'll do anything for you
God-money just tell me what you want me to
She flies over Roxxon employees, so busy pushing at each other to follow their evacuation routes and fighting for a place in line, they don't even signal to the copter.
God-money nail me up against the wall
God-money don't want everything he wants it all
She hovers near a Roxxon sign. She speaks into the microphone. Dottie has been in the world again long enough to know someone, somewhere, is recording. "Good evening. Please be aware that Roxxon initiated this shutdown and evacuation to hide illegal experiments on trafficked human children. Say hello, children." She invites the youth to shout into the microphone.
No you can't take it
No you can't take it
No you can't take that away from me
"Everything that happened here today is because of Roxxon, by Roxxon's design. Should you survive today, please make better choices in employers." She lifts her pistol and shoots out some of the lights, before pulling away into a wider circle around the facility.
No you can't take it
No you can't take it
No you can't take that away from me
Cut to Frank fighting for his life in the water down below.
Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control
Back to Dottie, tossing flashbangs at security's last ditch attempt at retaliation. The copter lifts upward as a rocket propelled grenade flies wide of the craft, and security officers flee and fall amid the bright white phosphorus bursts.
Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control
She flies down, scanning mainly for Frank, hoping he emerges somewhere. If she see someone who truly seems like a victim and she is able to feasibly rescue them without putting the children in danger, she will do so. She will not if it puts them or the copter at risk. She will definitely bypass anyone looking like a loyal henchman or superior. Otherwise, she mainly is only buying time to see if she can find Frank, but we all know Dottie will not wait forever...
Bow down before the one you serve
You're going to get what you deserve
Bow down before the one you serve
You're going to get what you deserve...
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Frank holds Darque in one coil and lashes out with the other. Darque continues to quirm in his grasp, but makes no progress in finding an escape.
With the other coil, he lashes out at the stout blonde, dealing the exhausted woman another sound blow as water fountains around them, sheets of water thrown up by the struggle.
Darque can't manage to reach any sort of controls. Blanche can't resist the blows from Frank's coils and harness. But Darque is a smart woman. She has doctorates in physics and biology, not as many as some, but many. And more than that, she is paranoid. And, even worse, she works for a company that has many tentacles in many pots, and who knows that its secrets must not be revealed.
Frank's coils drag her under the cold water, and she struggles, thinking she might drown. When her head bursts again into the pocket of air between water and ceiling, she speaks. "Roxxie, initiate Europe Protocol."
...Dottie will not wait forever...
The sad thing is that Frank won the battle. He beat the world class mercenaries, out muscled the muscle. He beat the big brains, at least he pounded their tech to bits. He gave the kids time to escape. But he couldn't punch the global corporation and all of its planning and paranoia. What they were doing here was too big a secret to reveal to the world. Attempting to harness an esoteric energy source by using its connection to children collected from around the world. These were not things that played well in the Bugle. Anything that might reveal the truth must be tamped down.
And so, while this might be secretly a facility to access wells of Zero Matter and to study their interactions with certain special youths, it is also a working oil platform and refinery. With the addition of a few select explosives, the stores of crude oil and refined fuel go up in a massive Hollywood style fireball. Frank has only a moment to register the "wuff" sounds and what they must mean before the light, heat, and pressure intrude on the darkness and cold in which Frank is fighting.
And above, Dottie pulls the copter skyward and away as the first storage tank explodes, daisy chaining into a series of explosions that throw the scrambling figures of workers on the platform, moving toward bright orange lifeboats.
[MOMENTS]
The fight lasts moments.
Bad guys nullified… He’d given the kids a chance to escape. The gift of a life to live. Their own moments to make.
Hell I hope Dot waits for you all. Waits for me…
[MOMENTS]
Anchored to its foes, the Constrictor suit bobs heavy in the rising water. Suddenly cold and tired, Frank leans back and allows the chaotic sounds of the base to become a muffled calm.
He breathes deep, taking a moment as his daughters voice drifts into his good ear;
”I think if you could be a hero again Mom might let you come home…”
Frank smiles.
Somewhere else he hears a woman’s voice; Blanche? Darque? Dot?
Pushing the distant roar that answered aside he instead refocusses on his daughters words, answering with a calm, quiet voice;
”Reckon this is what being a hero is. Reckon we made it kiddo. me an' Dot. Reckon it's time to come h-“
[MOMENTS]
After the initial credits run, with silhouettes of the main characters forming from what looks like mixtures of liquid darkness and blood...
We flash to cuts of the helicopter falling into the sea, and Dottie and the kids teleporting to safety on the far shore...
Dottie at Empire State, talking to Samberly...
To a new device, drawing the Darkforce out of Lainia and the two boys...
Meanwhile Silhouette, opting to keep what has been forced upon her, disappearing into the streets...
Dottie now back in Brooklyn, taping a sign to the front door of Duke's: "Closed until further notice due to a death in the family"...
Dottie upstairs, cleaning up Frank's room, finding a half written letter...
Meanwhile, Dottie's voice comes through over the scenes:
"I have never understood why the world gets fixated over heroes. Heroes get the climactic battle, sure... they get the victory. But then you leave the rest of us behind, to clean things up. You fought the Red Skull, crashed your plane, everyone sings your praises. We're the ones who actually fought the final battles. Received the surrenders. Opened the gates to the work camps. Went home to famine and struggle. Where's our statue?
"Not that I want one. That's not the point. The credit isn't the point. The point is...
"I'm tired of being left behind.
"I'm tired. I'm old.
"But I will carry on... Because you heroes..."
We see Dottie, getting off a bus. Walking into a suburb. Leaving an envelope tucked into a door...
A woman picks up the envelope, examines it. Text on the envelope reads: "He died the hero she wanted him to be. Children live because of him. I hope that's enough."
"You heroes keep leaving me. Leaving us behind."
Fade into Dottie standing before the statue of Captain America in Brooklyn. Frank's grave is underwater. Peggy's is in London. So she stands before the monument of the living, and yet the far away. At the base of the statue in black magic marker reads block printed letters: "Constrictor gave his life for Brooklyn. What will you do?"
Dottie looks up at the statue, her fist clasped against her chest. "I'm not doing this for you anymore, you're not worth it. I'm not doing it f-" she chokes something back. "For her. I'm doing it because not a hero."
She lays something on the statue's pedestal, just one of many gifts and tributes. Dottie opens her hand and lets it go: her handmade red hourglass symbol.
"I am a soldier. And a soldier doesn't leave their people behind."
She turns and walks away, and we fade back into black.
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From the black, credits scroll.
From the darkness, a blinding searchlight sweeps across our field of view. The light is on the bow of a small grey salvage ship. Roxxon logo on the ship. The man behind the light points and shouts, "There!"
A blonde woman clings to a floating barrel, a metal coil wrapped around the barrel and her torso, holding her up.
Beneath the surface floats a familiar face.
As the light strikes her, the woman's eyes open and she gasps.
____________________________
The man we have called Duke stands in a dark grey featureless space, surrounded by cloudy darkness. He is afraid. The shadows close in around him. At first, they probe at his defenses, and he swings at them and they recoil. But then they surge forward, pouring into his eyes, ears, mouth, filling him with Darkness.