Chapter 19 - Chapter 19

"Well, Mr Osborn-"

"That's DIRECTOR Osborn!"

The doctor flinched "Sorry, Director Osborn. As I was saying, while neither Melissa Gold nor Robbie Baldwin sustained any injuries in the battle, the same unfortunately cannot be said for the rest of your subordinates. Andreas Von Strucker is missing two fingers and parts of another on his right hand and has sustained severe nerve damage in the arm itself, Chen Lu has one ruptured ear drum and damage to the second one, and Karla Sofen has sustained severe radiation burns over 70% of her body. Mac Gargan appears uninjured, but by the teams reports, it seems the symbiote was destroyed in the battle, leaving him powerless."

Osborn gritted his teeth and glared out over the defeated remnants of the team, it would be a while before most of them could be useful to him again, and he'd be spending days finding decent replacements for them. And god knows what happened to Bullseye...

"Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Did any of you land even a single hit on the guy? Just ONE? The idea here was to gauge his abilities, but you idiots couldn't even LOSE right! We don't know anymore now than we did before, other than that bullets apparently don't work on him either. Now we have to waste time healing you incompetent fucks and look for substitutes, and in the meantime, that mutant asshole is just walking around defying my authority!"

Sofen glared right back "Osborn, I did hit him, both me and Bullseye did, neither bullets nor energy attacks did a damn thing against him! When we tried attacking at the same time, he just redirected the energy back against us. He damn near crippled us, I'd say that's plenty of information!" She trailed off, her eyes closed as she tried ignoring the throbbing pain under the bandages.

Osborn scoffed but didn't bother arguing further. To be honest, he didn't really expect any sort of success at all against the mutant, he just wanted to test him, but dealing with supervillains required negative reinforcement, so he wasn't going to tell them that. A lot like raising kids really. The truth was he could probably use the Thunderbolts overwhelming defeat to further inflame the fears in government, playing up how not even their own government-sanctioned teams could stand up against this new terror, and that much, MUCH more drastic methods to contain the threat were needed.

Gargans voice drew him out of his musings "So, what now, boss?"

Osborn raised an eyebrow "Now? Well, for you, it's back to prison, because you're useless to me without the symbiote."

"What? But I thought-"

"Gargan, the only reason you were even on this team is because you were dumb enough to sign up, and getting the symbiote to agree to a new host was too much hassle. Venom is dead, and no one has any use for Mac Gargan. What, you expected me to keep you on as The Scorpion? Sure, right after I recruit Big Wheel and Turner D. Century. Baldwin, my office, NOW!"

Ignoring Gargan's outraged stammering, Osborn quickly strode out of the medbay, followed by Penance. It was just a short walk to Osborns commandeered office, which he had taken from the previous base commander, and only had one chair, the one behind his desk. Osborn liked making his subordinates stand while they met with him, he felt it put them in their place. He sat down and turned to look at Baldwin, who had removed the spiked helmet, revealing his bald and scarred face.

"Baldwin, could you please explain to me why you and Gold are the only members of the team who are currently not maimed?"

Baldwin "I-I really wouldn't know, sir."

"You sure about that? There's no pre-existing familiarity between the three of you?"

Baldwin shook his head "I've never seen him before in my life. He seemed to know me though, he... he said things about Stamford. About how I've been handling it."

"For your sake, those better not be second thoughts I'm hearing-" his words cut off as the office was suddenly filled with a flash of light, and as if out of nowhere, the familiar figure of Bullseye dropped out of thin air and right on top of Osborns desk, scattering papers and computer equipment everywhere "What the hell?!"

Tumbling off the desk and hitting the floor, Bullseye seemed to be grabbing for something to pull himself up with, eventually grabbing onto Baldwins legs, who helped him up to his feet "What- Where am- Osborn?! OSBORN, IS THAT YOU?!"

"Yes, it's me, you don't have to yell, I'm right here! What the hell happened to you? Where did you come from?!"

"That fucking... it was the mutant! He did something! Did something to my brain, or my hands or something! FUCK!"

Osborn shook his head "Did what? What are you talking about?"

Instead of answering, Bullseye grabbed for a pen knife lying on the desk, and before Baldwin could stop him, threw it right towards Osborns head. Osborn barely had time to register what was about to happen, before he felt the impact against his skull... and a rubber duck toy bounced off his head and onto his desk. There was a pause as all three men stared incredulously at the object, before Osborn picked it up, looking it over like he expected it all to be a dying dream as his brain was pierced by a knife.

"...care to explain, Lester?"

"It's not just ducks either, look!" Grabbing several other sharp objects from the desk, Bullseye threw them the same way, and again, the result was the same. A nerf dart, a tiny teddy bear, and much to Osborns disgust, a condom, all replaced the projectiles the moment before impact. "That fucking mutant did this! He said that from now on, anything I try to use as a weapon will turn into this crap! He fucking ruined me!"

Osborn sighed and rubbed the side of his head, feeling a headache coming on.

....

"Sorry about that. Now, where were we?"

Urich jumps back from the window as I pop back into his office after finishing up with Bullseye. Turns out he's not the only one, as half the Front Line staff seems to have gathered to watch the fight, if you could even call it that, several of them filming with their phones, and one of them, a pretty blonde woman in street clothes, screams and almost drops hers when I reappear inside the room. "Holy shit!"

"Okay guys, shows over, back to work! And I mean WORK, not jump on social media to post pictures of what just happened." Urich says as he tries to herd everyone out.

"But Mr.Urich, he just beat the crap out of all those guys, and all he did was lift one arm!"

"I'm well aware Winters, I was watching the same fight you were, now GO!" Urich pushes her out, and closes the door with a sigh before walking back behind his desk. "There's no way I'm going to get anything productive out of the staff today, I hope you realize that."

"Sorry, but I've been ruffling a few feathers lately, so I never know when someone is going to try and start shit over it. Now, if you don't mind, we were talking about your SRA investigation..." Urich looks about to protest but I keep going "I'm aware of your concerns, but as you just saw, the SRA is having serious consequences and need to be overturned. Those guys were here on behalf of Norman Osborn, who I shouldn't need to remind you since you wrote a book about the bastard, is a megalomaniac serial killer who got hired by the government specifically to commit extralegal acts. They were trying to arrest me for violating the SRA, even though I'm a mutant so the SRA doesn't even apply to me in the first place!"

Urich taps his fingers against his desk as he thinks "...if I were to give you my files, what would you do with them?"

"Me? Nothing. Jennifer Walters would, however."

He blinks "She-Hulk? She's this associate of yours? Last time I checked, she was a supporter of the SRA!"

"Yeah, until she scratched the surface of all of Stark's bullshit and found out just a tiny bit of all the civil rights abuses he's been engaging in to make the SRA a reality. Oh, and that's not even all he's been doing. I'm pretty sure he's committed high treason atleast once. But we'll have to start somewhere, so I want your help in exposing what he and his supporters have done, all in the name of their goddamn stability. And keep in mind that when the time comes, you will probably be called on to testify and verify that you did indeed dig up this evidence yourself. What do you say, you want to knock the house of cards over?"

Urich is silent for a long while, until finally "Tell Walters to expect my call. I need to reassemble what I have before I'm ready to turn the files over. But I'd like to make a request in return."

"Name it."

"When you have a moment free, Front Line gets an exclusive interview.

"I'll check my schedule."

...

Before teleporting out of the office, I place a few subtle protections over Urich, just to make sure he doesn't meet any unfortunate "accidents" now that Osborn knows I've been meeting with him. Hell, I wouldn't even put it past Stark to try and pull some shit against him. Nothing flashy, but attacks or other attempts at harming him will mysteriously fail, seemingly by dumb luck, even mindreading.

I reappear in Jen's apartment, catching her while she's at her kitchen table, looking through some legal files from the early days of the Civil War. She looks up as I burst into view. "You're back! Did you find anything? What did Urich say?"

"Not a lot, but I was right, he did know more than he had published. Stark isn't as good at hiding the paper trail as he thinks, and if Urich can find it, I'm pretty sure he's not the only one. It did take a little convincing but Urich agreed to call you about it."

"Oh thank you! We need as much dirt on Stark as possible, I want to BURY him, not just slightly inconvenience him! Anything else?"

I shrug "Not really. Oh, well I did have to beat up the Thunderbolts real quick in the middle there, but otherwise it was pretty uneventful."

Jen nods distractedly "Mm-hmm, okay, next we should-" she pauses "Wait, what was that last part?"

"Oh, the Thunderbolts tried to arrest me so I had to knock them around a little before sending them limping back to Osborn. You wanna go get some drinks?"