38 Third Night Out
On the night of the warehouse, I didn't do much after eavesdropping on the conversation. I couldn't find any solid evidence that can tie them to a specific organization and their only crime so far is the illegal gathering of alien debris. Since it was just a processing and distribution location and a small clog in a bigger system. I left them alone but I've also marked the warehouse as another place of interest. I have to quickly build up my network of intelligence if I want a fighting chance in this world. Can't play on the street level when the masterminds behind the operations are moving armies and wealth around like pawns on a chess board. I wonder if the Ten Rings have any operations here in New York. Would be an interesting day when I find them.....if they don't come looking for me first.
Well anyways, tonight is my third night of patrolling as the Mystic Spider. Yesterday I sort of took the day off from patrolling the streets to review and do some research. The cameras on the helmet allowed me to record all the faces I encountered that night. And looking through the database, I'm pretty surprised at what I discovered. None of the boys have been caught with anything up until that night. But even then they weren't charged with any of the crimes that I saw because the victim had already fled the scene by the time the cops arrived. All that they were charged with was breaking minor curfew. The cops only saw a bunch of teenage boys laying around with some sort of bone injury to everyone of them. This probably caused a lot of confusion too because they probably came in after a report of a woman screaming and then several screams that came afterwards.... Well if the victim doesn't go to the police to report anything and nothing else happens to the group of wannabe thugs then it's not my problem. They've already received their warning and if I catch them again it won't be another warning.
Now the rooftop arms deal was pretty interesting. The building doesn't seem to be owned by any gang I've seen before nor does the front company that owns it. Seems like the building is just another corporation that deals in vague businesses like real estate and industrial trading of some sort...but that can't be it right? There's definitely no way a legitimate business has anything to do with salvaged alien technology. All I can do is watch from afar and continue to observe the flow of the city.
The warehouse at the port is also the same story too. Just some run of the mill LLC that deals with vague shipping business. They claim to deal with foreign industrial goods and act as a distribution company to set it fit for the American market....and I guess they're not lying. It's just foreign goods from space instead of overseas or across the border. But the parent company of the business is interesting. It's a part of a large real estate corporation that owns a good portion of New York's industrial and entertainment properties. There's only a shortlist of people that can control those type of power and none of them are normal people.
Sigh. Looks like I'll have a long list of things to do to clean up this city and the world. Welp there's no point in stooping in the dumps now, I have all the powers and will in the world to make a change. If I don't make it then no one else will. I put on my helmet before climbing out of the window from my apartment. I want to try seeing how things are going in my neighborhood tonight. After a few minutes of swinging I came upon a drug dealer. I was just going to leave him alone because I feel a sense of sympathy for those who deal and who use but what this guy is selling is quite interesting.
I land on the building across the street to observe the dealer. He must've been at this corner for a while now and he seems to get a customer every half hour or so. Busy spot but not busy enough to be a big shot in the neighborhood. I wonder where the distribution center of this product is from. Can't be from the neighborhood that's for sure but it must be from somewhere in the city. I guess I'll just have to keep watching and follow the money. Who knew doing street level hero work would be so much watching and waiting.
I continue to watch over the man for another hour or so before he finally begins to move. He must be one of the most hard working drug dealers I've ever seen because it's almost 1 in the morning and he's just not going somewhere else. I form a small compressed tracking spell in my hand before webbing it up with my other. I shot it at the sole of the man's shoe as he starts to walk away. I know I'm still new to this whole hero business but sometimes I'm impressed with the things that I can do. A tracking spell that will just feel like you stepped over some tiny barely noticeable gum.
I get up from my little corner of the rooftop to do some stretches before leaping over to the next. Oh it feels so good to finally be able to stretch my legs after squatting like a gargoyle for a few hours. I begin doing flips and somersaults in between buildings as I enjoy the rush of the wind on my body-SKIRTTTT! Fuck I lost the guy. Got too distracted by playing with myself I guess. I turn around to see if he's still walking on the sidewalk. Hmmm I don't see him so he could've either went into the building next to the one that I'm in front of or anything of the previous apartments.
It's a good thing I like to invade other people's privacy because WOOSH! With a swipe on my control panel I'm able to activate the tracking spell to appear on my helmet display. Goddamn just how distracted was I? He's nearly two blocks away from where I am. I jump back towards the direction of the blinking light before finally jumping on top of the apartment complex that he went into.
I walk around until I'm directly above the light on the rooftop. I walk over to the ledge of the roof and crouch down to begin crawling towards the window that's closest to the spell. Uh the spell is staying in on place without moving, he must've taken off his shoes or something. I start crawling to the closed window with it's blinds down. With a slight wave of my hand I pull the strings on the inside of the window just ever so slightly to allow me to peak inside.
Oh shit he's not just home. He's on the couch getting domed after a long night of sales on the street. Good thing hesy distracted now because I want to see what he's selling. From afar I couldn't really see just what his merchandise was. All I knew was that it's a clear crystal like substance. I crawl away to a nearby window that seems like the unit's bedroom. With a simple plea from my magic the window slid up and the screen became undone. I quietly crawl in before closing everything up like nothing even happened. I observed the bedroom from the view of the ceiling and all I could find was a dirty bedroom with shit all over the floor. Well at least it's easy to see where his priorities are.
I lift a small baggie of his merchandise towards me as I observe the substance. It's definitely a crystal like substance but unlike methamphetamine or crack. I take out two crystals and put it in my own vials from my belt before putting everything back like how I found it. I stealthily exited through the window while the two couples were enjoying their night out in their living room and couch. With one side mission done I begin to web and swing away into the darkness of the night.
After swinging away it didn't take me long to find a burglary being actively committed. Just took a couple of minutes to web up the two men that's attempting to steal from a home while in dark clothes and face masks. This time I made sure to leave them at the scene of the crime along with making enough ruckus to alert someone to call the cops. Overall it took maybe a few minutes to stop a crime and leave enough evidence for a conviction and charge to stick. On to the next crime!
I was free running and swinging through the outer edge of my neighborhood when I heard a woman scream for help. I shiftly perform a flip from my current swing and head towards the direction of the scream. Not long after my change of direction I see a group of men trying to pull a woman into a van. She's fighting for her life as she tries to pull out her pepper spray to mace the men around her. With just enough luck and willpower she was able to escape the grasp of the men. She trips over the sidewalk as she tries to get out of the van but luckily for her, her kidnappers gave up on targeting her. The van begins to speed away as it leaves behind an odor of burnt rubber and tire marks on the street.
Luckily for me this is an opportunity to see how deep this syndicate rabbit hole goes. I shoot another webbed tracking spell onto the side of the van as it sped away. I take a deep breath before I begin to follow the almost kidnapped woman. I don't know which is weirder following her from the rooftops or following her from the street. She almost lost her life so she's definitely devastated and emotionally wrecked from the experience so I don't think it's a wise idea to approach her. Even if the intentions are to make sure she gets home safely....I continue to watch her from afar as she finally climbs up a short flight of stairs to enter an apartment complex. Good that's all this spider creep needs to do for now. I turn around towards the direction of the van before turning the tracking spell on to my HUD.
In just the short 10 minutes that I've spent watching over the random woman walking to her home, the van must've already gotten a victim because it's currently heading towards the direction of the seaport....just how connected are all these criminals and their organizations. I leap off of the building I'm currently on to build my momentum in order to swing at the speeds that I want.
After about an hour of swinging I finally arrived at the seaport. If it's one thing that's for sure it's that this warehouse is definitely not connected to the Chitauri harvesting business. It's on a completely different side of the city and the language that's being spoken by these men are different from the Chitauri camp. If I had to guess I would say Russian or some sort of eastern European language. Oh I love diversity in where diversity should matter. Everyone is trying their best to make their money and destroy each other and the world regardless of their background.
Anyways, the inside of this warehouse was a smaller operation than the harvesting warehouse. From what I can see through the vent opening, there might be somewhere between 15 to 20 men here whereas before there were at least 70 to 100 men. I guess that makes sense, having too many people on a job that requires less manual labor is just stupid and a waste of time and money. Well the van that I was following is currently parked in the corner of the building. There's a couple of shipping containers in the middle of the building with just one of them being open. I guess your product needs to stay alive and well otherwise not only are you losing out on money but you're also committing 'worse' crimes than you already are.
Two men are currently dragging a drugged out girl out of the van. Uh this must be the next one they found after speeding off. Plenty of fruits to pick from a city population of 8 million. Well I guess technically it's about 2 million if we're keeping it to just in Queens. One is holding on to the woman's arms while the other is carrying her legs. Just after a few minutes of waddling they've already gotten her into the cargo container and locked everything up. One of them looks at a man that's standing on top of the rails overlooking the whole procedure. With a nod, a crane came down to pick up the cargo container before placing it on a truck. It's still pretty early in the night apparently because there's no driver in the seat of the truck and the vehicle isn't even on just yet.
"It's Mystin time!" I quietly crawl out of the vent to explore the rest of the warehouse. Oh good, the office is also by the top of the stairs. I just need to make a quick download of their business data and then I can call the cops. My fingers quickly creep their way towards the office as my body slowly slides across the ceiling. If anyone were to look up right now they might not even see me because the lights are hanging too low for them to see past the brightness illuminating the building.
Not long after I stumble on to the vent covering that connects the office room to the rest of the open area. Honestly this seems like a pretty dumb architectural design. You have a main vent for the air conditioning to get into the office room as well as distributing cooled air to the rest of the office. And then you have one more that's just a 'covered' opening that connects the roof to the open area. I don't want to sound ungrateful because it makes my job easier but goddamn that's some lazy wri-I mean architecture design.
The only problem I have is that there's a light source close by the vent and the area surrounding the vent is pretty well illuminated. Well a slight flicker of a light is all I need to get in anyways so that won't be too much of a problem. Now my only major problem would be what's on the inside of the office. There's for sure one person in there and taking them out shouldn't be too hard. But the unknown is the real danger, there could be multiple people and traps in there and it can become slightly dangerous for me.
I should really develop a drone or something small with a camera so I can collect intel better. Wait I'm a fucking wizard who can access a whole ass dimension and can't get caught. I lean back as I let my hands unstick to the wall allowing gravity to pull me down. With a twist and pull of my hands a crack in space opens up underneath me as my body crashes into the opening. Just like diving into a pool my body broke the surface tension of the dimension sending my body down a few feet before stabilizing. I nearly landed on top of one of the workers but I was too quick on my feet and avoided him completely.
Being in a completely different sublayer of dimension I knew nothing would happen to the man even if my heavier body and suit crashed into them. But it's better to start forming good habits now rather than later when I actually might land on someone in the real world. I look around the warehouse for a bit before climbing up the wall towards the office building. I must say the mirror dimension is a little bit creepy and unsettling for me. I know it's empty and devoid of life but the thought that there might be some creatures that can only exist here is not entirely out of the possibilities.
Anyways I made my way into the office just to find a single person sitting behind the desk. I wonder just how someone can come into a position and job like this, oh well it's not like I really care anyways. I deactivate the spell and exit the dimension as I creep up behind the man. "Yo boss man, where's the next delivery driver?" I rest a hand on his shoulder as I shoot a web at his wrists to lock them into his armchair.
Before he could raise his voice to call for help or alert anyone, I materialized a slab of webbing in my hand and placed it over his mouth. "I suggest you don't make too much noise or things won't go well for you and the crew." I place a finger on where my lips would be as I gently push his chair towards the wall. With a few short flicks on my wrist he soon became cocooned within a ball of web on the wall. I turn my attention to his computer. Everything was still on and had yet to go into sleep mode because it took such a short time to disarm the guy. I start digging through his storage and browse his history for a second before just taking his hard drives from the PC. "With that done I think it's about time to finish up the work here." I slowly cock my head towards the manager for his operation. With a flick of my fingers, the lights in the room go off.
I slowly walk towards the door where the rest of the lights in the warehouse are still on. I conjure up a few knives as I aim them towards the cables holding up the lights. Soon everything went dark as my eyes and scarf started to glow to contrast against the pitch black wearhouse. I slowly turn my bright purple eyes from one side of the wearhouse to the other side as I count up how many are in the immediate vicinity. I jump down towards one of the men close by while everyone else is still confused by the sudden switch to being pitch black darkness, and the only thing that they can see are a pair of glowing purple eyes and a floating green scarf. With a firm grip around my new knife everything went pretty smoothly. All the startled men that were standing in the open area were no longer scared once they started sharing a warm shower together.
Not that they had a choice of voicing their opinions because my knife was doing all the hard work for me. First it punctures a hole through the back of their lung and then from there it cuts through the spine to leave them in an enormous paralyzing amount of pain but with no way of expressing before crossing the river for the damned. Now let's see, that's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9-BANG BANG!! THUD! My body whips from shoulder to shoulder as I dodge the bullets coming from the gun that was aiming towards my glowing head and scarf. With a quick flick of my wrist the knife found itself lodged into a soft brain tissue just right after the shots were fired.
"Goddamn that's cold!" I wipe off the blood from my blade with the jacket of one of the freshly layed corpse. These men stood no chance when I deemed their actions as worthy of a painful and agonizing coward's death. I walk around digging into their pockets to look through their wallets and phone for any more information. Well it looks like these guys are just some lowly kidnappers and don't have any higher connections. "May you find yourself in whatever afterlife you deserve" I put my hands together and give them a little words of passage before jumping backwards to swing towards the office door.
I stumble loudly on the platform just outside of the office door and pause for a second. The slightly dim light of my helmet and scarf just barely reaching into the room. With a kick of my foot the door cave in and broke off the door frame. I slowly approach the man still stuck to the office chair and wall. From what I can see he's already pissed himself in the short time that the blackout happened and now he has floating spider skulls slowly approaching him.
"I'm going to give you one chance and one chance only. Tell me everything I want to hear or else I'll be cutting into the spinal cords of your family just like I did to your crew." I reach my hand out toward the man before ripping off the webbing that's around his mount. "Now who do you work for and where are you sending the girls?"
"I-I don't know man. I don't know what your-ACK" I squeeze his left thumb until the bone simply cracks and splinters under the strength of my hand. "The next one will be your balls and then your family." I shoot a ball of webbing at his crotch. "P-pleass man, I can't say that. They'll kill me if I say anything. I have a family to feed. I don't know what they do to these girls after we send them off. I don't get paid to know and ask questions." SIGH. I reach down to the man's crotch and with a firm squeeze...BLOP!
I've seen vets neuter male animals but they usually put the animals under before cutting open the sack to pop the testicles out. I think the man's testis are still in his sack but they've just changed into a phase of matter. Oh well it's not really my problem now. I've already call the cops using this building's phone and now I just have to wait for them to arrive to pick up the girls that are still in the cargo containers. I must say I have gathered a few millions worth of crypto currency and cash from this raid. Not bad since I'm pirating from human traffickers. And with the sound of sirens roaring in the distance coming closer and closer to this location I finally jump off the rooftop to swing away into the darkness of the night.
