(Ben Urich: A Few Minutes Ago)
Ben waited inside his car, taking a drag from his cigarette before blowing it out the window like one of the old detective films that he'd grown up watching as a child. He didn't smoke often, not since he was a young twenty-something kid, trying to take on the world.
But every now and again, he decided that he needed just one… which usually became two, which became three and so on and so forth. It usually stopped after the first day, as Doris never liked him smoking and when she found out that he'd been smoking again, she gave him a look. Then he'd give up smoking again.
Ben was just waiting for the right moment to strike, the right moment to silently call in the other reports, them and the news networks that could get here the fastest. All to make sure that they couldn't cover up the trafficking of young girls going through this dock.
The idea was when Ben heard the sirens of the cops, he'd call them in. Simple enough idea.
"I just hope the kid doesn't get a big head," Ben murmured, squashing the cigarette into the car's ashtray. "There are more ways to kill a man than just shooting," It wouldn't be something that the reporter would like to be responsible for. "Just what I need, the kid to be drowned."
It was taking longer than it should've. Ben could already hear the gunshots ringing out from the docks. Someone should've called the cops already. It put Ben on edge, made him feel jumpy and caused him to keep an eye around for signs of trouble.
But then it happened, the sirens rang out, police cars zooming on past him as if they were red, white, blue blurs.
"Showtime," Ben hit the send button on his burner phone, sending a mass message that would start the media frenzy. Then he put his foot down, following after the cars as they made their way towards the docks.
Though, keeping himself from getting too close to the cars, getting ready when they went to form a perimeter around the dock entrance. Something that they did with expert precision just mere moments later with barely a screech from their tires.
"Hello," Urich erupted from his car with a smile on his face. "Officers, mind giving me a statement?"
"Oh god," A detective groaned, one hand holding his head as if it was in pain while the other smoothed out the creases in his suit jacket. "Who tipped off Urich?
That question only brought a series of shrugs from the other officers around him.
"Detective Blake," Ben grinned, waggling a finger in a playful manner as he walked up to a barrier that the officers had just placed on the ground, having taken it from the trunk of their cars. The Reporter didn't bother to try and get around it, he wasn't stupid, he knew the rules. "We both know that I don't need to be tipped off to follow the sound of gunfire."
"Well stay back, just-" Blake's rebuke was interrupted by the sound of what amounted to a parade of news crews, reporters, cameramen and the rest of those ilk arrived. It was sidling van doors that created the majority of the noise. "Oh fuck's sake."
"Listen folks!" Blake's partner, a black man by the name of Hoffman, yelled out, grabbing the non-police officers' attention. "Stay back, far behind the barrier or we can't protect you. We won't be taking any questions, we're still just accessing the situation."
Sadly for Hoffman, his exclamation didn't stop the entirety of the reporters on hand, barring Urich himself who just leaned back and smiled at the situation, from screaming a barrage of questions that only grew into in odder questions.
Some of which caused even Ben to raise a brow.
"Is it true that you Detective once shoved a banana up you-" That question was halted by the sounds of gunfire restarting once more, as well as a deafening explosive that went off.
"And so it starts," Urich murmured to himself, his eyes staring as the police broke down the front gate of the docks, allowing him to catch a glimpse of a shadowy figure near the back of the docks, standing on the edge of one for the two boats were docked.
The seasoned reporter only took out a single notepad, jutting down a few notes about the night before walking back to his car with a large smile on his face.
("Patrick Doyle: Present Time)]
The water hit my skin with a refreshingly cool sensation, but nowhere near as cold as it should've been for this time of night. But it was cold enough that I wasn't surprised that it brought a small amount of shock to my system, sending shivers up my spine as I drove deeper into the water, hopefully letting me go unseen by anyone looking into the water from the docks.
I was swimming much faster than I'd ever managed before, probably faster than any regular human could've without some enhancement of the mystic source or being some sort of alien from beyond this realm.
It wasn't even ten minutes before I'd managed to swim out far enough that I couldn't hear the sounds of the police anymore, so I slowed down and made my way towards a public peer, the darkness of the night masking my figure as I crept out of the water.
Standing tall and attempting to shake off as much water as I could from my body. Sadly, I could feel that I was zapped, so tired that I wasn't really able to shake off much water before I decide that I should just cut off my losses.
"Fucking water," I groaned, my fingers pinching the ruined fabric that made up what used to be a hoodie. The water seeped out, not a lot of water but at least enough to let me know that I needed to change clothes as fast as possible, otherwise, I couldn't help but hope that the motel that O'Reilly picked out had a change of clothes.
I ripped the mask off my face before throwing it behind me, not even waiting for the sound of it splashing before I started to jog off. it didn't take long for me to get to the motel that O'Reilly had told me about.
But it was as I made my way there that I noticed that some people were looking at me oddly, I looked down towards my feet, the attention causing me no small amount of anxiety… which was when I noticed what I thought they were staring at.
My clothes had a series of burns and holes that made me seem more like a stripper than some jogger. In fact, the hoodie was barely holding together, strings of burnt blue were the only thing that held the top of the hoodie to the bottom of it.
I'd reached the motel much faster than I'd thought I would've… which lead to me realizing that at least some of the people were giving me looks weren't really giving me odd looks, so much as they were peering at a blur that was running by.
It was especially evident when I turned around and saw how run down the new pair of runners I'd been given had gotten, their soles were nubs.
"Hope that no one noticed me," I groaned, grabbing at my shoulders and hearing the squash of the wet fabric. How odd it was that my clothes were still wet when I was supposedly running as fast as some cars? "The last thing that I need is someone managing to take a pic of me running around in speed mode."
Deciding that it wasn't worth the time that it would take up, and feeling exhausted as well, I went into the motel, finding the lady sitting at the front desk within seconds. I tapped at the bell, drawing attention from her in the form of an unamused eyebrow raise.
"Sorry," I shrugged, rolling my shoulders and giving her a slight grin. "I just couldn't resist ringing the bell, ain't done it before."
"Riiiiight," The woman enunciated the word oddly, lengthening it till it became a parody of itself. "Do you have a reservation?"
"Jimbosentme," I replied, in a manner that I thought was smooth but was, in fact, just me saying the words so fast that anyone that could hear it just ended up confused. "I said. Jim-Bo Sent-Me!"
"Oh," She nodded, her eyes fell to the book in front of her, then she took her left hand and opened it. I let my eyes drag over to the clock, hoping that it would tell me the time. Sadly, the damn thing was frozen. "Room thirteen," The lady said, interrupting my thoughts and my eyes fell back to the woman. "That's down the hall."
I sighed, closing my eyes for just a second as I let my legs drag me towards the thirteenth door. Opening the door with a single hand, I heard the carpet smush under my feet, the water from my soaked pants having slid down onto my shoes.
"Fuck," Mummering I kicked the sneakers, letting them hit the floor next to the bed with a moist slap. I flinched, finding the noise gross and very off-putting. Then I carefully started to peel off the soaked hoodie.
Which was when something rather unexpected happened.
"You're not Pop?" A young woman's voice caused me to spin around, my eyes wide as we both took in each other's bodies. I recognized her as the girl that I'd met yesterday, Louise. A girl that was much too old for me to be her dad… I hope?
"I fucking hope not!"
"Wait… Pat?" Lousie asked, leaning forward without actually getting any closer to me. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here?" I replied, confused by the rather bizarre question for someone that barged into my room. Took some balls, let me tell ya, "What are you doing here?"
Louise's face went through several expressions that I wasn't even sure of, one of them looked close to surprise, another one looked like anger before finally shifting to something that I thought was embarrassment
"I thought this was Pop's room," She said, not bothering to shuffle her eyes away from the half-naked body. There was an odd quirk from one of her brows, almost like something that I'd expect from the Rock. "Clerk must have given me the wrong room, thought it would be funny or something."
While she checked me out, I noticed something about her that I hadn't before. She was pretty tall, like I wasn't a small man, standing at 6'2" but she was at least two to three inches taller than me. Impressive I suppose, but not at all indicative of any accomplishment on her part.
Just good genetics.
"What's his name?" I asked, curious about the subject but I also had this tiny bit of suspicion that if the clerk had pointed her this way, that her dad was someone that I knew.
She didn't talk for a bit, instead just closing the door and walking around to the other side of the room.
"It would be O'Reilly, Jim."
"So you told the clerk that Jimbo sent you?"
Louise let out a noise from her nose, I think it would be called a snort. Something that I'm pretty sure meant that she was suppressing a chuckle or a giggle. Something that may have been against her image but I didn't know her all that much, I'd need to spend more time around her to be sure of that.
"Oh, so you're a friend of Pop," she sighed as if disappointed with me. "So you some sort of junior member? Certainly, sound like one."
I've never been asked before if I was part of the Irish Mafia, or then Kitchen Irish as I would soon learn, which made this a unique experience, in a day of other unique experiences this somehow felt like it was something more interesting. Probably because I could be lit on fire and shot at any other day.
And I hoped that I wouldn't be asked if I was part of the mafia often.
"Nah, O'Reilly's just helping me out," I replied, making my way towards the bathroom. "He found me just after I left that place we met at," I grabbed a towel, rubbing off the excess water fast enough that I wouldn't have to be put under the stare of a young girl while soaked to the bone. "Some moron nearly ran him over, I shoved him out of the way. O'Reilly offered me this place to stay."
"Thank god," I heard her groan, jumping on the bed with a loud thump. "Pop would kill me if he found out that I'd managed to interfere with his boss's business." I loudly chuckled something that Louise seemed to hear right away if her response was anything to go by.
"What's so funny?"
"What… not going to kill ya if you reveal to strangers that he works for the Irish Mafia?"
"Nah, Pop just works for the Kitchen Irish," Louise said, from the sound of her voice, she was speaking into the pillow. "They're a loose series of mobsters, connected to but not really part of the Irish Mafia families."
"Is there really a difference?" I found a dry set of clothes sitting on the cardboard under the sink. "Irish descended mobsters are mobsters of Irish descent, no matter how they arranged the organization."
"Gotta say, a potato is a potato."
"That's just ancient Irish know-how there."
When I came back into the other room, dressed in a smile black tracksuit that I'd been left. My hair having been completely dried by the towel seconds beforehand as I took in how my bed was completely overtaken by the teenage girl.
"So what made you think your Pops would be here?" I asked her, taking the chair by the door, sitting with my right foot on top of my left knee. Jitters took over the limb beneath, shaking the one above all the while.
This wasn't just a nervous tic, it was something called stimming. It was an instinctual action that I couldn't control.
"Look, it's none of my business," I course-corrected my approach with the girl, obviously there's something with her dad that I shouldn't be asking about. "Forget I said anything, though I imagine that you should be getting-" Once more the door clicked open, this time with male O'Reilly entering the room with a rather alarmed expression.
"What the hell is going on here?" he asked, his teeth grinding with such force that I could hear how they were losing calcium by the second. The thing that actually worried me was the way his face flushed a furious red; furious being the operative word. "Louise!"
"Yo, Pop!" Louise lazily raised a hand but still laying down on the bed. There wasn't a single inch of her body that seemed to be concerned with the fact that her dad was enraged at the sight of her being here. Which in fairness…
… if I found my daughter alone, sitting on the only bed, with a man who'd been homeless the day before. I would be pissed too!
Suddenly the elder O'Reilly sighed, the timbre heavy in the air as he looked to me. I couldn't decipher what the look on his face meant, but I would assume it was something to do with how spent he felt dealing with a teenage daughter.
"Louise… what have I told about doing this?"
"Don't get caught and shakedown some gobshites along the way?"
"Louise."
"Right… right," Louise rolled off the bed, sending me a wink along the way. Very slowly the young girl walked over towards her dad, something that highlighted once more that she was pretty tall compared to most people that I've met in life, which included her father, who seemed to stand under six feet himself. "See you later Pat! We've gotta chat some time!"
In all her rush to leave, or rather lack of rush, I don't think Jimbo noticed the rather odd bit of paper that she left on the bed. The one with her mobile number written on it.
"So… " I trailed off when the O'Reilly Patriarch turned to glare at me. "How's those local sports teams?"
(The Man In Black)
He took a deep breath, letting the sound bounce off the room, letting him head right to the sink without any issue from running into something. The world had been on fire since he was a child, ever since the accident, it only took a while to notice it.
To take advantage of it.
Stick had told him that he had gifts.
But Matt had never met anyone else besides Stick that had gifts of a similar nature. For years, he thought the two of them were alone in the world of girt, of pain. Today showed him that there were more people with gifts; gifts that made his own seem mundane.
The gifts this man had made Matt Murdock feel small.
"Matt, you're back!" He heard his friend and current roommate's voice from the other room, but he had smelled the liquor from his breath, the cheap cologne that the fellow law student liked to use to mask the smell of his clothes when he didn't have the time to properly wash them "I thought that you were going to be gone for the weekend?"
"I got back early, Foggy," Matt replied, keeping his voice soft, even as his friend neared the bathroom door. "Got some unexpected help and got everything done early."
"I tolda that I would've helped you," Foggy whined drunkenly, slurring his words and suddenly turning towards his bed. Matt could hear the carpet decompress from his friend's weight lifting off it before Foggy even landed on the bed. "Now couldn't I have helped instead of some stranger?"
Matt was sure that Foggy meant how and not now, but he didn't feel the need to correct his friend.
"Oh, they didn't offer," The blind man between the two started to explain. "In fact, the guy was already doing the deed for me, and I forced my help on him."
"That's nice," Foggy mumbled into his pillow, his voice breaking against the soft fabric. "But next time I'm going to help ya… whether or not you want it or not… "
Matt smirked, grabbing his toothbrush so he could start to clean his teeth. It was only when he had finished, changed into his pajamas and sat on his own bed, that he spoke once more.
"You're a good friend."
"Good? I'm the greatest friend," Foggy wasn't above correcting Matt. "Not just good. THE BEST!"
"You're the best."
(????? ?????)
A clean suit, well-kept hair, glasses and a face clean of any sign of facial hair marked the beginning of what was a rather nondescript if well-dressed, man. He was one of the Boss's most trusted men, the man that got things done or at least arranged tasks to be completed.
Quietly.
Sometimes… even deadly.
He was sitting in a limo, watching a flat-screen showcasing the news of the evening. The breaking news at that, a bunch of girls, blind ones that were found at the docks, shoved into cargo containers like they were animals.
But that wasn't the only thing of interest, it seems that some of the docks were being run by the Irish Mobsters that currently were in power of the criminal element of Hell's Kitchen. Obviously, the two were connected.
And the final thing, a man in blue was rumored to have been seen taking gunfire like he was a tank; even being lit on fire at one stage. A ridiculous rumor no one seemed to take seriously, except for the fact that there was a vigilante wearing blue that beat them up.
Currently, he was just being called the Blueman.
"Yes, sir," He spoke into a phone, one that looked like something that would only see the mass market within the next ten years, perhaps something that only high ranking government officials would be using. "It's been taken care of, the relationship between the Kitchen Irish and Madame Gao's group will be strained by this loss. It should leave her open for you to negotiate the Russians to take over the trade."
The Boss said something in return.
"O'Reilly?" The metaphorical right hand of the Boss said, not so much in question to the man on the other end of the call but as a question to himself. "He's trustworthy enough, the man has his morals but… put some pressure on his family and he'll fold."
More words were said by the Boss, something that would vaguely sound like a threat to anyone else hearing it, but the man wearing the glasses knew it was just the tone of voice that the other always used. He was polite but had trouble speaking in a manner that didn't come off as threatening when certain topics were being discussed.
After all… Wilson Fisk didn't need to threaten anyone.
He just ended any threat to his goals. No warnings were needed.
"No, I don't know who Mr. O'Reilly sent in there but I can find out if you want?"
"That… won't be necessary," Fisk replied, for the first time the driver of the limo could hear his voice. "I'm sure that once we've brought him into the fold, O'Reilly will eventually hire the man again."
"Mr. Wesley," The Driver spoke up for the first time, interrupting the man's rather important conversation. "We've arrived."
"Ah, thank you," James Welsey replied, before returning to his conversation on the phone. "I'm afraid that I've arrived sir and will have to cut this call short. Once I've finished things up here, I'll call in."
"Remember, we take this slow." Fisk warned his right-hand man. "No need to make too many waves yet."
(Patrick Doyle: The Next Day)
The night before had ended with a rather quiet talk with Jim O'Reilly about how exactly I knew his daughter. Now thankfully the man didn't become that stereotypical angry dad that wanted to kill all males that came into contact with his daughter, at least the ones that were not family, so he did let me explain the full story of that to him.
And so he left me with a note telling me where to meet up with Urich again. Some cafe down the road, think it was called Brennans or something.
"You did good work, kid." Ben told me, sitting across from me in a booth near the corner of the room. "Real good, not a single person died, though some of them may not walk again… " he trailed off, his hand coming to rest under his chin as if a thought had struck him. "Maybe try and work on that, it wouldn't be good if you get mugged by some fool and you accidentally break him in half."
There was an image for you, accidentally doing Superboy-Prime, as in what he did to the Teen Titans that time they as a group decided to just throw themselves at the Superman-level being… and most of them didn't have durability as a power.
"On that," I said, agreeing with him. "So… what do I do now?"
Ben took a long gulp from his drink, while I dug into a toasted ham and cheese sandwich waiting for him to respond. I could feel my heart start to race as my ears started to pick up the sounds of the city going around me, the noises were far louder, far clearer than anything else. For a few seconds, I tried to down it all out.
"Pat," Ben's voice suddenly overpowered the rest of the noises, letting me return to normal. "You okay?"
"Yeah, suddenly gained super hearing," I said, nonchalantly finishing off the sandwich with a single large bite and then swallowing it in that same motion. "This is a rather terrifying, wonder what new power I'll get next. I kinda hope it isn't flight… I've got a phobia of heights."
"But you were leaping small buildings yesterday," he replied, his tone a mix of amusement and confusion with his index finger pointing directly at me. "What… now that you're fireproof, do you have a phobia of fire as well."
"Nah, I've a phobia of water, though," I grinned at him, something that he mirrored with one of his own. "So swimming is out of the question."
"You'll never make a good reporter if you don't get over those sort of fears," Urich's grin was a small proud thing, especially as he reached inside his jacket pocket. A folder of papers slapped onto the tale with enough force that they slid over to me. "And you'll need these."
I slowly peeled over the folder, revealing a mix of I.D cards, birth certificate and a lot of other sorts of papers that meant that I was who I said I was. Utter proof that I was both an American and an Irish citizen.
"This is a lot," I closed the folder, sliding it back to Ben, who was the only one between the two of us that had a jacket big enough to even carry the damn thing. "Why?"
He didn't speak for a few seconds, instead his eyes just roamed about the room, as if he was collecting pieces to a puzzle that I couldn't hope to understand. I continued to watch as he took off his glasses and wiped them with the fabric of his shirt till they were sportless to my eyes, it was only when the glasses returned to the ridge of his nose that he spoke once more.
"You saved lives," Urich said lowly. "You've been given power like no one else in the world. First thing you do with it?" he asked, but I couldn't bring myself to answer, sensing that it was rhetorical. "You've decided that you'll use it to help people. I'm doing this because your sort of power worries me and maybe now that you've seen that you can work outside the law without consequences… maybe that will be how you think things should go."
I couldn't deny the rush that went through my body last night, the raw emotion that churned through me like a drug. It could be addictive to me, nothing could stop me from going after every gang, every criminal enterprise and every mugger… nothing could stop me but myself.
"I think it's time that you learn how to use people, the public's opinion and a journalist's ability to expose corruption to stop the big guys, to help people, " Ben continued, standing now to deliver the documents right back into my hands. "or this is where we end this, you go on your ways and I go my ways but no matter what, I'll help you find out what happened to you… It's up to you."
Our eyes meet and I watched as he held out his left hand for me to shake.
"What do you say?"
I smiled.
"When do I start," Grabbing his hand, we shook and I could tell that this was the start of a beautiful friendship.
Author's Note: Shorter Chapter this time, but that's only because it's a transitionary and set up chapter, as well as closing part of the last one. The chapter after this one will be far longer than this.
Dealing with several other matters as well. Originally this was part of a longer chapter overall, but I read over it and felt that I basically had a chapter and a half in terms of plot and it would be better I just posted this half here. Then combined the next half into next chapter.
Since there's not a lot of connecting tissue between this chapter and the other half.
Again, this is unbeta'd and I would love if you wouldn't mind pointing out any mistakes, any awkward phrasing and the like to me if you see anything. Thank you, I hope that you've enjoyed this chapter.
Edit: It is now beta'd!