Chapter 8: Chapter 8 I like my weapons how I like my music: Heavy and Metal
Turned out that Stein and me were both right, the guys who were left alive (five men, out of a group that started out with roughly twenty or so) didn't know where Klaue was, but they did know someone who probably did.
Some small-time weapons dealer, who bought from the massive stocks that Klaue and his like had on hand, and sold them in turn to the various gangs in and around Johannesburg, like the one that had tried to rob me.
Getting the location had been easy enough. While they all feared the weapons dealer enough to not snitch on him for authorities or rival gangs and the like, they feared me on a whole other level.
What came after was significantly more difficult though.
"What are you going to do to us?!"
It was one of the survivors, yelling at my back as I turned away to walk back towards where Stein already has the truck ready to go. Looking over my shoulder at the desperate man (who flinches when my glowing eye sets on him) I briefly stand still to order to think about his question?
What was I going to do with them?
The smart thing to do would be to quickly kill them. If I let them go, then best case scenario is that they grab more weapons and friends and come back to try again, or worst case scenario is that they blab about me and my abilities to the wrong people (which at the moment includes just about everyone, but S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra are at the top of the list, and they definitely will find out).
On the other hand, I have definitely had my fill of killing (my hand piercing through a man's torso, the fire from my arm searing his flesh), and the thought of disposing of these men as well makes me vaguely ill.
Before I could make a decision either way, I suddenly remember the car that got away from me, probably three men inside. So, cat's already outta the bag, no need to kill these guys as well since containment is no longer an option either way.
I realize I'm rationalizing, and that it's probably a bad idea, but I can't bring myself to care with the stench of burnt human still filling my nose.
So all I did was shrug at the man, turning away from him and his friends, walking towards where Stein is waiting.
"I'm not gonna do anything. Just don't get in my way."
And with that, I jumped into the cabin, and Stein drove off, towards where the next lead to Ulysses Klaue and his Vibranium is located.
Finding the arms-dealer's hideout is easy with the directions the carjackers gave me. Getting in is even easier. It's located in the back of a whore house, with your stereotypical goons one either side of the door, which is probably locked from the inside with a heavy bolt, a small flap allowing for someone to give a passwords or something.
I just walk up without saying anything, ignoring the warning scowls the guards send my way, smash the head of one goon (they're pretty big. I'm bigger) into the wall, kick the other one in the knee, then knee him in the chin, before I kick the door into the hideout, taking mortar and the bolt with it.
As I step inside, shocked silence greets me.
All around the room are stacks of cash, crates filled with weapons and ammo, while a dozen or so guys are seated on ratty couches or at dingy tables. They were all either playing cards, video games, or with the half-naked women in their laps, and the scent of drugs is an almost physical thing, hanging in the air.
Some slowly reach towards their guns as the people inside regain their footing, the women clearly not knowing whether to scream or go hide in a corner.
All movement is halted as I remove the ratty blanket I had thrown over myself as a makeshift cloak in order to walk the back-alleys of Johannesburg relatively unseen. However, as I throw it off myself, I show them just how huge my muscles are, the raised ribcage jutting out from my skin, the glowing pulses in my chest showing my heartbeat.
"Anyone here by the name of Mandingo?" I rumble, my voice and expression clearly conveying just how done I am with all of this shit, and someone better answer me within the next ten minutes or this part of Johannesburg goes up in flames.
A tall guy with dreadlocks warily steps up, an Uzi (or at least, I think it's an Uzi. I wouldn't know, I've never really been a fan of guns) grabbed securely in his hands, his fingernails blackened from filth and drug abuse.
"I am Mandingo, freak. What the fuck are you, and what the fuck do you want?" he spits, but I can clearly see through the front he's putting up for his gang.
If he wasn't terrified of me, he would've already shot me for being in his secret hideout uninvited.
Completely unbothered by the multitude of weapons that are within reaching distance of some of the worst scum in South-Africa, I take a few slow, measured strides towards Mandingo, until were about an arms-length away from each other.
Even from this distance, I'm looming over the arms dealer, who has to crane his neck a little to look me in my burning eyes, something he clearly has difficulty with. Most of them do, I notice, the dim lighting of the hideout throwing my glowing veins and pulsing heartbeat in high contrast.
"I want Ulysses Klaue."
That clearly takes him by surprise, as he briefly forgets his fear.
"What? Fuck no! I ain't telling you fucking shit, you motherfu-"
Faster than anyone can react, I've reached out, my massive hand closing around his throat and lifting him high above my head, making his feet dangle way above the floor. Immediately I hear the sounds of hammers being cocked but I ignore them, instead heating up my hand just the tiniest bit.
Immediately, the sounds and smells of burning flesh fill the hideout (I have to force myself not to hurl as an image flashes before my eyes of my hand piercing through a man's torso, the fire from my arm searing his flesh) Mandingo screaming bloody murder.
"Tell your men to stand down. Now."
"Stand down! Stand the fuck down assholes!"
As the men lower their weapons I drop Mandingo to the floor, letting him smack down with a meaty sound as he keeps writhing in pain from his burned neck.
"I'm gonna ask you again. And this time, you're going to tell me everything I want to know. And trust me, Mandingo: their ain't gonna be a third time."
I bend down, grabbing the wailing arms dealer by his dreadlocks, hauling him up so I can look him in his blood-shot, panicked eyes.
"I. Want. Ulysses Klaue."
"All right! All right! I'll tell you! He's down at the Three Rivers, near Eikenhof, just South from here!" Mandingo screams out in a panic, any thoughts of keeping his dignity in front of his gang forgotten after his near-death experience.
Unfortunately I don't know where that is.
With that realization, I drop him to the floor again and straighten up, looking over the other gang members, who are all looking at me with a combination of wariness and anger. I look back down at the whimpering Mandingo, before I make my decision.
"I'm taking you with me."
And with that, I grab him by the neck (making him cry out again, this time cursing me, my ancestry, and the ancestry of the goat my mother has apparently lain with in order to conceive me. Or something like that, I don't really bother with listening) and turn around, making my way towards the exit, before I pause as my gaze falls on a duffel bag filled to the brim with cash.
I bend down, zip it up and sling it over my shoulder.
"And I'm taking this as well."
One of the bigger grunts opens his mouth in anger, the grip on his gun tightening, but I suddenly twist towards him, my eyes nearly bursting into flame with the heat I'm channelling through them, making him stop in his tracks, fear flashing over his face.
Tracking my hellish gaze over the other occupants of the room, I challenge all of them to try and stop me.
None of them do.
And so, with a cash-filled duffel bag over my shoulder and with a cursing and spitting arms dealer in my hand, I turn my back on Johannesburg.
As Stein and me are walking up to what Mandingo assured me was Klaue's base I was surprised to find that it wasn't a ship, before I kicked myself for forgetting the timeline (Klaue only gets the boat in 2015 I remember now).
So looking for the non-existent coast had been a bad idea from the start, as the weapons merchant wasn't even based there yet.
It's yet one more thing that hammers home to me that, while I had abhorred Mary Sues in my previous life, not being one now sucked in the extreme. Just one more mistake that I really cannot afford to make, because this world isn't like my old one, because this is a world of Gods and Monsters and I'm just a nerd trying to get through it all alive.
The hide-out is apparently a warehouse that seems to have been abandoned decades ago, graffiti on every wall and most of the windows smashed in.
Basically, it looks like crap.
I turn a sceptic eye on Mandingo, who visibly gets nervous under my scrutiny.
"This is the place?"
"Yeah man, I swear man. This is where that fucking Klaue is, I come here all the time to do my business man." The arms dealer hurries to tell me.
"Really. All the time, you say. Then you go first."
"What?"
And with that, I grab him by the back of his stained shirt with one arm, reach back, and throw him through the front door, which yields under the criminal's impressive momentum in a wonderful shower of wood splinters.
Ignoring the pained groans from Mandingo and the panicked shouts from inside, I step into the warehouse, Stein making sure he stays behind me, which is rather easy as I am almost twice his size.
What greets me are several mountains of crates, cashes, storage units an even a few cubicles.
Oh, not to mention well over a dozen gun barrels.
I'm not worried however, as this time, I'm wearing my armour, fully kitted out with every weapon I could fit on it, which means that I outgun all of these men combined.
Hell, my tank gun alone would be enough to take out most of them, but I'm keeping that one as an ace up my sleeve for now. I don't know what Klaue will do, or what kind of toys he has, so better be safe than sorry.
I'm done making mistakes.
"Well, what's all this then?" A voice comes out of one of the cubicles, and as I hear the sound of an office chair rolling, Gollum himself peaks around the corner, one eyebrow raised in questioning, a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand, what seems like a Desert Eagle in the other.
Walking forwards, my boots clanking on the bare floor with metallic slams at every step, I ignore his henchmen training their weapons on me as I walk further inside.
"Meneer Klaue. Ik heb een voorstel voor je."
The Belgian man is clearly surprised at my Dutch, but even though he grins at hearing the closest thing to his mother tongue in what is likely decades, he remains wary.
"Really? En wat voor voorstel heb je dan, waarvoor het blijkbaar nodig is dat je mijn voordeur intrapt?" Klaue asks, arrogance lining his voice, though he seems to take me more seriously as he realizes I'm in power armour, standing up and putting away his bottle of Jack.
Stein taps me on the shoulder, and as I tilt my head to show that I'm listening, he hesitantly asks a question.
"Mr. McCole, what are you two saying?" he whispers, though in the vast space of the warehouse this is useless, his voice rebounding of the bare walls.
"I just told him that I had a proposition for him, he wondered what kind of proposition involves me kicking down his door." I reply, not bothering to keep my voice down, before I turn back towards Gollum, who seems to be amused at our byplay.
"Het soort voorstel dat ons allebei schatrijk zal maken." I say to him, trying to catch his interest by promising him riches.
"Aha." Klaue grunts, and his disbelief is almost visible as his gaze tracks my armour from my boots up to my helmet, finally resting on the turret of my tank gun that sticks out over my shoulder.
"Is dat Stark's speelgoed dat je daar hebt?" he asks about my armour.
"Als je mijn voorsteel aanneemt, dan kan het jouw speelgoed worden."
Again a tap on my shoulder, and as I turn back towards Stein he clearly looks uncomfortable with being the only person in the room who doesn't understand what's going on.
"What are you saying now, Mr McCole. I don't like the way he looks at us. Or rather, at the armour."
"I just told him that if he accepts my deal, the armour is his."
Ignoring Stein's outraged sputters behind me (for all the he claimed that as a geneticist he had no business helping me build power armor he rather acts affronted at the thought of losing something he has invested days of work into), I turn back towards the Belgian arms dealer, who I can tell is really intrigued by the possibility of getting his hands on Stark's latest tech.
The arms sector took a historically large hit when Tony Stark pulled Stark Industries out from weapons manufacturing, and despite people like Hammer trying to jump in and fill the gap, people all over the world only hungered even more for Stark tech, which had just become even more exclusive.
What is it they say about artists? The best thing they can do for their art is die?
As far as people like Ulysses Klaue were concerned, that's exactly what happened, and the thought of getting his hands on post-Iron Man tech was clearly catching his fancy.
"Ik neem aan dat er bij zo'n mooi aanbod ook een heftige prijskaart is inbegrepen. Wat moet je ervoor hebben?"
At his question as to what I want in return for my armour, I simply grin, hands outstretched in a grand gesture, as if I was a showman presenting my greatest prize.
"Vibranium. Alles wat je hebt."
At that, Klaue's expression immediately closes off, and in a flash he has trained his hand cannon on my helmet, his thugs quickly following his example.
"Geen sprake van. Het is niet te koop. Wegwezen met dat kut harnas van je, of ik blaas een gat door je kop!"
This time, I almost expect Stein's tapping on my shoulder, the scientist looking extremely worried at the amount of guns that are now pointed in our direction.
"Michael! What the hell did you say? What the hell did he say?!"
"Oh, I told him that I wanted all of his Vibranium in return for the armour, he told me it isn't for sale and that I should leave before I get a hole shot through my head."
"Aha. I see."
"In dat geval zal ik maar gaan. Maar voordat ik vertrek, mag ik misschien nog één ding zeggen?"
Frowning at my request to say one last thing, Klaue makes a 'get on with it' gesture with the cannon in his hands.
"Oke, je hebt waarschijnlijk wel eens gehoord dat wij Nederlanders grappen maken over Belgen, toch? Nou, probeer deze maar eens op te lossen: Hoe vermoord een Belg een vis? Hij laat hem verdrinken!"
Other than a snort from one of the goons surrounding me and the furious expression on Klaue's face, there's no reaction at all, besides the frantic tapping on my shoulder from Stein, whose clearly freaking out about the look Gollum is sending us.
I head his question off before he can ask it, not taking my eyes off the infuriated weapons dealer.
"Before you ask, I just insulted both him and his entire people."
"What?! Why?!"
"I thought it was funny."
"What are we going to do?!"
"You are going to duck."
"What?"
"Now."
And with that, Stein hits the floor as I activate the submachine guns hidden underneath the plating on my arms, which are still outstretched in my showman pose. The moment Stein ducks, I fire up all the repulsors on the left side of my armour, and as I get hurled around in a circle I keep my fingers on the triggers, gunfire spraying out in twin cones of death, taking down everyone who wasn't fast enough on the uptake to duck alongside Stein (Klaue and two others are the only ones left alive, not to mention Mandingo, who seems content to simply lie very still were I threw him).
As I come to a stop in the classic hero pose (by accident this time, as I'm extremely dizzy and I almost fell down before I managed to catch myself in a way that at least looked cool), one of the guys that ducked in time, nails me in the head, making my helmet jerk back as the bullet glances off in a shower of sparks.
In response I blindly fire in his direction until I hear a cry of pain and a wet smacking sound.
Standing up straight, I see Klaue looking at me (or rather, my armour) in something close to amazement before he unloads his clip with a snarl. I let the bullets ping off my armour until I can hear his gun click empty, before I slowly approach him.
The last guy alive throws away his gun and backs away as I turn to look at him. For a moment both me and him stand absolutely still, before my tank gun suddenly swoops low and takes aim at him, prompting a small "oh god" and a wet stain at the front of his pants.
"You saw nothing. Leave."
Giving a hurried nod, the hardened mercenary high-tails it out of the warehouse, not even looking back once at his former employer.
I step up to Klaue, hauling him to his feet with one hand (the new model of my armour leaves my hands free, making his eyes dart to the glowing veins with surprise, even as he starts sweating at that much heat so close to his face.
"Je Vibranium, Klaue. Alles wat je hebt."
He growls at my demands for his hard-earned(stolen) miracle metal, but he refrains from antagonizing me, the combination of his feet dangling of the floor and the heat steadily burning his shoulder keeping him from spouting off.
"Of wat? Arresteer je me?"
I almost chuckle at his idea of me arresting him, before my other hand glows white and comes up in a cutting motion, severing his arm just below the elbow. I drop him to the ground (more to keep the smell from getting to me, but it hopefully comes across as callousness instead) where he lies screaming in pain, clutching at the cauterized wound.
I shut him up by placing my armoured boot on his chest, and pressing down slightly, which causes his eyes to fly to my helmet.
"Dat kan het laatste stukje zijn van jezelf dat ik verwijder, of het eerste. Jouw keuze. Waar is het Vibranium, Klaue?"
Between the option of his arm being either the first or the last piece I remove from him, the weapons dealer is quick to choose the latter. Directing me to the back of the warehouse, at the bottom of a small mountain of cashes and other crates, Klaue, who is looking decidedly bleak from shock, points out the largest crate.
"Daarin."
I grab the crate by its sides, before ripping it from underneath the larger stack, not caring when it comes crashing down like a bad game of Jenga, my eyes glued to the box in front of me. Without ceremony, I rip open the lid with my bare hands, and there it is.
The metal I have crossed an ocean and a country for, a journey during which I had evolved to a new form and during which I had a minor existential crisis.
All there, neatly packed in tubes, right in front of me.
Vibranium.
"Step 7: Complete."
AN: Step 7 is complete, but at great cost. Not only has my anonimity basically shriveled up and died a painful, ignoble death, I have also begun to question my role in this story I'm in. Or rather, what kind of story I'm in, or if I'm even in a story at all. The line between what's real and what's fictional blurs with each passing day. On the other hand, with what I took from Mandingo as well as what Klaue has squirreled away here is enough to keep me and Stein going for a while, though it's no permanent solution. Step 5 is still in progress.
Fun Fact: The Hulk was originally meant to be gray. However, due to the printers giving each different panel a different shade of gray, it was decided that he should be green instead. The run during which the Hulk was gray instead of green was later explained as being a completely different alter-ego of Bruce Banner, called Joe Fixit.
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