บท 43: Hellish Rage
Two months later.
The cloak of darkness, brought upon by the night, was whisked away by the blinding lights of the city. New York City stood defiantly; a shining beacon suffused with all kinds of people, a melting pot of diversity and culture, but, at the very same time, a hotspot of crime.
A lot has happened in the last two months. New York City had unexpectedly gained a new hero.
Masked and cloaked in black. Powerful and ruthless.
He and the famous Ghost-Spider seemed to be occasional teammates, cracking down on crime on the city streets, but unlike his carefree quipping friend, he truly inspired fear.
He never killed, at least not yet, preferring to break almost every bone in a criminal's body before giving them brain trauma, making most of his worst victims quadriplegic. It was arguably worse than death, but of course, this was for the worst of the worst.
Ordinary theft would merely net you a few broken limbs and a nose. The injuries wouldn't come close to killing you, but the hospital bill most definitely would.
J Jonah Jameson, the editor-in-chief and publisher of the Daily Bugle, had named them and every other masked hero as a menace to society for taking the law into their own hands. Such a radical take after two simultaneous superhuman terror attacks made it gain traction, but it never stuck. One reason was that the crime rate in New York dropped drastically, with only the oldest, most powerful gangs daring to operate beneath the surface.
The fear of being turned into a quadriplegic did work after all.
Another major event that made waves in the public was the building of the very first purely superhuman prison dubbed 'The Raft'. It was located near Ryker's Island in New York and had a few inmates, the most prominent being the man dubbed the 'Tombstone'.
The time of political turbulence owing to the Superhuman Registration Act was dying down; the discussions on its intricacies dragging on and on with Reed trying his best to slow it down. Tony Stark, the famous billionaire, had thrown the biggest party in New York, and the public had moved on from the attacks.
Meanwhile, the scientific world eagerly awaited this year's WCCR, almost foaming at the mouth at the prospect. The papers were published by an anonymous scientist in the journal 'Science', had set off a bomb in the field of cancer research. It had posited a cure for one of the most prevalent diseases in the world after all.
Fanatic scientists were on the verge of storming the headquarters of the 'Science' journal before it was revealed that the aforementioned scientist would be presenting his work in the WCCR. The one held in the Kingdom of Latveria.
It was a joyous event for the human race, and the world was slowly returning to normalcy.
At least, on the surface.
Tap!
Tap!
Tap!
The sound of boots hitting the concrete seemed to echo in the bustling streets, somehow piercing through the sounds of vehicles and people. Yet, no one seemed to notice the owner of said boots - one who was lounging on an empty bench and munching on an unnaturally large doughnut.
Large swathes of people walked by him without giving him a single look as though he didn't exist. Sure, it was New York City, and nobody had time for anybody else, but when one factored in the man's strangeness, his invisibility became odd.
The large doughnut that was the size of a person's head was perfectly balanced on his long fingers. Every bite he took was measured, not a speck of the generous icing coating his perfect teeth or skin, as though it was scared of blemishing it. Speaking of perfect, the man seemed to embody the word.
His body and face seemed to be artfully drawn and sculpted to sheer perfection. Too perfect.
His beauty was ungodly.
He was what many would call 'Devilishly Handsome', and in this particular case, they wouldn't be wrong whatsoever. They would've struck the mark on 'Devilish'.
'Hmmm... the plan needs a few tweaks, eh? The dance of chaos shall be perfected yet,' he thought, inhaling another piece of the doughnut while still somehow looking elegant. Yet, his calm demeanor hid incomprehensible rage. It would be so much easier if the damn Sanctums stopped suppressing his power.
Hell, he wasn't even supposed to be here. It had taken centuries for him to find a pathway to the Earth Dimension without breaking the deal he'd been tricked into making with Agamotto, but once he managed to gain a foothold, he realized that his entire existence was suppressed to a point where his life was threatened.
Still, he was Mephistopheles! With immense cost and sorcery, he managed to stay in the Earth Dimension for extended periods of time - his main method being making lost, lasting deals with mortals with powerful souls. It was easy to slip back into his very own dimension, but it was a pain to get back here.
Although his cosmic powers were enough to create realities and play with time, the deal with Agamotto and the Sanctums reduced the prodigious power to mere shapeshifting, minor mental manipulation and the creation of cursed objects. To add salt to the wound, he could only marginally mentally manipulate people he had already dealt with and could not directly kill anybody.
'Agamotto, the fool, scattering Sanctums like breadcrumbs,' he grit his teeth. 'I must weave new threads of temptation.'
His mouth opened naturally wide, like a snake, engulfing the savory treat before he held out his hand, multiple holographic pictures swirling above them. A few of them would've been highly familiar to Peter.
Helen Stacy, Gloria Grant, Betty Brant, Harry Osborn, Norman Osborn and more. But the one at the very center was Gwendolyne Maxime Stacy.
He didn't know where it went wrong, something he would never admit as if he ever did; it could adversely affect his very being. His plan to slowly torture the Spider was supposed to begin with George Stacy's death.
It was he who had let Otto Octavius gain such detailed info on Aldrich Killian's and Maya's work on Extremis and the Techno-Organic implant. He knew Otto wouldn't be able to resist getting his hands on the implant and that his arrogance would lead to him breaking his mind by overclocking his mind.
Knowing Kingpin's shrewd nature, he knew that the 'Fat Bastard' would try to take over the company due to Octavius' instability, but Otto unexpectedly dying while attempting to acquire Extremis was a welcome surprise. Either way, he would gain the result he wanted, which was Alonzo 'Tombstone' Lincoln feeling angered and illogical - primed for manipulation.
The time it took to slowly manipulate Lincoln into publicly attacking the Obsidian Nexus Building was annoyingly long.
Lincoln, while not smart in the normal sense, was 'street smart,' which meant that he knew that revealing himself to the public was an incredibly stupid idea. He had to worm his way into his circle of henchmen and slowly increase his already immense hate of the Kingpin. He'd failed multiple times, but after he'd arranged for Lincoln's daughter to get into a small accident, it reminded Lincoln of his family's frailty.
He, once again, slowly increased both the fear and hate of the Kingpin in Lincoln before encouraging the idea of storming the building and personally killing the 'Fat bastard.' After all, wasn't he the one who destroyed his years of hard work? Couldn't the Kingpin attack his family to get back at him? He convinced him that by doing this, he was, in actuality, protecting his family.
Arranging George Stacy's presence during the shooting was the easiest. Studying Stacy's patrol patterns was more than enough.
All that planning to get a father to die before his daughter.
A plan that failed because of a variable he did not predict.
"Now, now. Who are you?" he whispered as the hologram morphed into one of Peter Benjamin Parker. "Oho~ The boyfriend, eh? The father of the destined child, perhaps?"
Mephisto's eyes glinted with ecstasy as he imagined slowly torturing Parker before Gwen. The fact that this Parker boy had a healing factor made it all the better.
"He'd last longer," his handsome face stretched into an evil smile, his beautiful features contorting into something satanic.
But just as he began contemplating and strategizing more of his sick and twisted plans, he felt a disturbance in the fabric of reality.
His elegant eyebrows furrowed as he went still. He knew this feeling. Someone was weaving a story. Someone proficient.
HMMMM!!!
The air hummed as the concrete beneath his feet transformed into a giant, incredibly complex circle whose glowing green symbols were eerily familiar. The concepts it included were suspiciously similar to the mathematics of more advanced races in the universe. Who was the fool who thought of incorporating such concepts in the art of magic?
He didn't have any more time to contemplate the circle as a reddish tear in reality opened up behind him that brought with it the smell of sulfur, fire and brimstone.
He needed to get out of this place as he was immensely weakened in this Dimension. Moreover, the sheer magical power that the geometric marvel exuded, greatly exceeded what he thought a human sorcerer was capable of.
CLINK! CLINK! CLINK!
The gravity within the circle increased tenfold as three chains burst out of it, gunning for his body. If he was a second too late, perhaps he may have been crushed and caught, but he was Mephisto! Nobody could catch him!
WHOOSH!
With a graceful step, Mephisto slipped into his tear, the chains uselessly swinging past him.
'Powerful, but still mortal,' Mephisto gloated as he stood on his Dimension's red and rocky ground, watching the tear in reality close. 'Still, if it's not the Ancient one. The wh-eh?'
SHINK!
His eyes widened as he spotted the circle outside spontaneously transforming its symbols into a completely different spell. One that he did not recognize and one that transformed the green chains into green scythes.
CRACK!
The weapon slammed into the tear just before it closed, making a minute piece break off. The empty space healed almost immediately but the damage had already been done.
'The target was never me....' Mephisto's eyes widened in realization. 'It was my Dimension.'
His dimension was magically created in such a way that only those who had previously been in it could find it once more. It was the perfect defense. After all, if his enemies never found his dimension, how could they find him?
But now that the sorcerer had a piece of the dimension with them... they had 'been' in his Dimension as a technicality. Thus, they could now find it whenever they wanted.
The fiery Dimension began to tremble as Mephisto's anger began to build. He was outsmarted by a mortal?!
He? Outsmarted?!
"RRAAAAAAAARGHHH!!!!"
That was the day the Devil raged in Hell.
***
Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Latveria.
In a large, lavish and grandious room, in the marvel of both architectural grandeur and technological sophistication, in the ominous architecture of towering spires and thick stone walls, the smell of brimstone hung in the air.
The tiny red piece of Hell floated above an armored hand whose owner reclined on an intricately carved and designed, dark, imposing throne. Its metallic embrace seemed to give him no discomfort as he sat there - in the presence of immense power and wealth, but alone.
His presence and cadence spoke for him. He was born to rule.
Those calm, brown eyes that emanated superiority stared at the extradimensional piece in his hand with amusement.
"Run, cower, hide, Infernal Jester", he said, his gravelly voice that oozed authority and a touch of arrogance filling the room.
"There is no hope. There is only Doom."
***
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