C31: Punisher
Twilight descended like a shroud.
Manhattan glimmered coldly beneath the full moon, and Hell's Kitchen, scarred and sullen—bristled with unease.
A man in a tattered black trench coat moved silently along the sidewalks of Clinton Street. His boots struck the pavement with quiet finality. Deep furrows were etched between his brows, and his eyes, sharp as military-grade optics, scanned the dark alleys like a predator waiting for a telltale sound.
Then it came, sharp bursts of automatic fire, the chaotic scream of innocents, the telltale chaos of a firefight.
Panic flooded the street ahead as civilians surged from a nearby warehouse district on West 44th. As they passed him, the man's jaw tightened. The emotion in his expression, regret or rage, vanished in an instant. His hands clenched, and with trained efficiency, he moved, shoulders forward, breath even as he sprinted toward the epicenter of the conflict.
…
A woman ducked, a streak of red missing her by inches. A 9mm ricocheted off the steel wall beside her.
Across the alley, a savage firefight was underway.
Frank Castle, known across the criminal underworld as The Punisher—stood tall, unflinching, amidst a brutal exchange with the Savage Gang. His grim face never changed. He fired his custom-modified M1911 pistol, armor-piercing rounds tearing through a thug armed with an AK-103. Frank's hardened frame twisted, expertly evading retaliatory bursts that cracked through the warehouse's rusted walls.
The Savage Gang, a splinter faction that once worked under Hammerhead's operations, had upgraded their gear, military-grade. Surprising even Castle, their volume of fire briefly overwhelmed his assault pattern. But Frank Castle wasn't just a soldier, he was a one-man war. His training with Marine Force Recon, and later his black ops experience with the CIA's covert task force Cerberus, had given him more than just reflexes. It gave him restraint. Cold, surgical restraint.
Even cornered, Frank was never out of the fight.
Duck, fire, reload. Shift position. Debilitate. Execute.
K-chak. K-chak.
His Browning Hi-Power clicked dry. Frank glanced down. Scrap metal now.
"He's out!" someone shouted from the gang's side. Cheers erupted.
"Smoke him! He's finished!"
"Slice him down the middle!"
Frank didn't flinch. He didn't react. He calculated. Provocation meant nothing to him. These were children pretending at war.
He calmly removed a grenade from the MOLLE webbing of his Kevlar vest, an M67 fragmentation grenade, pulled the pin, and dropped it behind a supply crate.
Boom—!
Splinters and shrapnel rained. Frank walked through the smoke, grabbing a fallen MP5-N from a corpse. His gravelly voice growled, "No bullets, huh? Fixed that."
"Get him—!"
A surviving gang member, bloody, delirious from the concussive blast, staggered to his feet, clutching a Beretta 93R. He saw the familiar dead faces of his crew, rage overtaking reason. He lifted his weapon and took aim.
CRACK—!
A distant shot. A .308 round pierced the side of the thug's temple. He dropped instantly.
Frank's brow furrowed. That wasn't his shot.
His eyes traced the angle. It wasn't the MP5. It wasn't the Savage Gang.
Slowly, his gaze settled on the alley's far corner, shrouded in gloom.
"Who are you?" he barked.
Silence.
Frank raised the weapon again. "I said—who the hell are you?"
"A passerby," a voice answered, not from the alley, but behind him.
[Famousness from Frank Castle +20]
Frank spun fast, finger on trigger, muscles primed.
A man emerged from the darkness near the fire escape ladder of an abandoned tenement. He wore a high-collared black trench coat and had the kind of grief-stricken expression one sees on gravestones. Every step he took seemed deliberate. Controlled.
The man was Li Ran.
But that wasn't his name tonight.
Here, he was Wesley Gibson, once a disillusioned office worker in another world, now a full-fledged operative of the Assassins Brotherhood, a shadow sect echoing both Marvel's Assassins Guild and DC's League of Assassins, blending the deadliest doctrines of both.
"You think I'm buying that?" Frank asked coldly, eyes locked. He knew he'd tracked the earlier sniper's position. But the bullet's trajectory didn't match this guy's location. That kind of margin of error didn't happen on Frank Castle's battlefield.
"Alright," Li Ran said with a self-deprecating smile, shadows deepening under his eyes. "I admit it. I came here for you."
Frank's finger twitched.
"So you're with them? Savage Gang found someone like you?"
No hesitation. He opened fire.
RATATATAT—!
Li Ran cursed internally. He'd expected hostility but not Punisher's infamous shoot-first ethic. But he didn't panic. His [Adrenal Acceleration] ability surged. Time slowed. Reflexes spiked.
Bullets became suggestions.
He twisted, ducked, sidestepped and in one fluid motion, drew his customized Jericho 941. One shot. Clean. Intentional.
Frank didn't move.
He knew it would miss. But he forgot what had just happened.
The bullet twisted, arced mid-air, like it had a will of its own.
A perfectly harmless shot became a death sentence.
[Famousness from Frank Castle +75]
At the brink of impact, Frank's instincts, honed from Fallujah to Harlem—took over. He didn't run. He didn't dodge.
He tanked it.
The impact struck center mass. Frank staggered, teeth clenched, the Kevlar mesh dispersing the impact but not the pain.
He grunted.
But he lived.
Then he stared at Li Ran, something sharper than anger forming in his eyes.
"Who the hell are you?"
He didn't retaliate immediately. Not because he couldn't, but because what he'd just seen didn't fit any known tactics. Not even the Hand, not HYDRA, not AIM, no one used ballistics like that.
Castle had seen a lot, demon-possessed bikers, dimension-hopping mercenaries, even Thor drop into Queens once.
But that bullet had curved.
"You're not one of theirs," Frank muttered. "The Savage Gang couldn't hire you. If they could, they'd already own Hell's Kitchen."
Silence.
Frank lowered the weapon a fraction, his mind racing, not with fear, but with tactical recalibration.
This was no ordinary fight.
And this man, with eyes like he'd watched his own soul die, wasn't just a stranger.
He was a variable, something Frank Castle rarely encountered.
A wild card.
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