marvel door: log - norman osborn is no more Who: Norman Osborn and Jack Corvus What: Norman gets some Comeuppance with a capital C. And then is dead. Where: Outside New York, rural, Marvel Door When: Just after the plot. Warnings/Rating: Violence and gore.
Norman lived in his own little world these days.
Somewhere along the line, madness had crept up and taken hold without him realizing it. Oh, he'd never been entirely sane, and he'd gone off the deep end more than once, but back home all that had been kept under control. But then he'd come here, and the pulse had occurred, and he'd become obsessed. Dangerously so. Nora was the first to come over to his side, but he wanted more. He wanted all his little mutants in his grasp, and he was well on his way to that goal before someone had interfered with his plans. The slaughter at his facility, he'd had to start over, fall back on contingency plans, and as a result it consumed his life. He had no idea what Harry was up to these days; frankly, he didn't care. During the day he was at Oscorp, making sure things were running smoothly; his schedule was predictable. His routine was consistent. There was no deviation, none that anyone could see.
Except someone had seen. Someone, somehow, had tracked him, been on his tail, and those trips to his new facility had to end. He'd cleared the place out and covered his tracks; he was getting really, really tired of having to do that. Whoever it was would be very sorry once he managed to get his hands on them. Again, he'd had to regroup, to set up shop elsewhere. It had taken some time, trucks and vans with a different company name on the sides each week driven back and forth to what was, on paper, a building used for storage space. The plates were fake, and the vehicles were spray painted to appear different each time.
When Norman himself visited the facility, it was with armed men paid too much to betray him and a decoy car just in case. He was working on creating a way to go back and forth underground, but he hadn't gotten that far yet. Paved streets turned into dirt roads once they got far enough, false paths leading to dead ends along the way; he was nothing if not careful.
Today it was late afternoon, the sun was low in the sky. Norman was in a van, a car with more guards having gone ahead. He had a new subject to study, and he was pleased.
Jack had planned.
Truth be told, Max was right. In the months she'd been gone he had rehearsed what he would do when he found the man from the facility. When he had finally picked out the name in the news, he imagined that it would all be over soon.
But weeks had dragged into months as he chipped away at how to get his hands on a man who could buy the best security a billionaire could afford. Jack excused it as careful planning. He was only likely to have a single chance at this.
Max was still right. He had hesitated.
He could have hunted Norman Osborn down sooner. It wasn't guilt, which was a slow reflex at this stage in his life, and something that more often distressed him by its growing absence than by consistent presence. He wasn't afraid to die. He saw another opportunity for revenge and hesitated, all the good reasons to go forward notwithstanding. The prospect of it, of a good, just death, of something like justice for the dead and mad people who had come out of the facility, of preventing it from happening to anyone else, it all felt like ten steps backward. More disturbing, bloodthirst felt like a concession to his altered biology. A loss.
It was the victims, in the end, and Max's goading voice behind him. He might not really believe anymore that he could crusade, a single person, and save everyone, but he could do the right thing, if not the good one. Hopefully for the last time. Probably not.
He didn't consider buying off the security. He didn't have the funds and he doubted it would meet with much success. No, the cleaner way would be to cut straight to Osborn through his men. He couldn't afford to waste time taking out corporate mercenaries while his target slipped through his fingers a second time.
He did his own reconnaissance for the second round. Osborn had as predictable a routine as he had before, as so many rich men seemed to do. The secret to great financial success lay in a sharp mind and a certain level of stability, at least in the most basic areas of life. He could rely on the man to be careful about anything that involved danger to himself or his fortune. It did not depend on sanity. He had to have faith that good security and a well-planned route wouldn't stand up to solid bone and the kind of quiet rage that seethed and smoked and never really went out, no matter how many polite smiles there were, no matter how many quiet conversations and quoted lines of poetry.
It had to be timed. It had to be somewhere around the middle his trip, not close enough to Oscorp to attract police and reinforcements from corporate, not close enough to the facility that its security could easily assist. On one of those stretches of dirt road, out in the country, before breaking through and into the city limits. Out in the sparse trees, interspersed with the occasional warehouse or half-rural farm. It felt right.
It took weeks of preparation. There was a solid truck to buy, and to fill with stones and cement blocks to weight it down. There was an explosive to acquire. And there were nights of applying a thin shard of silver metal to his limbs, whittling away at what remained of him, watching cuts heal faster, faster still. An old habit, painful, repetitive, and now, useful.
It was evening. The cars were headed to the facility, but the next town was far enough away to keep the noise from attracting attention too quickly. It was quiet, here, and all the dead ends in the world hadn't been able to hide the scent of fresh paint and cement that clung to the trucks along with the gasoline and bad cologne of the driver.
On the darkening road, headlights just turned on, he counted on the eyes of the driver straining in the semi-dark. He counted on them seeing only a bloom of light down the road when the truck they had sent ahead rolled over the cheap, dirty explosive he had planted there. He counted on shock to keep them driving, staring at the spectacle a few miles ahead, and not looking for a truck to come screeching out of the under brush and into their path.
The accident was a clap, a vibration, a skid and the sick crunch of metal and splintering tissue and white bone. Nobody came flying out of the truck - no, Jack was still in the driver's seat, unbuckling the seatbelt with broken fingers that were clicking, cracking, resetting, teeth slinking out around raw broken nerves in his mouth, ribs slipping forward in agonizing bursts against the belt to fit themselves together again. The truck's headlights had been crunched in the crash. For the moment, all was darkness. He rolled out the door before the survivors could get their bearings, and he moved through the quiet, around the truck, toward the side of the van.
Everything went smoothly at first. They were well on their way, and Norman was promised a dozen times over that no problems were foreseen. He didn't place his trust in people lightly, however, and they could make him a thousand promises that wouldn't do a damn thing to ease his paranoia. Because that's what it was, even if he wouldn't say as much. Paranoia.
For good reason, as it turned out. The purpose of a decoy vehicle was demonstrated as they all stared, too far to see what, exactly, had happened, save for the fact that it wasn't good. There was a sense of unease, weapons being loaded, reloaded, but the driver was an idiot and Norman leaned forward, tap-tap-tapping on the glass partition to get his attention. "I think it's time for the detour, Mister--" His sardonic suggestion was cut off by the sudden, unwelcome appearance of a truck; the driver slammed on the brakes, swerved, but impact was imminent. Norman held on, braced himself, until the van came to a stop and those around him stirred, groaned, slow to react. The driver wasn't moving, though, and he cursed the idiocy of humanity as a whole as he wrested himself free from his seatbelt.
"Move," he snapped, reaching for his own gun, gaze darting about. This was no accident. Someone had planned this, and that someone was out there. He climbed over the front seat, shoving the motionless driver aside, and waved his guards towards the other side; be ready.
At the back of the van, there was a screeching sound. The doors wrenched open onto the night, and one of the guards fired wildly into the opening, but there was nothing - there was no one.
No one approached, either. The silence stretched on - ten seconds, twenty - until, slowly, slowly, the guard slid one foot forward, moving quietly along the bed of the van, gun up, ready to fire at the first sign of movement. Still, no one.
The man wasn't stupid. Whoever was out there was obviously trying to bait them out, so he didn't get too close to the door. He couldn't have expected to have his foot punctured from below, though, like hot knives had punched through the thin metal of the truck bed. The guard stumbled forward on his bad foot, out of control, managing to get off one shot beneath him before he fell through the door. He disappeared from sight with another gunshot and a short gurgle. If any of the other men looked down through the four holes in the floor (three narrow and close together, one bullet hole) they would see their fellow bleeding out. No one else.
Norman let the guard go ahead. Better one of his hired thugs than himself, after all, and this was the best way to see what was waiting for them out there. Maybe the point of drawing it out--the door opening, ominous silence, oooooh scary--was to put them all on edge, and if so, it worked. Mostly. Big men with guns and they were still shaken up by some ridiculous scare tactics.
They were quiet, spectators as the brave soul inched closer to the back of the van, and at least he was cautious. Not that it did him any good; it happened fast, a gunshot and he tumbled out of sight into the darkness. Norman was already focused on what to do next as the other gunshot sounded and the rest of his men were fretting about their missing comrade, guns pointed alternately at the open door and the floor beneath their feet. One down, and he knew what whoever out there was doing. If they stayed in here they'd be picked off like sitting ducks; no thank you. Driving was out of the question, but maybe he could make it to the vehicle up ahead; chances of it being ruined by the explosion were high, but it was worth a shot. Alternate transportation would take time to get out.
Funny, the odds were against him and he still felt no fear. Death never really stopped him one way or another.
Three men, plus himself and the unconscious driver, were left. He signalled for two to watch the open back while he and the other made it out the driver's side door; leaving his employees to die didn't particularly bother him.
As Norman and his guard slipped out the driver's side door, there was a cacophony of sound from the bed of the truck. A quick glance behind would reveal someone tearing both men out the back of the truck, one by his collar, the other hooked with under his rib cage. More gunshots, then, and fierce sounds of struggle as one of the pair made a last attempt for his life. Then wet slicing, wind through the treetops, and quiet.
They got a lead of roughly a minute during the struggle. There was no way for them to turn that he couldn't follow, through, even with the bullet holes in his leg still closing. He moved fast, faster than anything animal could while remaining upright, faster than any human thing.
The remaining guard caught a glimpse of what was coming behind them and wheeled around, planting his feet for a last stand. Surely all those bullets had to have found their target. One more good round and he was sure to drop their pursuer.
The guard pressed the trigger and held it, white-knuckled, getting off a few dozen rounds before the burst of fire was cut off. That same shape that had moved after them so quickly was undaunted by a flood of metal slicing through his stomach. The guard was slammed to the ground by that same heavy shape. He only let go of the trigger once his head was actually severed from his body, and even then, his twitching finger still released a few final shots along the ground into what was left of the van.
Quiet again. In the distance, the other van crackled merrily. The wind swept through and the flames roared even higher, a jump in heat and height. Help was still ages away, if help was coming at all.
Whatever happened in the van behind them, Norman didn’t see. He refused to look back. His guard did, though, and the man turned white, perhaps realizing that the chances of him making it home alive were very, very slim. But even with his back turned the sounds told a story of their own, and the silence that followed the gunshots, the struggle, didn’t bode well for either of them. Maybe, Norman reflected, he should have been better prepared. A normal assassin could easily be dealt with.
But this was no normal assassin. His men learned that the hard way.
There was no choice but to keep moving. Fight or flight, and Norman knew the latter would only last them so long. He went ahead, let the guard take up the rear, and so he was the one who saw what was coming for them first. Brave man, or maybe he was just a fool. Either way he took a stand, and Norman turned to watch but he kept moving, steps back and back, wondering if he could somehow find cover for long enough. He watched the gunfire, watched his last loyal man hit the ground. Funny, almost, how even when his head was detached from his body he still kept firing. An involuntary movement, he knew, but still, he almost chuckled at the sight.
And then there were two. Behind him was the van, engulfed in flame. He didn’t think he could make it there in time and even if he did, what would he do? Leap into the flames to ensure whatever was out there didn’t get the satisfaction of killing him? Norman might have lamented death if he thought it could keep him down; he was arrogant enough that he didn’t. He’d come back, somehow. If not, there was always Harry. Disappointment though he might be, he wouldn’t let his father’s death go unpunished.
“It’s just us now.” He spoke to the night, to the thing that had tracked him down. “Don’t hide. Show yourself. If you plan to kill me, might as well let me see you first.”
A shadow split off from the trunk of a tree. He was illuminated from behind by the fading light and the flickering glow from the burning truck. It moved up from the ground and the still body of the last guard, until standing straight.
At his full height, Jack was a tall man, had been well before the pulse. It was one of the many idiosyncrasies of his bizarre life that, for all the death behind him, he rarely came across to anyone as intimidating. People rarely seemed to find him anything short of harmless.
He didn't expect to be recognized, his face faintly visible now, but he did think that Osborn would be able to make an educated guess who he was. He had to have seen the facility before they destroyed it. He didn't ask for an explanation, because his reasons for what he'd done were meaningless. He didn't seem like the sort of man to make excuses, anyway, and what did that matter to the dead? What did any of this matter to anyone but those left living?
All of this, of course, had been considered in advance. Right now he was empty of thought, smelling the crispness of early autumn leaves, the reek of burning gasoline, death carried on the wind from the truck behind him, and the distinct lack of fear on the man in front of him.
There was no aha! moment of recognition once the man came into sight, but Norman wasn’t a stupid man. A lot of different people had a lot of different reasons to want him dead, such were the occupational hazards of being him, and yet this, so carefully planned, so full of bloodshed, spoke volumes. He hadn’t forgotten the facility massacre, nor his most interesting test subject. He could certainly make an educated guess, and he did. Well, well. Wasn’t this poetic.
“Hello.” For a man about to die, he was still cordial. Calm. “You’ve waited a long time for this, haven’t you?” He smiled. “You can certainly kill me, my boy. I’ve seen your work. But my death won’t change what you are. What I made you.” He gestured to the carnage, the destruction, around them.
There was, for the moment, a ripple in the focused malice. It was amusement mingled with the hate. This man, because he was wealthy, thought his evil was unique.
"No," he said. "That had nothing to do with you."
He could have spent the night torturing him, dragged him to some quiet hollow and teased his insides out, drilled into him with his claws until he was nothing more than a shredded wreck. The cruelty of it would have satisfied in the moment, but widened it later on, and there was no will to hold back with that smirking face in front of him even if he had wanted to toy with him. No, instead he wrangled him close by his shirt collar. He thought of the girl from the facility who could grow weeds from between the metal plates in the floor, and listening to her cry, listening to the whine of the drill carving out pieces of her brain in the next room over until she couldn't remember what crying was.
He punched his claws through the plate of Norman Osborn's skull.