raising cain
It started with a tweet from Peter’s little blurb of letters and numbers. Peter wrote:
“Hi everyone! Happy Halloween! In celebration of the best holiday of the year, I would like to hereby announce that this weekend, I will be Deadpool. Thank you and goodnight.”
Brett did not know what this tweet meant, but he decided that he hated it all the same.
A new account replied to Peter’s, or so Sasha screeched over Amos’s head in the living room. Brett and Kelly, in constant pursuit of putting order to their mother’s house, paused in their sheet-folding party in the back room to take cover.
Sasha slammed open the door as expected and demanded that Brett look, look, look.
Another jumble of letters had indeed responded to Peter’s. It said:
“dd here. seconding Spidey’s notion. I would like to announce that I will also be Deadpool this weekend. Thank you. please don’t message me I’m leaving twitter now forever goodbye.”
Brett felt the vein in his neck start pulsing.
“Daredevil got a twitter,” Sasha told him, beaming. “Daredevil got a twitter.”
No, sweet child. Daredevil had probably gone over to Spidey and said ‘I have a fucking awful idea, will you help?’ and Spidey said ‘will it destroy Detective Brett Mahoney’s soul?” To which Matt must have replied, “yes and then some.” And so to that Peter could only say, “Fuck yes, hold on, lemme make you a twitter.”
This was not ‘getting a twitter.’ This was soul-cracking behavior and Brett would not stand for it.
He stood up. He grabbed his coat. And he went out on the prowl for Franklin Nelson.
“I have nothing to do with this,” Foggy said.
“Make him stop before I do,” Brett said back.
“Come on, man. Lighten up,” Foggy huffed. “They’re just having some fun. You are aware that you don’t have to be the fun police, right?”
Brett was not the fun police. Brett was the real police. And the real police had a problem with Deadpool—multiple problems in fact.
“They’re gonna cause mass hysteria,” Brett said. “Fogs, you can’t let him do this.”
“They have literally announced their shenanigans on twitter, Mahoney,” Foggy jabbed. “As far as I am concerned, that was a PSA. All is fair in love and Halloween, man. If you’ve got a problem, go talk to Matt.”
“If I can’t be Wade, then I’m dressing up as you,” Murdock sniffed over his paperwork. “It’s your choice, detective.”
Fuck this man and the horse he rode in on.
“No, I’ve gotta be Wade,” Peter said.
“Why?” Brett asked in what he liked to think was a calm voice.
“’Because last year, Wade dressed up as me and was a real ass about it,” Peter said. “This is war.”
You had to be kidding.
“Fuck off, detective, I ain’t tellin’ you.”
“You do know what Red and Spidey are planning don’t you?” Brett asked Wade’s retreating back. Wade’s shoulders stopped shifting for a long moment. Then he snickered. Then he cackled.
“Oho, trust me, I know,” he said.
Brett was at a loss. He’d tried, really he had. The only thing to do now was wait and mentally prepare for the worst, he supposed.
He was anticipating a load of copy cats, really. He’d filled his mental map of the weekend with an endless line of drunk and aggressive Spidermen and Deadpools, so when Friday came around and he found himself looking instead at lines upon lines of the usual vampires and zombies waiting outside the bars of 9th avenue, he should have been relieved.
He was not.
He was paranoid.
“You’re gonna break your teeth grinding them like that,” Maynard pointed out next to him in her own patrol suit for the night. To get into the spirit, she’d put on a headband with a couple of bees bobbing around on wires attached.
“I can’t find them yet, but I know they’re here,” Brett told her with narrowed eyes.
“Brett—”
“If you call me the ‘fun police’ one more fuckin’ time—”
“We oughta put a siren on you.”
Friday night came and went without a hitch. Then Saturday night.
But Sunday night?
Woho.
No.
“You guys might want to move back a couple of blocks,” Hawkeye the Younger, dressed suspiciously as Hawkeye the Elder, told Brett and Maynard with what was absolutely not her own bow in her hands.
“What are you scheming?” Brett asked her.
“I’m not scheming anything; I’m just here to shoot Clint in the ass,” Kate said, refreshingly straightforward about it.
“Why the warning then?” Maynard pressed.
Kate looked up at her with pity in her eyes.
“’Cause shit’s about to get real,” she said.
Brett had been mistaken in thinking that Matt and Peter would confine their activities to their respective home bases.
He had also been mistaken to think that they were the only two in on this Deadpool joke.
He looked up from his phone at 11pm and saw the folks lining each side of the street starting to stop, turn around and point. When he turned to see what they were pointing at up the road, he was met with not one, not two, but three Deadpools standing in a line.
Peter was the most easily recognizable of them because compared to fucking Barnes, he was about the size and breadth of a penny. Matt stood in the middle of those two, a happy medium as usual.
People lost their goddamn minds. The crowd became a sea of cellphones held up high, recording what was no doubt going to be an event to remember.
“Wil-son,” Barnes sang. “Where are you, darlin’? Olly olly oxen free, you massive waste of space and humanity!”
Oh fun.
So they were feuding again, those two.
That explained so much.
Brett really had to give it to Barnes, he knew where to stab Wade where it hurt. The man had gone and taken Wade’s suit and his teammates.
If that was anything less than a declaration of war, Brett’s name wasn’t Mahoney.
“Well, well, well,” Wade’s voice called back from the other side of the street.
The phones all smoothly flew his way to capture two of the biggest, buffest Captain Americas the world had ever seen standing on the roofs of cars in the street; between them stood Wade’s pal Cable with his giant fuck-off cyborg arm, dressed in JB’s characteristic taut, black, strappy leather vest.
“So we meet again, Sergeant Bane-of-Our-Existence,” Wade called.
It took Brett a moment to recognize the guy on the other car as Frank Castle, who must have finally had it with something that Matt had done and had signed on to destroy him through whatever means possible.
The message was pretty clear between these two teams: fuck you and all your goddamn cows.
Barnes made a derisive noise.
“You don’t deserve to wear that suit,” he barked across the street.
“Well you do deserve to wear that one,” Wade called back sweetly. “Whaddya think of the back, huh? Sexy, no?”
Wade shouted out of nowhere following that remark and Brett tensed only to realize that that hadn’t been a bullet that had gone flying there; Peter had nabbed Wade in the face with a ball of web.
“Oh, good job. Nice hit,” Barnes praised him.
Peter preened.
Wade swore and got the web off his face, only for it to be stuck on his hand.
“You little—traitor!” he barked at Peter.
“Dickface!” Peter called back.
Wade gasped.
“Do you kiss your mother with that—”
He reeled back again at the second volley of web.
Peter dropped into in a hunch, prepared to gun it at whatever came next. Matt held a hand out to steady him, though.
“Easy,” he said. “We’ve got what someone wants.”
He reached back and painstakingly drew one of the swords out of the scabbard strapped across his back and Wade went from swearing to dead still across the way.
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare, Red,” he threatened.
Matt jerked his elbow and sent the blade out straight with his arm, pointing down at that asphalt.
It was a moment before it dawned on Brett that he probably really did know how to use it.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Wade warned.
Matt held still but cocked his head naughtily to the side.
“Oops,” he said, and dropped the thing.
The clang and rattle and grate of the sword against the asphalt did something to Wilson. His hands leapt to his face and clawed themselves into fists in horror. He seemed to be saying something, but he was too far away and talking too quietly for Brett to catch it.
“We moving now?” Peter asked the other two anxiously.
“Nope,” Matt said.
Peter shivered.
Wade pressed his palms against the sides of his forehead across the way. Barnes leaned over and stomped on the sword so that a second clang rang out.
Wade’s head snapped up; the black mask he’d pulled on under the Captain America cowl was unreadable.
“Now?” Peter repeated more urgently.
“Barnes?” Matt deferred with just a hint of detectable anxiety.
“Stand steady,” Barnes ordered.
“We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die,” Peter started to sing quietly to the amusement of the crowd close enough to hear him.
Barnes stomped on the very end of the blade so that it rocketed up into the air; Matt caught it without needing to be told, then realized what he’d done and directed what was sure to be a suddenly horrified expression at his hand.
Peter had stopped singing. Everyone on both sides of the street was focused in on Matt.
“Now,” Barnes ordered.
And all hell broke loose.
Matt could have been an Olympic sprinter with the way that he’s spun around and gunned it down the street. Although, to be fair, if Brett had Wade Wilson that pissed off right behind him, he probably could have been an Olympic sprinter himself.
Apparently, the idea here was a keep-a-way type of situation, because as soon as Wade’s first heel hit Peter and Barnes’s held line, they each threw shoulders into him, shouting behind them at Matt to fucking go, man.
Wade was a big guy, but even he couldn’t shake The Winter Soldier and Spiderman.
That’s what his new allies were for.
Castle swept in hard and fast from the left and caught Peter around the waist.
Peter was a strong motherfucker, that was to be sure, but he had an Achilles heel and that was being maybe 115lbs soaking wet. Castle plucked him right up off his feet and dropped him down onto the asphalt before launching himself at Barnes. Barnes struggled to keep a hand on Wilson while fending off Castle’s shoving.
Peter got up just to be re-picked up and dropped into a nearby dumpster by Wade’s hulking pal Cable. Cable slammed the lid closed just as Peter’s fingers hit the edge and the shout of pain that resulted echoed metallically. Brett winced and felt a strong urge to go help the kid out, but he had his own hands full at the moment, trying to ward people and their goddamn phones back from the battle.
Cable flexed his metal fingers into a fist, but Barnes saw it coming and made a very wise and calculated move to get the hell out of the line of fire. He ducked low, sacrificing his grip on Wade. Wade broke through the group and took off after Matt.
“SPIDEY,” Barnes shouted, now preoccupied with trying to keep distance been him and Cable.
Peter punched the dumpster lid hard enough that it crashed back. He leapt out onto the lip and danced out of Castle’s sudden attention and reach. He nearly slipped backwards when he ran out of lip to stand on. The crowd gasped and shouted out, trying to warn him.
He caught himself with a spray of web onto the wall and then, realizing that Castle was severely lacking in sticky fingers, he jumped from the dumpster to the wall and scampered on up onto the roof. And then away he went, tearing back the way his usual teammates had gone.
Cable and Castle paused in their violence to assess the new situation; they made eye contact, then abandoned their stations to go give chase after Peter.
Barnes picked himself up from where he’d been crowded to the ground, swearing.
He finally, finally made eye contact with Brett.
“Is this strictly necessary?” Brett asked him as the group of girls in front of him shrieked encouragement at Barnes.
Barnes shrugged.
“No,” he said. “But it’s fun.”
Brett had to radio in to Harlem that they had a disaster headed their way. In some respects, he was grateful because that shit was now out of his assigned jurisdiction for the night. But on the other hand, there was no way Matt was going to keep that sword.
None.
Brett felt bad for Foggy’s first aid kit more than anyone else.
Things quieted down for a while once the vigilantes had cleared the area. Lots of folks were watching the battle continue on different social media livestreams on their phones.
It was Brett’s understanding that, as of half-past 11, Matt no longer had the sword. Barnes had it again and was truly enduring hell to keep it.
Brett wondered if Sam and Steve were watching the streams and if they were supportive of this behavior or if they’d gone back to their ‘yeah, just fucking deck him’ attitude.
Maynard said that she could understand them; if she had a partner like Barnes, she too would want his ass occasionally handed back to him so as to keep him humble.
It was a good and fair point.
Around midnight, Brett got a call from Midtown that there was Hawkeye on Hawkeye violence headed their way.
He and Maynard prepared themselves for the onslaught.
Apparently, at some point in the night, folks had realized that they could drink, or they could chase one of the vigilante battles happening around town. And chasing the vigilante battle was essentially a costume parade with a show.
Brett kind of wished they’d just stayed back and drank.
Hawkeye the elder came to Hell’s Kitchen, crashing into walls with the discretion of an attack dog and tailed by no less than thirty dedicated fans. The fans took cover and filmed as Barton slammed into brick again and again and then seemed to disappear around these into the darkness with sudden and stunning efficiency. Kate rolled up about a hundred yards behind, bow cocked and eyebrows set, clearing alley after alley. Hunting.
“Where are you?” she sang. Then made kissy noises. “Come on out, little birdie, don’t be shy,” she entreated.
Barton was an idiot, but he was no fool. He stayed dead still in that alley.
The folks on the side of the street around Brett had settled down and gone quiet; they all knew where he was hiding. And knowing that before Kate did made watching the two of them akin to watching a real-life horror movie.
Brett hadn’t realized that he was on Barton’s side until Kate went still, staring into the darkness of the right alley.
The whole street had gone still and quiet in anticipation.
Kate made kissy noises.
“I know you’re in there,” she sang softly.
Brett honestly didn’t know how Barton was going to get out of this one.
Kate held her position for several beats. Then took a step forward. As soon as she did, a leg swept out of the dark and sent her stumbling. She hit hands and knees and Barton stepped out of the alley while she moaned in pain. He picked up the bow and tsked.
“We’ve talked about this, Katie-Kate,” he said. “You gotta watch your legs.”
She slammed a fist into his shin.
The cry was immediate.
“Watch your own fucking legs,” Kate snarled.
“You little shit—”
Kate shoved herself up and grabbed for the bow; Barton fell back away from her and almost stumbled. He seemed to melt back into the darkness of the alley.
“FIGHT ME,” Kate roared into the dark after him. There was nothing.
“FIGHT. ME,” Kate called again.
“No!”
They all looked up to see Barton cuddling his bow to his chest up high, almost to the roof.
“Ooooh, I’m gonna getcha,” Kate murmured to herself with balled fists at her sides. “Just you wait. I’m gonna crush you, you--”
The flick and clatter of something hard brought her attention back to the street. And to Brett’s horror and the newly formed crowd’s delight, there stood The Widow herself, wearing Kate’s purple costume and making it work for her.
“No way,” Kate breathed, dropping her fists.
“NAT, NO,” Barton shouted from the roof. “DON’T DO THIS. YOU DON’T WANT TO DO THIS.”
The Widow swayed her hips as she waltzed forward to Kate. She held out a bow. It looked much different from the one Kate had just been using.
“Make him beg,” The Widow commanded. Then smiled. “I’ve got your six, Hawkeye.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kate said. She grabbed the bow and whipped a grin up at Barton as he was clinging to a chimney. She held up the bow.
Brett couldn’t quite see the look on Barton’s face, but he knew it was one of betrayal.
The Hawkeyes and the Widow didn’t stay much longer than that. They had a town to paint red, or, in their case, purple. That meant that Brett and Maynard got a good twenty minutes of peace and drunk people before Brett stood back and bumped into someone. He turned around to see Peter standing there, staring up at him.
He held out a hand and wiggled his fingers.
Brett did not respond in kind.
Hell no.
He was not getting involved in this nightmare.
“Give it to her,” he said, pointing at Maynard.
Peter stared up at her through his much smaller, rounder Deadpool mask.
“I don’t want it,” Maynard told him politely.
Peter dropped his face and shoulders and looked sad.
The folks around them fell for it like chumps.
“Hey, little buddy, I’ll take it,” a man dressed as Tarzan, who Brett could only otherwise describe as a ‘bro’ said.
Peter lit up and stared up at him, then excitedly produced, not a sword, not a gun, but a cellphone.
He put it in this guy’s paw and squeezed it with both of his own in gratitude.
Tarzan frowned at the phone when Peter let go.
“Is this yours?” he asked.
Peter shook his head.
“Whose is it?”
Brett almost covered his face with secondhand embarrassment.
Man, Rule One: do not ask questions of vigilantes. Even the small, harmless-looking ones. You will hate the answer. There are no good answers.
“Mr. Castle’s,” Peter said simply.
Tarzan briefly reconsidered all his life choices.
“Here, I have a better idea,” he told Peter kindly. “Let’s give this to the barkeep, huh?”
“I can’t go in there,” Peter said completely honestly, pointing at the bar. “Will you do it for me?”
Tarzan realized now that he’d been taken. Had. Drawn in by the sad puppy face and twisted around into complicity.
“How about we give this to Mr. Officer here?” he said, shoving the phone into Brett’s unwilling hands. “Isn’t that great? That’s what police officers are for, right?”
Peter beamed at him and nodded.
He’d gotten his way in the end, this little shit.
“I’m calling Homeland,” Maynard announced.
“Yeah, call Metro Gen while you’re at it,” Brett told her miserably.
“I won’t let him hurt you,” Peter told him. “And besides. He’s wet. He can’t run as fast.”
Brett stared down at him.
“Tell me you did not just push the Punisher into the river,” he said.
“I can’t,” Peter whined. “Lying is a sin.”
Castle turned up right on time for Maynard to get off the phone with Homeland. He was not the least bit threatened by the apparent incoming action. He walked right up to Peter standing in front of Brett and, when the kid fanned himself out into defense mode, grabbed the front of his suit and held him up to eye level.
“I’m not playing anymore,” he said plainly.
Peter put his hands on top of Castle’s.
“Me either,” he said.
Castle went down from a surprise elbow from the side. He dropped Peter. Matt lurched over and snatched the phone out of Brett’s grip and went tearing off into the street, with Castle nearly on top of him.
He skidded to a halt at the end of the block and pitched the phone out over the rooftops like a left-fielder throwing for home.
Castle steadied. Matt steadied, too.
Castle patted at Matt’s shoulder. Once, twice—
Alright, police intervention now. A public strangling was about to take place.
Just when Brett’s heart lurched in realization that Castle might actually kill Matt in the next couple of seconds if he couldn’t get the guy’s hands off of him, a whistle sounded out and Castle froze.
Barnes, lit from below, held up the phone and kicked his feet on top of a telephone pole. Castle dropped Matt, who shook himself out and gasped. Brett kept a hand on him to make sure he was still breathing.
“Make a deal with me, Francis,” Barnes called down. “Your phone for a side-switch.”
Castle sneered up at him.
“I ain’t playing anymore,” he said.
“You want this?” Barnes sneered back, holding up the cell phone. “Then you’re playin’. If not, we’re seein’ what kinda fall this bad boy can withstand. Choice is all yours, bub.”
Barnes looked a little worse for wear, Deadpool suit notwithstanding. He’d yanked off the mask and his hair was all over the place; a lion’s mane, nearly.
Castle considered this offer over the ever-increasing presence of civilians and volume of sirens.
“Give it here,” he said.
Barnes chucked the phone down and Castle dipped forward to catch it. He checked it over and crammed it back into his pocket. Peter ducked under his arm and he jumped.
“Take that one,” Barnes ordered. “And disable your dear, angry robotic friend. There’s only room for one tin can in this streetfight and that’s me. Got it?”
Castle scowled at the phone-thief under his arm, but true to form, he didn’t try to hurt him.
“Take it again and you and me and that goddamn river are having a long, deep talk,” he threatened the kid. Peter pressed himself all up against Castle’s side in defiance.
Castle scoffed and reached back to yank his Cap cowl back on. Peter grabbed his hand and dragged him off to the end of the block. The two of them vanished around a corner.
Once the they were gone and the screech of Homeland Security’s tires filled the air, Brett turned very slowly to Matt who had since re-gotten his bearings.
“Does this make you happy?” he asked.
Matt snapped up straight and wriggled in delight.
Yeah, no.
Of course it did.
Matt and Barnes got the fuck out of there just as Agent Dinah Madani threw open her car door and got up in Brett’s face.
He could only point in the direction Castle had gone and say, “he’s with Spiderman.”
Homeland took that for what it was and went a-chasing.
“Maybe,” Maynard said gently, “You should have told them that Spiderman is temporarily Deadpool.”
Yeah, maybe.
But if Brett’s life couldn’t be easy, then it wasn’t fair for theirs to be.
It was nearly 2am when the fight came to a close. It didn’t finish where it started. Well, the Red Team vs. the Faux-Caps anyways. The Hawkeye vs. Hawkeye showdown had started in Brooklyn and indeed it ended in Brooklyn, according to twitter.
Brett found himself oddly invested in the outcome of that one, although he had the feeling that any battle the Widow entered, she won. Still, she didn’t pick Barton to be her main partner for no reason. Maybe she’d finally driven him to breaking out some of that hyper-competence that he hid so well.
The Deadpools vs. Faux-Caps, as Brett understood it, ended somewhere down in the East Village. Homeland was that way, so Brett could only imagine that Castle had at least been present in the area. He presumed that Barnes had taken victory.
He was surprised to find out the next day that it had been a draw in the end.
Goldberg showed him a video of what looked like a standoff between Barnes and Wilson, Wilson holding a recaptured blade to the other’s neck and Barnes with a mean-looking knife hovering over—surprise, surprise, Peter’s chest.
Now that was one way to get what you want.
Wilson asked for a draw in the video. Barnes huffed and agreed and they pulled themselves off Pete who popped right up, unharmed; he didn’t seem to have considered himself in mortal danger, although that might just have been his faith in the older fellas sustaining him.
Brett noted a suspicious lack of Matt in this video.
“Oh, he’s fine. Just dumb as shit,” Foggy assured Brett at lunch that day.
“Guy almost got strangled last night,” Brett pointed out.
“He almost gets strangled every night,” Foggy said grumpily over the top of his coffee.
“Is Pete alright?”
“Are you kidding? He had so much fun. Kid doesn’t understand why everyone’s motherin’ him all of a sudden.”
Ah. So the older folks had read Barnes’s threat for what it really was. No doubt there was much fussing and checking and double-checking of the baby to do.
“That boy’s gonna grow up fearless,” Brett sighed.
“If he usurps Matt’s title, he’s gonna have to be,” Foggy hummed.
“Tell me this isn’t an annual thing,” Brett pleaded.
“No, it’s my understanding that this is more of a bi-annual feud.”
Oh, beautiful. Perfect. Just what Brett had always wanted.