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A Spotty Record	By : keithcompany Category: Marvel Verse Comics > Crossovers Views: 1808 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or setting of the Marvel Universe. I make no profit from this fanfiction.

Chapter List
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Just before Christmas, I got a call about four minutes before my alarm went off. "Hello?"
"Yeah, Malone? This is Mystique. I'm here to meet the ballerina who lost her legs, but no one's shown up."
"Um, what?" I started to ask. Then it hit me. "Get out of there! There's no dream! The Foundation isn't looking to put you next to a kid. It must be a trap! Cops or Feds or Genosha or…"
"Well, shit," she said, then hung up.
God. DAMN. The NYPD had a history of this sort of thing. Putting out word that criminals had won the lottery, or earned a visit with the entire team of the Mets, whatever. Then when someone shows up, they get arrested. It would be like them to pretend a kid wanted to meet someone and…
No one was ever going to trust me, ever again. Whoever set this up, they had just screwed me, and the Foundation, and any number of innocent kids. This couldn't be tolerated.   I slapped my alarm into silence and got dressed.
I called my parole officer. "Officer Penn," I told his voicemail. "This is Malone. I need to speak to someone about… I dunno, the CIA would have called it the Dirty Tricks department. I… I'll be in your office some time this morning. I need… I mean, I would appreciate if you could point me in the direction of someone in charge of efforts to..."
Then I heard a tapping. At my window. At my 10^th floor window. It was mid-December, so the sun wasn't up, but the sky was lightening. And my window had a shadow. Something that just looked predatory was knocking at the glass. Well, if it wanted in, the glass wasn't going to stop it. I opened the window and stepped back.
Freezing air and a tall figure flowed in, utterly black. Or maybe purple? Hard to say, I didn't have any lights on. I noted a cape, some armor, maybe armament… It stood. He stood. A huge figure rose in my room. After a moment, I placed him, The Prowler. Perfect. Mystique was a deadly X-Men villain who probably thought I'd crossed her, now this assassin was here for what couldn't be a good reason.
"You don't need to go yell at the Mayor," he said.
"I, um, oh?"
He shook his cowled head. "I faked the Mystique call." He pushed a button on his wrist. I heard my and 'Mystique's' voices from moments ago. "I was hired to find out if you can be trusted. If you're cooperating with the cops, or FBI, or SHIELD, or…whoever."
"Oh. And?"
"Easiest $5000 I ever earned," he chuckled. "Gonna tell everyone you're the real thing." He gave a half-salute, then turned back to the window.
"Can you tell my parole officer?" I asked, only half-serious. "Now that I'm ranting conspiracy theories to-"
"I scrambled frequencies when you made your call," he said. "You didn't actually record a message."
"Wow, thanks!"
"Seems only fair. You wouldn't have made the call if I hadn't made mine." And then he was gone. I waited a moment, then closed the window.
I needed some protection, I realized now. So, off I went. Burner phone, random trips on the subway, and a phone call. "I need that favor," I asked Kingpin.
"Of course. What can we do?"
"I need secure communications. I need to know that when people arrange a visit, the cops aren't listening in." I was prepared to explain my epiphany further, but all he did was ask a question.
"How secure do you need?"
"I, uh, well. I guess… I need it safe from pretty powerful people."
"How powerful?"
"So far the most powerful person I've contacted was Doom. So, I need protection that works against people powerful enough to feel like ambushing Doctor Doom."
"Give us a week," he said. "And we are glad to know you feel you can trust us in this." Then he hung up on me. Much better ending, I thought. I tossed the phone and went to the office.
----------
I had a reserved stool in Sammy's. It was at the end of the bar, by the wall. On the wall right there was a bulletin board. I didn't rush around town anymore. I went to Sammy's and put a 3x5 on the board. Brief sketch of the kid, the dream, the person they were looking to meet. As soon as it went up, people shuffled up, took a pic, and the word spread.
That night, I went in, stamped off the slush, and signaled for a beer. A few guys waved, nodded, raised their drinks. I pulled out an index card and the place went dead quiet. As part of the ritual, I stood by the board and read off the card's contents. "A girl. Seventeen. A dancer, wants to do it professionally. Knees being reconstructed after an accident, thinking of taking up a martial art to help with her rehab. Strength, balance, so on. Desires to meet Batroc the Leaper to discuss the relative merits of Savate."
Five guys got up from one of the tables when I mentioned Batroc. I noticed none of the guys standing by the bar looked in their direction. They formed a wedge, came up to where I was standing. People moved away from my end of the bar.
The leader had a French accent. "She wants to meet…Batroc? Why?"
"She knows he's an expert in several martial arts, and-"
"Non, why does a sweet girl want to meet a mercenary? Are there no heroes to help her understand the relative merits?" Sammy brought six drinks to the bar. I took my beer but didn't sip. The others downed or sipped theirs.
"The Black Knight did come to her right before one of her surgeries," I nodded. "Talked about martial arts. Also, he talked a lot about taking everything one day at a time. Being open to new possibilities. If she can't dance, maybe she can teach. Or direct." Then I shrugged. "She threw a water pitcher at him. She WILL dance again, or she'll know the reason why."
Batroc laughed. "I wish to meet her now, if only for that. I like her style.   Her determination."
"Great!" I said. I put the 3x5 down, reached for a business card. "We can-"
"Seventeen?" one of the guys in his crew asked. "That's, like, after puberty, right?"
"For humans, yes," another crew member said. An important point in New York, these days.
The first guy smiled. "Which means she's menstruating. And like they say, old enough to bleed, old enough for me!" He laughed. "And she can't run away, right?" He looked around the room. Not a single other person laughed.
"Not cool, man," someone said.
"You don't do that, not with a kid."
"Not in rehab, that's for sure."
"Not one that INVITES you."
"I only-" first guy started to say.
Batroc didn't turn around. "You're not in the Brigade any more, Tomas. Bart, Antoine, take him out back and beat the shit out of him." The people beside Tomas grabbed his arms in swift, merciless take-downs. He struggled, but it didn't change anything as he was dragged across the floor. The crowd parted in a straight line to the hallway that led past the restrooms to the back door.
"Don't break his legs," someone said from a shadowed table. Bart and Antoine paused.
"Why in the name of God should they not?" Batroc asked, turning towards the hidden speaker.
"Don't want him in the same rehab program as the girl." That got a big laugh. The dragging continued.
I was worried about being followed by cops or someone, and said so. We arranged for Batroc to go without me. He went in civilian clothes, posing as a martial arts instructor from Scranton. He had an appointment. I hear that five minutes into the 'consultation,' he pulled out his mask. Then did a handstand on the end of her bed, had her toss a dime in the air, and kicked it into a coffee cup he'd placed across the room. They talked until one of his remaining crewmen called and said there were twelve cop cars parking outside.
Then I got yelled at for NOT being at the Dream. How it was disappointing that I hadn't been there to do the introductions and watch over the dream. Then Rabin let slip that the cops were noting my movements, and had expected me to allow them to complete an ambush. I stopped even reading applications for a while, after that revelation.
I wasn't going to use the Foundation to destroy the trust I'd established. I'd established it with criminals, sure, but according to the state, so was I. I thought maybe they deserved… Maybe WE deserved, if not a free pass, but at least a head start on a selfless gesture.
It was during this lull that Stark showed up again. But instead of the office, he was standing outside my door when I got home one night.
"You," he said, "should sue someone."
"Turns out I signed a release, forfeiting all rights to sue the company that did this." I opened the door, invited him in. I needed a beer, but my guest was an alcoholic. I got two Cokes from the fridge.
"Why would you sign a release like that?" he asked, incredulous.
"Same reason I laundered mob money," I said. "I didn't, but the state told me I did." I eased down onto the sofa. My leg did not like the weather of the holiday season. Or any season, really.
"Oh. What company would you have sued, otherwise?" he asked, perching on my other chair.
"Yours," I said bluntly. He was not surprised. He sipped soda and gestured for more info. "Okay. One year into my sentence, they came looking for volunteers. The government had contracted with Stark Enterprises to make a new generation of Mandroid Armor. And they hired an 'independent contractor' to run some basic tests of the submitted prototype.
"The contractor slipped money to our warden, who offered time off for good behavior for anyone that wore the suits while off-duty guards tried to beat the hell out of us." I sipped, kicked my wooden foot with my real one. "I personally found a design flaw."
"So, you should sue me. We don't offer releases like the one you signed."
"Nope," I said. "The penitentiary healthcare system is forever broke. By law, if I got any money from the lawsuit, the state would get first grabs. They can only take enough to compensate for their outlay in my surgery, prosthetic, rehab and my cane.   But I'm sure, no matter HOW much the jury soaked you for, the pen would declare an amazing coincidence and show that was 90% of what they spent on me. Doctor bills add up, you know."
"Jeez," he muttered. Then he nodded. "Then I'll just have to build you a leg."
"Don't," I said. "I walk up to some of the criminals out there, sporting a super whammodyne Iron Man leg, they're going to figure I'm a Junior Avenger or some shit."
"I can get Janet Van Dyne to make you a suit," he suggested. "You'll be snazzy and fashionable, but not suspicious."
I laughed at him. "You pay me $23 an hour. I can barely afford a place with an elevator." I kicked the leg again. "I show up in a Van Dyne original, everyone's going to think I'm crooked. Either taking money from the cops tipping them off to bad guys, or from the bad guys to keep the cops away from them. Thanks, but no thanks."
"There's gotta be something I can do," he implored.
"Bail me out if my involvement with criminals gets me arrested?" I suggested.
"That was going to happen, anyway," he promised. He knocked back his soda. "If there's anything. Anything at all. Let me know." He stood.
"I will." I sipped my soda. "I'd show you out," I gestured towards the door, all the way across my one-room apartment. "But I think you can figure it out." He nodded, put his can in the recycle bin, and left. I sat there for a while, imagining the possible accessories on an Iron Man leg. Then, of course, imagining Doom detecting coded transmissions from it… Eugh.
----------
Two days after Christmas, I got a visit from the Prowler again. He tapped at my window, I waved, he let himself in. "Kingpin's respects," he said, handing me a small box. "This should serve your needs."
It was a phone. No indication of what company made it. Just sleek black plastic and a fairly basic screen. "How does it work?"
"Like a phone," he shrugged. "There's some state-of-the-art tech in there, and a little magic, too. Fisk has people all over the place. Might be some alien technology, who knows? But only you and the phone you intend to call can hear the conversation or even trace the signal. Oh. And touch that button with a thumbprint on it." I did. The button glowed, then recessed into the casing. The exterior smoothed over the hole. "Now only you can use this phone."
"Thanks," I said.
"No, thank you," he said. "Because of you, I've got ten grand for not really doing anything." We bumped fists and he let himself out.
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A Spotty Record