The North watchtower came with a spectacular view of absolutely nothing interesting. Just dead grass, concrete, and the dark waters of the bay reflecting the city lights across the bridge. This island alone had three bridges connecting it to Manhattan, and this research facility was the only structure worth noticing.
Norman Osborn essentially owned this island.
Dante leaned against the railing, still uncomfortable dark gray tactical gear. He just couldn't deny Silvija's gift, not when she had that "Don't you dare get a single scratch" look on her face.
That hadn't been her only parting gift. She'd granted him full access to the site's resources, including the armored personnel carrier parked below the watchtower. She was spoiling him lavishly when he was only her boyfriend. He couldn't imagine what she'd do if they got married at some point.
His tactical radio came alive with the now-familiar voices of Wild Pack.
"Grey Wolves, status?" Piotr's deep rumbling voice and Russian accent made a normal report sound official.
"All quiet on the western front, literally," Crippler responded. "Unless you count Amy singing in that unique voice of hers."
"Shut the fuck up, Pervert." Amy Chen's indignant response came immediately. "I'll get better… eventually."
"Yeah, sure, Miss Assassin. You'll be a world-class performer, my pitbull will learn to do my taxes, and I'll sprout wings to meet God in Heaven."
Dante couldn't help but smile. The banter reminded him of his old friends. These weren't bad people, even if they'd pointed guns at him earlier. They were professionals who looked after their own.
"Hades, you copy?" Raul's clear voice cut through the chatter.
Dante pressed the transmit button. "Copy. The north is quiet. Scouts will radio if they see anything."
"That's great. Don't let your guard down."
"Got it."
As if the universe had been waiting for exactly that cue, Dante's scout unit sent a comm on their designated channel.
"Hades, we've got movement on our side. Multiple vehicles approaching from the north road. Seven... no, eight black sedans. No plates. Moving in a tight formation."
Dante brought the binoculars up again. Sure enough, glaring headlights flashed in the distance. He pressed the switch to thermal mode to spot four men in seven vehicles and only two in the middle one.
'That must be the boss.'
"Hades, awaiting orders, sir." The leader of the three-man scout team remained steady.
"Don't engage. Fall back to secondary positions." Dante kept his voice calm. These men needed to know their squad leader wasn't panicking. "Let them come to me."
The vehicles soon rolled to a stop about two hundred meters from Dante's watchtower, arranged in a loose semicircle. Doors opened, and men poured out. Behind their cars, behind trees, anywhere that provided a decent firing position became their cover.
Movement from the center vehicle caught his attention. A man emerged in an expensive suit completely wrong for an operation of this level. He raised a massive megaphone to his mouth.
"ATTENTION, WILD PACK MERCENARIES!" The voice was so piercing that it made fork fingernails on a chalkboard sound like a symphony. "THIS FACILITY NOW BELONGS TO THE MAGGIA! SURRENDER AND LIVE! RESIST, AND YOU WILL DIE!"
Dante looked down at the assembled Maggia force. Thirty professional criminals with automatic weapons, organized positions, and the will to kill. Men who wouldn't hesitate to shoot him dead.
His heart should have been pounding. His hands should have been shaking. Instead, he felt that strange calm. This was his first real battle, unlike the sparring match with Silvija and psychological confrontation with Emma Frost.
This was life and death.
And he wasn't afraid.
He was excited.
He grabbed the sniper rifle from the crate and took an appropriate shooting stance. The stock pressed against his cheek as he sighted down the scope at the loudmouth boss of Maggia.
He took a breath, held it in for steady hands, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked against his shoulder. The shot rang through the night despite the suppressor.
The bullet missed the target by a solid ten meters, kicking up dirt and making everyone duck. His marksmanship really needed work. He had to take up some sharpshooter's Resonance Link after Sue Storm. Her invisibility was mandatory for the heist.
"Hades, wait before engaging," Raul sounded somewhat concerned. "My unit is en route. ETA: three minutes."
"Comrade, I'm also on my way."
"Hades, wait for backup." Even Amy shoved aside her earlier prejudice and told him to wait. "You can't catch that many bullets."
It seemed like his unit had also informed Raul, which made sense since Dante wasn't really informed on their protocols.
"Hold your positions," Dante confidently spoke into his radio. "I'll take care of them."
"Hades, that's thirty hostiles!" Raul said in a bit of panic. "How will you even engage?"
"Just one of me is overkill for this trash. Remember, Commander's orders were to let me handle the North alone. I won't fail her."
"SO YOU HAVE CHOSEN DEATH!" The boss screamed through his megaphone.
Dante couldn't stop the grin that spread across his face. He leaned over the tower railing, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted back, "HELL YEAH I DID! I LOVE DEATH TO DEATH!"
His words echoed across the island. For a moment, perfect silence fell. The Maggia members looked at each other, clearly trying to process whether they'd just heard correctly. One gunman made a "he's out of his mind" gesture at his companions.
Dante chucked his rifle to the side. "I should finish this fast."
He climbed onto the tower railing and jumped. The cold wind rushed past him. In that half-second of freefall, time seemed to stretch.
"Null, Death."
The world came to a crawl. Sounds became distant, muffled, as if heard underwater. The pounding of his heart slowed to deep, resonant thumps. He felt like he stepped into a place where the rules of reality didn't apply the same way, except he was the one who caused this.
Death's presence wrapped around him comfortably.
The fall should have shattered his ankles but instead barely jarred him. He straightened up, slowly. Twenty nine guns tracked his movement, even so, he walked toward them.
"OPEN FIRE!" Their leader shouted. "KILL THAT FUCKER!"
Muzzle flashes erupted across the darkness like violent fireworks. The continuous roar of gunfire was deafening. Bullets tore through the air, dozens of them converging on his position.
Dante didn't flinch. He didn't dodge. He didn't even stop walking.
Darkness materialized around him. The Death Aura manifested as a swirling shroud of absolute black, moving with a mind of its own. The rounds struck the aura and simply stopped, their kinetic energy reduced to nothing.
As Death's Resonance Link grew stronger so did his own understanding of how each ability under it operated.
The gunfire faltered, weapons falling silent one by one as the Maggia members processed what they were seeing. These were men who'd lived their life committing crimes left and right. Even they gasped at the sight. None of them had seen anything like this.
"What the fuck is that—"
"Keep shooting! KEEP SHOOTING!"
"It's not working!"
"Mary, Mother of God—"
"Argh! I'll blast this bullshit to pieces!!!"
Desperation and fear of the unknown drove them to pour round after round into his Death Aura.
He stopped walking fifty meters from their position. Close enough to see their faces clearly, to watch the growing horror in their eyes. Close enough that they could see his face too, see the absolute calm, and the slight smile. Close enough for them to see they had no hope.
"Die."
The casual word decided the fate of one Maggia member. The man on the far left crumpled instantly and stopped breathing.
"Andre died! HOW DID HE DIE?!"
"What the fuck is happening?!"
"It's that monster! THAT THING? How the fuck do we fight something like that?!"
Panic spread like wildfire. Their organized assault collapsed into chaos, all tactical training abandoned in the face of something that violated every rule of reality they understood.
"Die."
A gunman near the center dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Another casual word. Another life extinguished.
"Die."
An enforcer trying to retreat backward stumbled, fell, and stopped moving.
The survivors broke. They threw down their weapons and ran. Six, then eight, then a dozen men sprinting for their vehicles, abandoning their pride and any pretense of being a tough member of a Maggia Clan.
"GET BACK HERE, YOU COWARDS!" The boss, still holding the ridiculous megaphone, fired his pistol wildly in Dante's direction. "I'LL KILL YOU MYSELF IF YOU—"
Dante tilted his head slightly, studying the remaining gunmen with the detached curiosity of someone watching insects.
"Die."
Another dropped dead, leaving a strangled gasp as his last sound.
"You die."
A gunman fell forward, his body sliding down a car's hood.
The remaining gunmen lost their nerve completely. Weapons clattered to the ground as they fled on foot, not having the courage to stay long enough to start the engine.
The boss fired a few more desperate shots, screaming threats at his retreating men, before realizing he was utterly, completely alone.
The pistol slipped from his fingers.
His legs gave out.
And then a dark stain spread across the front of his expensive suit pants, clearly visible to Dante's sharp eyes.
"P-Please…" His voice came out as a broken whimper. "Please, I'm just a contractor. Roxxon Corporation hired me! I'm just doing their dirty work! I'm no one! Please, God, Devil, whoever you are, please have mercy…"
"Interesting. Even Roxxon wants a piece of Norman's pie."
His lips parted, preparing to grant a merciful death to the sobbing man.
"STOP!"
A voice came from above. Dante looked up as someone swung through the air, carried by white webbings attached to a tree.
'Spider-Man?'
A figure landed between Dante and the sobbing Maggia boss in a graceful crouch and a hand extended toward him in a clear "stop" gesture. The sleek white-hooded suit immediately revealed her identity.
Gwen Stacy and her iconic suit, years before Peter Parker would be bitten by his radioactive arachnid. This timeline was completely off the rails.
"It's you!"
Just as he recognized the lady under the mask, she also recognized the man who praised her father outside Hellmoon Club yesterday.
Dante tilted his head. "Do I know you?"
"No!" She started breathing harder, noticeable shivers running through her legs as she struggled against every instinct screaming at her to run. The sharper your perception, the more clearly you'd feel the presence of death from him.
"Then move. This is private property, and you're trespassing."
"You can't kill him!" She shifted her stance again, trying to position herself more fully between him and the Maggia boss. "You can't just… look, he's a criminal, yes, but you can't execute him! The law will decide his punishment by trial."
Dante really wanted to get this over with and disengage Death's link. But here was Gwen Stacy giving him the hero speech about law and justice and due process.
He could fight her. He could kill her. But that would be against his conscience and would probably trigger some horrible curse since Spiderman and Spiderwoman were the main characters of their world.
Besides, he didn't need to kill the Maggia boss either. The message had been sent that thirty Maggia members attacked, multiple died, and the rest escaped. Wild Pack's reputation would undoubtedly grow across the world.
Keeping one alive for Gwen's conscience meant avoiding a potential enemy in Ghost Spider, who would remember he'd shown mercy when she asked. Having Gwen around meant fewer villains for him to deal with in this hero-less era.
"Fine. Take him."
Gwen's mask lenses widened comically. "What?"
"You heard me. Take him to the police and let the justice system you believe in handle it." Dante turned his back on both of them, reaching for his radio. "I'm too busy for this shit."
Finding a safe space and deactivating the Resonance Link took priority over a random Maggia boss.
He pressed the transmit button on his radio. "Hades here. The situation has been handled. The north sector is free from Maggia maggots."
"Foooh, I was assuming the worst after that silence," Raul said in a relieved voice. "But damn you really fucked up a crew of thirty on your own."
"So THIS is the power of Hades," Crippler said, disbelief apparent even through the comm static. "White Tiger and Hades are just in another league from us normal mercs."
"I guess that's Hades, the God of Death for ya," Raul added. "Hades, return to the watchtower. I'll let rookies handle the cleanup."
"Gotcha."
He glanced back at Gwen, who still stood in her protective stance. Behind her, the Maggia boss sobbed quietly.
"Want me to drive you and your 'date' home?"
"I—I am leaving! And, um, thank you… for not killing this douchebag."
"Maybe I just don't want to argue. Get him out of here before I change my mind."
As he walked toward his watchtower, he really felt like dropping dead again.