"S.H.I.E.L.D. ran the background check. Aleksei Sytsevich. Ex-enforcer for the Russian mob. He stepped away from the syndicate a few years back to work the docks."
Nick Fury stood on the edge of the rooftop, his single eye fixed on the chaotic street below. The wind whipped his heavy leather trench coat around his boots. Peter crouched on the gargoyle beside him, listening intently.
"He and his wife had a quiet life," Fury continued, his voice cutting through the wail of distant sirens. "Until she was diagnosed with a rare blood disease. Aleksei couldn't afford the treatments. So, he volunteered for Otto Octavius's experimental armor plating."
Peter frowned beneath his mask. "Kingpin footed the bill."
"Exactly," Fury nodded. "Fisk paid him a lump sum. To a guy who spent his life loading cargo, it looked like a mountain of cash. But long-term medical care in this country drains accounts fast. The money ran out. Aleksei needed more, so he tried to forcefully withdraw it from a bank vault."
Fury folded his hands behind his back. "We need someone with his kinetic output. I'm going to recruit him into S.H.I.E.L.D."
Peter tilted his head. The mechanical lenses of his mask whirred, sliding into an asymmetrical, highly skeptical squint.
Three blocks away, a sleek, radar-absorbent S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet hovered silently between the skyscrapers.
Inside the cockpit, Clint Barton adjusted his grip on the flight stick and sighed. "Just to review. We are currently tracking an eight-foot-tall humanoid rhinoceros whose speed and strength rival the Hulk's. And my elite tactical strike team consists of a guy with a bow, a spy, and a teenager who walks through walls."
Clint didn't bother hiding his sarcasm. This was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s brand-new "Thunderbolts" initiative: Hawkeye taking the lead, Natasha Romanoff riding shotgun, Ava Starr sulking in the back, and Bill Foster stretching his neck muscles in the cargo bay.
Bill was the only one on board who could physically block a charging Rhino. He tapped the Pym Particle regulator on his chest, taking a deep breath.
"Good luck down there, Bill," Clint said over his shoulder. "I read Hank Pym once tried to arm-wrestle the Hulk. Try not to repeat history."
Natasha paused, looking up from the targeting monitor. "Wait. Ant-Man fought the Hulk?"
"Yep," Clint nodded, banking the jet. "It's buried in the S.H.I.E.L.D. archives. A forty-foot giant got completely suplexed by a nine-foot green toddler."
Natasha blinked. In the back of the jet, Ava let out a long, suffering sigh. She pulled her Ghost mask over her face and simply phased backward through the hull of the plane, dropping into the open air.
Bill hit the cargo release and plummeted after her.
Back on the rooftop, Peter watched the deployment with crossed arms. "I'm not exactly blown away by your Thunderbolts, Fury. You dropped four people. You couldn't spare anyone with heavy artillery?"
Before Peter even finished his sentence, Bill Foster hit the asphalt and triggered his suit. He expanded into a thirty-foot giant, planting his feet to block the intersection. Rhino didn't even slow down. Aleksei lowered his armored head and rammed dead-center into Goliath's shin.
CRACK.
Goliath toppled like a felled redwood. His massive shoulder smashed into a row of parked cars, crushing them into flat steel pancakes. The secondary property damage was instantly worse than anything Rhino had done alone.
Peter gestured to the fallen giant. "Brilliant tactical deployment."
Fury didn't flinch. He reached up, pressing two fingers to his earpiece. "Barton. Status."
Three stories up, crouched on the edge of a fire escape, Clint Barton lowered his bow. "Target neutralized, sir."
Clint never expected Goliath to win a fistfight. Bill was just the wall. While Aleksei was distracted knocking the giant over, Clint had drawn a bead on the one vulnerability in the Rhino armor: the unplated joints behind the knees. He buried a specialized arrow directly into Aleksei's skin, pumping enough concentrated elephant tranquilizer into his bloodstream to drop a herd.
Down in the street, Rhino stumbled, his eyes rolling back before he face-planted into the concrete.
"See?" Fury dropped his hand from his ear, looking at Peter. "My team handled it. Give me a little more budget, and I can expand the roster."
"Yeah, well, don't hold your breath on Aleksei joining up," Peter said, shaking his head. "He's painfully literal. He's going to demand to serve out his entire prison sentence before he even looks at your contract."
Peter stood up, stretching his back. "So, why did you call me up here? Just to watch Hawkeye shoot a guy in the leg?"
"Yesterday, Wilson Fisk surrendered to the NYPD," Fury said, his tone shifting entirely. "Today, our surveillance flagged an anomaly. Over a dozen new, massive gang syndicates supposedly popped up overnight in New York."
Fury tapped his wrist console. A massive data packet transferred directly into Peter's mask HUD. Dozens of police reports, precinct alerts, and crime statistics scrolled across Peter's vision.
"I don't care about street gangs," Fury said. "But I care about this data. Every district is showing a three-hundred-percent spike in violent crime since Fisk walked into that precinct."
Peter frowned, reading the reports. "This is fake."
"Excuse me?"
"I patrol these blocks," Peter said, pointing at a map of Hell's Kitchen. "I was swinging through there an hour ago. It's quiet. Too quiet. If there were a dozen new gangs tearing up the city, I'd be punching them right now."
"Exactly," Fury said. "Someone is manipulating the NYPD database. They are actively cooking the books to make New York look like a warzone."
"So? Trace the hack," Peter said.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is currently handling a global crisis. I don't have the manpower to audit the NYPD's server farm. That's your job."
Peter let his head fall back, groaning at the sky. "Fury, I have fought a lizard-man, a shock-wave guy, a guy with a fishbowl on his head, and an actual rhinoceros. Can I please just take a nap?"
Fury offered a grim half-smile. "Nobody forced you to put on the tights, kid. The data is yours. What you do with it is up to you. But the Avengers aren't flying down here to fix local server issues."
Peter sighed, saving the files to his suit's memory. "Fine. I'll look into it."
Deep inside the maximum-security holding wing of the NYPD's central precinct, Matt Murdock tapped his white cane against the concrete floor.
He stood perfectly still in the corridor. He listened. He tracked the heartbeats of the two armed guards assigned to the cell block. The steady thump-thump grew fainter as the guards walked away, their heavy boots echoing down the hall. They had been paid off.
Matt adjusted his red-tinted glasses and stepped up to the reinforced steel bars.
Inside the cell, Wilson Fisk sat on a metal bench. His massive frame made the room look like a dollhouse.
"You requested me," Matt said, his voice flat.
"I was wondering if you came to gloat, Mr. Murdock," Fisk rumbled, not looking up. "To celebrate your great victory."
"This isn't a victory, Fisk. It's an arraignment."
"Oh, it is a victory," Fisk chuckled, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated off the concrete walls. "If your spider friend hadn't been so relentlessly persistent, I might still be sitting in my penthouse. But... this arrangement suits my purposes."
Matt tightened his grip on his cane. "You aren't walking out of here easily."
"Why would I want to leave?" Fisk finally looked up. "My lieutenants are tightening their defenses. My forces are pulling back from the streets. I am exactly where I need to be."
Fisk stood up, stepping slowly toward the bars. "Soon, this city will finally understand who actually kept the animals in check. Who stopped the chaos from spilling into the suburbs."
Matt didn't step back. He tilted his chin up. "You think you're indispensable."
"I know I am," Fisk whispered. "What is truly terrifying to a city isn't a singular, powerful kingpin, Mr. Murdock. It is unbridled, directionless chaos. A power vacuum that not even your Avengers can plug. Because I am no longer suppressing them... the wolves are coming."
PS: Bill Foster (Goliath) actually has a long history with Pym Particles in the comics! First appearing in Avengers #32 (1966), Bill was a brilliant biochemist who worked alongside Hank Pym. He eventually cracked the formula himself, taking on the mantles of Black Goliath and later just Goliath.