REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!Chapter 102: I Wouldn't Even Give You This for a Dog!
Some time passed.
The corridor held no one standing except Norman.
The soldiers had stopped pushing men into the building. With the senior officers evacuated and the situation inside making clear that close-quarters engagement was yielding only one outcome, they had fallen back to encircle the building from the outside instead.
In the empty hallway, Norman stood in a spreading pool of red and let out a satisfied breath.
He was aware that Carnage had, to some degree, deepened his appetite for this kind of work. He found this acceptable. If he was being honest, the appetite had always been there.
He glanced down at Vane Carter, who had stopped making any sound some time ago.
Matthew had told him to get in and get out. Norman decided not to push it.
He stepped onto the Goblin Glider. A string of smoke grenades detonated in the air outside as he cleared the building, and before the soldiers surrounding the perimeter had finished processing the sound, he had already punched through the cloud cover and disappeared.
Gone.
Over the open ocean, no pursuit visible behind him, Norman gradually brought his speed down.
It occurred to him that he had forgotten to report in. He connected to the mental network.
"Boss. Mission complete."
The connection carried his voice into Matthew's awareness. Matthew was in the middle of testing the Astartes Prototype's combat performance. He paused for a fraction of a second.
The Astartes Prototype, operating without restraint, found the opening and drove a fist straight at Matthew's head. The fist was about the size of Matthew's skull.
Matthew stopped it with one raised hand.
"Good work." He returned the response to Norman first, then held up a hand to pause the test and sat down on one of the cracked stone posts at the edge of the space.
"Were you identified?"
One second. Two seconds. Three. After roughly ten seconds of silence, Norman's voice came back.
"If 'not identified' means they didn't see my actual appearance, then no, I wasn't identified."
Matthew picked up something in the phrasing immediately. "I sent you for a stealth assassination. Tell me you didn't kill everyone."
"...Not everyone. Just a small amount." Norman answered with complete honesty.
In fairness, it had genuinely been a small amount. If Matthew hadn't said to come back quickly, he and Carnage had been planning to stay and make a proper evening of it. If that had happened, the death count would have been at least double what it was.
"..."
Matthew let out a long breath.
"Fine." He said it in the tone of a man who had decided to stop asking follow-up questions. "Either way, after this mission you need to go quiet. Keep a low profile for a while."
"While you're keeping that profile, use the Osborn identity to run the company properly. Stop fixating on Spider-Man, and stop looking for reasons to start something with him."
This time, Norman agreed without resistance. The mission had served as a productive outlet. The humiliation that the Green Goblin personality had been carrying since being beaten across half the city had largely dissipated. He felt ready to acknowledge, in the present moment, that his feelings toward Spider-Man were not as intense as they had been.
That was the present moment, of course. In the same room was a different situation.
Matthew ended the call.
He considered resuming the Astartes test, but his phone rang before he could move.
He pulled it out.
Ada Wong.
"Hey. How's the vacation going?"
Her voice came through the line with its characteristic composure. "Tolerable. The accommodations leave something to be desired."
She glanced around the dim, rundown room she was sitting in.
"I found the person you asked about. He's showing some reluctance when it comes to working with us."
She looked across the negotiation table at Ulysses Klaue.
Ulysses Klaue. Belgian acoustic physicist. Arms dealer. And beyond both of those, a black market operator specializing in the theft and resale of vibranium from Wakanda. In the Avengers' second encounter with Ultron, Klaue had been the one who sold vibranium to the machine. Matthew's current interest in Klaue was straightforward: he wanted to buy vibranium, and Klaue had it.
Klaue sat across from Ada with a cigarette between his lips, smoke drifting up through the dim light. His impatience was not difficult to read.
"Did you actually explain to your boss why I'm not interested in doing business with you people? The price is wrong. You want to buy my entire current inventory and you're offering thirty million. Which one of us has lost their mind?"
Over years of theft and operation, Klaue's current vibranium holdings had reached three tons. In Wakanda, three tons was an unimpressive figure. On the black market, three tons would command three billion or more without difficulty.
Thirty million.
For three tons.
She thought she wasn't the one who had lost her mind.
Ada didn't answer him. She kept talking to Matthew for about thirty seconds, then ended the call.
She put the phone down and looked at Klaue.
"My boss heard your objection."
"His exact words: ask him one more time. Thirty million dollars. Take it or leave it."
She let the sentence sit.
Klaue's answer was immediate.
"Not selling! Thirty million? I wouldn't even give you this to feed a dog!" He put his palm down hard on the table.
Ada turned her head slightly. "Bullseye."
"Heard it." Bullseye nodded.
"Then you know what to do."
"Of course."
His gaze moved from Ada to Klaue, then to the bodyguards standing behind Klaue.
The atmosphere in the room shifted in a way that Klaue felt before he fully understood it. His hand moved toward the gun at his side. Behind him, his men racked their rifles in the same instant, bringing them up at Ada and Bullseye.
"I'd strongly suggest you don't try anything in my place of business. You'll regret it. Pick up your things, get out the way you came in, and I'll let this all go." He had the gun out now, pointing it across the table.
Ada shook her head slowly.
"Let it go. That's not really an option."
She let a brief pause sit.
"When we came in, I was still willing to pay thirty million for your inventory. But now that we've had this conversation..."
"I'm not paying anything at all."
Done talking.
In the same instant, dozens of throwing knives left Bullseye's hands.
Klaue's bodyguards never got to their triggers. The knives passed through their skulls and lodged in the wall behind them. The blood took two seconds to start flowing. Then the bodies dropped, all of them in the same moment.
In the time it took to blink, Klaue was standing alone.
A drop of cold sweat tracked down the side of his neck.
He understood now. These two had never intended to negotiate. From the moment they walked in, they had been planning to take the vibranium by force. The discussion about pricing had been theater.
Bullseye produced a syringe from inside his jacket. The handgun in Klaue's hand was shaking in a way he couldn't control.
"One thing I forgot to mention, Mr. Klaue."
Bullseye stripped the gun from him before the motion was visible, pinned his head to the table with one hand, and pressed the Las Plagas injection home with the other.
"Nobody gets to refuse the Boss's generosity."
***
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