Turncloak

Jammal dashed down the stairwell at speed through the darkened prison. Shouts and screams were calling out from all over, since the power went out. A Wing, B Wing and C Wing were all being checked out. For the prison, D Wing was low priority. This was the place where they kept less dangerous inmates. A threat to society potentially, but not necessarily a threat in a fight. They could be stopped with bullets and tasers.

Turning the corner, Jammal caught his breath and raised his torch and pistol. He walked between cells, looking through each peep hole as he did. Hopefully the power cut was just a freak accident, but given the back up generator hadn't come online yet, it was worth making sure.

"Crystal Lynx, check. The Blue Baron, check. Sonia the Strangler, check. Emerald Man--- fuck!" *Jammal grabbed his walky talky in a panic, reporting in his findings as the other prisoners began to laugh.

It didn't take long for word to spread and for the sirens to sound. The guards went out searching efficiently, taking with them hounds and two hellicopters. They followed the usual escape routes, as well as the sewers. There was no sign of Mantis, or any struggle.

-----

Flick grinned as he landed down by the quiet roadside, setting the old villain down. His shrinking powers had gotten them out of the facility easily enough, with Mantis being shrunk down alongside the mercenary, and his new jet pack had given him a head start on the guards. They'd never expect anyone to have gotten this far.

Flick unshrank alongside the old man, as he looked back up atop the distant cliffside and seen the helicopters heading in the wrong directions. He smirked behind his visor. "You're safe, old man. You'd best keep your end of the bargain. No destroyin' New York. I live here, aye? Turn Saint Kilda into emeralds. Nobody lives there."

"Of course," grinned the Emerald Mantis, feigning honesty. "You'll be well rewarded, too, my friend."

"Grand. I've been needing a bit more cash, as it happens. This upgrade set me back." Flick gestured to his jet pack, which retracted into his armour.

"My offer still stands. I could use a more formal bodyguard." Mentis raised his eyebrows, sincere.

"I'm alright. I'll do a job if I'm alright with it, but your game isn't mine. Besides, I'm not tangling with Scarlet Web again. If she catches you again, it's on you." Flick winked under the moonlight, confident the mission had been a success.

“He was in here with the rest of them before the lights went out,” Jammal explained, “I should've known better than to leave some young cadets on duty down here.”


Scarlet Web, who had arrived only moments ago, stood beside Jammal before the prison cell that once contained Emerald Mantis. As she walked through the prison previously, many of the criminals she had been directly responsible for capturing had cried out in protest of her presence, swearing they would exact their revenge upon her in the future.


She put her hand down on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. “You mustn't blame yourself. This was something beyond your control. Unfortunate predicaments such as this occur from time to time; even had you been here, I'm not sure there'd have been much you could do from preventing this.”


There was just one thing that didn't make sense. Yes the power going out was most likely by design… but why was it that not a single brick had been left out of place? How had the Emerald Mantis vanished without so much as distorting anything in his immediate surroundings nor at the very least leaving a hint of evidence?


By her estimate, they were dealing with someone who could teleport or someone perhaps who had the ability to walk through solid objects. Was there a new villain in town trying to ring up the old ones? Was there a new super team in the making? She had to get to the bottom of this.


And that was when her spider-senses went off. Marvelous. As convenient as it may have been, in reality, she had invested a lot of time into training it as of late. Her spider-sense was much more powerful than before, and with a much longer range of scope. Her eyes narrowed.


“Don't worry. I'll get to the bottom of this.”
It didn't take Scarlet Web long to track down Emerald Mantis. Thanks to her new and improved spider-senses, she was actually able to pinpoint the old man based on his personal signature; in other words, she knew it was him long before she had ever arrived upon the scene. In the same sense, she was confused to sense Flick together alongside him.


As she landed onto the road, she couldn't believe what she was seeing. The two of them… back together? Her hand clutched her stomach. It had grown in size since the last time the three of them had come together.


She had every intent to march up to them both and expose them for joining forces yet again. But something kept her from moving. Something kept her from talking, too.


There was no other way around it. She felt betrayed, strangely. The sight had brought her to question her own motives; how could she have trusted him? How could she have been so… stupid?


“Flick…” her voice was but a whisper.


The Mantis turned around at the sound of her familiar voice and cringed instinctively, covering himself as if to fend off an attack of some kind. “Get Her, Flick! She's already come back for me!”


This wasn't the first time Scarlet Web had caught Flick assisting the enemy. And something told her this wouldn't be the last, either. She had misjudged him. She had misjudged him gravely. To think he would have changed since they… to think he would have learned from his mistakes and grown to be a better person.


But no. He was who he was and it was quite apparent now that there was no changing that. He was a mercenary for hire, a mercenary for life. So long as the job paid well, there was no sort of limitations to the sort of work this man was willing to take on.
Beneath her mask, Victoria broke into tears. She didn't know what to say. She didn't know how to act. As much as it was her duty to return that old man into prison and inform the police of how it was he escaped, a strange feeling in her heart kept her from doing so.


“Flick I… I trusted you…”


So she turned around. She turned around and in the same moment, her hand moved up from her stomach to her chest. Her heart ached profusely. She couldn't breathe.


Her arm trembled as she aimed her palm at a nearby building. Nevertheless she managed a strand of web and used it to pull herself up off the ground. She took to the skies, slinging away from it all web by web.


Her speed was impeccable. And yet so too was her state of mind. She wanted no explanation, no justification from Flick as to what he had done. She simply wanted to get away, far, far away from him. To leave him behind, forever and always.

Flick grimaced, immediately. Caught. But what was the big deal? This guy was a joke. "Shit!" He turned around, glaring at Mantis as if it were his fault. It wasn't at all, of course. It was Flick's. But he didn't like blaming himself.

The mercenary turned his jetpacks to face the ground and immediately blitzed off after Scarlet, trying to catch up with her. "Scarlet! -Victoria-, wait!"

But she was gone. Not a strand of web in sight. Was it speed? Was it her stealth? Was she hiding someplace? Had she dove under water somewhere? There was no clear answer. But a single place seemed plausible to check: her home. A place Flick had managed to find on his own in their first meeting.

Hours passed. Should he have gone to wait at her doorstep, there was no answer. Nor was there any sign of the door opening and closing.

Whole days went by. And the home showed no activity.

Weeks went by. And at last a large truck came, stopping before the home.
It played its part in carrying cardboard boxes, which a man and the driver of the truck carefully lifted through the front door. All the while a heavily pregnant woman stood watching.

The man approached her after stowing away all of the boxes inside. He positioned himself down on one knee and kissed the woman's enlarged stomach.

Flick watched quietly from atop the steetlight across the road, until the boxes were all inside. He stood up, flexing his jetpacks, and looked to the ground.

Flick the Turncloak, he thought. Then and now. Whether he liked it or not.

The truck drifted away with further time and the couple climbed the stairs, hand in hand. That home now belonged to them. The last trail Flick had of Scarlet Web was now lost to time.