Where are you relative to literally anything besides just fringes? Compass direction, distance from city If you're texting me from soup I applaud your ability to spell under the circumstances.
I didn't know they'd be here. Happy little accident. Bunch of people with good intentions are showing up trying to save people from the soup, like you can save a man that's got half his brain and both his lungs merged with a steel support beam. Good samaritans are practically catnip for them.
Don't worry sweetheart, you know how much I love your bow. Don't have eyes for any other bow but yours.
( As it turns out, it's a good thing Clint didn't go home. What happens occurs sometime after he intervened for some other asshole with a bow — turns out he inadvertently bow-cheated on his bow-work wife.
Anyway, the problem isn't with the raiders; Clint will find their corpses sinking into the pavement, halfway melded into blacktop, road lines on their skin, fingertips jutting out at odd angles like shark fins. They've been lying in place for a while.
It makes for a nice breadcrumb trail to find Mister Big Bad Punisher, sunk up to his knees around the side of a building, his back pressed against a wall, and both hands bringing down what looks like a crowbar in a painstaking effort to bust up the sidewalk around his calves. He's put a pretty good dent in it, but he's sweating his ass off. The problem is less about his stamina, though, and more about the fact that being a one man job means he's sinking just about as fast as he's digging himself out. )
It takes time to track Frank down, because 'the Fringes' is not the most pinpoint accurate location, but it's somewhere to start from. The forums help, a little bit. When people start capslocking about bodies melded into the buildings, the ground, between things, along with any supposed spottings of raiders, that helps narrow it down further.
When he sees the vehicles in the distance stopped, some even halfway sunk in, he decides to stop even further back and carefully walk.
It's not great, feeling like he has to tiptoe on solid ground in case any given spot decides it's actually a quicksand pit of fuck you that's going to get his stupid ass caught as well. He tries to keep off the ground, alighting on the stuck vehicles and other objects, though he knows even that is unlikely to save him from getting sucked in. The bodies--what's left of bodies--do in fact lead him to the grunting effort of Frank trying to dig himself out of a sidewalk that looks both painfully solid and like it's trying to swallow him up.
Okay. So don't stand there, maybe, is what he's picking up.
He comes at the problem from above. Grapple arrow still works like a charm, and soon he's working his way down alongside Frank and really really hoping the hook doesn't meld into the roof or his feet don't slip into the wall. One problem at a time.]
What do you need me to do?
[Which is a much nicer and more urgent thing to say than making any smartass comments about Frank soup, which, rest assured, he is thinking about.]
( This is something he'll appreciate about Clint for a long time — that he knows when to be serious. That when it matters, he's a consummate professional, a seasoned soldier. Starting things off with what can I do instead of some bullshit commentary which Frank already knows is gonna come later. He reaffirms in a single line why he's a good choice for a partner, and it's enough that Frank will start to reconsider his strategy of lone wolf'ing it next time.
But for now— )
I got a sledgehammer in the back of the van. You get me that, I can break this up, and then it's just dirt.
( Between the two of them, they can haul his ass out of dirt, he thinks. It's just the inches of cement between here and there. )
[He has to make sure Frank is alive to give him shit for 'I'm not gonna get souped' and getting souped. That is priority number one. Clint can be a lil shit with the best of them, but when it matters (and it usually does), he is to the job.
After what they've been through, if he just happens to lose Frank to some fucking diffusion zone freak accident, he can't see the end result of that reaction being a happy one. (And who in the hell could've seen that coming, that he'd come to rely so heavily on the god damn Punisher?)
He nods once, ascends back up his line. Clint's gone for many long minutes. It must feel like forever, the time it takes for him to find and get to the van as efficiently as he can while touching as few surfaces as possible, to come back the way he came because at least he knows it's not quicksand soup while hauling a sledgehammer in his quiver.
But at last, the hammer slams into the concrete beside Frank, dropping it being a quicker way to get it to him rather than wait for Clint to come back down. And obviously, obviously he's not planning on letting Frank do it all by himself.
There's a tentative touch of his foot to the sidewalk by Frank, like it's going to soup him up as well, but it feels solid enough. Keeps the line hooked to his belt to haul himself up if that ever changes, but he alights onto the ground, and as Frank grabs the sledgehammer, he takes the crowbar from his hands and joins in the effort.
It's definitely less efficient for the job needing done. That Frank was managing is actually pretty impressive. But he can leave all that for later, when Frank is out of the god damn soup.]
( The sledgehammer hits the ground, and Frank wastes no time scooping it up. In just the brief minutes he's been gone, Frank's sunk another three or four inches into the earth. There's no time to fuck around. Clint gets a front-row seat to the Frank Castle show, a firsthand view at how good this particular man is at swinging a hammer.
He circles it around over his head and brings it slamming down into the sidewalk with devastating ferocity. The second hit comes with the added bonus of a somewhat feral-sounding, vaguely animalistic grunt of effort — and so does the third, and the fourth, never slowing, never faltering, muscles working despite how hard he's already pushed them trying to crowbar himself out.
Eventually, the concrete's busted and it's just the dirt to contend with. He throws the hammer over to the side, manages a hoarse — )
Can you-
( And holds out a hand; give him a tug, buddy, he could use a little leverage. With the tension and the pull-weight on that bowstring, he's well aware Clint's no slouch himself. )
[It isn't like he had any doubts that Frank could be a machine; anyone can if pushed to it. But the way he attacks the concrete without falter, without hesitation, without slowing from exhaustion or needing to catch his breath, is...impressive. Gets a hell of a lot more done than a crowbar, that's for sure. Man's got a drive to survive, have to grant him that.
He can see the way that even now, into the dirt underneath, Frank still seems to be sinking, the quicksand, the fucking soup, still hungry to make him a permanent part of the landscape. Neither tool is any good for digging, incidentally. Clint foregoes the offered hand and grips his arm instead, one on the forearm, one on the upper arm. Feet planted on terra firma, at least for the moment, and pulling.]
( It takes a fair amount of yanking, coupled with Frank pulling himself out with that grip, pushing at the ground with his free hand, praying his palm doesn't wind up sinking next. At length, they manage it — he goes stumbling out of the dirt, nearly bowling Clint over in the process, catching himself with filthy hands on the guy's shoulders.
Dirt clings to his boots, his pants, all the way up to the knees and then some. Flecks of concrete powder settle above that, along with a couple rubbed-down, worn-out patchy holes in the fabric. It wasn't really graded to withstand getting encased in fucking cement. But all the same, all the same, he's out. Breathless, panting, sweating his ass off, casting a quick glance over at the busted up sidewalk and the gaping maw of a hole that should exist, but simply doesn't. There was no extra space to accommodate him. He was fazing through the dirt and, sooner or later, that dirt would've begun to solidify — on his legs, in his legs.
[Clint catches him, though he damn near stumbles over his own feet in the process. Frank's a big guy. Thankfully, he's gotten pretty used to working around big guys. They're a mess, Frank more than Clint obviously, and covered in concrete dust that is going to be hell on the lungs in the next couple days, but he's out, alive, relatively unharmed.
Clint dips his forehead to Frank's shoulder, laughing, arms around the big lug to hold them both up.]
You asshole. [That's Frank in a nutshell.] You fucking idiot. 'Oh, I'm not gonna get souped, you stay away but I'm totally fine to go into the soup and won't be people soup.' Did you have fun at soup, Frank? Was this fun for you? Gosh, I had so much fun rescuing you from Francis soup.
[He's not letting go to save his life shut the entire fuck up.
They've been causing a commotion that's difficult to miss, however. Yeah, all the raiders in the immediate vicinity seem to have suffered a soupy fate, or a Punisher-and-then-soup fate. Doesn't mean there aren't other people around, friend or foe or neutral. Someone comes poking around.
Someone comes poking around wondering where the hell the rest of their group is and why the hell they haven't come back or checked in. And then there's Castle, becoming a real god damn pain in the backside. Looking like an easy target.
A flash of movement, a drawn gun, the rapid fire of several shots to center mass--]
( Things Frank Castle isn't used to: people that aren't Karen Page demonstrating actual concern for his well-being. It takes him a second to figure out what in the hell's going on, and it isn't until Clint starts raking him over the coals that he realizes. For his troubles, he earns a solid, amused couple of thumps to the back, your stock-standard manly testosterone display of affection during a hug.
Underneath all that lambasting comes a wry New York lilt— )
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get it all out. You happy? Happy with that? You done?
( Thump thump.
It's a goddamn miracle he sees it in time. That asshole off to the side with his gun leveled, a sway in his hand that suggests he's got all the aim of a fucking stormtrooper, intending to hit Frank but not all that bothered by the prospect of winging the guy snuggled up to him in the process if it means taking the asshole out.
He spins roughly, dragging Clint with him, whirling around to put his back to the guy like the meat shield he is. The impact of the bullets hit so hard, the two of them jolt from the force of it. This is how Frank learns that having a built-in bulletproof vest doesn't suddenly somehow make him immune to pain.
But honestly, all that does is piss him off.
A second later, Clint's left to stagger on his own as Frank scoops up the wooden handle, marching directly into two or three more rounds fired off at him, bullet casings tinkling onto the ground as Frank powers directly through them to introduce the man to his sledgehammer.
He's exhausted. What this means is not that he's sluggish. It means he has no patience. The dispatching is brutal. )
[And then he's being physically moved with such sudden force that his body tenses up, ready to have to throw his friend or grapple with him or otherwise be put into a fight mode.
And it's a good and proper response, too, when Frank is fucking shot. Frank, who normally wears his kevlar vest, who is not wearing his vest at current, why the hell wasn't he wearing it out hunting--
The bullets don't pass through, in spite of the power, and Frank leaves him to do his work. Clint, for his part, breathlessly pulls his bow to hand and nocks an arrow. He doesn't have a good shot on the guy given Frank is taking up all the immediate space, Frank who gets shot even more except...
The sinewy string under his fingers thuds rapidly in time with his heartbeat, a thing he hates has happened to his weapon. He keeps his eyes and ears open, even as Frank delivers a blow, several blows, that are both crunchy and squishy. There isn't anyone else in the immediate area that he can figure. Loner, seeing a chance and fucking it up, maybe. What they're going to need to do is lock down the area, secure a perimeter, make damn sure no other stragglers are loitering around.
For the moment, though. For the moment, it's just them again.] Frank. [He isn't bleeding out he isn't dying he's still standing-- Clint makes his way over, at the ready, spinning himself in a slow circle in case there's anyone else, and he sees nothing, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything these days, does it?] Frank!
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Where are you relative to literally anything besides just fringes?
Compass direction, distance from city
If you're texting me from soup I applaud your ability to spell under the circumstances.
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Why do I get the feeling if I tell you, you're gonna come to soup?
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( For now. )
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Bunch of people with good intentions are showing up trying to save people from the soup, like you can save a man that's got half his brain and both his lungs merged with a steel support beam.
Good samaritans are practically catnip for them.
Don't worry sweetheart, you know how much I love your bow. Don't have eyes for any other bow but yours.
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See you soon babe.
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( As it turns out, it's a good thing Clint didn't go home. What happens occurs sometime after he intervened for some other asshole with a bow — turns out he inadvertently bow-cheated on his bow-work wife.
Anyway, the problem isn't with the raiders; Clint will find their corpses sinking into the pavement, halfway melded into blacktop, road lines on their skin, fingertips jutting out at odd angles like shark fins. They've been lying in place for a while.
It makes for a nice breadcrumb trail to find Mister Big Bad Punisher, sunk up to his knees around the side of a building, his back pressed against a wall, and both hands bringing down what looks like a crowbar in a painstaking effort to bust up the sidewalk around his calves. He's put a pretty good dent in it, but he's sweating his ass off. The problem is less about his stamina, though, and more about the fact that being a one man job means he's sinking just about as fast as he's digging himself out. )
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It takes time to track Frank down, because 'the Fringes' is not the most pinpoint accurate location, but it's somewhere to start from. The forums help, a little bit. When people start capslocking about bodies melded into the buildings, the ground, between things, along with any supposed spottings of raiders, that helps narrow it down further.
When he sees the vehicles in the distance stopped, some even halfway sunk in, he decides to stop even further back and carefully walk.
It's not great, feeling like he has to tiptoe on solid ground in case any given spot decides it's actually a quicksand pit of fuck you that's going to get his stupid ass caught as well. He tries to keep off the ground, alighting on the stuck vehicles and other objects, though he knows even that is unlikely to save him from getting sucked in. The bodies--what's left of bodies--do in fact lead him to the grunting effort of Frank trying to dig himself out of a sidewalk that looks both painfully solid and like it's trying to swallow him up.
Okay. So don't stand there, maybe, is what he's picking up.
He comes at the problem from above. Grapple arrow still works like a charm, and soon he's working his way down alongside Frank and really really hoping the hook doesn't meld into the roof or his feet don't slip into the wall. One problem at a time.]
What do you need me to do?
[Which is a much nicer and more urgent thing to say than making any smartass comments about Frank soup, which, rest assured, he is thinking about.]
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But for now— )
I got a sledgehammer in the back of the van. You get me that, I can break this up, and then it's just dirt.
( Between the two of them, they can haul his ass out of dirt, he thinks. It's just the inches of cement between here and there. )
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After what they've been through, if he just happens to lose Frank to some fucking diffusion zone freak accident, he can't see the end result of that reaction being a happy one. (And who in the hell could've seen that coming, that he'd come to rely so heavily on the god damn Punisher?)
He nods once, ascends back up his line. Clint's gone for many long minutes. It must feel like forever, the time it takes for him to find and get to the van as efficiently as he can while touching as few surfaces as possible, to come back the way he came because at least he knows it's not quicksand soup while hauling a sledgehammer in his quiver.
But at last, the hammer slams into the concrete beside Frank, dropping it being a quicker way to get it to him rather than wait for Clint to come back down. And obviously, obviously he's not planning on letting Frank do it all by himself.
There's a tentative touch of his foot to the sidewalk by Frank, like it's going to soup him up as well, but it feels solid enough. Keeps the line hooked to his belt to haul himself up if that ever changes, but he alights onto the ground, and as Frank grabs the sledgehammer, he takes the crowbar from his hands and joins in the effort.
It's definitely less efficient for the job needing done. That Frank was managing is actually pretty impressive. But he can leave all that for later, when Frank is out of the god damn soup.]
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He circles it around over his head and brings it slamming down into the sidewalk with devastating ferocity. The second hit comes with the added bonus of a somewhat feral-sounding, vaguely animalistic grunt of effort — and so does the third, and the fourth, never slowing, never faltering, muscles working despite how hard he's already pushed them trying to crowbar himself out.
Eventually, the concrete's busted and it's just the dirt to contend with. He throws the hammer over to the side, manages a hoarse — )
Can you-
( And holds out a hand; give him a tug, buddy, he could use a little leverage. With the tension and the pull-weight on that bowstring, he's well aware Clint's no slouch himself. )
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He can see the way that even now, into the dirt underneath, Frank still seems to be sinking, the quicksand, the fucking soup, still hungry to make him a permanent part of the landscape. Neither tool is any good for digging, incidentally. Clint foregoes the offered hand and grips his arm instead, one on the forearm, one on the upper arm. Feet planted on terra firma, at least for the moment, and pulling.]
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Dirt clings to his boots, his pants, all the way up to the knees and then some. Flecks of concrete powder settle above that, along with a couple rubbed-down, worn-out patchy holes in the fabric. It wasn't really graded to withstand getting encased in fucking cement. But all the same, all the same, he's out. Breathless, panting, sweating his ass off, casting a quick glance over at the busted up sidewalk and the gaping maw of a hole that should exist, but simply doesn't. There was no extra space to accommodate him. He was fazing through the dirt and, sooner or later, that dirt would've begun to solidify — on his legs, in his legs.
Under his breath, a rusty, derisive mutter: )
Fucking soup.
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Clint dips his forehead to Frank's shoulder, laughing, arms around the big lug to hold them both up.]
You asshole. [That's Frank in a nutshell.] You fucking idiot. 'Oh, I'm not gonna get souped, you stay away but I'm totally fine to go into the soup and won't be people soup.' Did you have fun at soup, Frank? Was this fun for you? Gosh, I had so much fun rescuing you from Francis soup.
[He's not letting go to save his life shut the entire fuck up.
They've been causing a commotion that's difficult to miss, however. Yeah, all the raiders in the immediate vicinity seem to have suffered a soupy fate, or a Punisher-and-then-soup fate. Doesn't mean there aren't other people around, friend or foe or neutral. Someone comes poking around.
Someone comes poking around wondering where the hell the rest of their group is and why the hell they haven't come back or checked in. And then there's Castle, becoming a real god damn pain in the backside. Looking like an easy target.
A flash of movement, a drawn gun, the rapid fire of several shots to center mass--]
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Underneath all that lambasting comes a wry New York lilt— )
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get it all out. You happy? Happy with that? You done?
( Thump thump.
It's a goddamn miracle he sees it in time. That asshole off to the side with his gun leveled, a sway in his hand that suggests he's got all the aim of a fucking stormtrooper, intending to hit Frank but not all that bothered by the prospect of winging the guy snuggled up to him in the process if it means taking the asshole out.
He spins roughly, dragging Clint with him, whirling around to put his back to the guy like the meat shield he is. The impact of the bullets hit so hard, the two of them jolt from the force of it. This is how Frank learns that having a built-in bulletproof vest doesn't suddenly somehow make him immune to pain.
But honestly, all that does is piss him off.
A second later, Clint's left to stagger on his own as Frank scoops up the wooden handle, marching directly into two or three more rounds fired off at him, bullet casings tinkling onto the ground as Frank powers directly through them to introduce the man to his sledgehammer.
He's exhausted. What this means is not that he's sluggish. It means he has no patience. The dispatching is brutal. )
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[And then he's being physically moved with such sudden force that his body tenses up, ready to have to throw his friend or grapple with him or otherwise be put into a fight mode.
And it's a good and proper response, too, when Frank is fucking shot. Frank, who normally wears his kevlar vest, who is not wearing his vest at current, why the hell wasn't he wearing it out hunting--
The bullets don't pass through, in spite of the power, and Frank leaves him to do his work. Clint, for his part, breathlessly pulls his bow to hand and nocks an arrow. He doesn't have a good shot on the guy given Frank is taking up all the immediate space, Frank who gets shot even more except...
The sinewy string under his fingers thuds rapidly in time with his heartbeat, a thing he hates has happened to his weapon. He keeps his eyes and ears open, even as Frank delivers a blow, several blows, that are both crunchy and squishy. There isn't anyone else in the immediate area that he can figure. Loner, seeing a chance and fucking it up, maybe. What they're going to need to do is lock down the area, secure a perimeter, make damn sure no other stragglers are loitering around.
For the moment, though. For the moment, it's just them again.] Frank. [He isn't bleeding out he isn't dying he's still standing-- Clint makes his way over, at the ready, spinning himself in a slow circle in case there's anyone else, and he sees nothing, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything these days, does it?] Frank!
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🎀