#underswell | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

storiesof2018 · 2 years

Photo

The electric rush of the Gibson's strumming cords bleedingly pulsed against his roughened fingers with a thunderous flux of amplifier that heart-thumpingly echoed with the psychedelic lasers that blindingly strobed over the stage; unerringly he gripped onto the fretboard, becoming harmonically attuned with the bone-racking drumbeat. Grungily, his chestnut-raven tresses clung to his feverish temples as his mesmeric aquamarine irises were blackishly smudged with knol eyeliner, registering the heaviness of his guitar strap grazing over the bracketed-graven tautness of his athletic-honed chest that dampishly glistened as he strummed on the power-cords. "GOOD EVENING BROOKLYN.." he belted into the microphone, raspily, and clutched onto the metallic stem with his leather-sheathed hand. "M' BUCKY BARNES..." The sensuous bow of his shapely-wide lips quirked, toothily, while the clamorous pandemonium of exhilarated thongs ardently gave him fisting-in-the-air saults. "WHO'S READY TO MAKE SOME NOISE...YEAAHHH!"

The boisterous roar of the crowd was like fuel to the burning fire inside of him. Their energy, their passion arced through his veins like electricity and for a moment, the rocker soaked in the feeling. His lashes lined with mascara accentuated the deep pools of blue that reflected the strobing lights of the stage. It was here he felt alive, here he felt like he was larger than life, almost god-like. Over ten thousand in attendance and their whooping cheers felt more intoxicating than a bottle of vodka. The smirk on his lips stretched into a toothy smile which garnered several wolf-whistles from those closest to the stage.

He cast a look at his bandmates, the Howling Commandos, all of whom appeared just as jacked and ready as he was. Bucky inhaled deeply calming the beating of his racing heart that would soon be in-tune with the electric screech of his guitar. "GOT A SPECIAL NUMBER FOR ALL YOU HERE! COMMANDOS, YOU READY?" A chorus of wolfish howls from his bandmates was all the motivation he needed. "LET"S GO!" With a flourish of his digits across the strings, the ambient melody exploded throughout the arena, bringing the crowd of fans jumping with renewed wake. The acoustics flared to life and Bucky fell into his dreamscape, eyes-closed, soaked in remembrance and tranquil illumination as he poured his heart into the microphone.

Against the draped length of the curtains that shadowily contrasted over her whitish-palatium whorls, curvaceously Felicia poised her svelte form a breadth on the stacked drum cases as backstage ushers were stationed on the door; her flintier dark irises became steelily fixed on the intrusive lackey garbed in his tailored Armani vestments, deceptively wiping his glasses with a satin handkerchief-Wesley-a viperous footman to the 'big guy' who slimily patrolled the hallway, waiting for her Rocker Wolf to return to the dressing room. "Interesting..."

The cool stiffness of her leather motorcycle jacket tensed as she gnawed on the plushier underswell of her lip, Felicia listened to the raspier-contralto scratchiness of Bucky's whiskey-roughen vocals-a forbidden decadence that heatedly became sensuous-additive like melted chocolate shunting in her veins. Quirking up her eyebrow, readily, she caught a whiff of the rancid -acidic stink of Wilson Fisk enwreathing around her. Clutching onto her burner mobile, she flitted her brandy irises on the unknown number on her contact list and dialled. "If you're not bleeding out in a dumpster like usual, meet this kitten after the show without the stick..." she whispered, breathily, glaring at Wesley advancing closer with haughtier paces. "The big guy is about to make a play..."

"I'll try my best. I have to go," was the hastened response from the other end before the call ended, leaving the silver-haired vixen to gaze upon the stage, watching the concert with equal parts awe and trepidation. She could almost feel the extra set of eyes peering at her through the rimmed spectacles. Not with the level of desire or curiosity, she was used to from most men she crossed paths with. This was more unnerving as if she were being assessed by an analytic mind. Finally after what seemed like a woeful eternity, the businessman broke his silence while remaining in a folded hand-posture.

"Felicia Fox," he addressed her with a cool professional tone, deep and astute. "You must be Mr. Barnes' friend. His close confidant if I am correct. I am-"

"Hardy...My last name is Hardy." Felicia gritted in a terse undertone, indifferently, bracing her leather-sleeved arms over the voluptuous swells that bustily fringed her white camisole, with no deterrence of restraint, she fervently narrowed her dark gaze at Weasley's polished hand creepily outstretched to clutch hers for a decorous gesture-a charade of synthetic trust. Scoffingly, Felicia quirked her full-bow lips into a deviant smirk, evident in her sassier retort. "I know you always like playing in the backseat of your boss's fancy car, seems like that is how you get your drive-by kicks in the Kitchen..."

Wesley refrained from smirking, delighted to see he'd gotten a small rise out of the woman by feigning ignorance. The cat-burglar's reputation was almost as infamous as a certain Masked Man operating out of Hells Kitchen. Only unlike that growing nuisance, Ms. Hardy had a weakness that could be exploited and an unquenchable thirst for fine jewels. She was a creature of habit, one that his client at one point in time used to steal a number of priceless artifacts that meant little to him but oh so much to others he would lure into his pocket. James Wesley had never dealt with the woman directly, but now that his client was apparently broadening his business interests into the entertainment industry, it seemed this meeting was bound to occur give the mutual person of interest.

"Nothing quite as exhausting, Ms. Hardy. And I thank you for refraining from saying his name, even in this venue. He has spoken great things about you. How efficient you are at acquiring priceless assets. He regrets how your business dealings came to an abrupt end. But it seems you've taken an interest in a different kind of asset..." Wesley's point was punctuated with a glance towards Bucky who was nearing the end of his ballad. The businessman's eyes were dark and greedy as if looking upon a cash-cow. "Mr. Barnes' is a talented musician, though not as quite the alluring sensation he began as in his career." He said with a cold tone, not shying from the sharp look he received from Felicia at the jab he made towards her boyfriend. "There was a time he drew hordes of fans to his live events by the tens of thousands. Now? There are barely one-tenth of that number."

The malicious cadence of his offish timber ratcheted through her veins, tightfisted, Felicia vexatiously reeled back against the curtain on her razor-edge stilettoed heels , suppressing the devious urge to explosively push him into the drum cases; she wouldn't allow Bucky to get caged into the backstabbing -a cheated-out deal that would tragically made him an expandable drudge on the stage. The machinations of industrialized-slaughterous dominance over Hell's Kitchen was becoming infectious with new breeds of mafia dynasts, Fisk was a heavyweight titian of 'death-grip' influence who reaped his murderous vengeance in spades; dissecting corrupted-traitorous alliances, while blood washed down the drains. Now, the Kingpin had deadbolt usefulness for her roguishly handsome Rocker Wolf's ballads. Shifting her tigerish-brandy irises on Weasley's straight-cut features as he sneerily gave her a devilish grin while clutching a Gucci briefcase-he was the connoisseur of mayhem. "Look I don't what your angle is with Bucky..." she murmured out, testily, knowing that a contract was made to leash down the Brooklyn rocker at Fisk's boot. "He's not for sale..."

"Hmm," Wesley feigned thoughtfulness, his spectacled gaze sweeping over the concert hall as the sounds of the roaring crowd had steadily begun to subside over the past few hours. His look of quiet contemplation turned smug. "They all think that way once they start out. But…they all reach their lowest point. Once their starlight begins to fade, they'll look for a life-line to carry them back to the top." The dreaded meaning of his words were for Felicia to hear, but on stage, Bucky experienced them first -hand as he began to notice how the crowd was slowly but surely dispersing as the concert continued.

There was still over an hour left in the gig, and he hadn't even gotten to classic requests. There was a time his fans would scream at him to play "Soldier On The Ice" and he would milk their anticipation until delivering. Now…nothing. The Rocker Boy felt his heart steadily plummeting as he struggled to remain professional, keeping his voice even though he did manage to skip over a few lyrics to his current ballad. He could hear muttering behind him among his bandmates once they finished the track.

"They're bugging out early, man," Jack, his drummer, said with a dismal voice.

"This has been happening a lot lately. Ever since that gig in Seattle," Andre, his fellow guitarist, agreed. "You thinking of calling it off early, Bucks?"

Bucky said nothing, his blue eyes losing much of their shining life as less than half their audience remained. He struggled not to crumble under the weight of the maelstrom of emotions. Anger, sorrow, confusion, despair. His calloused digits trembled over the strings of his instrument. They felt so heavy now. He held himself together if only to maintain some air of dignity and professionalism. His searching eyes fell towards the one presence that gave him strength.

His kitten stood far off to the left behind the curtain, her brandy-isis' gazing at him with so much depth silently urging him to stay focused. Bucky inhaled through his nostrils, calming the beating of his heart and centering his thoughts. "When the going gets tough, the Commandos keep going." He said to his mates, some appeared brightened by his morale-boosting phrase while others still looked unsure. Bucky didn't blame them. If they had to end the night early, they'd end it out on a high.

An exhaustive aura of unbidden defeat-heartbreak struck a cord, whirlingly, Felicia pivoted on her spiked heels, gazing his crestfallen expression that warily edged over his sweat-glazed features as he tremulously eased his grip on the microphone stem, the unkempt grunginess of his raven tresses sweatily hung askew of his tenser brow in the heart-racking wake of dredged up frustration that achingly raided through him. The blackish knol eyeliner trekked smearily over the hawkish ruggedness of his stubbled cheek; scowlingly, Bucky dragged his toothier incisors over his jutted underlip on bruising accord, scraping his knuckles over the metallic strings. "No...Keep playing, Barnes..." she urged, hushedly. "Block it all out..."

Licking his lips, he flashed what remind of his audience, some three thousand in the front row, a winning smile. "THANK YOU, BROOKLYN! BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OVER, WE GOT ONE MORE MONSTER CLASSIC TO LET LOOSE! LET'S*** IT!"

The Howling Commandos played with a second-wind of exhilaration, each of them determined to cleanse the ill-feeling of decline by ending the night on a high-note. They could only be thankful that what remained of their audience stuck around till the end of the last track.

Slaking down her rabidity of purging out humanity with her demonical conjury of the Eldritch incantations-she was a portentous harbinger that damningly ushered a telestic emergence of dimensional rifts-bridges to a chasmic eternity where pitiful mortality became harvested into zombified husks; feeding the behemothic devastator of the astral planes. She needed to obtain the archaic -celestial relic -the book of Vishanti to hellishly unleash the soul-ravaging cavalcade of the Dark Verse. Witchily, Clea grounded her business-like poise near the dressing room lockers, the reek of virile sweat raunchily wafted from drenched towels for the stagehands to collect. "Where is that impudent boy..." she rasped, waspishly, registering the invidious approach of Weasley, as she quashed down the urge to wrenchingly morph him into a vermious cockroach for breaching her proximity. "The deal must be made tonight...No setbacks."

"Not to worry, Ms. Strange," Wesley assured as he took a stance beside her, bringing up a make-shift table for him to set his briefcase on. "Everything will go accordingly," he said with the certainty of a businessman who had seen so many similar dealings that he possessed a near clairvoyance over their outcomes. He didn't know James Barnes personally, but if tonight was any indicator, the former soldier turned musician was perilously close to drowning in a sea of oblivion due to his declining stardom. He would be a fool to dismiss an opportunity such as the one they were prepared to give him.

The business duo waited patiently as numerous stage-hands and operators wandered past, their eyes peeled for their potential client. The Howling Commandos said nothing, each of them lost in a somber-mood over the turnout of their gig, many of whom were wondering if at this time next year, they'd be performing in school auditoriums instead of the spectacle of a jam-packed arena. Bucky's grim thoughts fared no better as he lingered at the back.

"Good show, Guys. Keep your chins up," he said as they lingered in front of their prospective dressing rooms. His attempt at breaking the ice was met with a collective shrug. His mates said nothing as they stepped inside their dressing room, leaving him by himself as he made his way towards an empty locker-room. His agent Moya had told him someone wanted to meet him after the concert. Though Bucky longed for nothing else than to sweep his kitten into his arms and forget how dreary tonight was, he couldn't ignore a potential business deal that could help him and his band.

He entered the locker-room, his tousled dark locks matted to his brow, dressed in a sweaty tank-top and torn jeans. He found two suits waiting for him. A tall blonde in a pencil-skirt and a fitted blazer. She oozed authority and carried herself with the poise of a powerful woman who was used to getting what she wanted. The weasley-looking man beside her looked like a shady lawyer who Bucky immediately didn't trust as he just oozed smug deception. Though his instincts screamed at him to leave, Bucky shrugged as he towel-dried his sweaty locks.

"You two wanted to see me? Something tells me you're not here for autographs."

The murmurous snarkiness of his throatier drawl was maddeningly evident to his roguish-hellbent strut of his clunkier motorcycle boots as he swaggeringly advanced towards her; every athletic-honed contour of his bulkier muscles cuttingly edged with- corded resiliently that hunkily contrasted with his dampish white tank-top. Cockily, Bucky quirked his shapely-bow lips into a waggish smirk as he tactlessly flung his towel into a hamper with reckless precision. Scrunching her nose, Clea edgily rapted her purplish lacquered fingernails on the briefcase, feigning her teemed disgust. "Good evening, James Barnes, I'm here to help steer new possibilities of a new trajectory on the collapsing road you're stumble on..." With viperous swiftness, her lithe fingers popped open the briefcase, revealing a heap of printed documents. "You've exhausted your voice on heedless crowds who have dissolved in the static..."

Bucky revealed nothing in his stare as the business woman laid it all on thick. If he had thought of convincing himself that tonight wasn't as bad as he and his band believed, those were dashed by this unexpected meeting. Inwardly he was brimming with frustration, wondering why Moya didn't think to give him details on who these people were and what they wanted. As the silence in the room was a second close to becoming awkward, Bucky chuckled dryly. "First of all, we musicians all have ups and downs on the road. There's bad nights and good nights when you're on a tour. I'm throwing tonight on the "not so awful but could've been better" pile." He said, sitting down on an equipment crate, knee brought up in a leisurely posture.

"Second off, I didn't get your names or why the hell you think I need whatever this is." He said a tad defensively, not liking the feeling of being in the dark with no cards to play. He peered at the business duo with dark eyes rimmed with smeared eyeliner.

"My name is James Wesley, Mr. Barnes. I represent a consortium with vested interests in New York-specifically Hells Kitchen. My client, you might say, has a certain sympathy for Brooklyn natives such as yourself who rose up from nothing to achieve greatness."

Bucky wasn't phased, his mind striking the businessman off as corporate lackey here to do his shady boss' bidding. Flicking his gaze to the platinum-blonde who wasn't shy about being blunt, Bucky gestured to her with his hands. "And what's your deal, Ms…"

"My name is Clea Strange," she answered with vague raspiness, gazing at his shapely-wide lips twitchily purse into a snobbish grimace; the cool pearlescence of her exquisite stone-carved features bewitchingly contrasted her iron-straight platinum whorls that draped over her Valentino Bouclé-tweed magenta blaze, malefically she flashed her ophidian-virescent depths at the silver gothicesque wolf-head ring that masculinely adorned Bucky's roughened finger-a prevailing trinket of his dynamical-soldiery covenant of invincible brotherhood that was forged with the Howling Commando's. She needed to amputate off that wasteful promise. The Brooklyn rocker's impetuous demeanour was vexatiously repulsive-boarish; stifling the urge to morphically leash him into fattening dregs of a porcine-rotund visage, Clea gripped onto the documents with malicious ease as she icily mirrored the voltaic rawness of his sweltry aquamarine irises as his shaggier raven tresses stickily feathered his tenser brow. "The means of my presence here is to grant you a solvent future, James Barnes..."

"Is that so?" Bucky feigned interest though his skepticism was clear in his tone. He doubted either of these two clowns in suits understood how show-business worked. The audience either loved your voice and your charisma, or they didn't. You were either the mega-hit or a one-hit wonder that would be forgotten down the road. While getting more exposure could prove beneficial, he doubted the terms would be favorable. "And how's that Ms. Strange?" He said, fishing a cigarette out of his pocket. "You plan to start writing my material? Or let me guess, you plan to reinvent my image? Hell why not just slap a metal-prosthetic on my left arm and call me Bucky Silverhand already." He grumbled, finding it remarkably easy to vent his frustrations over the night's show on these two suits who gave him a bad feeling.

"Mr. Barnes, what we're proposing isn't so much as changing your style, but broadening your audience beyond the small venues your band has had to settle for across the country." Wesley responded, unphased by Bucky's snark which the rocker found to be a little peculiar.

As the vaporous waft of ashy nicotine smokily enwreathed the locker room, giving him a sourish glower, Bucky strummed his ringed thumb over his poutier underlip while he uninterestingly sucked back a drag of his cigarette. The jacked-off edginess of his steeled poise had tellingly conveyed warred distrust while the Brooklyn rocker staunchily half-quirked his senseous-bow lips to blatantly puff out whitish smoke. Obviously, his maverick-rebellious attitude needed to be taken down a peg. Flitting her viperous gaze on bracketed ridges of his washboard abdomen that bulkily delineated underneath his tank-top, Clea hungered to vilely exorcise the hunkish visage of his athletic-honed solidity into globbier mass of an obese-hoggish deformity. Once Bucky signed her contract -he would be damningly chastened to her sorcerous-inescapable thrall. "What I can offer you is a chance to become more than a name on a record label, James Barnes..." Clea returned in a huskier undertone, enticingly, spreading out the documents that were branded with a crimson rhino seal-the insignia of Wilson Fisk. "All you have to do is sign, rocker boy..."

Bucky eyed the contract shrewdly, fatigue creeping in as he took another long drag of his cigarette. Times like this he almost wished he hadn't fired his manager who had been nothing but a corporate shill looking to exploit his image for political agendas. Bucky and the commandos were only about making good music that came from their hearts and souls. Never once did they entertain the notion of "selling out" to some corporate bigwigs who might seek to steer them into unwanted territory. Though he was wary, Bucky thought he could at least entertain this meeting as he lifted the contract and began to read through the first few paragraphs.

It was several pages long, many clauses and details blurring together in their overly complex terms that just made his headache. He cast Clea and Wesley a dry look. "It says you want 35% of my live performance and merchandise earnings. Minimal oversight over my material, and in exchange…"

"You can become more than a sell out with your voice, James..." Clea returned in a huskier pitch, trickily, and watched him unabashedly pinch the cleft-dimple of his broader chin as the steeliness of his cool aquamarine irises troubledly flitted over the document with a variance of bone-deep reluctance. She needed to bridle him into a deceptive throe of validation-cement a promise of security. "Ask yourself this, do you want to conduct a symphony of your ballads, get exhilarated by roar of the crowd who cheers out your name..." She enticed, tauntingly, as Bucky attentively quirked up eyebrow at her damnable proposal. "Or you want to live in the filth like a rocker swine?"

Bucky frowned at her wording, hating how too close to home it hit. The past few gigs the Howling Commandos had had were the start of their downward spiral. Try as he might, James wasn't very good at dealing with his climbing depression. When he didn't have his special kitten there to help soothe his anxieties, he devolved into unhealthy habits. Whether it was draining a bottle of Jack Daniels, smoking a carton of Marlboros or stuffing his face with a dozen donuts, Bucky felt like a pig waiting to be put out of his misery by the end of it all. He hated that feeling, but more importantly, he feared what she would think if she saw him that way.

However, it didn't change the simple fact that he didn't trust these people who had yet to even reveal the name of their supposed client that wanted to back him for a lot of money. Having made up his mind, Bucky dropped the contract back on the table and rose up from the crate. Dropping the cigarette to the floor, he stubbed it with the tip of his boot. "You drive a hard bargain. You and whoever your boss is. Tell em thanks for being a fan, but this is a hard pass."

Wesley visibly clenched his jaw and tightened his hands in an attempt to mask his displeasure. Bucky ignored him as well as the dark gleam that entered Clea's eyes as he turned to leave.

Reining back her vampirical rabidity to dementedly shackled him into craven - injurious dregs of her eldritch witchery, viciously, Clea slashed her lithe fingers in whooshing succession as verdigris psionic energy telekinetically slammed the locker room on her abrupt command, stuntedly, with his shapely-wide lips gapingly stretched against a throatier gasp, Bucky whirled on his motorcycle boots with a dumbfounded pinch furrowing on his sweat-glazed brow. "Close the door on this deal, Barnes, and your precious Howling Commando's will indulge on the luxury of their fame that you foolishly discarded..."

"Did you-How did-" A chill crept down Bucky's spine wondering if what he saw was real or some coincidence. Was he that sleep-deprived? But one look into the blonde's wicked orbs made him suspect otherwise. Wesley beside Clea didn't react either, if anything, gone was his stoicism in the fact of negotiations, replaced by smug determination.

"The only thing relevant here, Mr. Barnes, is we have the opportunity to save your diminishing career as a famous musician. You won't be performing in mediocre venues in Brooklyn with a minimal capacity of a few hundred, but in stadiums with tens of thousands. My client is adamant about pushing your star higher than the moon. But if you refuse, choosing to continue on your own self-destructive lone-wolf path… Well, let's just say the Howling Commandos will only be one lone-wolf. My client is just as prepared to throw your bandmates the same offer you've refused."

Sliding the contract across the table with a modicum of latent restraint, the ophidian intensity of her virescent depths snakily beckoned him to inadvertently swipe the golden-plated fountain pen out of Weasley's polished grip-to sign his name on the printed line that would irrevocably grapple him into soul-vising-chasmal misery of becoming a ensorcelled drudge-hog. "Ready to become the rocker star you were born to be, James Barnes...?"

Frustration and fatigue coursed though him, knowing that he was caught between a rock and a hard-place. Jack, Andre, Ben, Roofus; he'd known and worked with them for nearly ten years. They were hard-working, talented and professionals. Fun guys to work with who believed in his brand of music. But they were also very ambitious, they weren't just in it for the thrill and fame of performing in front of thousands of screaming, adoring fans.

They wanted to make enough money to set them up for life. Some of them had families to worry about. The past few gigs were a detriment towards their goals, morale was steadily falling. As much as Bucky believed he could count on their loyalty and friendship, it wouldn't surprise him to learn they chose to split and pursue a better deal with another aspiring band controlled by this Consortium. He wouldn't have blamed them either.

His decision regretfully made, Bucky strode towards the table and yanked the pen out of Wesley's hand then swiftly signed his name at the bottom of the contract. A feeling of nausea came upon him as he finished, feeling a irritating discomfort at the back of his throat causing him to grunt. It felt piggish. Scowling, he took his copy of the contract and left the room. He only hoped he wouldn't regret this decision.

The mustier shoddiness of the backstage room dustily assailed over a scuffed black-ochre vanity that was adorned with bulb-framed mirror; emptied bottles of Jack Daniels gleamingly contrasted against the shadowy ambiance of her Rocker Wolf's makeshift dressing quarters as Felicia collectively roved her brandy irises over tubes of kohl makeup and black eyeliner pencils that were placed in a glass jar; it was a timeworn refuge that Bucky utilized for isolation from his dejected bandmates.

Orangish sconces of lamp glow burnished her cascading silvery-white tresses as she alluringly braced against a upholstered stool with vixenish-slinkier poise, glancing at the frayed USO poster of the 107th infantry on the door-the Howling Commandos- printed image showed a boyishly-suave Bucky Barnes tactically garbed in his combative military fatigues with his toothier 'prince-charming' smile while crouched on his armored haunches with a M4 5.56mm Carbine rifle cradled in his bulkier-corded arms. Everything tragically changed when he was medically discharged with head-crippling barrages PSTD trauma after heartbreakingly losing his 'wingman' pararescue airman- Samuel Wilson- in a RPG firefight. "

Tonight wasn't a very good night for her Rocker Boy. Felicia was already anticipating what words of comfort she would share with him after watching half his audience take off early. It seemed she didn't have to wait long before the door to his dressing room opened. "I said not right now! I'm busy!" Bucky yelled at someone out of view, probably a stage-hand. The Rocker Boy slipped inside, allowing the loud noise in the corridor to slip in before he closed it. He had his guitar in one hand with a stack of papers in the other. Both of which he set down on the nearest counter.

There was a sulkiness to his posture that evaporated the moment his eyes landed on her. Then everything went silent, the loud atmosphere morphing into something deep and intense. He stood still against the door way, eyes drinking in the alluring visage of the most drop-dead sexy and gorgeous woman he'd ever seen. Clad in tight-blue denim jeans that accentuated her athletic thighs, mid-heel black boots that gave her a stature of poise, a black leather jacket that gave her dangerous confidence, the silver-haired beauty stole his breath and caused his heart to skip wildly in his chest.

"I-uh-didn't think you'd stick around," he said, both sounding apologetic and grateful. That meeting with the two suits took longer than it should've. He half-expected Felicia to send him a text or leave him a note that something had come up and she had to take off. Truth be told, it would have helped him ease through his stressful mood over what he had to do. But seeing her here now, a small smile stretching across her full-lips, brandy iris' gleaming with the light of the bulbs surrounding the mirror, he felt something much more palatable and tempting taking hold of him.

The kiss-starved achiness of riotous hunger implosively notched through her veins, giving him an impish smirk, Felicia arced her form onto the vanity with balletic graces, and curbed her lithe palms on the wooden edge as the frizzing heat of the mirror curvaceous bulbs fervently contrasted over her leather garbed back. "I had the night off …" Her sultrier rasp, coquettishly beckoned him to edge closer with a tameless promise of headier decadence friskily gleaming in her autumn-brandy irises; swaggeringly poised like an uncaged alpha driven by ardent ferocity, roguishly Bucky half-quirked his shapely-bow lips into a naughtier smirk as his roughened fingers blindingly ghosted over his loose belt. "Ready to have some fun with this kitten, Rocker Boy..."

Bucky's bedraggled dark locks framed his temple, casting dark seductive shadows over his shining blue eyes. Desire burned bright in those depths while his lips pulled into a wolfish grin.

"You read my mind, Babe," was his heady response. In a swift move, he lifted her up and plopped her down onto the edge of the vanity. The allure of her intoxicating perfume caused heat to flush in his veins, making him feel even more hot and bothered than he was a moment ago. Her coaxing touch brought him in until his lips bruisingly claimed hers in a wet-interlock. Her thighs snugly pulled him in to deepen the kiss. He happily obliged, lost in the sweltering addiction of Felicia's touch. A stifled groan came up the back of his mouth. His throat felt dry after hours of singing, he needed something to moisten his chords.

He came up for air only to lock his gaze on his bottle of Jack Daniels beside her. He reached for the bottle and popped the cap only. Before he could take a proper swig, Felicia seize the bottle. Their intense gazes locked in a fervent tug of war. The walls surrounding them shook with the musical vibrations coming from outside the room. Smirking, Bucky allowed her to take a drink of her own before she tossed the bottle aside, and then pounced on him.

Against the breathless abandon that implosively ratcheted in her passion-driven heartbeat, moaningly, Felicia answered the evocative cadence that stealingly rode through her veins in denotive tenor as she gripped onto his metal dog-chain with a fiercer tug, becoming aware of the addictive-savorous reality of hard-edge tautness that bulkily over his muscled solidity as the flush suppleness of her voluminous breasts heavily cushioned the against the cotton material of his black tank-top.

Raggedly, Bucky heaved out throatier pants, hungrily reaching for her-the scrunching pressure of his Romanian nose kneaded against her feverish temple with arrowed ministrations as his wolf-head ringed fingers avidly bracketed over the delicate contours of her underside jaw with feather-soft pressure-a surrendering reverence ardently coupled with a duelling need-unstoppable hunger that ragingly gloried within them. "Bucky..." she murmured in kittenish pitch, raspily, as the masculine potency cinnamony smokiness of Jack Daniels and the raciness of headier sandalwood head-whirlingly floored her resistance like a decadent anesthetic-edging her into a glorious fusion of boneless voltage. Embracing his broader nape with her twined leather-sleeved arms, bodily, Felicia clung to a heart-racking demand of breathtaking intimacy with her badass-hunky Rocker Wolf. "A-Are we really doing this..."

Threading his fingers with hers, the depth of his affection for her rose to the forefront and was plain for her to see. "I really hope so, because I need you now, Babe," was his husky response. He'd been away from her too long, and after the maelstrom of emotions and unfortunate swerves he experienced tonight, he desperately needed something good and familiar to steal his focus and make everything feel like it would be all right. That, and Felicia was looking mighty fine tonight…His fog of lust returned as he noted the mutual look in her eyes, and Bucky wasted no time in tearing open her leather jacket, exposing her white-tank underneath.

The bosomy swell of her ample cleavage stole his focus momentarily along with the necklace she wore with a jeweled-cat's head. Their lips returned to their fervent dance, he shivered as her fingers roughly clawed at his muscular shoulders, memorizing him. His lips nipped at her chin, trailing a path of wet heat down her neck as she arched into his touch. His hands slipped beneath the hem of her chemise caressing the soft flesh of her abdomen. They were sinking further into the deep-end of their desire, they weren't bound to care that they weren't somewhere less private. All that mattered was feeling each other after so many weeks of being apart.

Their bodies sensuously mirrored the rhythmic cadence of bone-liquefying intimacy, breathlessly, on his guttural command, Felicia voluptuously arced the exquisite swollenness of her delectable breasts against the corded rigidity of his sweat-damp shirt, feeling every tauter curve of his bulkier flesh throbbingly strain as he forcibly braced his muscled forearms onto the vanity's edge in rampant succession. His vein-threaded knuckles caressingly grazed over the satiny alabaster of her supple cheek with strumming delicateness in every tentative ministration-the cherished -undeniable sweetness of his devotion became fervidly invested on headier accord.

The heart-thudding closeness of their aligned bodies was steamily fueled by the intensifying demand of his unleashed arousal while shapelier curves of her denim-clad thighs beckoningly readied for his revving urgency. "D-Don't let go..." she hitched out, disheveledly her whitish tresses draped over his tenser shoulder as Bucky thrust the dampish heat of his kiss-swollen lips gapingly over her plushier mouth, bruising the crimson swell of her underlip as he devouringly ravaged the hungrier pressure of his open-mouth kiss with the minty hotness of his surging tongue-careening her into paradisaic dregs of aphrodisiacal havoc. "Mphm..."

Words were lost to them as they fell into the depths of total lust and affection. Bucky's eyes were hungry, his mouth finding Felicia's in a firm kiss, tongues dancing between their lips. The Rocker Boy groaned into her mouth, hands groping the soft curves of her abdomen working their way up. Felicia's own hands weren't idle as they automatically worked on the buckle of Bucky's belt-pants. Skilled and determined, she loosened his knot and tugged down impatiently. His pants dipped low to his pelvis, exposing his hard midriff and v-line. Bucky's hands began to latch onto the sides of her jean-pants, ready to yank them down with one harsh pull.

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

It was like a gunshot had gone off, and the spell of desire was broken by the loud frustrating sound of someone knocking outside the dressing room door.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Bucky shouted through clenched teeth, eyes burning daggers at the door and whomever had the audacity to try and block him and his silver-haired kitten.

"I-It's okay..." Felicia implored against hitching breaths, kittenishly, and gazed into the deadlier intensity of his silvery-aquamarine depths blazingly razored at the door with murderous heat while she featherily braced her daintier palm over his tenser, bristled jaw-a deterrence to restrainedly ground him as he lashingly scythed his ringed fingers over the vanity in aggressive tenor, gripping onto an emptied Jack Daniel's bottle to shatteringly whip against his dressing-room door. Scathingly, Bucky jutted out his dimpled chin with intimidating traction as the graven-edged contours of his stubbled jaw cuttingly hollowed against teeth-gashing strain. "Hey, don't even think about making it rain glass in here, Barnes..."

A timorous breath gutlessly emitted out the portly stage-hand as his stubbier fist rapted against the black-lacquered door, as he nervously listened to a full-throated snarl explosively resonating within the dressing room, the bestial viciousness of Bucky's growlier heaves whip-sawed through his veins- he breached the forbidden ground of a wolfish Brooklyn rocker's 'cool-off' domain. With a measure of his tampered reaction, he stumbled back at the second the door knob turned with jarring force. "Uh...Excuse me... Mister Barnes, you kinda left your guitar picks on the stage..." he stammered out, quakily. "I-I found them for ya..."

Bucky's eye twitched annoyingly, but it was subtle enough that the stage-hand visibly gulped as he took in Bucky's disheveled state and what he presumed to be the shape of a woman behind him adjusting her clothes. The stage-hand gulped, realizing what he intruded on. Bucky could've been rude, even aggressively vindictive by slugging the unassuming worker who ruined what was sure to be a very vivid and wild time with his kitten. Instead, the Rocker Boy forced a tight-smile that resembled a grimace as he swiped the guitar picks from his hand. "Thanks a lot. Now don't come back again," he said, then promptly slammed the door. The guy might've just been doing his job, but he still had bad-timing.

He felt better once he closed the door with the single-minded purpose of resuming what had been interrupted. "Now, where were we?" The heat in his veins still burned with desire, however the moment he turned around, that heat turned to bitter ice as he took in the sight of Felicia reading through a paper-clipped set of documents. The new contract he signed. Bucky refrained from cursing as a dread set-in. Running a hand through his hair, he approached her with an air of reassurance. "Look, Felicia. We can talk about that later-"

"You signed a deal with that oversized bastard..." Felicia rasped, irascibly, a pent-up resurge of backstabbing-sellout heartache implosively leashed her into a knifepoint deadlock gripping the document pages, her doe-like brandy irises fleetingly glanced at the branded mark of Wilson Fisk that was direly stamped like a dynastic seal-the notorious Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen had possessively seized ownership of her Rocker Wolf as Bucky's signature became a profitable-expandable asset of controlling the music industry. A bloodied sting throbbingly pulsed against her lithe palm-this wasn't a charity play -Bucky was pocketbook collateral. "I can't believe you would even think of doing this, Bucky..."

"What over-sized b***?" He asked which earned him a sharp glare from her serious eyes. The Rocker exhaled roughly, the prickling unease of a vexing argument began to sink in as he walked past her and discarded the guitar picks onto the counter in front of the mirror. He had hoped to avoid this conversation with her until at a later time when he had more time to think about it. There was no backing out of something like this and rekindling the sweet ambience they had created only moments ago. Gazing at her reflection in the mirror, he turned about and crossed his arms at her.

"I had no choice, Felicia." He uttered, the harrowing pit of frustration he felt inside over the concert and that shady business meeting began to grow. "These two suits came out of nowhere and drop that on me. If I hadn't said yes, then the guys would've walked out on me soon as they were offered the same thing!" He tried to control the pitch of his voice but felt he might as well have been singing it through the microphone.

"I-I can't deal with this now..." Felicia hastily grabbed her leather jacket with swift ease and fervently paced a breadth at the door. Staving down the warred anguish that heart-punched against her bustier swells, she dragged her palm over the Howling Commando poster. "You know I thought you were smarter than those other stage boys..." She gnawed on her kiss-bruised underlip, and mistily gazed back at the contract documents on the vanity. "All I see now is a collared rocker pig who hungers for his damn fame..."

Her words stung more than Bucky could've imagined. The hard-truth that he had been trying to stem from consuming him since he'd put the pen to that damn paper. That he was a sell-out who cared more about the fame than music. Felicia was the only one that believed in him to pursue this liberating dream away from the horrors of the battle-field. "Damn it! Felicia, wait!" He cried, but the door had already slammed shut behind her as she exited his room-his life. He stood alone facing the door, the mahogany walls of his dressing room only made him feel even more lifeless as he did inside.

He fought to remain in control, to stifle the emotion building inside of him like a reactor full of energy. But it was useless as he picked up the bottle of booze and took a hard swig.

"S***!" He chucked the now empty bottle at the wall, shattering it to a thousand pieces. The beating of his pulse couldn't have been louder than the drums Jack played tonight.

He was like an uncaged wolf that needed to howl and tear everything in his path to shreds. Teeth gnashed, he smashed his palms against the vanity and glared at his reflection in the mirror. He loathed what he saw staring back at him. A weak man who allowed others to manipulate him. A pig with intent on stuffing himself with the pleasures of fame. He smashed his fist against the mirror, uncaring of the damage and the explosion of pain in his hand as shards dug into his knuckles.

He welcomed the pain as if it were a cleansing lash. The peering steel of his gaze zeroed on the contract, and he felt bitterness on his tongue. "Screw it," he picked up the papers and put them between the edges between his thumb and index fingers, prepared to shred. A spike of agony suddenly jolted through his head, like a migraine that had been festering in silence until screaming to attention. The ringing in his ears came louder, and his vision blurred to the point he was sure he was seeing things-terrible things. The cracked visage in the mirror resembled a hideous animal than a grown-man. A diminutive hog.

Suddenly overcome with exhaustion and the fatigue of his emotions, Bucky collapsed onto the couch, dropping the contract on the floor. "I'm sorry, Babe…" He stared into space, letting the darkness take him into slumber.

A stagnant aura of unbidden heartache enwreathed her, guardedly, Felicia braced her leather-garbed back against the brownstone wall of King's Theater as mistier wetness heatedly blurred her vision; brandishing up an impassive demeanour over the delicate contours of her elfin features the vixenish feline shifted her brandy irises at the backlit parking lot, detecting a visceral heartbeat of payback-hellfire incarnate. Smacking the lush crimson of her pillowy lips with a devious quirk, she glanced at the masculine silhouette -a black nanotube carbon armour that bulkily fused over his athletic-Spartan litheness of warrior-honed solidity that contrasted a demask burgundy. The sentinel of Hell's Kitchen intimidatingly grounded his 'street-fighter' poise across from her proximity. "You were right about Fisk..." she murmured in a breathier rasp, grittily, her dark gaze mirrored the red lens of his demonic-horned cowl. "That obese bastard has staked a claim on someone close to the vest, Matt...I want to sweep his card off the table. "

The Devil of Hell's Kitchen didn't look directly at his new acquaintance. He and Felicia Hardy had crossed paths numerous times over the past few months, some encounters were less amiable than others. But while he didn't condone her often illegal life-style when it came to theft, he knew she was anything but a danger to innocent people that he swore to protect. Many times she often protected those who she came across who had no one else. He respected that as well as her skill-set. She was dangerous, cunning and well-connected. When he'd learned she had once worked for a target of interest, he had reached out hoping she might offer him something that would put Fisk behind bars.

She hadn't indulged his wish…not until now perhaps.

"If Fisk has your friend in his sights, he's gonna keep a tight leash on him. He'll yank it if he gets out of line. If you want to chase him… it might mean keeping your distance from him for awhile. For his own safety." Matt added, sensing Felicia's growing apprehension over the thought of leaving Bucky to wallow in his unknowing servitude to the Kingpin.

The whispery somberness of Matthew's gravelly timbre infinitely struck a chord through Felicia's veins as he advanced closer with vigilant paces methodically invested with every step, against the backlit obscurity, the pursed fullness of his shapely lips half-quirked, underlying a tentative semblance of rapport-not a cheapened vestige of trust. Unrelentingly, Fisk had bred a parasitic syndicate within the environs of Brooklyn-every criminal element was orchestrated by him as he warranted his intention on revamping tenant buildings of Flatbush using his cash flow of underground resources to bulldoze everything into a ruinous warzone.

Bracing her leather-sleeved arms over her curvier décolletage, stingily, her brandy irises gleamed with heated bleariness as she dared to glance at the graffiti-sprayed backdoor of the King's Theater."We don't have to worry about that since I closed the door behind me..." she answered, tersely, fisting her gloved hand to stifle vexatious-white-hot- onrush of her tempered chagrin. "Something about the conditions of this damn contract seems off...We need to find a way to shred up before that Rocker Boy in there loses everything to Baldy.."

Daredevil didn't question the nature of Felicia's relationship with the famous war veteran turned rocker. It was none of his business, but it was clear to him that she cared too much about James Barnes to simply let him get pulled into Wilson Fisk's ring of corruption. "First thing's first," the vigilante said as he approached the edge of the rooftop. "We rattle some cages. Find out what Fisk really wants with your friend and who's helping him. I have some ideas where to start…But I'll need your help." It was an open invitation for cooperation. For the longest time since he began his crusade to silence the noise of lawlessness, Matt Murdock had operated alone. But things had changed-the world had changed.

More heroes were out on the streets fighting the good fight. But crime rose too as a result, sometimes more than one person could handle.

"You know how to show a bad girl a good time, Murdock," Felicia purred against a huskier undertone, sassily, with an underhand swipe of her lithe hand she riskily clutched onto an ebony velvet domino from her leather jacket's pocket; her stealthier calibre of being a thievishly-combative- kitten who was genetically weaponized by the enhanced infusion of Doctor Erskine's alpha serum that her father-Walter Hardy- had deceptively pinched the mutative formula out of Stark Industries for Wilson Fisk to beta test on disposable-trafficked strays from Hell's Kitchen. The high-rigged profit of marketed installations dementedly fed his infestive tantamount of supremacy-she wouldn't allow Bucky to become a captive for morphic -serum-infusions. Adjusting her sleekier domino over her tousled silvery-whitish tresses, craftily, a foxier smirk played on her full-bow lips. "Lucky for you, I know a little Spider from Queens who might swing in for a dance..."

A soft smile tugged at the devil-vigilante's lips. "I guess that makes two of us." It had been awhile since he'd bumped the friendly Wall-Crawler. A young man who for some reason, Matt felt as if he had him before outside of their mutual line of work. If Felicia knew who was behind the mask, then maybe, just maybe, they could take the fight to New York's most notorious Kingpin. Tonight was as good a night as any to get started. With a sharp nod to the masked silver-haired feline, Daredevil lunged off the rooftop, the whoosh of air and the thrumming vibrations telling him that his new acquaintance was not far behind him.

Three months later...

The greasy sugariness of the fresh-glazed doughnuts had fatteningly induced his piggish voracity in tenfold; gripping onto a half-eaten box of his midnight-gluttonous splurge, gruntingly Bucky chewed on a doughy piece in listless tenor as he nonchalantly braced against his black-matte Harley-Davidson FXDWG Dyna motorcycle, every night unwarranted cravings inexorably kickstarted a doughnut-hoarding indulgence as he debauchedly staunched down the hoggish onslaught with another lardy dozen. "S'good..." he murmured in slobbier cadence, belchingly, and tactlessly scarfed down a powdery mouthful of blueberry jelly as the poutier fullness of his shapely-wide lips toothily quirked against a throatier snort while he greedily clutched onto chocolate-fudge doughnut. His grungier raven tresses shaggily feathered his temples as he lasered his silvery- aquamarine irises unwaveringly at his fried dough stash. "Grah...Better have some damn coconut on this one..."

It had been a little over two months since that fateful night his life was turned upside down, in some cases for the better and in others…A surge of hunger assaulted him as his chronic depression instigated his cravings, causing him to stuff his face with the freshly baked pastry. He moaned into the sugary flavor bursting through his taste-buds. Coconut and chocolate, a mouth-watering taste that could topple giants with its strength. The parking lot outside of Randy's Donut shop swam with cars coming and going. The rocker paid em' no mind as he sat on the edge of his bike, letting the sounds of traffic fade into obscurity. His ears perked up at the alluring ambience of a familiar tune playing on the radio of a car nearby.

His newest recorded single, "Winter's Breath", was already climbing the billboards and topping digital sales on Amazon. The Howling Commandos were suddenly getting invites to perform on at music festivals, award shows and late night talk shows. Money was pouring in by the truck-load and he and his bandmates were beginning to feel overwhelmed by the outpour of zealous fans playing their tunes and wearing their merchandise. On the surface, it was everything they had aspired to achieve.

But it felt practically meaningless without someone to share the success with. Bucky's ravenous appetite took a dour turn as he watched a happy young couple exit the donut shop, arms linked around each other, their faces beaming at one another with loving smiles. A bitter pit formed within that he sought to stuff with another chocolate long-john. He ignored how stuffed he felt, how his cut physique was beginning to grow fuller as he ceaselessly indulged in his unhealthy habit of consuming a dozen donuts almost every night followed by a bottle of Jack Daniels to carry him to slumber.

"Stop thinking about her…Damn it. She walked out on you," he grumbled to himself. A repeating coping pattern he'd thrown himself into to stem the pain of emptiness with bitter anger. "Keep riding. Gotta keep on riding…"

"Woah...Dude, you're Bucky Barnes..." Within an earshot of annoyance, a chirpier teenager garbed in a Midtown High School hoodie, sheepishly conveyed his unbridled excitement, while he braced against the glass door with half-measured caution against thongs of customers, his dishevelled brunette tresses messily gave him a bed-head visage, evident to his boyish features as he clutched onto a paper bag of gooey cinnamon buns. Dragging out rampant breaths, he speedily gestured to a paunchier Filipino teen baggily wearing an overly-large black Howling Commando's shirt designed with the White Wolf emblem of the lead guitarist-Bucky Barnes. "M-My friend is one of your biggest fans, sir..." he stammered in a tremorous pitch, shifting his umber-hazel irises at his best friend-Ned-standing at the display case that housed trays of various doughnuts. "It would mean a lot to him if I could get your cool autograph, Mister Barnes..."

A flush of irritation moved through the Rocker who began to regret wearing his aviator shades as they no doubt made him even more recognizable to people. There was a time he would've graciously accepted the peering adoration of his fans that wanted an autograph or selfie with him. Some were more thoughtful than others when it came to accosting him in public, others were just downright demanding even if he were having lunch or stopped at a traffic light. Bucky at this point was in no mood for niceties when all he wanted was to stuff himself with donuts and wallow in his relationship woes.

"Yeah, I think you got the wrong guy, kid," he said to the taller of the two as he discarded the empty donut box. "Why don't you go bother Harry Styles, I hear he's in town." With a quick stride, he mounted his Harley before either of the teens could think to whip out their cellphones and begin recording him. He ignored the crestfallen look on the Filipino kid's face and how his friend looked at him with disappointment. Bucky closed his eyes to banish the remorseful sight.

He had places to be, a liquor store being at the top of the list.

Against a modicum of his warred anguish, sluggishly, Bucky paced closer to the scuffed mirror-vanity, detachedly clutching a half-emptied Jack Daniels as he towed out the wooden stool with his clunkier motorcycle; the electrified pulse of his recharged amp speaker thrummed like a revved heartbeat within the curved sleekness his ebony SG type Gibson; the vomitous reek of doughy grease from cream-infused doughnuts temptingly wafted from the box as he indifferently eased onto the stool. A rubbery heaviness of droopy pudge saggily glozed over his leather waistband, blankly, on floored alarm, he flitted the owlish intensity of his silvery-aquamarine depths at his chunkier backside. "Huh...What..." A throatier snort noncommittally hitched in his murmurous drawl as he splayed his palm shakily over the leather of his skinny Gothic-punk 'rocker' pants metallically adorned with belt chains. "Damnit..."

There was a time he couldn't stare at his reflection enough at the beginning of his career as a musician. Image was important in show-business and he wasn't shy enough to admit he had all the gifts to make irresistible. Now he loathed what he saw looking back at him. The extra amount of weight he put on wasn't nearly as indignant to him as the worn emptiness in his eyes. The bottle of liquor was nearly half-empty and it was only seven o'clock. His concert hadn't even started yet and already he was trying to both waste and stuff himself into piggish oblivion. He was losing himself with each performance.

Fatigue was seeping through the cracks and he could barely keep his eyes open. He kept himself alert as he listened to the pulsing beat of the speakers and the cheers of the audience assembling inside the venue. Tonight was supposed to be a 3-hour performance. He doubted he could make it through 1 hour. He was tired, mentally and physically. He thought about calling the thing off, even if it cost a pretty-penny in refunds and marketing. Him and his boys needed to rest up. Sure the cash-flow was coming in non-stop, but they were working themselves almost to death at this point.

Blue eyes peered at his own reflection, and he wondered if he had too much to drink as he grimaced at warped image of himself. Discomfort edged in, he grimaced at the throbbing ache in his jaw and the fullness of his bulging cheeks. How did he get so fat so fast? If that wasn't alarming enough, the pointed tip of his ears was like a bucket of cold water dumped all over him. He gasped with disbelief stumbling away from the mirror so fast he nearly tripped.

"What the hell is happening to me?" He couldn't just be seeing things as his fingers traced the edges of deformity and found that they weren't just an illusion.

A malefic valance of blighted witchery portentously assailed within the shabby dressing room in possessive fruition, enforcing her malicious poise against the lacquered door, sinisterly, Clea gazed at her porkier drudge's flabbier swollenness of his bugly mid-drift that porkily outstretched underneath his black shirt. He couldn't wage against the morphic exhaustion that gruellingly infected him in the wake of his bone-deep reluctance. He was doomily chastened to her sorcerous-hoggish thrall as the rounded curvatures of his ears hideously lengthened underneath his wolfish raven tresses into a bestial deformation. "Not feeling up to play tonight, James..." she questioned, tauntingly as Bucky stumbled in wobbling traction with his shapely-bow lips puffily swelled against his jutting incisors-in seconds his virile-hunkier beauty would be harvested."Your deifying fans adulate the Rocker prince of Brooklyn, not a plump swine who revels in his own gluttonous temptations..."

"What the hell do you want, Clea?" Bucky barked at the sight of the corporate witch who had tethered him into this burdensome trend. Some of his bandmates had dubbed her "ice-queen" despite her having no chill whatsoever. Bucky never felt comfortable around her, something about her making his skin crawl with dread. He hadn't noticed her entering his dressing-room and feeling indignant over his personal space being breached, he stowed away his anxiety and confronted her with a jutted chin. "You here for another management smackdown? Another pep-talk about my adoring fans? Whatever it is, I'm not in the mood to hear it."

"You dare insult me with your boarish impudence, Rocker boy," Clea lashed out, waspishly, the cool exquisiteness of her sirenic features grew unmercifully taut with viperous malice as Bucky sloppily gulped down the whiskey bottle, offishly, conveying his dismissive response. "Perhaps you're too content in this visage I conjured, maybe I should give you a little peek of what happens when you don't play for me..." she warned, irately.

Bucky met her hardened stare evenly, perhaps the booze giving him a burst of stubborn liquid-courage in the face of her cold threat. "You realize you're trying to intimidate a man who's survived 3 bloody tours in Iraq and not to mention the worst war this world has ever seen? It's gonna take a little more than sneering and whatever weird roofie you dumped in my drink to scare me."

He crossed his arms at her as he leaned against the wall. "having by now dismissed whatever weird feelings of supernatural he might've had about the blonde since he'd met her. He knew the world was filled with unnatural phenomena and had only just bore witness to a god of thunder descending from the skies a few years ago, but magical hocus pocus just wasn't something he couldn't entertain in show-business. "You're working me and my boys through a meat-grinder." He said with a sober-voice, "this is our 6th gig this week, our 30th this month. I don't care who your boss is, we're not slave-labor. We need down-time."

Hearing the derisive scratchiness gruntingly resonated out of him, Clea bridled down her irrepressible urge to catatonically rope him into stuporous-burgeoning dregs of Eldritch magery, trickily, she fixed her virescent-teal irises on his Gibson -the soul-harvesting instrument that devouringly siphoned mortal -astral vitality into a transcendental bridge of Dark Verse. His spirited-hellbent tenacity was a deterrence that needed to become razed. Pivoting on her spiked heels, malignantly, Clea glanced over her shoulder with a leering smirk at his paunchier girth-the athletic litheness of his V-cut obliques was blubbery flab that was a mutative divergence of her porcine spell-cast.

She wanted to evilly usher him into a mud-heap where blimpish -overfed hogs were listlessly penned for slaughter row; despite that he was a valued-roguishly hunky investment for the Kingpin's marketed industry, after the upcoming Halloween gig he would become a repugnantly obese boar to anguishedly wallow into his mucky squalor with his Commando bandmates. "Finish the October gig, Barnes, and I will give you all downtime you want..." she countered against gritted breath, sneerily, watching him blindingly reach for a long-john doughnut as he oinkishly emitted a long-drawn grunt. "Maybe I will grant you, someone, to slake your torrid appetite, unless you still desire that vixenish beauty...Felicia?"

Bucky's complexion became immediately sober and defensive. "Leave her out of this," he said, with a finger jabbed in Clea's direction. His ire rose with a scorching pitch, he could feel his skin flushed with heat. Clea for her part just appeared mildly amused by his reaction which made him feel even more uncomfortable in her presence, feeling as if he were a fish being circled by a shark. "We're ancient history," he said with a shrug. He couldn't reveal any sore-spots that Clea might look to exploit. He felt further and further out of his element as this partnership progressed and Bucky wasn't sure just how much more he and his boys could keep up with this exhausting tour. There were days even when Bucky woke up with a sore throat after a 3-hour gig the night before only to perform another late that same night.

Jack and Ben were anxious to get some time at home to see their families, even threatening to quit the last few gigs unless he worked something out for them. Bucky didn't blame them. But they had to play ball. The deal he signed had brought their stardom to new heights with a large cash-flow. Tonight was October 1st. If they just made it through the month, they could get the break they needed…if Clea was to be believed.

"Fine, we'll do this gig tonight," he said to the blonde as he rubbed his temple. He sniffed and shuddered, somehow feeling the spell of discomfort that had been hanging over him begin to lift as if by magic. He took it as a good sign that he was making the right choice. Fixing Clea with a fierce gaze, he took up his guitar. "After this is over, I want to meet your Boss and let him know I want to renegotiate our deal."

His snappish pitch gutturally fringed with throatier rawness, tactlessly, Bucky fisted a knuckle-clenching grip onto the Gibson's leather strap; in seconds the chunkier bulginess of his lumpish midriff hunkily fused into graven-corded ridges of bracketed solidity as tauter-edged flesh cuttingly delineated underneath the fabric of his black muscled shirt-his 'badass' rocker visage had returned. Suppressing her vengeful urge to morphically obesify him into a globby pot-bellied hog, Clea stoically brandished temperate wickedness over her ashen-pearlescent features, as she returned in a pithier undertone. "The stints of the contract you signed can't be altered..." Vehemently, Bucky flashed her a dead-straight glower of his frostier aquamarine depths as he sashayed with menace-honed paces seethingly near the door, evading her witchy sneer. "Don't forget my employer owns you, Barnes..."

Casting a hardened glare at the blonde over his shoulder, Bucky clenched his jaw so tight he thought it might crack. The impulse to smash his guitar against the wall and flip her off was ever-increasing. But as he heard the roaring vibrations of the crowd awaiting his arrival, a sentimental part of himself that still cared for them compelled him to release his frustration in a snarling breath.

"No one owns me. Now now, not ever," he slammed the door behind him, marching down the hallways as an attendant guided him towards the stage.

The amplifying voltage electrifyingly thrummed within his veins as the cacophonous mania of the exhilarated throngs packed around the stage platform deafeningly chanted out his Howling Commando moniker in throat-railing unison: "WHITE WOLF...!" Clunkily, Bucky rapted his leather Gore-Tex motorcycle boot on the polished wood; his thumb unerringly strummed over the nickel-metallic strings of his Gibson while his palm shakily curved against the fretboard. "Give em' on helluva of a show, Barnes..." he murmured in raspier timbre, unwaveringly roved the mesmeric smokiness of his aquamarine irises unwaveringly over the packed-in crowd, as the shaggier length of grungier raven thatchily draped askew over the chiselled angularity of his razored-edge cheekbones. With his fingers readily poised to deliver a bone-racking riff on the strings, crestfallenly Bucky glanced at his wearied-exhausted drummer-Jack-who tremulously clutched his drumsticks, his lankier form materialized disturbingly gaunt as the hollowed contours of his ribcage bonily jutted underneath his ashen flesh. "No..."

He blinked repeatedly, feeling a touch out of breath as if his lungs had been pulled into a vice. What the hell was happening to him? He inwardly felt chills, the stifling urge to keel over and huddle into himself was as empowering as the need to stuff his face with a coping distraction. He licked his lips, willing himself to concentrate on the Commandos' next number while the adoring crowd cheered. It didn't help. Somehow, the atmosphere of the concert became dark and foreboding, the strobing neon lights became a deathly pale violet, casting ominous shadows over the audience.

"What the hell…" For the second time tonight, he wondered if something had slipped into his drink in the dressing room and he was seeing things. The crowd looked the same as the one that had attended their gig in Charlotte last night…and in Raleigh the night before. While it wasn't uncommon for fans to follow them on their tours, alarmingly, he realized, the crowd looked haggard and drained; their eyes blood-shot, their clothes worn and disheveled as if they hadn't had a night sleep in weeks. And yet they cheered on as if they were mindless puppets waiting for their strings to be snapped. "Boys, is it just me or do these people look…"

"Out of it? Yeah," murmured Roofus with a dour pitch. His backup vocalist looked equally exhausted as if he barely got a wink of shut-eye, but at least he was somewhat focused. The same couldn't be said for Jack, Ben and Andre who looked high as kites. The stress of the constant tour was taking its toll over his boys just as much as it was on him. "Let's just get this over with, Hoss." Roofus muttered.

Bucky was close to putting his foot down and saying "no". He would yell into the mic that the show was now over and that all these people needed to go home and get their heads on straight and take a bath. But he could feel eyes on him, visceral and condemning. Clea's eyes watching him to the far left of the stage beyond the curtain. Bucky bit his lip, struggling with the impulsive urge to voice his defiance…

"Deny me of this harvest, Barnes, I will reap out your humanity..." Clea murmured under a vitriolic breath, the rabid intensity of her ophidian gaze had noxiously roved at the zombiesque husks gathered a breadth near the stage front as purplish-amethyst racemes of Eldritch glyphs burningly etched into the obsidian, scaly flesh that cadaverously morphed into ghoulish-emaciated frailty of her drained victims as the apparitional pulses of celestial gateway of the Dark Verse demonically ushered a spookish cavalcade of mortal vitality to breach the dimensional threshold in hellish fruition. Whitish salvos of astral energy spectrally dissolved into the vaporous ether as petrified- desiccated forms morbidly collapsed in soul-razing unison. "Keep singing...!

With the flick of a switch, the concert had become a horror show as screams tore through the musical ambience. The Commandos, somehow feeling the effect of the bewitching spell, reacted like puppets who just had their strings pulled and launched into their next track. A full musical intro to their title, "Faded Glory". A somber piano melody played by Ben led to a full percussion as Roofus took over. The musical notes were like tidal waves crashing into the audience, causing their bodies to blister and singe with dark matter.

Bucky felt like he was in a nightmare. He had to be. Nothing this horrific should be real. Every camera in the venue had shattered like glass, every soul in attendance howling with pain and terror as the barrier between realities was breached. Bucky didn't realize he was playing until he looked down and saw his fingers working the strings with a relentless pace. "What the hell is going on?!" He screamed over the chaos. He felt as if he were on a runaway train heading over a cliff. The natural impulse to sing into the mic felt nauseating, he wanted to empty the contents of his stomach all over the stage.

"I-I won't…" He couldn't-he shouldn't. But the more he resisted, the greater the agony inflicted on him as his body swelled with ballooning force. His breathing was labored, his voice was stifled into an invisible grip that would only allow pained grunts and oinks to register. He didn't know what was happening to him, but through his foggy vision, he thought he saw silver-glowing orbs peering at him from the shadows framed by a mane of ashen locks. He was spell-bound, enthralled to the point he couldn't control his voice that began to sing into the microphone.

"So M' dreamin' to feel the sweetness of home..." The croakier raspiness of his whiskey-smooth drawl hypnotically became a velvetlike contralto within the murmurous tempo, every gravelly pitch decadently became a sensuous anesthetic, trancedly inducing his fatigued audience into a deathlike slumber. Against the vomitous fervency churlishly imploding through his veins, shakily, Bucky gripped onto the microphone with a bone-deep flexion of hesitancy, registering the doughier plumpness of blubbery rotundity underneath his sweat-damp shirt as electrified static thrummed from the massive amp speakers behind him.

Staving off a pukish onslaught, groggier bleariness robbed his vision as the clamping pressure of a sorcerous restraint kept him unmovingly tethered on the stage while the fiery Eldritch sigils of the morbific conjury psionically arced over the stage lights, forming into vaporous tentacles, grappling motionless forms into chasmic trenches of the Dark Verse-they were horrifyingly becoming mindless zombified vessels-drudges- to slake the behemothic harvester-Dormammutru's quenchless thirst. "I keep fallin' down on the frozen road... Until my heart grows cold...I keep fightin' in my bones ...Until seams of hope rip away..."

The lyrics poured from his mouth in an uncontrollable flow as if they were being forced out. His waking mind was tormented by the horrific imagery as he watched scores of innocent people become consumed by the dark energies consuming them into zombified husks. Tears welled in his eyes, remorse pulled at his heart realizing their fates were consigned by his own hand and by the music he was creating. Trying to release the tethers of his guitar caused his digits to well up with heat, and pain to return full-force. He kept singing, he kept playing, even as the song began to lose its lustre due to the absence of instruments. He wondered why Jack, Ben, Andre and Roofus had stopped playing. Had they finally had enough and decided to run?

He could hear screams right behind him on the stage. Terrified and animalistic, he shuddered at the pitch and was almost too frightened to look. Too frightened and exhausted. His strength was sapping away as the chaos in the venue began to wind down from its apex. Bucky teetered on the brink of collapse as he dropped his guitar and spun around. His bandmates were gone. Their positions are surprisingly occupied by the shape of wild hogs running rampant on the stage. Where had the pigs come from? Where did his boys go?

He couldn't fathom the answer. Darkness consumed him as the world spun and he collapsed onto the stage.

The miasmic reek of putrefied flesh nauseatingly wafted off medical gurneys that heart-wrenchingly carried HRP pouches of emaciated-mummified corpses being loaded onto EMS vehicles that obstructed the backlot as reddish sconces flashily strobed against the black-tinted windows of a parked Escalade SUV convoy as yellow barrier tape of NYPD flappingly barricaded swarms of pushy media reporters of the Bulletin and Daily Bugle who aggressively thrust out their microphones to record statements from the proximal officers. Vertiginously, on his conscious footing, against choke-off sobs, Bucky did his utmost to evade the horrific reality that soul-cripplingly manifested into a damn terror-show. Heaving out gruntier pants, on explosive -white-hot ferocity, the Rocker boy readied to bruisingly drive his knuckled fist with hammer-pounding momentum into the black-matte hood of the SUV. "Argh..."

"DAMN IT!" A cry tore from his mouth, sorrow and remorse consuming him. The wafting stench of smoke and debris climbed high through the smoldering remains of the venue where he had performed. Countless bodies were being wheeled away, police were everywhere. He'd only just finished being questioned by a detective named Mahoney a few minutes ago over what had happened. Bucky didn't know what to explain, his practical mind telling him the truth of what he thought he'd seen would land him either in a jail-cell or a padded cell. That was until Clea stepped in and revealed that a gas-leak had been the cause of the devastation and loss of life.

Disgust welled up inside of Bucky until he could take no more and emptied the contents of his stomach upon the ground. He wanted to believe that's what it all came down to. That all the horrific things he'd seen was just a result of hallucinating over a gas-leak. But he wasn't stupid or naive. One look at the businesswomen's violet eyes revealed a dark deceptive mind at work. Now so many people were dead. Innocent people who were here because they adored him and his band. His band… He tried calling Andre and Jack several times only for the calls to go straight to voice-mail. Their sudden disappearance had many in the media and authorities curious if not suspicious about what role they might've played in the disaster.

Bucky clenched his fists once he'd regained control of his stomach. He cast a furtive glance at his surroundings until his gaze landed on the shape of Clea striding past the police tape and heading towards a caravan of SUVs parked off the side of the cordoned area. Without thinking, he began marching in her direction, unsure of what he might do.

Keeping herself collectively poised near the Escalade's rear door, Clea whispered in a huskier pitch as the window automatically descended precariously revealing a hulkish masculine silhouette of her 'close-door' employer. "The certain party you wanted to be disposed of has been removed as promised, Fisk..." Malignantly, she gestured a lithe hand in the obscured direction of an eroded shipping container-anguished cadence of throat-railing squeals gruntingly resonated in frantic unison. "James Barnes is still under contract until Halloween night, unless you want him to join his bloating friends in the mud-heap...?"

A calm and collected set of eyes stared off at the chaos unfurling throughout the area without a hint of remorse in their depths. The amount of devastation and public exposure to it was more than Wilson Fisk had been hoping for. Even now he was taking a big risk in allowing himself to get close to it. "No," he voiced after a moment of contemplation. "We can afford no public scrutiny at this time." He sees Clea narrow her sharpened orbs at him, demanding for an explanation. "If Barnes were to vanish just as suddenly as his fellow musicians, suspicion will fall upon us who are his sole benefactors in the wake of this incident." The last thing they needed was for nosy reporters to ask difficult questions, or worse, meddlesome vigilantes to stick their noses into his business dealings. "Put him on the bench for now...let him stew in his demons until the public forgets about him. After Halloween, he will be of no further use."

Propelling his breakneck momentum with boot-stomping advances of his untrammelled ferocity, piercingly, Bucky razored the voltaic heat of his wide-blown sweltery aquamarine irises, bestial rawness flamingly gleamed underneath the bedraggled shagginess of his raven tresses sweatily clung to his feverish tenser brow. "Hey...M'done being your damn stage puppet..." he railed out in a full-throated snarl, gnashingly, he strutted a deadlier variance of his sniper-honed grace at the obstructive Escalade convoy, his shapely-bow lips menacingly jutted out on the fiercer accord, while the broader heaviness of his saggier jaw clenched. The occultic harpy-dame- had maliciously ensnared him into inevitable ropes of her damnable witchery. He needed to drive a stake through her contract-burn every signed document into ashy particles and locate the stray Howling Commandos-his pack. "You hear me, Clea... I'm rippin' up you warped contract...!"

His anger climbed to the point he couldn't stop himself or turn around to save face from the spectacle of spectators that might be watching him. His gaze zeroed in on Clea and who he discerned to be her boss inside of the parked SUV. The benefactor that had been pulling the strings behind his deal and the Howling Commandos' misery the past several months. The thought of slugging said benefactor to guarantee the contract would be torn up gave him the conviction to push forward. His angry rant had caused Clea to turn to face his direction. The moment she did, offered him a clear view of the man sitting inside of the SUV.

His pulse sped up rapidly, his brain lurched unable to dismiss the harrowing familiar image of Wilson Fisk-the Kingpin-gazing in his direction. Eyes boring in disbelief, Bucky made stand his ground. A cruel smile spread across Clea's lips and she raised her hand towards him.

"I'll handle this..." Clea whispered to her maniacal backseat companion, hissingly, without reservations of harnessing control over her tenebrous witchery, reddish sigils of psionic energy had fierily morphed into mandalas of Eldritch conjury as she virulently glowered at the intractable Rocker Boy with her fingers readied to scythe a paralytic onslaught through him. "You need to cool off, Barnes..." Her spiteful utterance stuntedly arrested Bucky's clunkier footing, his brow rapted confusedly into a dumbfounded pinch as the stormier intensity of his pupils blankly dilated at the vertiginous-possessive moment he staggeringly double-over onto his denim-clad hunches. Every telekinetic pulse of her slumberous incantation barraged him with skull-cleaving agony, forcing him to noncommittally belched out rubbery grunts; within seconds his mobility became weightily floored into deadweight as he unconsciously collided onto his back. "Don't worry, when our dear James wakes up in the decadence of his squalor, he won't remember seeing your face, Wilson..."

"Hmm," Fisk simply humphed while observing Bucky's prone unconscious body laid out. For a former decorated WWII veteran and combat specialist in Afghanistan, he fell like a ton of bricks. He wasn't impressed. Bucky didn't stir even as Fisk motioned to a few of his men to pick him up and carry him into one of the cars. Shifting his gaze back to Clea Strange, the woman who unsettled him deeply but that he somehow managed to form a lucrative business relationship with due to her powerful abilities. "Keep an eye on him. When a man senses he is close to losing everything, it compels him to act foolishly…dangerously." He knew that from experience after all.

Above the police-barricaded parking lot, menacingly poised like a sentinel of vengeance, Matthew tilted his cowled head against the disruptive frequencies of noise that pulsed with every heartbeat; within the cacophonous vibrations of klaxon sirens of EMS vehicles-the carillon bells of midnight; he became viscerally attuned to the grated raspiness of Wilson's deep-throated cadence resonating inside an Escalade while tires of another SUV fleetingly rapted over the pavement- ferrying the inert Brooklyn rocker-James Barnes. The carious stench of a massacring wake had grievously beckoned for a tempest of mortal retribution. Scowlingly, as the orangish sconces of streetlight eerily reflected off his red-slit lens, Matthew quirked his shapely-bowed lips, and murmured under breath, while his gloved hand unerringly clutched onto his 'billy-club' hostler. "Let's see how long you can go the distance, Fisk..."

A fizzled rain came down upon his shoulders as he gazed upon the grave-marker with quiet sorrow. Moments in time, echoes of a former life replayed in his minds-eye, relieving the nightmarish moment where he had lost a good friend. Even now the memory as if the event had occurred last night despite it having been nearly 10 years since he'd lost a friend, his brother-in-arms, Samuel Wilson-the Falcon. It was like the stitches had been ripped out of a closed wound. All the pain resurfaced causing him to grimace and take a swig of his 40-ounce.

He had no words to say. It had been nearly a year since his last visit, but each time he stared at that humble marker with his friend's name inscribed on it, he felt only shame and a deep sense of failure. Try as he would to move on from the pain, to keep it buried, he could never banish those last moments where he failed to pull his friend from a trapped wreck of a ruined helicopter. Sam knew in those last moments that he was done for, he wouldn't be seeing home again and those waiting for him. Even as Bucky tried fruitlessly to lift the crushing debris, Sam thought of only him and forced him at gun-point to leave him behind before the explosion took them both.

Bucky had been prepared to die, prepared to go into the next life with his friend beside him. But the other men in their unit wouldn't allow him to uselessly throw his life away as they pulled him away from Sam even as he kicked and screamed. The memory of the explosion caused him to take another longer swig. Bucky shuddered and closed his eyes, but that memory brought to light a more recent one-more visceral and felt as grievous as a knife to the stomach.

How many more would die because of him?

"Wish you were here, Sam. This is one battle-field I wish I didn't have to stand on alone." Feeling he had nothing more to say, Bucky trudged his way back towards his motorcycle, his heart heavy with indecision and his mind clouded by the impossible challenge that awaited ahead.

The ambient eeriness of klaxon sirens of EMS vehicles harrowingly resonated throughout Mid-Town, numbingly, Bucky clutched onto the half-emptied bottle of Jack Daniels, the sugary cinnamons of heated Texan malt became his slow-burn anesthetic. Evicting bone-deep revulsion as the girthier bulginess of his mid-drift chubbily outstretched underneath his black shirt on blimpish fruition; he braced against a wall, his grayish-aquamarine irises downcastly glanced at his mobile phone for the umpteenth time as he replayed the 'miss caller' messages that suffocatingly became white-noise. He couldn't press the redial icon-when the sultriness of Felicia's velvety undertone only dredged up a knifing onslaught of unbidden 'shut-out' heartache.

"Kitten...M' one helluva jerk..." Bucky murmured, sniffily, gripping onto his mobile phone as his blearily aqueous irises gazed at the wallpaper screensaver photo of his best girl-Felica- curvaceously poised against his Harley Davidson, her silvery-whitish tresses sexily draped over her leather-clad shoulders as the crimson glossiness of her pillowy-bowed lips played off a foxier smirk; her doe-like brandy irises naughtily gleamed with thievish heat. Every moment with his smokin' gorgeous vixen was electrifyingly rapturous-like getting a bone-shunting dosage of ecstasy that made him addictively ride on the power cords. Nothing kick-started his rebellious drive when the ambrosial decadence of her luscious-kittenish beauty throbbingly stole his warred heartbeat in a breathless-headier firestorm of tameless passion. "Hell, I gotta make things right..."

Registering the straying trek of dampish wetness on the pudginess of his stubbled cheek, Bucky unwaveringly glanced at the flat screen of his 65-inch Apple TV, the red banner of the Daily Bugle report flashed BREAKING NEWS: MULTIPLE CASUALTIES OF A CONCERT GAS LEAK. "W-What the hell are they sayin'..." he grumbled out against a threadier breath, croakily, as the macabre-calamitous reality of desiccated corpses being traumatizingly stacked into NYPD forensic vans stoked an insomniac barrage that would only be staunched out by gulping down another 'pillow-side' bottle. "Gonna feel this in the mornin'..."

Days passed as he fell into the same copious yet self-destructive pattern. Confined to his studio apartment not messy as a pig's sty, Bucky laid on the couch staring blankly at the nine o'clock news that had yet to cease their coverage over the concert explosion. Over a thousand dead, twice as many were injured and those lucky enough to still be alive were all confused as if their memories of the incident had been wiped clean. Bucky had fared no better initially which made his daily interrogation by the NYPD and FBI all the more frustrating since he had no answers to give them. None that they would believe. Suspicion still hovered over him and his band who had since gone missing since the incident.

Bucky had given up trying to reach them as his calls went straight voicemail. The world needed someone to blame other than a faulty gas-line and the disappearance of his bandmates was enough to have conspiracy theorists go nuts with speculation. Bucky stayed away from social media and all the horrendous trends about him and his isolation. It only dug a deeper hole of self-pity in his stomach that he had stuffed with junk-food and bottles of whiskey. The kitchen was a mess of empty pizza boxes and beer cans, the apartment saturated with the bitter scent of nicotine that even his neighbors could smell from down the hall.

He didn't care even as they ranted at him to open a window. He ignored his phone calls from friends and especially those who held his leash. His agent Moya had quietly distanced herself since this incident, not that Bucky blamed her. Clea and Fisk hadn't reached out and Bucky dreaded the day they might. Without Andre, Ben, Jack and Roofus, the Howling Commandos' tour was over for the month. He wouldn't perform with stand-ins, no matter how much they threatened him with legal action.

But then again, these weren't ordinary business people he was dealing with. These were unmoral criminals who wouldn't think twice about killing him and making it look like a suicide. Realizing this, a dark thought entered his mind. Was that what happened to the Boys? They were adamant about not performing any more gigs until they got some downtime. Did they get snatched up by Fisk' goon-squad after the explosion? Bucky didn't know what to think. He only knew he felt alone, surrounded by lions in a den he saw no way of escaping.

His eyes moist with remorse, he refrained from sobbing out the pain in his chest over his situation and buried it deep. But it only caused him to tremble and instinctively reach for his half-drunk bottle. He hesitated at the last moment as his hand brushed his phone. Another drink wouldn't alleviate his anguish.

He needed to talk to someone. He needed help…

The full-measure of patriotic valiance left him in a deadlock of being on the crossroad fringe, he was a soldiery paragon who carried the mantle of liberty against tyrannous odds. The value of freedom was high against governmental mongers who sterilized moral insurgence; he was pegged to become a levelheaded poster boy for 'tight-grip' heroism.

Garbed in a white Brooklyn Dodgers shirt that bulkily delineated over the grave-edged-hunkier resiliency of battle-honed tautness, reservedly, Steven Rogers braced at the railing of his balcony, gripping onto a graphite pencil as the aromatic scent of brewed coffee soothingly wafted out of his mug on a wooden stool. He needed a hinged semblance of his artistic calibre to quell the restlessness in his tensing veins. Despite his unwarranted efforts to steer a 'hand-picked' tactical strike-force; he didn't want to compromise his moralistic ideals -valorous defiance with the corruptive envoys of the World Council. Shifting the hawkish vigilance of his turquoise-azure irises on the obscured alley below his Brooklyn flat, downcastly, he clenched the broader angularity of his jaw. "You gotta keep your distance, Rogers..." he drawled in raspier pitch, whisperingly, and lifted up his frayed sketchbook. "It can't be your fight anymore..."

His musing thoughts were disturbed by the ringing of his phone. Once he glimpsed the name on the caller ID, he was filled with surprise…and a moment of indecision. How long had it been? He didn't know. His resolve returned in light of the things he'd seen on the news and picked up his phone to answer.

"...Steve?" Bucky's tired voice came filtered through, timid and uncertain. From within the grungy isolation of his own apartment, Bucky sat at his kitchen island bent over with his phone clutched against his ear. He feared any moment the tense silence he was greeted with would end with the line disconnecting. Another close person in his life severing ties, leaving him well and truly alone. "I-It's me…" He said softly, guilt flushing through him over the fact that he had ignored his friend's calls for nearly a month now. He was sure Steve had even come to his apartment once over the past week while he was in a blacked out stupor, too drunk to answer the damn door.

He wouldn't blame him for ditching him.

"Buck...It's good to ya, jerk..." Steve dragged out a heavier breath, placidly, registering the throatier suaveness of his best friend's whiskey-roughened drawl chestily out a gruntier cadence; there was no underlying boyish cockiness "M'here if you need me..."

Bucky's eyes shuttered, the comforting sincerity in his friend's voice was like a soothing balm that eased his worry. His lip quivered and he fought to contain the rampant emotions inside of himself so as to not break down and worry his friend even more than he needed to be. "Y-Yeah…" He said, sniffling softly with a small smile stretched across his lips. "Yeah…Its really good to hear your voice, punk." He couldn't have been more truthful. "Look I uh, know I haven't been keeping in touch…M'really sorry. It…" A lump of grief lodged in his throat, and the Rocker Boy resisted the urge to reach across the island and pluck the half-empty bottle of liquid courage to see him through this.

Thankfully Steve didn't seem in a hurry to rush his response and Bucky was inwardly grateful for the chance to regain his composure. "It hasn't been easy lately…Its been a mess actually."

"Thought nothin' puts you on the ropes, Buck..." Steve returned in a chipper timbre, heartily, pressing the speaker icon on his mobile phone-awareness of traumatized-sporadic disability of PSTD insomnia that agonizingly plagued homebound veterans with horrific-cerebral barrages gruesomely spawned on the bullet-gored desert quakily hijacked his adamant resolve; Bucky didn't need a therapy session -he needed a brotherly promise of visceral hope. "Look, I know you're facin' something that hits deep, but you don't have to fight it alone...You gotta know I'm gonna do whatever it takes to help get you on your feet again."

"I wouldn't doubt it, Steve." The Rocker Boy was filled with a returned sense of pride and gratitude, never having doubted Steve's good heart. His friend had always been steadfast and caring ever since he was a skinny little kid thriving in the streets of Brooklyn. Being turned into the world's first supersoldier and a living legend hadn't changed him. Bucky only wished he could say the same for himself. Time had changed them both, and Bucky now wasn't sure he wanted to bring Steve into the storm he found himself in.

"How've you been man?" He asked, not wanting this conversation to turn grim so fast.

For the next half-hour the two engaged in a heartfelt recollection of their lives over the past year since they'd last seen each other. It didn't surprise Bucky to learn that Steve was considering the offer to join the superhero team known as the Avengers. Though his friend was a proud military soldier for the past decade since he'd come out of the ice and initially refused the offer to join the powerhouse group of colorful heroes, the Battle of New York had changed things. That was around the same time Bucky's military service was nearing its end and his new life as a musician was about to begin.

It seemed they were both destined to go separate ways, but they had strive to remain in contact. As the conversation delved into light-hearted topics such as any new movies they'd seen or places they'd visited, the conversation took an inevitable turn towards the present as Steve decided to confront the proverbial elephant in the room and asked him about Felicia.

"...She uh. She left a few months ago, man." Bucky said with some difficulty. Though a small part of him felt as if he were abandoned by the woman he loved, he knew that deep down it was him that had pushed her away. "I messed up." Steve's silence on the other end was telling enough that he was confused and wondered what might've happened. Bucky threaded a hand through his dark locks, sullen and tired as his thoughts drifted back towards the night his life and career changed forever. "Commandos and I were on a down-turn. It felt like we were about to crash and burn. Then these creepy suits showed up offering us a way back to the top. Felish…she warned me about em, but I was too damn stubborn. So she took a walk…And now…now I'm stuck in this mess I walked into."

The hitching rawness of Bucky's slurrish timber detachedly coupled with soul-damaging heartache as Steve attentively listened to choked-off sobs of gurgling anguish that shunted a desperate revelation through his veins; he wouldn't abandon his best friend. Mistily, Steve roved his azureous depths on his tarnished silver-plated lensatic compass that he glued a newspaper photograph of the lavishly voluptuous-delectable Peggy Carter-British dame who ignited heartbeats of resistance against HYDRA's strife."You gotta find her, Buck," he urged, sheepishly, doing his utmost not to be dragged into a heartsick vigil of stowed regret. "Don't keep waitin' for her to knock on your door...Knock on hers..."

Bucky only wished it were that simple. Truth be told it would be the simplest thing in the word to drive over to her flat in Midtown and knock on her door. But what if she didn't want to see him? What if he had eyes watching him outside his apartment that would follow him to her? What if…what if she moved on with someone else? His heart sunk into a pit at the mere thought of that. He'd heard rumors after all of the so-called Black Cat jumping off rooftops with the Devil of Hells Kitchen, and not to mention hanging out with the Friendly Wallcrawler in Queens. Felicia was a beautiful and charming woman who would have no difficulty finding someone interested. Bucky this time didn't refrain from reaching across his kitchen island and taking a long swig of good ol'Jack Daniels.

Once his nerves had settled, he let loose a shaky sigh. "What if she doesn't want to see me, man? What if I bring this whole mess crashing down on her?" Felicia had tried to reach out to him a week ago after news of the concert ran rampant. It was a text message just asking if he was okay. Once he responded that he was, there was nothing else. No follow-up, nothing. Clearly, she cared enough just to check and see if he was still breathing. But did she miss him?

The gravelled hesitancy of dispirited-sloshed Brooklyn Rocker's murmurous drawl was dismally fringed with heart-starved achiness that couldn't be warded off by the validity of his brotherly resolve, unabashedly, Steve braced the corded planes of his garbed back against the steel door of his fridge, clutching onto a glass bottle of cola. "It's really not my place to say this, Buck..." A half-hearted smirk quirked his plushier-chiselled lips, as he gulped down a frizzy rush. "Stow it down and ask her if she'll dance with ya again?" he prompted, steadily.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to-" A crinkling of static suddenly pierced his hearing causing Bucky to recoil with discomfort. "Argh! What the hell?" He tried to bring his phone back to his ear but could still hear the ringing affliction that smothered Steve's voice in the background. "Steve? Steve?! I can't hear what you're saying-" He set his phone down and switched it to speaker-mode. The grinding static phased in and out, distorting Steve's concerned voice in the background. "There's something wrong with the signal. I can't hear a word you're sayin' now." Bucky picked up his phone and tried moving throughout the room. Still nothing.

"Look, I might have to call you back-" The static cut off and he gazed at his phone-screen. 'No Signal Found'. Frowning with confusion he tried texting Steve instead. The message lagged in a state of limbo with no sign of getting through. "Perfect!" He grunted, pitching his phone onto the couch. He was sure Steve got the message but it didn't alleviate his stress as he returned to the kitchen island where a clutter of documents were spread out.

Gripping onto a crystal-diamond whiskey glass tensely, with his motorcycle boots propped against a table, Bucky flashed the cool steeliness of his grayish-aquamarine irises at the printed contract that was branded with the Kingpin's record seal on the bottom-a rhino head. Wilson Fisk was a heavyweight mogul-blood shark who devouringly slaked his unquenchable thirst for the 'big time' cash flow by leashing down musicians-expandable players for his own high-rigged gambit.

Easing back against the leather cushions, scowlingly Bucky lifted the paper up, his shaggier raven-chestnut tresses grungily askew over his temples as he registered the clunky strain of his dog-chained necklaces grew heavier against his warred reluctance. "Hell, M'not gonna let em' own me..." he drawled in a murmurous pitch, huskily, and crumbled the paper into a ball. He wouldn't become a damn smoke-show attraction who bled his fingers on the Gibson cords of the elite stink of the Black Rose Club. "The Howling Commandos are done playin' for Fisk."

Relief pooled through him at such an act of conviction. The weight of his decision seemed to evaporate with his internal decision as he stared at the crumbled ball on the floor. He would find another label to promote him, he didn't need Fisk and his connection of slugs that would strip away every bit of his soul in order to make money. As he made to lean back and relax against the cushions, he was startled by the thumping knocks against his door. He peered with mounting unease as he rose to answer it. It was late and he wasn't expecting any visitors. His bare feet padded across the floor, the dim lamps covering him in shadows as he looked into the peep-hole. Who he saw on the opposite end of his door not only confused him but caused his frustration to return ten-fold.

The viperish green eyes staring back at him through the peep-hole were unnerving. "Little late for a business meeting, Ms. Strange. Can you come back in the morning?"

Garbed in a purplish vampiresque long coat that aesthetically contrasted with her iron-straight whorls of sleekier platinum-blonde, leerily Clea flashed her virescent irises through his door, the hawkish contours of her seraphic features were alluringly glamorized with an intricate magenta eyeshadow as she haughtily grounded her intrusive poise at the breadth of his apartment's locked door. Reining down her vehemence against his tenacious spirit, repulsively, Clea was aware of his warranted reluctance again Fisk's contract-the Brooklyn rocker was evicting himself out the nightclub gigs." Playing the low deal, are we, Barnes..." she rasped, bluntly, grazed her lithe palm over the knob in clockwise tenor-as vaporous bluish-aster sigils of psionic energy telestically weaved into a geometric construct. "Double cross my intent and you will become chastened to the pitiful reality without the feel of your guitar..."

Bucky narrowed his eyes, a sinking feeling of danger entering his bones as he listened. "Yeah, I don't think I'm in the mood for this conversation." He grunted, feeling the weight he thought he had shed begin to return to him. He couldn't deal with this right now. He had to call Felicia, let her know that he didn't sell himself out, that he wasn't gonna let himself be a puppet for Fisk and his corporate scumbags. Clea would only just try to convince him otherwise, throwing more money and empty promises at him. His response to her earned him a sharpened glare through the peep-hole, reminding him that this was a woman who was used to getting what she wanted and had a very hard time taking "no" for an answer. "Look its late. Whatever this is about, I'll call you tomorrow morni-" A wave of agony exploded in front of him concussive force, sending both him and the blown remains of his front-door across his apartment.

A blinding snuffed reality out from him. He found himself back in Afghanistan, battered beneath a pile of debris after he and his squad were struck by an IED. The ringing in his ears wouldn't stop, his blinded vision making him nauseous with the ever throbbing increase of pain in his body. Groaning, he found himself back in his apartment, his swimming vision making out the shape of a tall violet shape sauntering into his apartment.

"Do you take me for a damn fool...!" A vitriolic cadence waspily seethed out of her as she crouched onto her dagger-edged stilettoes and snakily threaded her ashen fingers through his grungier raven tresses, gnashingly, Bucky gripped onto her fine-boned wrist on blinded accord, delivering strenuous pressure while she viciously yanked onto his GI dog tags. Against dampish heat, blearily, his grayish-aquamarine irises mirrored her demonic glower as he choked on heaves of breath-trying his utmost to push her off. "That contract would have given you the power to conduct a new reality, but you had to let your mortal heart bleed just like your impotent friends..." she hissed, lashingly, and splayed her lither fingers over the swollen flabbiness that chubbily sheathed over the ridges of his tauten-edged abdomen-the hunkish resiliency of a badass rockstar meltingly oozed into globby mass. "Now you will lament in your pathetic ballads, James Barnes...Come midnight you will become a wretched hog who fattens into the dregs of his misery..."

A paralytic onrush numbingly suffused his veins in sorcerous mania as runic glyphs of reddish astral hellishly striated over the floorboards, doomily converging into an eldritch incantation, possessively, Clea gripped onto the material of his black Jack Daniels shirt, evilly registering the bulkier contours of his graven-cut mid-drift had become doughily rubberized into blubbery-chunkier fleshiness that disturbingly jutted out his bulbous navel. Groaningly in throatier cadence, in mortified alarm, Bucky eased his neck off the floor on the vertiginous strain, his unkempt raven-chestnut tresses sweatily feathered over his shapely-bowed lips as he forcibly jackknifed the corded-heaviness of his denim-clad thighs, and bolstered himself off the floor.

A vomitous upheaval gruellingly barraged him into morphic throes of obesifying -piggish havoc. Gaspingly, Bucky emitted choke-off heaves, while the noxious spell cast irrevocably grappled him into a deadweight-porcine thrall. "Y-You won't get away with this..." he warned in garbled pitch, oinkishly, against feverish bleariness, he shifted his aqueous depths at the blown-off door: he needed to bolt.

"You can't run from this, James," Clea's voice taunted him as he staggered his way out the destroyed remains of his front door. "No one breaks a deal with me. One way or another, I will have what is due." She made no effort to follow him as he lumbered his way out of his apartment like a confused drunk. Bucky's breathing felt labored, the exertion of simply rising up off the floor proved as taxing as a morning run. The corridor outside his apartment seemed to spin around him causing a surge of nausea to afflict his senses. He stumbled on clumsy footing, barefoot and dressed only in a loose set of jeans and a black shirt. His clothes were meant to be comfortable wear around the house, loose and breathable, but for some reason they felt as tight as spandex.

Bucky threw open the street grate to the apartment-building elevator and hit the button for the lobby. The bright light above him flickered insistently, causing his already delicate senses to throb with increased stress. He fell back into the corner as the elevator carried him down. A cold sweat ravaged his once warm smooth skin. His dark locks were greasy and splayed across his temple in messy strands. What was happening to him? What the hell did Clea mean?

His increased sense of anxiety brought him to a feverish pitch as he pulled out his cellphone and hastily typed a text message, "i need to c u. comin over. Somethings happened." He sent the message to Felicia, hoping she was still awake to read it. As he climbed up to his feet and staggered out of the building, he drew numerous gazes from both neighbors and guests but he paid them no mind as he made it to the parking lot. His Harley Davidson waited for him, he climbed on and shuddered as the bike seemed to groan at the unaccustomed weight.

"Damn it," he grimaced at the feeling, the degradation of his mass slowly expanding. He had to get to Felicia. He needed to see her before it was too late. Revving his motorcycle, he took off into the New York City traffic.

The amberish scones of backlit streetlight alluringly burnished over silvery-whitish tresses sexily curtained over her delicate-boned shoulders, as she indifferently crouched against the iron rails of the fire escape; the cool suppleness of her kittenish-sirenic features rapted with vexatious tension as Felicia piratically fixed her tigerish-brandy irises on the vacant alleyway-the breeding ground of thuggish brutes-gangbangers who murderously prowled in the slum-nests, sniffing out for new prey.

The stink of vulturous creeps was infectiously potent in the backdrops of the Hell's Kitchen's underground 'close door' syndicates reigned over the dockyards. Being leashed on the razor's edge of knifepoint vengeance, Felicia weaponized her vixenish beauty, her svelte curvaceous form was exquisitely honed with foxier decadence as she naughtily played down the flirtatious card with grubby-handed jackals garbed in flashy tracksuits.

Clutching onto her mobile phone, grudgingly Felicia roved her dark gaze at the screen reading a text from her wisecracking street-kid informant. "Going out to play, Spider..." she murmured in a sultrier rasp, deviously, gnawing on the voluminous swell of her crimson underlip. "Don't have too much fun..."

The violent screeching of motorcycle tires could be heard from somewhere outside, setting the snow-haired kitten on alert after she had read Bucky's cryptic last text message. The thought of what was so urgent had compelled her to send a message back and find out, but as the minutes passed, she knew she didn't have to wait long as the floor outside her studio apartment shook with encroaching footsteps. They were heavier than Bucky's, and a bit clumsy in their swagger. The steps grew louder until they stopped outside of her apartment door.

Bucky knocked with loud thumping bangs of his clenched fist. The drive over to Midtown had been about as long to him as a march through the desert. He felt hot and fatigued, the weight in his body torturing him each step of the way as he longed to just lay down somewhere and rest. He glanced at his watch and could see the time read 10:56pm. He had little over an hour before Clea's threat would take complete hold over him. Only a couple of seconds passed before he knocked again, louder this time. "'Licia, please. Open up. Its me." It hurt to talk, as if his jaw refused to obey the signals sent to his muscles. His teeth ached and he suppressed the urge to bite down.

The murmurous gravelliness of his raspier timbre was huffily fringed with a snortier pitch, defensively Felicia sauntered with cautious paces to her apartment's door, readily, she was prepared for another run of his cantankerous-aggressive tantrums -if his recording studio near Gleason Gym housed wannabe newcomers -cheap-rate bands that maddeningly doused his untamed spirit. Clutching the doorknob, Felicia's kittenish nose twitchily scrunched against the odorous reek of hoggish sweat that alarmingly wafted in the hallway. "Urgh..." As she opened the wooden, offishly her brandy irises roved at his sweat-drenched shirt as she caught a freakish glimpse of his bottom incisors disturbingly jutting into porcine-tusks over the pouty stretch of his deforming lips-a definitely a damn Halloween prank with monster teeth. "T-This isn't funny, Barnes..." she hissed, offishly.

"I'm not laughin', darlin'," he said with a grunting heave as he pushed his way through her front door only to lose his balance and crash onto her floor. He distinctly heard a tearing noise and a brief surge of relief in his torso. His Jack Daniels shirt wouldn't survive what lay ahead it seemed. "Ngh! I-Mhm! This was my favourite shirt." The scent of Felicia's apartment, citrus with a hint of lavender was enough to calm his anxiety and made him long to wrap himself in the comfortable feeling of her couch. He pulled himself up to rest his back against the wall, and Felicia rushed to his side. Seeing the concern in her eyes, Bucky decided to shoot straight with her. "This isn't a joke, Licia. Y-You were right. Ngh!" He groaned as pain lurched through his stomach causing him to clutch it with swollen fingers. "You were right about those people…"

Against the oinkish tenor that gruntingly fringed with his whiskey-roughened drawl, Felicia staunched out her unwarranted irateness, knowing that his swellheaded mentality of being a powerhouse hotshot drove him rebelliously played down the fool card in Fisk's perfidious deck; vehemently, she glared at him with the dead-straight intensity of her brandy irises as she inadvertently sidestepped from the door with balletic graces. "It took you this long to figure that out..." she hissed, tetchily, as the 'shrappp' noise of his denim jeans rived against pudgier globbiness that fubsily sagged over his loose belt. Gurglingly, Bucky moaned against the burgeoning pressure that fatteningly roped him into piggish throes. "Y-You're bigger..."

Caressingly, Felicia graced kiss-soft pressure of her lithe fingers over the hard-edged ruggedness of his bristled cheek, the charcoal tracery of his knol eyeliner smokily contrasted the glacial sapphire of mesmeric aquamarine that hypnotically blazed with stormier heat underneath his darkened lashes; evocative awareness careened through her as she kneaded her palm over the broader solidity of his nape, registering the velvety silkiness of his raven tresses featherily brush over her polished fingers on addictive volition. She grounded him with intimate reverence, as the plushier lushness of her cherry-red lips stealingly ghosted a breathy rush dampish-savorous heat over his puckered-tusked lip with ardent promise.

In seconds, the blobbier rotundity of his paunchier mid-drift flabbily glozed underneath his shirt in blimpish fruition the athletic definition of his v-cut obliques plumpishly sagged over denim-he was ballooning up. "W-What the hell did those damn cheats do to you..." she gasped in tremorous pitch, flashing her dark irises at the puffier swollenness of his vein-threaded knuckles as his silver wolf-head ring explosively popped off his stubbier finger. "Bucky..."

The invigorating heat of her intimate touch was enough to soothe his anxiety and the unrest in his soul. He weakly returned the brushing stroke of his fleshier swelled lips over hers, finding it difficult to immerse himself in the loving exchange as his jaw continued to throb with transformative agony. He grimaced against the pain, steeling himself away from its coils. He needed to focus, he didn't have much time. "Y-You won't believe it," he grunted as she helped him to his feet. The dead-pan look he received from her was telling enough that whatever he had to say wouldn't be too far-fetched at this point. "Fisk wanted me under contract," he shuddered with a stealing gasp as a spike of discomfort lanced through his swelling abdomen.

He teetered forward against the kitchen island, leaning against its surface. "Detes were all wrong. I said no. S-So he sent his henchwoman after me. S-She must be some kind of witch, darlin'." The dumbfounded look on her face told him enough about what his story must like. "Mmph! Im-I'm serious. S-She's did this to me. S-said I got till midnight to-"

"Okay...We'll figure this out..." Felicia murmured in a huskier undertone, pressingly, bracing her lithe forearm against the corded planes of his garbed back, everything was rigged to become a damn powder-keg of calamitous mania, she wouldn't allow her hunky rocker-wolf to become an expendable pawn for a king-shark. Collectively, she flitted her brandy irises at the globbier roundness of his bloated-out abdomen, the smooth resiliency of his washboard ridges had droopingly fused into a lumpish mass that pudgily overlapped his furrier navel. Floor panic nakedly gleamed wide-blown in his aqueous depths as his shapely-bow lips gapingly outstretched against the mutative traction of his boar-like tusks-he was morphing into a hoggish beast. "J-Just don't panic..." Blindingly, she reached for the kitchen sink and twisted the handle to dampen a cloth with a cool gush of water. Harnessing gentled precision, she dabbed the soaked cloth onto this stuffier-jowelly cheek as he quakingly gripped onto the counter's steel edge, staunching down the vomitous urge that belchingly sloshed in his roundish girth.

"Y-You can't-" Bucky bit back the retort on the tip of his tongue. He hadn't come to Felicia's looking for a solution to his problem. The last thing he wanted was for her to stick her neck out for him and get caught in Fisk's crosshairs. But she was as stubborn as a mule and wouldn't be dissuaded from anything she set her mind to. The deepness of her brandy iris' lulled him into a sense of security that made him want to confide, to reveal all his inner turmoil and regrets he held for the missteps he'd taken in their relationship over the years. But as he opened his mouth to speak his thoughts they were suddenly dash as an empowering feeling too control of him from head-to-toe. It started in his stomach like a spark being lit and it spread like wildfire.

Hunger.

"Ooh…" He held his stomach, brow furrowed as he fell into a trance-like state. He said nothing to Felicia as he mindlessly wandered to her fridge and threw open the door. Nothing but healthy food, vegetables and salads. He slammed the door and opened the freezer, grabbing the first thing that looked edible which was a bag of frozen tater-tots. Without further thought, he opened the bag and scarfed down the frozen tatters like they were a bag of chips, all the while Felicia watched him.

The rubbery grunts disturbingly resonated as he tactlessly munched on the potato balls without a grip of restraint, piggish instincts amplified into a gluttonous stupor as his misshaped hand dove into the freezer shelves, pulling out an unopened tub of Rocky-Road ice cream, snortily, Bucky popped the lid off and hungrily plowed his tusked-lips into the cool layers of vanilla and chocolate, unaware that his ears floppily lengthened under his grungier raven tresses as he messily slobbered like a debauched hog- blubbo.

Gripping onto his shirt, jerkily, Felicia ushered him away from the fridge, as the bulging swollenness of his tubbier -cushy girth inflatingly shoved her against the counter on fattish accord. "Ooph..." she gritted, tersely, and braced her palms over the blimpish flabbiness as his Jack Daniels shirt tatteredly clung to his bulbous girth."Y-You better drop that now...Porky!"

Lost in a bout of intense hunger, Bucky released an aggressive shout that transitioned into a piggish oink as he fell to the floor, knocking down a trash-bin. The scent of meat and half-eaten fruit smothered caused his mouth to salivate as he dipped his nose to the floor and sniffed, crawling on all fours towards the trash and siphoning through it. A voice at the back of his mind screamed at him to stop. It was as loud and desperate as Felicia's who stood over him in mounting horror as he scarfed on a chewed apple, his long dark longs now messy with bits of fruit, some strands even caught in his mouth as he feasted. His pulse beat wildly in his ears, the haze of reality seeming to grow even more clouded. He could feel hands on his shoulders trying to pull him away. Wrestling him as his bulging mass continued to expand and in some places, began to sprout fur. "H-Hungreeeeee," he said with a deep squealing voice.

The rancidity of putrid trash stinkily enwreathed Felicia; distressingly she watched him slobbily gulp down remnants of saucy pasta with hoggish -insatiable abandon, uncontrollably, Bucky dragged the heavier sagginess of his jowly chin over the bilous heap of spoiled fruit in a gruntier tenor. Every hard-edged contour of his roguishly hunkier features chubbily dissolved into blubbery layers of hoggish flab in morphic succession. Gapingly, his tusked-lips stretched as he vented out a throat-belching grunt. "...Hrgh...Grionk..."

Shakily, Felicia eased her daintier palm over her tremorous lips, trying her damnest to rein a visage of control at the grotesque-bestial onslaught that suffocatingly robbed her breath. "S-Stop acting like a damn pig...!" Felicia railed out against heart-stopping alarm, tearily, gazing at the masculine sculpt of his Romanian nose fleshily bubble into a hideous visage of the elongated length as his swelled lips slimily fused into a wedged -porcine snout. Against skull-cleaving agony that excruciatingly purged his warring resistance, the broad contours of his thickened nape globbishly bulged overlapping flab as his Gothicsque metal chains alarmingly snapped and ricocheted off the fridge door as he emitted breathless oinks. "Argh..."

The swelling mass of his body was like a scene from a horror movie. Grotesque and uncontrollable in its shifting. Every muscle tore and reshaped, every inch of flesh began to grow patches of dark fur. His thrashing form convulsed with loud squealing cries that were as nerve-wracking as nails on a chalkboard. Bucky's thoughts were a mess of images that synchronized with all the sensations firing off in his body. He felt pain, hopelessness, anger, fear and most of all, resignation. Was this how he was going to die? Would there be nothing left of him once he changed?

"F-F-Feleeeeeeeeecia," a shrilling squeal ripped from his mouth. His full lips had melded into a porky snout sealed tight by the protrusion of sharp tusks jutted from his jaws. His blue eyes were impossibly wide as he lurched up, spine arched, hands splayed across the floor. His digits were gone leaving only the foreboding shape of piggish hooves. The force of his spasm brought him lurching face to the floor, his limbs snapping like a voodoo doll manipulated by an invisible force. Felicia could only look on in horror, tears brewing in her depths as his suffering unfolded uncontrollably before her. Bucky still felt conscious, like he was chained to a raft and being carried away by the stormy tide, each wave of pain threatening to drown him in agony. He felt hot, smothered and larger than life. As his mass expanded, his size diminished from that of an average human into something more stocky. He felt smaller, like the world around him had grown as he stood still. Eyes closed tight, and his words failed him as they became sealed in a choking vice. Through the dressing mirror setup on Felicia's bathroom door, he could see the change-the horror of his predicament unfolding. There wasn't a man staring back at him anymore. Only the alarming spectacle of a tattered pig. "N-Nooooo!" He wasn't a man anymore. Clea had taken that from him.

"B-Bucky..." A breathless mewl shiveringly rasped from her voluminous lips as she collapsed onto her leather-clad knees in mortified tenor, supressingly, with a jacked-off measure of restraint, Felicia gazed at the droopiness of his pudgier jowls that blobbily overlapped his stockier neck while his Jack Daniels shirt clung tatteredly over the barrel-size rotundity of his paunchier girth-she wouldn't become leashed into a stalemate of nightmarish lucidity. The hunky-roguish sexiness of her Rocker-Wolf-the best damn guitarist of Brooklyn had morphically vanished into a fattish blob- piggish collateral of one of Fisk's double-dealing contracts.

The new player-hag-Clea-was a smokescreen conjurer of occultic -morbid witchery; she nastily morphed Bucky into an obese 'rocker hog' to slake her off-the-rails malevolence. Gruntingly, Bucky eased up his tusked snout against her delicate wrist, the snotty moistness had droolingly smeared over her pearlescent skin, oinkily, he was coaxing her to mirror his beadier grayish-aquamarine irises as the shagginess of his raven tresses were grungily askew over his floppier ears-definitely a suave chubb-ball. "Y-You need to stay with me, Barnes..."

The Rocker Pig gave no clear response, no indication of his mood, though Felicia wasn't even certain if he was capable. The hyper-tension lingered and everything felt so quiet. Bucky's world felt submerged and disconnected, he longed to wake up and make himself believe this was one long nightmare. The sensations pouring through him were heavy, nauseating. He wanted to bury his face and smother away all sense of cohesion as he indulged into primal indulgences. Hunger remained, but so did the bitter aftertaste of his calamity. The waft of Felicia's citrus perfume kept him centered, the warmth of her touch calmed the storm of panic that had been building inside of him. He avoided her gaze, too ashamed and self-conscious. He couldn't bare to see the pity in her beautiful eyes, nor the heartbreak. He was nothing but a bum, a washed-up rocker-boy who had sold himself to get another chance at fame only to end up less than what he was. How could she love him now? He couldn't speak, he wouldn't even try. Wobbling on unsteady hooves, he felt the world around him spin and his vision swam into a blur. Exhaustion had taken hold and he couldn't fight it back. "F-Felicia...Mm, sorry." And then he collapsed, diving head-on into the sweet darkness of slumber.

Against a guttural moan that oinkishly resonated up his flabbier throat, moaningly, Bucky registered the globby mass of his bulbous rotundity squishily melding over the leather cushion. Easing the sagginess of his tusked-jowelly snout on groggier accord, twitchily, he caught the ambrosial-headier scent of a distractive intoxicant-the fragrancy of cherry-vanilla that coaxed him out of his slumberous thrall. Blearily, he flitted his beadier aqueous irises underneath his grungy-raven tresses as the clunky heaviness of his dog-chain was akin to a vice-grip over the flabbier pudge of his thickened neck. "Mpmh...Definitely smell good darlin'..." he quipped in a snorty breath, throatily, and bloatedly shifting the lumpish paunchiness of his droopier girth as his corkscrew tail wiggily rapt against his furrier backside. "S'kinda had a weird dream that I was a fat -"

Reality hit him like a brick to the face as his groggy gaze swept over the sight of stubby hooves below his chin where there should've been a fine set of hands. Where were his hands?! "Oh no…" The Rocker Boy's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, the foul taste of expired fruit was at the back of his tongue bringing to life harrowing memories of his "dream". "No-no-no no!" He made to rise up from his seat only to stumble clumsily as if his joints were fastened by a rope. He toppled and rolled like a bowling ball off the couch, a raucous of piggish oinks and distressed squeals tore from his snout. "It wasn't a dream!" He struggled and stomped his hooves, feeling the smooth tiles of Felicia's expensive floor deny him purchase in his attempt to stand up. Anger and frustration clouded his vision as he threw his weight against the couch. "G-Gotta get out of this… I gotta-I gotta."

"It's going to be okay, Bucky..." A sultrier undertone purringly had arrested his rocketed distress, impassively, Felicia was crouched down near the balcony door with balletic ease, as the black neoprene of her stealth garb contrasted against the orangish sconces of the streetlight; the whitish fringe of her voluptuous decolletage emphasized her feline-like visage as her autumn-brandy irises. Unwavering she glanced at the obese potbellied rocker-hog's stubbier hooves lumberingly clanking on her marble flooring. as she brandished up her cool poise, while he scathingly emitted out huffier-nasally grunts, jutting up his tusked snout on aggressive tenor as the rubbery pudge of his swelled-out girth flabbily jiggled with his sluggish wobbling. "I-I need you to stay here," she urged, breathily, knowing his rampageous -hoggish tantrum would become destructively hurricanic. "I wouldn't be long..."

Distress didn't begin to describe Bucky's feeling as he saw Felicia ready to pounce away on one of her nightly thrills. Fear paralyzed him in his crippled state where he could do nothing but lay down and stuff his face. He knew her well enough to see the conviction in her brandy orbs that promised swift action in the most deadly of instances. "Don't do anything stupid, Felicia. Please!" The hog grunted as he trotted towards her, brushing the tip of his snout against her leg. Her scent of lavender caressed him like a warm blanket that he wanted to wrap himself in. But he maintained his eye-contact with her, searchingly begging her not to put herself in the crossfire for him. "These people are dangerous. Fisk-Clea...I'm not worth THIS happening to you or worse."

Outside, klaxon sirens eerily resonated against the infectious mayhem of anarchic criminality, under table scores -vendettas were murderously settled on blackout sites in Hells Kitchen. A scuzzball breeding ground where the Kingpin was the imperious ringleader. High-priced decks needed to be swiped off with the claws of the Black Cat-she wanted to deliver a hell-storm reckoning to the Wilson Fisk-the syndicated alliances of pay-off contracts had escalated into a powder-keg; abducted children were being trafficked to Black Market arcades-disposable strays.

Vexatiously, Felicia splayed her gloved palm, lithely over the humped pudge of his shaggier back, gazing into the silvery-aquamarine irises that beadily implored her to stay. "Fisk owes me everything..." she gnashed her teeth, hissingly, clutching onto his raven tresses, as she adjusted a pair of Ray Band aviator sunglasses over his floppier ears. "I-I need to make sure he repays in full..."

Bucky was stricken by her soft caress, but the determination in her voice didn't ease the storm of anxiety that was covering him. Remarkably, he felt more like himself as she put the shades on him. A mask of familiarity that would keep him grounded to his true-self. "Darlin', you can't go out there alone." He was far from the soldier he used to be. Even as a hard-rocker, he still gun-trained on weekends to keep his skills sharp knowing they would be useful in the chaotic world. He wouldn't have hesitated to join his kitten out there knocking in a few skulls while serenading one of his newest singles. He was a soldier and a musician, but now he was just a sad pathetic hog who could barely wobble on his hooves. He couldn't stop her from going after Fisk. He could only entreat her. "Isn't there anyone you can trust to watch your back out there?"

The huskier smokiness of his whiskey-roughen drawl gruntingly strummed through her with unbidden anguish, nakedly Felicia delivered a kiss-soft caress of her lithe fingers over the jowelly underside of his puckered snout, as Bucky chuffily snorted in warbled pitch, nudging his pudgier head rubberily against her shapely leather-clad thigh with tactile precision of amorous reverence. Evicting the knifepoint betrayal of her riotous heartbeat, Felicia arched up his designer sunglasses, tearily, mirroring the cool grayish-aquamarine of his beadier depths-the pulse-arresting sweetness that was roguishly alight, despite the overlapping globbiness of his puffier cheeks. With Murdock being stitched up after profusely bleeding out in a slummy dumpster; she did have one exception for practical backup-a Midtown High teenager who had a rebellious -spirited knack for puckishly show-offing his sky-diving acrobatics within the environs of Queens. "Don't worry about me...I have someone who knows who plays the heights..."

Realization sunk in and Bucky knew there was only one person who could fit that description. The Rocker Pig's ears visibly raised and his eyes widened behind the aviator shades, dread crawling beneath his furry skin. "Oh no, you didn't?"

"Somehow call for a pizza?" A shape swung towards the fire-escape from out of nowhere, the pig released a bewildered grunt as it landed next to Felicia with all the grace of a swan flapping down from the trees but with the posture of an arachnid creeper. Fitting as his athletic form was covered in a red and blue unitard etched with spider-webs in black. The Spider-Man removed his mask and looked at the vixenish feline next to him with a dopey smile.

"Hey Felish! Do I have good time? Had to deliver a few jumbo cheeses I'll tell you they may look and smell as good as they are but trying carrying a dozen of them on your back through midtown traffic i tell ya if you're not being chased by a pack of hungry kids its the wild dogs in the alleys which speaking of which you should really keep a look out for that big bulldog down below he looked ready to eat even me as I made my way up-"

"This is just perfect," the hog grumbled as the youth blabbered on without pause. "Is he always like this?"

Hearing the Rocker hog's grumblier snorts, unnervingly, Felicia glanced at the jovial web-slinger's umkempt auburn tresses sweatily askew over his boyish features as he waggishly quirked his shapely lips into an impish smirk, while clutching his Spidey mask. "Yeah...Pretty much..." Felicia quipped against tartish breaths, snarkily, as Peter speedily hopped off the fire escape with spider-like graces; his brownish-hazel irises peppily steered onto the blimpish-potbellied hog who staunchily gave him a sourish pucker of his wedge-out snout. "You'll be nice with little Spider..." she purred, devaintly, kneading her palm over Bucky's droopier underbelly. "Right, big boy..."

Bucky felt an impulsive need to roll his eyes. "Kitten…" He began, wishing for anything other than to be condemned to a long night of being babysat by the chattering spider. Especially since the kid didn't have a "mute" button. Before he could continue, the arch of her Felicia's eyebrow was a stern challenge to caused him to bite his tongue. He would've preferred she take the teenager with her if she was looking to take on Fisk, but knew that she had a unique way of doing things in the field that the morally righteous wall-crawler wouldn't agree with. "Fine!" Bucky grumbled, turning on his hooves and wobbling back towards the couch.

A now unmasked Peter Parker stepped back into the apartment after bringing in with him a jumbo box of pizza he'd carried with him. The teen for once appeared uncertain as he watched Felicia step out. "Okay, look, I know you often tell me the less I know the better, but is there something about him I should know? I mean do I just let him munch of whatever he wants? What if he has to go and…do his pig business? I mean, should I take him outside?"

Emitting a full-throated grunt, huffily, Bucky jutted up his tusked-snout on derisive tenor, puncturing the leathered cushion with his cloven hooves as the sunglasses loosely trekked off his floppier ears, revealing the knifing gleam of voltaic steeliness that razored in his beadier aqueous depths. The plumpish mass of his barrel-shaped girth blobbily dragged over the armrest like sludge, raggedly, the Rocker boar hunkered on his cloven- hooves with tactless poise, doing his utmost to rein back the bestial-piggish ferocity that electrified through the rotundness of his bulgy form, as he deathily glared at the spider underling as if he was face-bombing selfies with a henpecking fan. Peter Parker was a chirpy-hotshot teenager who constantly got himself tangled on the ropes because of a virtuous-callback promise of being a spandex defender. "This is gonna be one heckuva a night..." Bucky drawled in a snortier pitch, naughtily, quirking his puckered mouth into a toothier-rascally smirk. "Yeah...Can't make it -that- easy for the kid..."

"I didn't order take-out but i'm not saying "no" to free pizza. Sit down, kid. Crack that pie open," Bucky grunted a tad impatiently. The wafting scent of cheese, peppers, sausage and jalapenos set his mouth drooling with an insatiable hunger. After Felicia stepped out into the night, leaving him alone with the young crime-fighter, the Rocker Pig would take any distraction that prevented him from worrying. Pigging out and stuffing his face seemed like a good way to start.

Keeping herself guardedly impassive in the wake of spiderling's peppy curiosity, Felicia glanced at the paunchy-girthed hog who moodily slumped against the cushions with indifferent traction; sconces of lamplight burnished over the bristly shagginess of his cinder-chestnut fur as Bucky snottily nudged his moist snout over a satin pillow, leaving a dampish imprint for her to cleanse in the washer when she returned. Inadvertently, Felicia gritted her teeth against an upheaval of teeming disgust as his corkscrew tail wiggily rapted against his globbier backside, while the vexatious grunting chuffily emitted out of the Rocker hog. "Make sure porky here only downs a few slices..." she advised, techily, gesturing a lithe hand at the pizza boxes. "Nothing else, Spider..."

Against a measure of tactful caution, unblinkingly Peter gazed at rapt his stauncher indignance scrunch over the jowelly sagginess of the pot-bellied hog's furrier snout as Bucky clumsily eased onto his blobbish girth making boorish attempt to 'solider-crawl' over the cushions as he piggishly thrust his snout over cardboard while the jutted curve of his tusks flipped open a box, revealing the cheesier gooeyness that appetizingly melted over a heap of coin-sized pepperonis and banana-jalapenos. "Whoah...Hey...Excuse me, Mister Rocker Pig," he urged, timorously, as his wrist readily flexed to grudgingly deter the rotund boar's pizza-gorging hunger with a sticky assault of his webbing. "I'm not really sure those peppers will agree with you..."

Huffing out a derisive snort, glaringly, Bucky flashed the point-blank intensity of his beadier aquamarine depths at his dutiful babysitter who gave him an unwavering stare-down when his pudgier snout droolingly hovered over stone-baked crust at the vexatious moment he blindly snagged an irresistible piece with his tusked-mouth. "Mmph...I can handle the heat, kid..." he grumbled, slobbily chewing on his saucy piece with aggressive gulps as cheese globbed over his stumpier fore-hooves-he was definitely relishing in his gluttonous-hoggish stupor with careless abandon. "Gonna need you to swing out and buy s'more, 'cause M' eatin' all night..."

"Yeaaah… I'm not sure if-" Peter cast a worrisome glance towards the fire-escape but Felicia had already stepped out, but not before sending him an coquettish smirk that all but screamed "he's your problem now, Spidey." The teen shrugged, knowing he could very well be in for a long night of swinging between Felicia's building and the nearby 7-Eleven. Did he even have enough cash to feed a pig all night? Should he be allowed to eat pepperoni? Wasn't pepperoni made from pigs? Wait-were pigs cannibals?! His wandering mind nearly allowed the Rocker Pig to seize the advantage and start digging into the edge of the pizza, tucking a full slice into his tusked mouth in one bite!

Peter's eyes widened as he immediately swallowed it down with a gulp before moving onto the next slice. "Whoa there, Felicia said only four slices!"

Reactively, Bucky's floppier ear twitched at the dumbstruck teenager's sheepish cadence, while his wedge-out snout pudgily dove into the globby cheese, while he indignantly munched on a doughier crust akin to an obese-brattish slob in euphoric throes as suffusive hunger avidly notched in rampant tenfold. Easing up his plumpish furrier head, Bucky gulped down a flavorous mushroom, aware of the spiderling's telltale repulsion. "N-Not happenin'..." he snorted, oinkily, marinara sauce drippily trekked over his blobbier jowls, smearing the cushions while his tusked- mouth gapingly stretched in listless variance to rabidly consume every remnant of pizza within the box. He savoured the ballooning pressure tubbily swelling out the droopy rotundity of his barrel-sized girth- the fattish paunchiness of his globous mass fusing into the cushions with every sloppier mouthful. "Gotta have more..."

'Should've asked Felicia for a pig-sitter fee,' Peter thought as he watched the horror show of the jumbo large get caked and savagely ravished. All that gooey cheese was caked to the pig's snout in messy strings that made his webbing look less hazardous. And was that a pepperoni sticking out of his nostril?! Peter nearly gagged. "Okay, I'm officially never eating pizza again." And he thought Ned was a messy eater! Mercifully the pig seemed to have grown tired of massacring what little remained of the dish and began to dig into the cushions in search of something else to gorge down. "Whoa! Hey wait!" Peter leapt out of his seat as the pig jumped and trotted his way towards the food pantry closet in Felicia's kitchen.

Instinctively, Peter fired his webbing at the pig's back. "Can't let you do it, Pumba," he said with a determined face as if staring down a mugger ready to high-tail it with a snatched purse.

Against his rampageous momentum of untrammelled hunger, stoppingly, the Rocker hog's bolstered the sagginess of his blimped-out girth as the sticky webbing gummily melded over his bushier humped back. Thrashing his bulgy mass against the couch, his designer sunglasses loosely glided over his furrier elongated snout that puckered into a taut grimace; in a defensive second, antsily, Peter mirrored grayish-sapphire irises that beadily gleamed with frostier intensity under shaggier raven tresses while nasally snorts aggressively vented out of the potbellied boar. "W-What did you just call me, kid...?" he grunted with a snobbish tenor, becoming attuned with his piggish appetite exponentially crescendoing through his massively obese form. As he hammer-stomped a forehoof, gnashingly, Bucky wobbled near a cupboard, scraping the hinged door with his jutted tusks, until the door whooshed open, revealing a stashed package of Jet-Puffed marshmallows, the gelatin sugariness had intoxicatingly beckoned for him to destructively rip the plastic. "Y'know, if you had one helluva makeover like me, you'd be stuffin' your damn face too..."

Surprised at the pig's show of strength that was beyond ordinary, Peter hesitated to apply greater pressure with his web-strings, not wanting to hurt the porky creature. "I'd know when to staaaaahp!" Peter was suddenly yanked across the room like a ball on a string, crashing to the floor. The weight of his mass crashed down on the floor knocking over a decorative vase from a table. The breaking of ceramic caused him to wince even as his body was dragged by the pig. "Felicia's not gonna be happy about that. Bad piggy!" He released his web-shooter and resolved to go for the direct approach. "You've had enough snacks for one night." He attempted to seal off the pig's attempt at escape but Bucky used his height advantage of run beneath the table and chairs. Peter hopped and crawled, trying in vain not to ruin Felicia's apartment.

"Got ya!" The teen pounced and wrapped around the massive hog who struggled to wrestle out of his hold. "Don't make this-ngh- worse!"

The web-slinger's headlock assault over his blubbery rotundity arrested his explosive momentum, thrashingly, the Rocker hog bashed his protrusive girth into the cupboard on body-check accord of his porcine ferocity, making his defensive attempt to knock off his aggravating sitter. "Grah...Off!" Bucky seethed out a high-pitch squeal, demandingly, while gluey webbing stickily globbed between his curvier tusks as Peter blindingly gripped onto his shaggier thatch. "M'not gonna ask again..."

"Ngh! Calm down, can't we-gaah-talk about this?!" Wrestling the pig was like riding a tilt-o-whirl at Coney Island, he was bound to lose his lunch unless things slowed down. Amidst their struggle and Peter's attempt at restraining the pig without hurting him was proving more difficult than he could've imagined. A knife-digging pressure into his forearm caused pain to lance throughout his body, making him realize he'd pushed down on the pig's sharp tusk. "YAAOOWW!" Peter released his hold, and like an true escaped animal, the pig made to dash across the room. "That's it!" Firing off his web-shooter, he caught the pig around his hind-hooved, tripping him down on the floor. The force of the fall caused the apartment floor to shake. A mounted mirror fell off a night-stand and landed across from the struggling pig who was met face-to-face with his animalistic visage.

"Wha...That can't be me..." Bucky hitched out, sulkily, the full-blown confusion of his beadier irises gazed into the porcine deformity of his ensorcelled -roundish form as heart-plummeting reality damningly struck him with the sledgehammering force that was akin to being catatonically shell-shocked into paralytic dregs; he was a repulsively obese hog- a blimpish tub of piggish flab with cloven hooves that were stubbily overlapped with fleshier pudge. Against a bone-vicing grip of contractive heartache, voicelessly, Bucky angled up his puckered snout on mouth-gaping strain, raven tresses unkemptily clung to his floppy ears as he stuntedly wobbled back on mortified alarm. "No...I don't wanna be this...Damnit!"

As suddenly as this chaotic tug-of-war had begun, it simmered down to a screeching halt the moment his piggish charge caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Peter kept a hold on his web-line, wary but also worried as he listened to the pig visibly struggle with himself, falling into a fit of anguish. So much about this situation still confused the wall-crawler. Felicia had been shy on details, not even going as far as to tell him who the pig was or what his name is. Sympathy swelled inside of him as he released the web-line. "Hey…it's gonna be okay. Look no harm done," Peter grimaced as he lifted a broken chair before promptly setting it back down. Bad example. "Felicia will figure this out for you. You'll see-"

"S'just leave me alone..." Bucky rasped in oinkish pitch, morosely, pivoting on his stubbier hooves with clumsier-downtrodden traction, his girthier underbelly draggingly sagged against the floor, restrainedly, he pinched his beadier eyes shut against soul-crushing heartache. Warding off a modicum of stemmed disgust, broodily, he plodded a breadth closer to Felicia's exquisite mattress, sniffily his pudgier snout bonked over the half-draped comforter as wafts of smokier cherry and vanilla headily pacified his jacked-up distress. Every nectareous -addictive whiff of her decadent scent had tantalizingly infused within the cashmere satin blood-poundingly lulled him onto a white-hot fringe of sensuous lucidity-stoking up his fevered arousal. Bracing the lumpish bulginess of his mass against the mattress frame, Bucky eased up his wonkier hooves, raggedly, gripping onto the blanket with his tusked-teeth as he scooched onto the mattress with heftier momentum. "I-I gotta sleep this off..." he groaned out, snortily, trudging over blankets until he exhaustingly plonked against the pillows, aware of Peter's brownish-hazel depths that sheepishly fixed onto him with a semblance of heart-driven amiability. "Nothin' is gonna help, kid..."

Peter said nothing at first. Despite his desire to reassure the downtrodden pig with words of comfort, he didn't know if things would turn out all right. Life could be very cruel to those undeserving of its wrath. He himself had lived through some of the darkest moments of his young life, losing not just his Aunt May and the girl he loved MJ, but also his whole identity when he decided to be selfish. But he didn't give up hope, and somewhere along, he was able to become friends with Ned again who didn't know they had met through high-school. He regained a part of his old life.

"Don't give up," was the wall-crawler's encouraging response, uttered softly into the room where it was met with silence. "There's always a way, you just don't give up." The pig made no rebuke and it was enough for the teen to hope that his words were taken to heart. Releasing a sigh, Peter moved back into the kitchen to clean up the mess they'd made.

He could only hope that his words would prove true and Felicia was would figure something out.

Against the mistier darkness that gloomily enwreathed over the shoddy vicinities of Hell's Kitchen, a white-noise frequency demonically amplified in a murderous wake of Eldritch conjury; heartbeats screamingly flatlined as klaxon sirens deafened throughout main streets ushering a cacophonous symphony of soul-exorcising mayhem. He was perceptually attuned to every bone-racking pulse of traumatized victims. They were on the cataclysmic presupus of a zombified horror-show.

Keeping himself impassively grounded on a cement ledge, bracingly, Matthew readied his combative vigil, gripping onto his horned-cowl with an edgier flex of his gloved hands as he registered the October frigidness that gustily rapt over his darkish-chestnut tresses. The stillness of his dilated pupils caught the reddish sconces of the EMS vehicles speeding below him. "What's happening to my city..." he murmured in a whispery undertone, raspily, detecting that Wilson Fisk was deceptively orchestrating another homicidal terror-storm of his insatiable vengeance.

But there was more to it than that now, he imagined-no-he could feel it. Throughout his life living in the grisly borough, he could practically feel everything just as well as he could hear it. Every brick, every pipe and every beam just as much as the people who flocked the streets. Crime resonated everywhere as well as acts of kindness. Since becoming the Daredevil, Matt had become more attuned to streets, to the crime that riddled every dark crevice where scum preyed upon the weak. But so much had changed in the past few years. The dark ugliness of the outside world had come to ravage his city. Only it wasn't the mob or even aliens from outer space, but magic.

Actual dark magic.

Not for the first time, Matt longed for the days where the worst act of villainy he had to worry about was a thug with a gun, or a yakuza ninja wielding a katana. He knew in the grand scheme of things he was a small duck in what was becoming a very big pond. It was up to him to learn to swaddle through all the bigger ducks that were coming his way. Thankfully he wasn't alone tonight. "You're getting better at sneaking up on me." He acknowledged towards the presence that landed in his midst. "I could sense you only a building away now in fact." The feline had vaulted onto the chimney above him, silent as a shadow but the allure of natural fragrance touched his senses almost immediately.

"Still trying to impress me, Murdock..." The huskier velvetiness of Felicia's melodious undertone banteringly played off rapid-fire snark as she kept herself steathily crouched on her shapelier neoprene-clad hunches; the autumn fieriness of her brandy irises naughtily gleamed against the sleekier borders of her ebony domino, evident to a deviant smirk quirking over the burgundy glossiness of her pillowy-bow lips. Unnervingly, Matthew gripped onto his tactful restraint of bridling down his jaunty rebuff as he unerringly poised to swan-dive off the rooftop-they needed to staunch the reservoirs of Fisk's underground pipeline to steer him out into the crosshairs of their warranted vengeance before his parasitic reign escalated. The convenience of viscerous trust anchored her to a staked-down promise that she would reverse the porcine witchery that had fatteningly morphed her Rocker Wolf into a blobby chubb-ball. "There's been noise at the east docks..." she murmured, tersely with an edge of solemnity, while glancing at his shapely-chiselled lips naughtily quirk as her whitish-silvery whorls vixenishly draped over her poised shoulders. "Ready to crash a party..."

"Depends on whose party it is," Matt added with a touch of wariness to his voice. The rush of impending danger moved through his veins setting his mind into focus. The cacophony of sounds swirled all around him, giving him a mental blue-print of the docks and the areas surrounding it. The Daredevil had come to these docks several times over the past years to hunt down the racketeers who preyed upon the innocents, and using them to track leads towards the bigger fish. While his senses alerted him to the dozen men roaming about the docks, there was something odd to their formations.

"I can count at least a dozen men, lightly armed." He surprised, craning his head to listen in on their banter. "They don't seem especially on edge over what it is they're doing down there." There were different ways at reading people, how to tell their character-whether they were being truthful or lying. Criminals were always hyped in, either in fear or excitement over their exploits, especially the traffickers he'd dealt with in the past who used the docks to ship illegal cargo. But these men…they weren't nervous, or calm.

They seemed agitated…And was that a pig making noise? "Strange…" He muttered, drawing a sharp look from Felicia.

Hearing the oinksh clamour distressingly ratcheted within the steel containers dredged up heart-vicing panic as Felicia riskily fixed her dark-brandy irises at the obstructive convoy of diesel-belching trucks shadily unloading eroded crates of military-graded weaponry -high calibre trade-off payment that unmistakably Fisk had conducted with an underground syndicate installation to extract the detained hogs-blimpish victims of Hell's Kitchen that were morphically deformed into piggish vessels by a sorcerous denizen of Eldritch witchery.

Grittily, she dragged out a breathy hiss, knowing that the 'big guy' was paying off the scummy NYPD patrol officers for clearance to slimily utilize the east docks for a black-out zone of his international-criminalized trafficking. "Look, you'll get your answers down there..." she rasped, tartishly, retracting her metallic claws that readily pierced through the leather slits of her tactical gloves as she poised in mid-crouch to acrobatically propel off the ledge, and incredulously gazed at her adamant partner.

Tilting his cowled head, unflinchingly Matthew listened to guttural misery clashingly emitting out of the porky captives in throat-railing unison. For years, he balanced on the weighing scales of justice; allowing himself to heartbreakingly endure the interminable crusade of being a rogue-blinded-vigilante, despite that he grisly bled out his mortal vices and harboured the mantle of warrior-honed vigilance. Every time he wore the demonic cowl. his grappled with his own vindication-morality hinged on a pendulum of bone-deep restraint. He needed to be a Defender of the Kitchen again. "Shall we have some midnight fun, Horn-Boy?"

"Let's go," Daredevil descended from his perch with unnatural grace and silence, like a leaf in the wind. His sight-less gaze was focused in the increasing activity while being fully attuned to their surroundings. A wisp of wind at his back told him his partner was following at a relative pace, sticking to the shadows as they edged their way towards the glow of stationary lights illuminating the area. The shuffle and bustle of high-tech weapons crates brought an air of normalcy to this situation that was oddly reassuring in its familiarity. But the vigilante didn't discount the oddity of the cargo of live-stock being hauled off into cages to be loaded up on a shipping vessel. Were it not for the skimmed explanation Felicia had given to him a few hours ago about what happened to her boyfriend, he would have thought this whole situation to be confounding.

'Magic exists,' he reminded himself in his moment of doubt. If they could connect these men to Fisk and unravel the string of corruption, they could find just what was at stake and who was truly behind it all. "Stay sharp," he said to Felicia as a couple of armed sentries moved into view. The two vigilantes crept behind a cargo container and edged their way towards, silent as shadow and unseen. Standing behind the two gunmen, armed with assault rifles, they share a glance and nod. Together they pounce and seize the gunmen from behind, hands their neck and trigger fingers. The sentries struggled and grunted, one trying to wrestle himself free while the other attempted to reach for his radio.

Seconds later, Daredevil and Black Cat reemerge, leaving the unconscious men where they hid them. They had only a few minutes to act, maybe less if someone tried to contact the men on their walkies. Daredevil's senses were fixated on the amount of guards in their way, but Black Cat's eyes were focused on the task ahead, and the container being loaded up near the boarding ramp.

As the whitish sconces of automated searchlights gleamingly burnished over the eroded-decoy container, the petrified hogs deafeningly squealed in bone-racking alarm, grudgingly with a cool variance of her balletic evades, Felicia advanced with stealthier momentum, while the dead-straight intensity of her brandy irises gazed at furrier snouts frantically jutting out of the crate's holes. Tamping down a feverous onrush of revulsion, deftly, she crouched low onto her neoprene-clad haunches a breadth at the loading ramp. The pukish reek stinkily wafting over the blubbery-girthed captives who had been morbidly robbed from their humanity induced a vomitous onslaught through her veins, as she eased her clawed hand up with thievish precision over the control box, reaching for the turn-off laver. "Urgh...What is that smell?"

Matt didn't have an answer for her as she activated the switch to the cage. In that instant, a vaporous cloud of violet ash flushed the area.

"Something's not right," was Daredevil's choked response. If there was a time Matt wasn't thankful for his enhanced sense of smell, it was for moments such as this. The nauseating acrid stench was as devastating as a right-hook. The blind-vigilante shuttered himself in a concentrated shield using only his hearing to register the impending danger of a half-dozen guns coming towards them. Daredevil unlatched his baton-clubs and pitched the blunt instrument at the temple of a gunmen taking aim. The act of defense was draining on his conscious, a fog of disorientation causing his senses to go haywire as if the world erupted into flames. The phantom shapes approaching him resembled demonic ghouls reaching out to ensnare him into a cacophony of pain.

What was this? What was happening? A sluggishness enveloped him, but he didn't yield as the 'demons' approached and battled them with relentless force, toppling them to the ground with punishing force. A shattered groan behind him told him that he wasn't the only one afflicted by whatever it was that had hit them. A hallucinogen? A paralytic allergen? …Magic?

The sulphurous vapours of purplish aster chokingly enwreathed her in suffocating fruition, blearily, she gazed at Matthew jerkily collapse on his armoured knees in convulsive havoc as he became atrophied into throes of bone-crippling assault; his shapely-bow lips quivered against teeth-gnashing strain. Within moments, he thrashingly bashed his cowled head into the pavement with skull-hammering force as bloody treks smearily clotted over his bristled jaw. Assuaging her floored momentum on vertiginous accord, Felicia dragged herself closer to his side, reaching for him as he emitted voiceless-choke-off heaves of blinded alarm. With featherlight precision, she caressed the broader heaviness of his blood-damp jaw, bracing her lithe forehead around his tensing neck. "M-Matt..." she hitched out, threadily, anchoring his cowled head onto her lap. "S-Stay with me..."

His senses were spasming to the point Matt felt darkness ready to reach out and take him. He felt powerless to struggle against it, it was all-consuming and merciless. But he registered Felicia's desperate plea and the vigilante for a moment allowed himself a moment of comfort to stem the pain surging throughout his body and mind. "S-Sorry…" He uttered to her with a fading whisper. He only hoped to God that should he awaken, he would still be in his own body-his own mind. But if he didn't, he hoped he hadn't failed his city. Slumber took him into its grip, and Felicia was left deftly aware of a gathering of henchmen and the evil force that controlled them.

The clicking of heels moved across the path and Fisk's gunmen cleared a path, some out of respect but most out of fear for the towering blonde-haired woman with emerald eyes peering at Felicia with violet slits. "All of this for a pathetic boyfriend and a failed musician? You have made a poor choice, Felicia Hardy. You and your red devil should have kept to your devices and stayed clear of this path."

Bracing herself against the steel ramp with strenuous traction of her palms, breathlessly, Felicia registered the white-hot upheaval of morphic tenor irrevocably notching against the noxious barrage of eldritch conjury-deviance that agonizingly raided through her veins, dizzily, she glanced down at Matthew's toothier incisors disturbingly was the freakish length thinly razored into pointier bestial-vampiric fangs that splittingly dragged a knifing puncture over his bloodied underlip. Noncommittally high-pitch screeches chirpily resonated up his throat as darkish skeins of chestnut furrily hedged over the angular contours of his broader jaw. "N-No..." she panted in gruntier hitches, as the fine-bone curvatures of her sirenic -elfish features bloatedly globbed into jowelly puffiness that chubbily fused into a porcine deformity elongating into a fleshier wedged-out snout.

Moaningly, Felicia gasped in oinkish heaves, splaying her gloved palm over the bustier swollenness of her voluptuous breasts that were plumpishly straining underneath her neoprene decolletage, evident to the balloon-out rotundity of her curvier mid-drift. Warding off the mortified onrushes of heart-stunning alarm imploding through her blubbery-pinkish flesh, awareness rackingly jackhammered against her widening skull that she was hideously fattening into a buxom sow. "W-Why..." Uncontrollably, she became deadened into sorcerous throes as Clea sneerily watched Matthew's athletic-bulkier resiliency shrinkingly dwarf into a verminous- furrier mass within his 'nano-kevlar armour.

"What is done will not be undone. I have come too far, endured too much to be stopped by the likes of you." Clea uttered with a deadened gaze. The toll taken in her effort to not only enter this world but contain those who would stop her nearly drained her strength. Forging ties with mortal allies was a necessary step in accumulating a greater harvest. She would not be denied the fruits of her labor. Listening to the shattered cries of the costumed heroes, the dark sorceress smirked as her power unraveled and twisted their shapes, turning them into vulnerable prey to be caged. A cunning idea entered the depths of her sadistic mind, seeing this as an opportunity to further improve her ties to the mortal world.

Kneeling beside the distressed pot-bellied sow and the squawking bat, she flicked her finger, paralyzing them in a petrified state. "Have no fear. You will not be carted off to slaughter like the rest of these insignificant stocks. I know someone who would very much like to see you both."

And then she will pay a visit to a certain Rocker Pig.

Underneath a thermic encompass of heavier blankets that cozily fused over his plumpish form, moaningly, Bucky snuffled out deep-nasally grunts that vibrated against the clumpy pillow as the black material was doused with piggish drool as he inadvertently gnawed on the sheet in groggier succession, aware that he was sluggishly resting on his furrier back with his cloven hooves twitchily dangled up. Against the slumberous drowsiness that roped him down into listless throes, his wedged-out snout hungrily thrust when a cinnamony aromatic scent had mouthwateringly effused him akin to a bottle of Jack Daniels.

A cascading -rapturous-euphoria of spicy nutmeg and pumpkin that avidly hijacked a pulse of his warring restraint-he wouldn't evade a chance to piggily gorge down the 'best damn' pumpkin pie of Brooklyn. "That smell...Pumpkin..." he groaned out with sleepier raspiness, oinkishly, rolling onto his bulbous girth as his pudgier head was sheathed underneath the sheet. "Gotta be mornin'...Great."

The events of the night before returned to his thoughts in full-force, as glimpsed a furry hoof laying in front of him causing his brightened mood to diminish into sorrow. He would have felt content to just lay in his self-pity, waiting for Felicia to come in and deliver to him the grim news that he would be stuck like this permanently and whatever leads she had been chasing led to dead ends. That was until a dreadfully cheery voice entered the room after delivering a punctuating knock to the door.

"Hey, uh, are you awake?" Peter Parker asked, now dressed in a simple pair of jeans, sneakers and a dark blue jacket. "Its noon, and I'm not sure how long pigs tend to sleep. Do they sleep like us humans and get up at the crack of dawn? Or are you-"

"Why do you talk so much..." The Rocker hog drawled out an offish snort, moodily, as he buried his larger head into the dampish satin of a pillow, trying his damnest to snub off the pesky intrusion of the chummy teenager who gingerly advanced to the mattress with measured caution; reining back into his meditative vigil of passive solace, Bucky hunkered on his stubbier-cloven hooves, snortily venting out gustier breaths as the mattress springs nosily creaked underneath his rotund mass. He needed to strum on the nickel strings of his Gibson as the voltage electrifyingly pulsed with every blood-rushing crescendo of his riotous-untamed heartbeat. "Don't even think about it, kid..." he rasped, huffily, a dismissive scrunch rapted over his jowelly snout as he registered Peter's hand reaching to lift off the sheet. "M' warnin' ya..."

"Up and at em'!" With a simple flick of his wrists, Peter threw bedsheets high causing them to flap in the small breeze wafting through the open window. It had the intended effect as his porky charge released a disgruntled squeal. To further agitate the stubborn hog, the teenager threw open the curtains and the blinds, letting the intensely bright noon-day sun cast a blinding light into the bedroom. "Its a beautiful day isn't it?" Peter quipped with a smile, part of him longing to take a quick swing around the neighbourhood for any early signs of crime. The hairs on his skin suddenly rose up while a fervent chill crawled up his spine. Suddenly Peter dodged the rampant charge of the bullheaded hog that attempted to tackle him. "Whoa! Easy there. Okay, it was just a joke. Joking!" Peter held his hands up placatingly.

"Look, I know we got off to a bad start last night. Let's start over with some breakfast? How's that?"

As his cloven fore-hooves tensely sunk into the mattress, tamping down his chagrined aggression, stiffly, Bucky wobbled back into the clumpier heap of sheets, frustratedly glaring at his teenage sitter with the point-blank rawness of his beadier sapphire depths; Peter unabashedly grazed his roughened fingers through his floppish brunette tresses, while his boyish-cut features adamantly brandished tactful vigilance while he gripped onto the sheet underneath the paunchier droopiness of the Rocker hog's barrelled underbelly. Gruntingly, Bucky played down the snobbish card, as he clunkily plopped onto his globbier backside, evading Peter's unshakeable gaze. "C'mon kid, you really think M' gonna eat breakfast with ya...?" he oinked, derisively, with an indifferent shrug and thrust his jowelly snout against the nightstand drawer; the spiciness of packaged Jalapeno puffed Cheezies undeniably induced his tampered hunger. "S'just keep your distance, hell. do whatever you want...Cause this fat Brooklyn tub only cares where Licia keeps the good stash..."

"Oh you mean these?" A snapping of a web-line cut through the room and latched onto the drawer, snagging it open. A second shot reached in and whipped out the bag of cheezies before the hog could rush to snap his mouth around them. Peter yanked the snacks out of reach and into his own hand. Without missing a beat, he opened one of them and plucked a cheesy fry from the bag and stuffed it into his mouth. "Mmm. Want some? Gonna have to come get em. This way!" The youth rushed out of the room as he felt and listened to a stampede of hooves coming after him in pursuit towards the kitchen.

In a whooshing onrush of his acrobatic-spidey-momentum, light-footedly, Peter vaulted over the granite countertop with skateboarder graces of his enhanced agility, evading the barrelling rampage of massively paunchy boar who explosively drove his revamped ferocity on his stubbier hooves with explosive-adrenalized paces. Emitting a full-drawn snort, bouncily, the Rocker hog waddled his strutting advances near the fridge, thrusting his bulgy head against the steel door as his shaggier raven tresses grungily clung over the furrier pudginess of his tusked-snout. "Okay, not a smart move, kid..." he grunted out, scathingly, and razored his grayish-aquamarine irises that smokily gleamed with voltaic menace at the high school web-slinger. Keeping himself readily poised on his athletic haunches like a back-catcher, Peter dangled the Cheezie package with a viscid steamer of his webbing. "Hey, you better drop that, little punk, or M' gonna enjoy puttin' you on the ropes..."

Peter's quick reaction was to suddenly lunge high up,, his back pressed against the ceiling while snacking on another cheesy fry. "Gonna be a little bit hard for you to put me on the ropes from up here," the teen chuckled as the hog glared at him from down below. "C'mon, I had to fight off an old lady with a stick to get that last pumpkin pie." The wall-crawler beckoned to the opened box sitting on the coffee table. The pastry's sweetness was strong and mouth-watering, even Peter consoled himself with the idea that if the hog refused him one more time, he'd have the pie all to himself. "But hey if you don't want it," the wall-crawler made a slow dramatic gesture of preparing to shoot a web-string at the box.

Harnessing vestiges of restraint against implosive aggression, fumingly, Bucky shifted on his cloven-hooves as the cinnamony scent of baked pumpkin enticingly arrested his senses in tenfold, avidly manifesting rampant upheavals of denotive-piggish- hunger within the droopier bulginess of his underbelly. Curbing down, his unbridled urge to ferally deliver a head-bashing assault into the fridge door, involuntarily, he wobbled back in heavier traction. "Gotta admit kid, you don't know when to quit..." The raspiness of his oinkish drawl throatily fringed with deadpanned solemnity, as he unwaveringly glared up at the overstrung web-slinger. He needed to breathe smokier drags of a cigarette-gulp down a brewed coffee a morning ritual that was intoxicatingly addictive to strumming on the cords of his Gibson. "Okay, M'not gonna fight you...Done enough of that already..." he grumbled under a murmurous breath, snarkily, watching Peter confusingly, ease down his nano-web shooter-the veracity of Parker's kind-hearted endeavour to quell down his unslaked appetite booted his cantankerous attitude. "Grab some plates up there, will ya?"

"Coming right up." A relieved sigh escaped Peter's lips as he descended from the ceiling. Sure enough he observed as the stubborn hog made his way towards the table where the box of pie lay. He didn't try to open it himself with his mouth nor to take complete possession of it like the destructive pig he had met last night did. 'Baby steps,' the youth thought with a small smile. As he made his way through Felicia's kitchen, he passed her refrigerator while making his way towards the cupboards. He briefly glimpsed the photos on the door of the fridge. Photos of Felicia with a few faces that he didn't recognize. One photo astonishingly stood out. The silver-haired beauty was in a warm embrace with a man who was hugging her from behind, kissing her cheek while she held the camera, winking as she took the shot.

The man he easily recognized, Bucky Barnes. The war veteran, the famous rocker that he and Ned caught at a bad time several weeks ago. Peter gazed at the photo thoughtfully, spying the aviator shades that Bucky wore on his head in the picture that looked remarkably similar to the ones the pig wore last night. It couldn't be….could it?

"C'mon kid I don't have all day..." An indignant snort fervently gusted out of his furrier-pinkish snout on brattier tenor, warding off a vexatious onslaught of his pent-up appetite that effusively concussed through his bulbous rotundity like a depth charge of gluttonous mania,scrapingly, Bucky dragged his tusk-incisors against the wooden table with onerous grunts as the blobbier puffiness of his jowelly cheeks squishily globbed against his stockier fore-hooves. He was trudging into a stuporous minefield of ambrosial scents. Twitchily, his moist snout abandonedly jutted a hairbreadth at the boxed pastry, reaching to grip the cardboard with his tusks while unbeknownst, Peter dutifully braced against the opened fridge door, grabbing a carton of 2% milk off a shelf.

Crestfallenly, with kiss-starved hesitance, Bucky roved his beadier aquamarine depths onto the cherished photograph of his vixenish kitten: the whitish-silvery cascade of her glossier tresses sexily draped over her lithe shoulders, the fine-bone curvatures of her elfish features, and the pillowy lush of her burgundy lips that voluminously quirked into a kittenish pout. She was breathtakingly gorgeous -he was on the bleeding edge of heartbreakingly losing her to a sorcerous reality of being a hideously obese-grunting Brooklyn hog. "Yeah, kid, that's me with her...At least before this damn makeover took everything from me..." he grunted in dismal pitch, sniffily.

To say he was surprised by the pig's perceptiveness and forthcoming was a vast understatement to Peter who looked between the photo and the hog. Surprise and remorse flickered in his eyes, the teenager wondering what circumstances could've led to such a rock sensation being turned into a live-stock animal. Who did he p*** off? He wondered. "It really is you, isn't it? You know, a couple years ago this would've seemed like such a crazy thing, but now I guess nothing can surprise me anymore." Reaching up into the cupboard, Peter took down a set of plates and carried them over to the table where the pig waited. A short if not awkward silence followed as Peter gingerly picked at his piece of pie with a fork while the hog gorged onto his own slice with hungry enthusiasm.

He didn't know what to say. Oddly enough, it was easier to deal with the unknown without knowing what delicate buttons shouldn't be pushed, but now that Peter had a vague idea that he was pig-sitting Felicia's ex-boyfriend, the youth glanced at his phone where his text to his silver-haired bestie had yet to be answered. 'Where the heck is she?'

Lowering down on his chubbier haunches while feigning a tenser grimace over his jowly snout, temperately Bucky gazed at the dumbstruck Midtown High teenager who he boorishly snubbed off, discarding a request of his autograph that would have taken a moment to scribble on the greasy paper bag that Peter clutched when they grounded their mounting ecstasy of meeting 'White Wolf' the Commando's headliner guitarist outside the doughnut shop. He was nothing more than a pathetic -snobbish jerk. "M' sorry that I didn't give your friend my autograph..." he drawled with a snortier timbre, raggedly, becoming viscerally driven by a generous callback of his brotherly spirit as he glanced at the gothicsque metallic chain that Felicia had knowingly salvaged on a cushion: the silver-plated wolf head pendant was runically etched with Nordic sigils of valour."Look...Uh...That chain over there, I want you to give it to your friend...Kinda can't wear it anymore."

Peter's lips pulled into a faint smile, touched that Bucky not only remembered him and Ned but would also give his friend something personal. Ned had been crushed that day at the donut-shop when they were shrugged off for an autograph. Though Peter had been disappointed as well, he understood well enough that sometimes good people had bad days and from what he'd heard of the war hero turned musician was nothing but good to his friends and fanbase. Whatever had happened to him the past several months had visibly taken a toll on him. Extremely. "Ned uh, he'd appreciate that, thanks." Peter stowed the necklace in his pocket, but now that they were on the grim subject it would have felt even more awkward to try and avoid the elephant in the room.

"Looks like you've had a rough time lately, Mr. Barnes. Can you tell me what happened to you? Does this have something to do with Felicia heading out last night?"

Gnashing his tusked-teeth, scowlingly, Bucky jutted up his furrier snout against jack-up fury that had unwarrantably surged through his veins as the flabbier globbiness of his porcine features menacingly scrunched with every tremorous quake of deadlier vehemence. Suppressing back a full-throated grunt, jerkily, he lurched back on explosive traction on his stubbier hooves. The damn contract had kick-started his popularity-stardom that he recklessly wallowed in the rapturous cheers of his love-sick fans. Now, he was a blimpishly obese potbellied hog who could not even strum on the power cords of his Gibson or thread his fingers caressingly through his kitten's silvery-white tresses-he lost everything. "I-I signed a deal...!" he railed out, breathlessly, stomping down a fore-hoof. "I played a damn fool and now M' payin' for it with hooves..."

The pig's outburst surprised Peter in its raw anguish. The explanation in itself sounded ominous in the cliched "deal with the devil" sense that just spelled bad news. The teen bit back a quip at the tip of his tongue, knowing this wasn't the time for jokes to cope with his nervousness. Rubbings his forearms, unabashedly, Peter sank back into his seat and contemplated what the pi-Bucky-said to him and the bits of information Felicia had given him over the past few weeks as she ran off with the Daredevil of Hell's Kitchen. "So it was magic? Like a witch or wizard that did this to you?"

With tangible sincerity incredulously alight in Peter's brownish-hazel irises, guardedly, the Rocker hog angled up his paunchier snout as his shaggier raven tresses unkemptily feathered over his beadier aqueous depths; feverish tension ramped-up within his blimpish mass. He was downplayed by a vampirical-witchy- harbinger of apocalyptic mayhem who depravedly slaked her manic-homicidal- kicks by hellishly draining out souls of the Tri-State boroughs until they rancidly morphed into zombified -ghoulish corpses. Every power-cord ballad that he bleedingly strummed onto his Gibson was a sorcerous mantra that grievously ushered the pandemonium of his adoring fans into a dimensional cauldron of a soul-gorging entity.

Quashing down a throatier grunt, mistily Bucky flashed the cool sapphire of his irises at layered fleshiness varicosely rubberized over his stubbier fore-hoof akin to doughy sludge; he was nothing but a repugnant-fattened drudge who could never pick up his guitar again-never become intimately captive into the luscious decadence-the addictive heat of his kitten's pillowy crimson lips that meltingly suffused his rigid bones into liquid butter. Maybe he deserved to be staddled into an obese existence of being a pot-bellied Rocker hog ', he printed his damn name on Fisk's contract-became a trade-off sucker of expandable gullibility to skyrocket the Commando's on the Billboard charts. "I-I really don't know what to call her, kid..." he admitted in raspier pitch, sulkily. "Whoever this dame Clea is, I think she's planning on stealin' a lot of good lives..."

The name Clea was new to the crime-fighter who had until now never heard of her in all his chaotic patrols over the past few years. Then again, people with magical powers didn't exactly operate at ground level on streets of New York, they kept to the shadows or at the top of concealed fortress' like every evil villain tended to operate. Peter was thankful to say the only wizards he'd ever met in his life were good ones, one of which had helped him to repair the damage in his life due to his selfish choices that affected so many. An idea entered the teen's thoughts, but he was quick to immediately curb it. 'You can't run to him every time something goes wrong. He doesn't even remember you.' Peter reminded himself.

But this time it was different. It wasn't about him. If there was a dangerous witch out there hurting people, maybe they would need magical assistance. "I know someone who might be able to help us. I wish Felicia had told me more about this before, I could've looked into this." Picking up his phone he tried to call her again. The phone rang several times, each unanswered ring filling the wall-crawler with dread. "Why isn't she answering?"

"Y-You tellin' me that Felicia never came back here," A gravelly edginess stammeringly fringed with his murmurous drawl, Bucky glanced at the mobile device-burner phone-clutched in Peter's tremorous hand with lasered intensity of his silvery- aquamarine irises; dredged-up panic crushingly stampeded against his chest-racking heartbeat when his floppier ear reactively quirked up to hear the white-noise of the message playbacks. Clumsily, Bucky tromped his cloven hoofs with the breakneck momentum of his wobbling paces-he was gunning for the apartment's door while Peter downcastly grazed his finger over the redial button."D-Do you where she went..." he questioned in panty grunts, chuffily, stomping down a fore-hoof. "Damnit..."

Peter's first instinct was to placate Bucky somehow with the thought that Felicia was probably too busy to answer, but he wasn't sure he believed that himself. She would've at least messaged him that she would be running late this morning, or that she would be away for a bit longer. His second instinct came about by the familiar tingle of dread traversing up his spine whenever there was an unseen danger: take cover! It all happened in slow motion, Peter's brown eyes shifting towards the door in a hardened glare. His whole body now wrought with pins and needles spurring him into action as he released a webline towards the couch and upturned it.

The door to the apartment exploded inward in a ball of violet flames and debris. Bucky released a shrilled squeal, taking cover under the barrier that Peter erected between them and the horrific presence sauntering into Felicia's apartment.

A sulphurous potency of carrion reek suffocatingly enwreathed them as ear-splitting assonance deafened out of apparitional vapours demonically whirled into tornadic salvos of purplish energy-the astral unity of the Dark Verse was being eldritchly heralded by telekinetic conjury of sling-ring as skeletal denizens berserkly whooshed out of the fiery sealer glyphs that portentously wheeled over the upturned couch. In those heart-arresting seconds, deformed visages of hollowed-out skulls cyclonically materialized into wispy obsidian pterodactyls of ghostlier shadow as bonier fingers twistily clawed in vicious fruition to lashingly gore into the Rocker hog's globbier backside. "Come little piggy..." A taunting cadence rabidly amplified in possessive unison, screechingly to devour him. "Sing for us..."

"RINGWRAITHS!" Peter shouted in both horror and wonder. The teen was paraylzed for a moment with sinking fear as the ghoulish spectres looked more hideous than any marauding alien or illusion he'd ever faced. Mysterio couldn't have conjured something this awful. The leering apparitions peered into his eyes, threatening to ensnare him in their hopeless pits of despair. Mustering what focus that remained, he tore his gaze free as he watched them surround an equally spellbound Bucky who tried to avoid their vaporous claws. "Get off of him!" Peter did something that felt incredibly futile as he took a swing. It felt like punching water, his fist lashing through the banshees with enough force to scatter their forms but not physically harm them. He fell into spider-mode, his senses going nearly haywire by the amount of danger that was suffocating the room.

"Get behind me, Mr. Barnes." Peter said using his webs to raise the coffee-table up and use it as a swatter to fend off the floating spectres.

"You can't evade me, James..." An invidious utterance of her raspier undertone, malefically, echoed through a fiery circlet of the sling-ring portal, vitriolically, Clea breached the kitchen as her leathered vampiresque cloak flitted over the granite floor, clutched in her lithe fingers was a vitreous blade that ethereally gleamed like icier whitish-amethyst-a weapon forged with celestial energy of the Dark Verse. As the soul-gorging banshees swirlingly veered back into the Eldritch portal that striated into reddish-psionic glyphs of demonic conjury; Peter kept himself readily poised on his denim-clad haunches at the Rocker-hog's tubbier side, injecting another web-shooter cartilage over his wrist nano-gauntlet.

Paunchily, Bucky slumped his globous mass against the couch, while the high-schooler tamped down a wisecracking quip of Clea's purplish embroidered Victorian garments being cartoonishly aesthetical to a galactic Power Ranger villainess as the livid intensity of her virescent irises deathily glared down at the high schooler with callous resolve edged over the hawkishly ashen curvatures of her stonier features. "So you're the little fool who played with runes of Kof-Kol..." she inquired, hissingly, without a flex of mercy rapting over her fisted hand as she malevolently glowered at Peter who became anguishedly grappled into a deadlock onslaught his soul-crippling heartache-guilt-of trading his existence to switchback the spell cast of remembrance bottled into archaic relic -the Macchina di Kadavus-only to desolate every transcendental gateway of Spiderman's mirrored reality. "You heralded dimensional visitors and defiled the guidance of Stephen Strange because of infective sentiment made your heart bleed for those forsaken souls, boy..."

"I-I know that error is on me, lady..." Peter whispered against choke-off hitches, sobbingly mirroring her with stoking ferocity that burningly flashed within his darkish hazel irises as he restrainedly lowered down his gauntleted wrist, despite that his throbbing pulse implosively jackhammered in agonized succession-he purged out every connective thread of memory that was seated within MJ and Ned-surrounding himself to a vacuous reality of being heartbreakingly discarded within throngs of pushy New Yorkers because of his votive choice to deter the cataclysmal incursion of the Multiverse denizens that were spawned from parallel universes. As saltier wetness dampishly trekked over his boyishly-chiselled features, blearily, Peter gazed at the Tibetian sling-ring that adorned her polished finger. "Hey, you stole that cool ring from, Stephen...Didn't you?"

Peter felt dread and righteous anger in his veins as he thought of what this Rita Repulsa-knock off might've done to his former friend and mentor. Stephen wouldn't have gone down without a fight and if he lost, this witch probably sent him to a place worse than the Grand Canyon in a mirrored reality. Was he even still alive? The piercing look in the woman's deadened eyes unnerved him by their emptiness. He knew a remorseless killer when he saw one and Clea had all the emotional sentiment of a black hole. "Did you kill him?" He was afraid to ask, but he had to know. They were all in big trouble if Earth lost their most powerful sorcerer, even if he wasn't the official Sorcerer Supreme.

When Clea's only response was a wicked smirk, Peter's heart plummeted into his stomach. How many more people he cared about would he lose? Bucky, as if sensing the teenager's turmoil, focused in on Clea with the full-brunt of his unreleased anger. "If it isn't the Wicked Witch of the West," the Rocker Pig grunted with narrowed eyes. "You called off your flying monkeys to do your own dirty work for a change?"

Hearing the snarkier cockiness testily fringe the fattish impudent boar's oinkish drawl, stiflingly, Clea flashed her viperish gaze down at her amethyst blade deceptively poised to bleedingly slash Peter's exposed throat with a cobra-strike. "You dare to reproach me with such craven defiance, Barnes, when the frivolity of your existence has been reduced to a squabby hog that will pathetically bloat into a worthless vessel for slaughter." The virulence of her nastier pitch was dementedly evident to her sneering lips. "Every piece of that contract shattered on your floor retains you to my compliance..."

"I'm not your stage-pet anymore, Clea. There's not a dab of ink in this world or any other strong enough to get me back under your thumb," Bucky flashed his teeth into a snarl as he stood his ground. A dark combative instinct surged inside of him to charge the evil sorceress and ram his tusks into her stomach. To exact every pound of retribution not just for himself but the lives that she had destroyed. But he knew he was outmatched, both physically as well as powerfully. He would only put himself and the kid in harm's way. That was until an alarming thought suddenly entered his mind. "Wait a second. How did you know I was here?" Panic settled in as his blood moved at an alarming pace. If Clea knew he was here at Felicia's place, and Felicia hadn't come in this morning... Did that mean?

No...

"It seems your thievish kitten has carelessly staked everything for you, James..." Sneeringly, Clea eased up her leather-sheathed palm with taunting poise as skeins of energy intricately weaved into a velvety domino as Bucky's puckered snout gapingly stretched against the oinkish heaves of his voiceless anguish. On heart-slamming tempo, gaspingly he wobbled back, aghast, the floored intensity of his beadier aquamarine irises owlishly dilated against white-hot surges of bleariness as he tearily gazed at Felicia's domino noxiously gripped into the demoness's 'winning' hand-she had a card to play down close to vest. "I'll admit just a shame to extinguish her beauty into a repulsive creature that will bloatedly swell into a dormant vessel ..."

Any last semblance of restraint Bucky had was severed with the realization that vixen had been ensnared into a trap. She was caught and now being subject to his exact same fate all because of him! All because he had run to her and brought her down into his mess. It was everything he'd been afraid of when had spoken to Steve. The man, the soldier inside of himself, struggled to compose himself but the animal's primal instincts saw him release a visceral squeal as he made to charge at her. "You evil b***, if you hurt her-" A web-line was fired at him before he could get close. Peter's spidey-sense screamed at him of the impending danger should Bucky allow himself to fall deep into his rage.

"Don't! Its what she wants!" Peter pulled the struggling animal with all his strength back towards him. Bucky rolled and thrashed, torn between his need for retribution and his frustration with Peter for holding him back.

"Damn it! Let me go, kid!" He tried to run again, forcing Peter to use a second web-line that latched around the pig's body. Though it pained Peter to have to restrain Bucky, especially since his own distress for Felicia was at an all-time high, they had to get out of here. Fast. Another portal opened behind the extra-dimensional sorceress, what came through sent horrific chills up Peter's spine.

"Whoah, that can't be good..." Peter quipped out, hastily, gripping onto the gossamer web-line that stickily fused over the shaggier thatch of the Rocker hog's blobbish shoulders as he became forcibly towed across the floor against Bucky's explosive -adrenalized momentum; harnessing lighting-quick reaction of his spider-honed agility, with teeth-gnashing strain, Peter bolstered his threadbare sneakers into a table as he deftly yanked a grip of urgent restraint onto the porkier boar's flabbier neck. Sweatily, his dampish brunette tresses were askew over his feverish temple, as he daringly glanced into the vacuous portal-a bridged gateway of prismatic quantum novas incandescently sailed over monolithic dolmens as monstrous pterosauric leviathans screechingly grappled onto desiccated-skeletal husks of lifeless New Yorkers as astral orbs of vaporous whitish energy were horrifically reaped into their squirming octopoidal tentacles: soul suckers of the Dark Verse.

Alarmed, Peter's wide-blown hazel irises shifted to the balcony window; assuaging a modicum of spidey-honed in a breathless earshot, he blasted another web-line, destructively flipping a chair against the glass door, shards of glass jaggedly rained over the floor."Hold on, Mr. Barnes..." he yelled in stammering heaves, pulling the bulbous hog's three-hundred-pound mass with his braced forearms as his enhanced resilience flexed over the corded litheness of his athletic bulk underneath his torn shirt-he wouldn't abandon the ensorcelled guitarist. "I-I need to get you out of here..."

The reflexive pulse of his spider tinkle became keenly attuned to Clea's telekinetic mordacity as reddish glyphs of her destroyer incantation runically striated over the walls-psionic salvos of energy doomily formed into fiery Mandala discs as she possessively rooted the valance of her spell within the foundations of the building. Grounding the chunkier Rocker hog into his cradled arm-lock, Peter desperately backflipped with acrobatic precision out the smashed window, evading whipsawing Mandalas that were akin to the Goblin's denotative pumpkin bombs. "Whew... That was close."

"Whoa, kid. Wait! WAAAAAAIIIIIITTT!" A shrilling squeal tore from Bucky's throat as he suddenly found himself being webbed against the teenager's torso in a make-shift carrier. They were both in free-fall mode, a now masked Peter catapulting them into the great outdoors just as a salvo of psionic energy blew a massive hole in the side of Felicia's apartment. Bricks and debris rained out over the city as panicking civilians fled. The streets of Midtown moved below them as the hog felt weightless in Spider-Man's secure clutches. Everything was moving fast, the wall-crawler propelling them across the city from one web-line to the next. Bucky yelled over the loud noise of whoosing wind. This was worse than the cyclone at Coney Island, but he wasn't about to chide the youth who pulled them out of the frying pan.

The hog's thoughts lingered with Felicia. They had to save her, no matter what.

Against the slumberous dregs that grippingly deadened her into a groggier stupor, blurrily Felicia registered the ear-splitting resonance of heart-jarring screeches caromed within the entrenched darkness; moaningly, she reared the rubbery pudginess of her furred cheek off pulpy remnants of desiccated pumpkin as she registered a featherlight pressure skittishly rapting against voluptuous—blubbery rotundity of her curvier form. Blobbishly, the swelled-out droopiness of her pinkish-furred girth chubbily fused against her delicate-cloven hooves. The bustier heaviness of her protrusive- teats- alarmingly deadbolted into a heart-stunting revelation -she was undoubtingly fattened into a pot-bellied sow. "Ooh..." As the skull-hammering barrage that feverishly coupled with a neasous onslaught ebbed; Felicia caught a bleary glimpse of razor-edged wings flappingly arching over a tinier rodent-like mass-a bat as he chirpily thrashed on his clawed-feet over the lumpish furriness of her cushy girth. "M-Matthew..." she rasped in a shakier breath, groggily, as the palm-sized bat squeakily twitched up the wedged-out deformity of his wrinkly snout, revealing his needlelike fangs. "I-Is that you...?"

The squealing hitch of the sow's voice was deafened by the piercing shrieks coming from the winded rodent at the breadth of her girthier underbelly.For a moment she was convinced the creature was feral and actually not who she thought it was. The bat outside appeared aimless and wild in its attempt to escape from its confinement. Try as it may, its wings couldn't lift it no more than a few inches off the ground before it fell and thrashed upon the floor. Was it injured? Unpracticed with its wings? For a moment it seemed the creature had wore out its strength as it collapsed against the bars, still screeching yet unmoving.

Slowly but surely, the sow began to make sense of the odd pattern of its noises and the words strung between the shrieking decibels. "W-What's happened to me?!" The bat whined, gazing blankly into space-unseeing and only hearing. His senses were dim like a flickering candle, but the man peered into the darkness of his new form and detected a familiar presence. "F-Felicia?"

Hearing the squeakier pitch gratingly emitted out Matthew's tinier-fanged mouth in distressed tenor, oinkishly, Felicia hefted up on her voluptuously globbier mass, inadvertently warding off vestiges of her teemed revulsion as she pudgily nudged the eroded bars with her jowelly-pinkish snout, the metal was smearily adorned with bloodied remnants of a butcherous assault, the bilious vapours of phantom dread lingeringly assailed over her as the silvery-whitish thatch of her roundish back disheveledly fringed over her floppier ears. "I-I'm not sure..." she rasped in threadier pitch, feigning a strained grimace against the furrier bulginess of her curvaceous- porcine form. Vertiginously, she flitted a bleary glance of her brandy depths at the winged-vigilante jumpily thrashing on the ground-they were pegged into the expandable menagerie of iniquitous vengeance that cancerously spawned within the high-rigged notoriety of Hell's Kitchen, only the jumbo boss-head tyrannically reigned over the boroughs-Kingpin. "There's a stink in the air, that we knew too well, Murdock..."

The bat that was once the Devil of Hells Kitchen fell into a secluded silence, the man within shaken to his core over the horror and indignity of what he was currently enduring. No person should have this kind of power to steal away someone's humanity, their identity. Matt knew magic existed in the world, seen its dark miracles and awesome effects, but nothing as horrendous as this. It was something he believed only existed out of old fairytales and cinematic movies. It was his first time coming into contact with this kind of threat and suffice-to-say, he wasn't handling it very well. Rather than break down into a panicking mess, he fell back onto his training with Stick and compartmentalized it all, forcing himself to see only the relevant factor here and that was what Felicia was mentioning.

"He's here," he squeaked, recognizing the scent of expensive Italian cologne over the death and decay that permeated the cell.

"I don't take my gratification of using such unconventional methods too lightly..." A raspier gruffiness thunderously resonated against Matthew's pointer ears, against the obscurity of the blackout warehouse, sconces of the florescence bulbs above eerily gleamed over diamond-incrested cufflinks as beefier hands were maliciously poised over the corroded bars of the cage. "You've been a deterrence of my ambitious reckoning..." His onyx-brownish irises virulently glared at the fidgety bat arcing his tinier form on his clawed wings. "Now, your pathetic existence is under my hand..." For a heartbeat of warred sentiment, Fisk narrowed his callous gaze at the pinkish-white furred sow-his Felicia-as she bloatedly sagged against a heap of blankets. A fisting clutch of his burly fingers tellingly conveyed his pained disgust. "She wasn't supposed to be a victim in this damn crossfire...Look at what you've done to her!"

"THIS WAS YOUR DOING!" Matt screeched with all the wailing ferocity that came with his new form. The anger that he kept buried in his soul emerged in the presence of the one man responsible for so much death and injustice in his city. The ill-intent seeking to prey and corrupt those with possessed a generous soul. That Fisk had discerned his true identity not so long ago only made the enmity between them all the more personal now that they knew what weaknesses to exploit. Matt cared for his friends and Wilson Fisk never hesitated to threaten or lay the blame of their misfortunes at his feet. He wouldn't endure this facade again. "The moment you set that woman-that thing-loose on Hells Kitchen, you became responsible for every innocent lift caught in her crossfire! All this-for what? What's your game, Fisk?" Matt couldn't imagine, even for a man as Wilson Fisk who long had a twisted vision of protecting and prospering Hells Kitchen, had never gone to such drastic means of achieving it like making a deal with an inter-dimensional sorcerer intent on harvesting life.

Glowering down at the pathetic vermin that screechingly chirped out his anguished pitch, tight-fisted, Wilson, quelled the powder-keg of his bearish rage as he threateningly dragged the silvered rhino head of his gentlemen-cane against the eroded bars, the clanging vibrations sonically amplified into a succession of ear-splitting knells against the bat's furrier ears. "You can't even begin to fathom her purpose of cleansing the rampancy of infectious filth that pollutes the streets..." he bellowed out in a guttural cadence, irately, gnashing his teeth as his chubbier features scaldingly reddened against his composed malice. "If you decide to cooperate with my intent to resurrect this city, I will permit you the freedom to soar above the graves of your courtroom friends..."

Matt released a guttural screech as he attempted to once again fly through the bars of his cage only to feel the manacle of his restraint pull at him like an immovable rock. He fell haphazardly onto his side, his wings gaining greater mobility the further he exerted strength over them. "Stay away from this, Fisk. I swear-we'll find a way out of this," Matt adamantly vowed. He didn't care how hopeless this all seemed, they would find a way out of this. "And when we do, I'll make sure you're locked away in a cell no one will ever think to break you out of." His threat was met with a passive look from the criminal Kingpin who no doubt only saw him now as an inconsequential nuisance than an obstacle to overcome.

Fisk' eyes strayed from Matt and settled upon the sow with bright colored fur, gazing up at him with deep eyes behind a small mop of whitish bangs. "Felicia, I don't want you to worry. After this city has been cleansed of all the filth that pollutes its streets, after this is all over. I will make sure you live in comfort in your new form… You won't have anything to ever fear or long for under my care."

Wobbling over the gloppy chunks of pumpkin, Felicia couldn't evade the gravity of validation nervily fringed within his throaty undertone; she was immune to his cheapen-backstabbing sentiment that arrestingly cajoled her with a downplay variance of possessive reverence. She wasn't a damn 'trade-off' product of his backstairs industry-Fisk had leashed her down to become his stealthy kitten of thievish calibre; her enhanced dexterity and feline-honed resilience made her lethally untouchable against rivalled synicates. Now, she divested into a blubbery-piggish captive because she turned her back on the king-shark. Emitting a snortier breath, deviantly, she glared at Fisk with the point-blank intensity of her brandy depths, refusing to fatteningly become a lockdown-dormant broodmare to listlessly swell with litters of milk-guzzling piglets within the borders of his Italian countryside estate. "Just like old times, huh?" she whispered in flintier breaths, scoffingly, keeping herself distant from the bars. "Except I'm a big girl now, and I won't play nice until you scrap the deal you made with Bucky Barnes..."

Your Rocker Boy has a part to play. It is the deal he made and I am a business man first and foremost," Fisk asserted with a detached voice, his mood suddenly becoming more authoritative as it did when it came to business decisions. "And this is one business deal I intend to close." Straightening himself to his full height, he cast a sharpened glare towards his cluster of men, some of whom bore the beginning signs of corruptions upon their faces as they had no doubt been touched by Clea's dark dimension magic. They were mindless puppets, useful only to obey orders and never questioned them. He sent a sharp nod their way and immediately they fell into step and began to lift the cages housing his two captives. The bat struggled inside his cage with the sow looked at him with focused eyes full of contempt. "You will understand one day, Felicia. Don't fret. Tonight is Halloween after all..." He watched as a portal opened and the dark sorceress herself emerged from it beckoning the men forward with the caged captives. "A night of tricks and treats...to which we are all entitled to." He would make certain his grand deception would go off smoothly, not even the Wicked Witch would see it coming.

"C'mon, you can do this for May..." Staving off a grievous throb of unbidden heartache, readily, Peter crouched on his red-spandex boots over a rickey fire-escape ladder, his darkish-hazel irises gleamed with unshakable vigilance as he clutched onto his Spidey mask, gazing at the Midtown environs that were spookily adorned with carved-out pumpkins and rubbery ghoulies hanging from branches with creepier motion-the ambiance of Halloween ominously ushered a valance over the vacant school grounds of Midtown High. After exhaustingly swinging over the brownstone complexes of Greenwich Villiage, Peter had knocked on the Baroque wooden door of the Bleecker Street townhouse-the Sanctum Santorum -only to discover the grouchy baldheaded Asian sentinel of the Kamar-Taj -Wong-had unseemly vanished for his Tiberian holiday within a sling-ring portal.

Athletically, poised like an unmoveable back-catcher, he attentively listened to oinkish snorts resonate from the girthier-bellied Rocker hog below him who sloppily chomped on throatier mouthfuls of greasier jellied doughnuts that he generously purchased to quench rampant tumults of Bucky's insatiable -gluttonous hunger. "Uh...Mister Barnes..." he murmured, sheepishly, threading his gloved fingers over his unkempt 'bed-head' chestnut tresses as he unwaveringly gazed at the rotund boar clumsily jutted out his tusk-snout over a plastic heap of trash bags that were rancidly stuffed with mushier remnants of neighbourhood leftovers. "Hey, don't eat that stuff...It's gonna make you sick, and to be honest, I really don't have the cash for a vet..."

When the hog gave no acknowledgment nor any signs of stopping his gluttonous pursuit of an edible feast, Peter sighed as he shot a web at the trashbags and plucked them out of reach, tossing them into the dumpster where the hog couldn't reach them. The hog released an annoyed growl, deep in pitch and bone-chilling to a normal observer but Peter who had faced down whole armies of aliens at this point was merely disquieted by the implications as he noted the blackness of the hog's pupils. For a moment the hog warred with the inclination to charge at the human boy who had interrupted his search for a meal. He was a friend, he was someone protecting him. What was his name? What was his own name?

P-Peter! The darkness vanished from the hog's depths and a shudder of unease moved through his body once he realized himself. "I'm losing it, kid. Ain't got much longer…"

"Don't give up on yourself, Mister Barnes..." Vaulting off the iron-railed balcony with spidey graces of balletic momentum, cautiously, Peter grounded himself at the glump-faced hog's bulgier side on his crouched haunches; the saltier dampishness of unspent anguish tellingly wafted from the overlapping pudge of Bucky's jowelly snout as he shiveringly pinched his beadier eyes shut against unwarranted onslaught of dam-bursting heartache.

Gruntier hiccups sobbingly racked out of his saggier throat, as Peter nakedly caught a glimpse of strayed wetness drippily trekking over his puckered mouth. "Y-You gotta listen..." he whispered against stammering breaths, placidly, kneading his spandex-clad fingers over chestnut fur that shaggily melded with globbier-bulbous flab."I-I know things look really bad now...We're not gonna quit fighting for the people we care about...Or lost."

The hog shrugged, feeling undeserving of the generous youth's compassion. "What happens to me isn't important. Don't you see? I brought this all on myself-on all the poor idiots who bought a ticket to watch me scream into a microphone-on my band-buddies who are probably dead somewhere for all I know. And Felicia…I brought this on her too. She didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve any of it…" A lump of emotion built up in his throat, causing the hog to hitch and heave for breath. Everything and everyone he touched ended up ruined. How long before the kid in front of him wound up the same? "I need to save her kid. No matter what. But this isn't your fight."

"You don't understand..." Crestfallenly, Peter registered a quivery grimace throbbingly strain over his chiselled lips as he gazed into the white teardrop-curved lens of his Spidey mask-the crime-fightin' identity of his nameless existence that was prevalently etched on the marble grave marker of his aunt May; he accepted his trialling-blighted reality of being heartbreakingly severed from his snarky-artistic MJ because he closed-off the dimensional highway-deterring the freakish-a mutative rogue gallery of Spiderman's villainous-tragic- nemesis' from destructively breaching the sealer incantation runes of mirrored paradoxes over the Macchina di Kadavus cube.

Being detached from the cherished memories of his best friend and his MJ-everyone-was his rectified penance for his Multiverse blunder of hurriedly asking Doctor Strange to exorcise his unmasked identity out of the minds of New Yorkers with a catastrophic 'Ghostbuster level' spell cast. "I have to keep fighting because Mr. Stark gave this kid from Queens a chance to be a web-slinging Avenger..." Sniffily, Peter flitted his brownish-hazel irises at the chunkier Rocker hog with heart-driven sincerity as he tactfully stretched the spandex cloth of his Spidey mask over his boyish features, becoming the heroic teenage defender of the neighbouring boroughs: Spiderman. "We're getting our Felicia back...Together!" He fired a gooey web-line over his frayed backpack, that rapidly slingshotted against the dumpster. "I bought something that will make you blend into the streets better as we're about to go into stealth mode..."

Bucky could say for certain he wasn't surprised by Peter's unrelenting spirit. Spoken like a true kid of Queens, natural brothers if not rivals to a son of Brooklyn. He couldn't help but feel remorse in his heart for what travesties the poor kid endured in his young life. They were unimaginable and undeserved. The kid had a good heart and a bright head on his shoulders, Bucky knew there was no stopping him from doing what he believed was right. He could respect that-appreciate it even. Then came the item of which the web-slinger had tossed to him with a flick of his wrist. The object landed with a bullseye square on his head, a quick adjustment with his hands and Peter secured the ballcap backwards on his head.

Bucky felt like an idiot and for the first time in what felt like days, the hog shook with snorty laughter. "You got style, kid, and a lot of heart…You can call me Bucky, I appreciate the respect, but the whole Mr. Barnes thing isn't making me feel younger." He quipped, with a piggish grunt.

The gravelly throatiness of his pinkish timbre murmurously reached Peter's ears, wholeheartedly, with a deft tracery of brotherly grace as he kneaded pacifying ministrations his gloved fingers smoothly over the 'bad-ass' Rocker hog's blobbier shoulders, gripping onto shaggier tresses of wolfish raven askew underneath the flipped baseball cap's brim; grounding him with patent steadiness. Gruntingly, Bucky reactively titled his pudgier head on gentled accord, nudging the droolier moistness of his wedge-out snout against the bracketed cords of lithe muscle delinted with vibrant red spandex that was embellished with a spider insignia-the promise of homebound friendship wouldn't be denied. Knowing they were on the knife-edge of bravely trudging into a sorcerous minefield, shakily, Peter gazed into the porkier guitarist's beadier irises of voltaic sapphire that burningly electrified with a tenacious ferocity-of a Brooklyn kid's hellbent spirit. "Thank you for letting me help, Bucky..." he whispered out, earnestly, injecting another web cartilage into his wrist gauntlet. "I-It means a lot..."

"Thank me when we get Felicia back," he added with an air of determination in his bones. It was a familiar feeling he'd almost forgotten, the heat of adrenaline pulsing through his blood that came when facing a dangerous mission. He wasn't a soldier anymore, he wasn't even a human. But he wasn't about to let that stop him, he had nothing left to lose. "Fisk has a lot of holdings in this burough, but I think we both know he'll operate closer to his home-front." The docks would be ideal but it was too open a place to lure them in where they might be surrounded and picked off by a web-slinging hero. That left the Blood Rose nightclub. An elite social function but also a rumored front for the Kingpin's shady business dealings, or so he remembers Felicia mentioning. "Let's go get our girl back."

A web-line zips across the block, and spider swings through the skies with a hog attached to his chest. The full-moon glowed ominously above Manhattan, casting a violet hue upon the city. Trick-or-treaters and partygoers across the streets couldn't fathom the horrors about to be unleashed by an inter-dimensional sorceress.

Against the backlit obscurity that eerily contrasted over stacked freight containers within the basement of the Blood Rose club as the veristical pulse of damnable Eldritch conjury had telestically sailed over a spikier barb-wired fence as bulbously massive deformities of obese porcine captives that were bruisingly shackled with reddish psionic glyphs over their stubbier hooves distressingly squealed out throat-racking anguish in voiceless -horrified unison; torn visages of clothing tatteredly clung over the lumpish globbiness of saggier rotundity of their girthy masses-pitful blobs for the astral harvest.

Gothically bedizened in her purplish-ebony armoured garment that fittingly melded over her statuesque litheness as the aesthetical length of her Victorsque cloak draped over her iron-like shoulder pauldrons -she was vampiress-warrior incarnate. "Once the celestial bridge of the Dark Verse has breached this mortal threshold as I command the book of Vishanti, every soul in this wretched city will be devouringly razed into the astral trenches..." she taunted, dementedly, flashing the malefic intensity of her amethyst irises fierily onto the newest hoggish prisoner within a fortified cage- a pinkish-white furred sow who delectably swelled with the curvier exquisiteness of her bustier form. "Your precious Rocker boar will finish singing my incantation at midnight, and you, dear Felicia will echo my reaping melody..."

"You don't own him anymore..." Felicia countered, raspily, her furry-spaded ears twitchily perked against the choke-off heaves of breathless grunting that suffocatingly emitted from the blubbery heaps of piggish flab that deafened into a cacophonic pandemonium of heart-paralyzing misery. Riskily, she roved her dark irises at the gunky steel buckets of mushier pumpkin slop as chubbier feistier piglets adorably garbed in dregs of makeshift Avenger costumes vomitously scarfed down putrid mouthfuls in gluttonous mania, their whitish-splotched fur was grimily caked with ordurous muck as heftier droopy-girthed sows were fubsily poised for a milk-guzzling barrage. A stuporous wake of unhampered instinct listlessly straddled the protrusively blimpish captives into dormant throes. "Let those little kiddos have their Halloween kicks..." she oinked in scratchier pitch, tearily, watching a dwarfish rosy piglet quakingly huddle underneath a barrel-sized hog. "I-I give you my voice..."

"Felicia, don't play down that card..." Grappling onto the steel bars of the hamster cage with his clawed-feet, flappingly, Matthew hefted up his tinier form; protestingly he screeched in a grittier pitch, the bluish solar ripples of his bat radar pulsed against his twitching largish ears. With every chirp he emitted, ultrasonic vibrations sonically became concussive depth charges over the basement floor-his visionless gaze piercingly caught dark roundish silhouettes of the imprisoned hogs around him. "My friend won't give you anything for your nightmare duet, lady..." Smirkily, he jutted his fanged-snout against the bars, shifting his beadier obsidian irises at the vampiric hag who morphically downsized him into a winged-vermin. "You killed a lot of innocent people in my city, that's something you won't be walking away from..."

It was a not-so veiled threat, one she wasn't used to hearing coming from Matt Murdoch's lips. It was clear that Clea's machinations had rattled the spiritual Catholic in a way that not even Fisk, Castle or the Hand had done. She was indiscriminate in her wrath, targeting men, women and especially children on this night meant for them to have fun. He, like Felicia, had been forced to watch as the innocent trick-o-treaters had been brought in oblivious, having wandered from their families and believing the strange woman would lead them back. Instead she turned into mindless piglets, tucking away their minds in the deep recesses of sloth and ignorance. It infuriated Matt who watched it all with blank rage, eyes unseeing yet fully aware.

As if sensing his mood, Clea's evil smirk remained in place, finding the diminutive human's threats to be as moderate as rain-drops pouring outside of the club. A storm had built up. The titter-tatter against the windows stole her gaze and for a moment, she thought she saw a familiar reflection in the mirror. Try as you might to peer through, you won't ever find your way back, Stephen,' she thought haughtily, unaware that from the rooftop above the club, a spider and a hog landed beside an air-vent.

"I hope x-ray vision comes with your skill-set, Spidey, because we'll be going in blind at this point," Bucky remarked after Spider-Man dispatched an armed sentry and webbed him up against a wall.

"Okay...Okay..." A breathless response muffled underneath his Spidey mask, crouching low on his spandex-clad haunches, Peter gazed at the pot-bellied hog who swaggeringly dragged his blobbier girth with determined paces near the rooftop domed sky-light, as electric-white light flashily strobed against the ear-numbing ambiance of techo-backbeats that deafeningly vibrated with costumed throngs of Halloween partygoers, stylish visages of pointy witch's hats and crimson vampire capes blurringly contrasted with reddish neon of the granite bar-top as skeleton-faced DJ conducted his synth electronica mixes at his recording station. Hesitance was tellingly evident over his lithe-honed muscles as he registered the acholic fumes enticingly wafting from expensive crystalline punch bowls filled with Vodka -the Black Rose club was a rapacious sleaze- pit that bred deziens of lewd carnality and drunken gangbangers of Hell's Kitchen. He couldn't infiltrate Fisk's demoralized nightclub, he was only eighteen: a minor. "Y-You see I'm still in high school, and entering this place would be against the law..."

Bucky would've laughed if the situation wasn't so dire, this kid reminded him too much of Steve, it hit him with a wave of nostalgia that reminded him of fonder times. Instead the hog visibly shrugged, "Welcome to the wonderful world of teenage-delinquency, kid. But if it makes you feel any better, I doubt anyone in there will be looking to serve a spider and a pig anything other than billy-clubs. But if anyone asks, just say I'm your chaperone," Bucky quipped with a snort. Sensing the young hero was still unsure of this course of action, his tone became more assuring. "Look, we have the element of surprise. Just stick to the ceiling and do your thing. It's me the evil witch wants, its me she'll be focused on if we're spotted. Use that if you have to, just make sure everyone else gets out."

"Sounds easy enough..." Peter quipped under breath, hushedly, as he braced his gauntleted fore-arm over the Rocker hog's furrier mass. "We're using the backdoor to enter..." In a whoosh of his acrobatic momentum, Peter flipped off the ledge into a sky-driving vault, firing a web-line to secure the brakes of his swift-footed descent. In stealthier variance, he deftly lowered Bucky near cement steps that merged into back-exit. "Like all the mafia films I've seen, the shady business always happens in the basement...That's when the real heat goes down."

"With a small army of goons and guns waiting to be picked off," Bucky grunted as they settled into position. "Guard ahead," he cautioned. One armed sentry, suited and well-built, standing at rest in front of the door. Former military perhaps. It didn't matter to the super-powered hero who made quick work of webbing the guard's hands before he could reach his walkie or his gun. The sentry cursed as he attempted to engage the agile young hero but was swiftly subdued with a right-hook. Clean, fast, efficient, Bucky was impressed with the skill of the young crime-fighter who from what he gleaned had no formal training and relied simply on his gifts and experience to develop his fighting skills.

Bucky for a moment lamented his inability to be of more direct help, almost longing for the feeling of combat that he thought was long gone since the day he decided to put down his guns and pickup a guitar instead. That was when he saw another distinct shape emerging from a dark alcove-a second sentry! Tall and armed with his Glock poised directly behind the seemingly oblivious wall-crawler. The hog didn't think, he simply reacted. "Look out!" He charged like a stampeding bull and threw his weight into the back of the gunman's knees at the same time Peter's spider-sense alerted him to the unseen threat.

Spider-Man pounced and delivered a spinning back-kick just at the same time the hog knocked the guard's legs out from under him. A 2-hit combo that effectively knocked the guard into unconsciousness. "Stragglers. I hate em," the hog grunted with the grim familiarity of it all.

A mordant aura of carious reek smellily enwreathed the darkened hallway, Peter froze in a stunted heartbeat, detecting the apparitional pulses of demonic conjury psionically striated eldritch runes over the cement-brick wall-purplish-aster glyphs that hellishly formed into sealer Mandalas on telekinetic fruition. With a measure of trepidatious caution, he became intuitively attuned with visceral -mirco tremors akin to insect vibrations on a spider's webbing; the same foreboding eeriness that achingly strummed through his veins when he sensed the homicidal emergence manically sloughing off the guise of reserved empathy of Norman Osborn's fragile countenance-it was a tornadic entity of berserk mayhem-bloodshed that he couldn't dodge. "Something very bad is happening down here, Bucky..." He backflipped with a reactive surge of unerring his spidery graces, bolstering his booted feet onto the ceiling like sticky velcro; his white lens expressively squinted as he gazed at the sorcerous glyphs of a Strange-level incantation. "I've been these symbols before with uh...Doctor Strange..."

Bucky didn't need the same precognitive abilities as the wall-crawler to discern that something awful was happening down in this place. The creepy dim-lighting in the empty hallway certainly didn't do much to dispel the notion of "haunted basement" from his thoughts as they crept along the path. "Just stay sharp, kid. Keep your eyes and ears open," he cautioned as they neared a turn in the hallway, coming across nothing unassuming other than stock-equipment and unopened crates of wine. There weren't any of the club employees moving around, if they were even allowed access into the club's basement. Peter and Bucky edged forward, one crawling along the ceiling concealed by shadows while the other clopped the floor with fast-paced hooves.

"You hear that?" Bucky grunted, the hairs on furry back rising as he gleaned an ominous chant coming further ahead. A pulsing violet lighting streaked across the wall. "Crap," he uttered as monstrous shadows crept past them. Bucky instinctively hid himself beneath a table as two shapes staggered into a storage-space, lifeless and groaning. 'Zombies?' He thought he heard Peter gasp. For a woeful moment, there was dead silence and Bucky feared the kid's ridiculous assumption wasn't too far off from reality. Then he heard the string of a web-line and the bodies clumped to the ground. Bucky felt his heart skip as he got a good look at the deformed men whose faces were mutilated with scaled ashes and violet vines of dark magic.

Clea's puppets. Peter landed beside him, ushering him on that the way was clear. Bucky forced himself to turn away, dread filling his stomach as he pondered what state he would find Felicia in-was she even still alive? He was afraid to find out as he and Peter edged up a small flight of stairs towards a set of double-doors. The chanting lay just beyond, and even more alarming were the howling cries of distressed people…and animals.

Bucky shot a look up at Spider-Man, staring at his lenses with determination. "No stopping now. You know the plan. Open em," he gestured to the doors.

Giving the plumpish chestnut boar a subtle nod in that earshot, unwaveringly, Peter readied his stoking resilience as he propelled the strenuous momentum of his gloved fist with a straight-arm punch into the metal doors, a caroming screech groaningly ensured as dented hinges explosively toaster-popped in the collapsing succession of his enhanced-spider-ferocity. "Woah, now that's what I call a knock..." he quipped under his mask, jauntily, flexing his gauntleted wrist-shooter as gooey web lines stickily obstructed the zombified raid of the emaciated zealots who swarmingly advanced in death-walker traction. The purplish skeins of the Dark Verse energy demonically veined over their scaly tar-like flesh -skeletal deformities of the monkish fanatics who became dementedly corrupted by Kaecilius's possessive teaching. "G-Go Bucky..." he blurted, only to feel a jerking tug that viciously of a rabid zealot who forcibly dragged him onto his knees. "I-I got this..."

Bucky gave no rebuke, sensing that time was of the essence, and broke into a mad sprint through the ranks of zealots. Their reactions were feral yet slow, their minds lost to the maddening grip Clea had enforced that allowed no room for free-will or thought. The hog sped through them like a bullet, distracting some which allowed Spider-Man to spring into action. Bucky didn't stop as he listened to the zealot's roars and the sickening thuds of hard combat. He hoped the kid didn't pull his punches in this environment. Bucky slowed as he entered what appeared to be a conference room. It was grand in size, big enough to be a miniature gladiatorial ring with numerous unoccupied seats in the far back. What drew his gaze were the rows of armed sentries, unmasked and suited bearing no signs of corruption. Fisks' men. Beyond them was the chilling sound of distressed live-stock being held in cages. They numbered in dozens, maybe hundreds. It looked like a madhouse of torment as the animals struggled within their confines only to be electrocuted by the cage bars.

The Hog crept close to the wall, using his size-advantage to stealthily manuever himself beneath tables as the guards made their rotations. "Where are ya, Babe?" He wondered allowed, stretching out his nostrils and using his sense of smell. The stench of nicotine and gunpowder hung heavily in the air, it was almost nauseating. The pig ignored the mouth-watering scent of fruit and grain that would threaten to corrode his focus. He kept sniffing while making his way onward, oinking and grunting with frantic pace as he left the huge-pen and into the next room. Everything was dim, but the citrus scent he'd come to identify with a certain silver-haired kitten hit him like a lightning bolt, setting his skin aflame. "Felicia," he trotted onward, throwing caution to the wind as he entered an open-space and up a flight of stairs. The doors opened ahead of opened, not automatically, but by an unseen force. Bucky found himself being pulled, yanked away like a kite caught in the breeze until he landed on his feet inside of a grand-ballroom of sorts.

A dreaded figure stood there waiting for him, garbed in dark regal clothes. "Clea..."

"You just couldn't stay away, Rocker boy..." Hissingly, Clea snarled in waspish cadence, her viridian irises lividly flashed over the raven-chestnut furred hog who vexedly reeked of unshakeable tenacity as he stumblingly wobbled his tackless advances on his cloven-hooves; the puffier sagginess of his jowelly cheeks rubberily folded over his beadier grayish-aqueous depths as he oinkishly angled up his tusked-snout, resonating a guttural snort. Lashingly, she arced her dimensional -starlight blade with scything poise of her gauntleted wrist over the steel-barred cage, as butcherous thirst malefically edged over the hawkish curvatures of her witchy alabaster features, sneerily conveying a rapt of her vitriolic wickedness. The sulfuric miasma of her Eldritch conjury noxiously sailed over the barb-wired pen, inexorably deadening a triad of lumpishly stockier boars into stuporous-fattening throes."Do you harbour the desire for a reunion with your pathetic bandmates or the little vixenish beauty who now disgustingly grunts for a swift hand of mercy...?"

Standing face to face with the very object of his suffering over the past year, Bucky's first impulse was to attack, but he stood his ground unwavering in the face of the powerful sorceress who had only hours ago sicced a wave of demons on him and Peter. Though he was compelled to stick to the plan he'd laid out to the kid, Clea's ultimatum rang loudly like an alarm going off in his head once he realized who she was referring to.

"What have you done?" Bucky grunted with a dangerous pitch, almost afraid to find out the answer. Try as he might, he couldn't suppress his anxiety as his gaze stretched across the room, over the cages of imprisoned pigs. Other than a few of Fisk's corrupted henchmen in the background, there was no sign of anyone else. "Where's Felicia?!" He demanded. That was when he saw the cages behind her. In one of them was a quartet of large and distressed burly hogs that looked worse for wear, their minds lost to the gluttonous instincts that came with their cursed forms. If it weren't for the tattered vestments of stylish leather, he wouldn't have recognized them as his boys. His Howling Commandos. "No…Guys…"

The second cage had a second pig imprisoned-a sow. That was when he felt that familiar feeling-the world coming still and a bolt of lightning hitting him. Attraction, desire, longing. Sensations that were familiar to him as a man. It confounded him for a moment that he would feel such emotions but his new body only registered the absolute beauty of the fair-furred sow that put Mrs. Piggy to shame in the looks department. She was beautiful. Gorgeous even. That was when her scent hit him-and he knew in his bones that he was staring right at his stealy kitty as his heart throbbingly pounded in his chest. "Felish?"

Against his untrammelled 'heart-stopping' reaction, a dumbstruck pinch flabbily rapted over his furrier brow, as owlish blankness feverishly gleamed with the voltaic steeliness of his beadier aquamarine irises, evident to his jowelly snout hanging breathlessly agape. Shifting on her daintier-cloven hooves, lurchingly Felicia registered the clamping strain over her shackled chain as she achingly nudged her pinkish snout against the bars in tempoed urgency-reaching for him. Shamefacedly, Bucky wobbled back on the clumsier traction of his stubbier hooves, a surge of mortified panic revamped in a soul-careening tumult as he mistily gazed at the voluptuous suppleness of her voluptuous underbelly that plumpishly bowed with her luscious-shapelier rotundity. Despite being morphically roped into a whacko porcine menagerie, the vixenish feistiness that had emphasized her decadent -kittenish beauty had sirenically melded into the dishevelled glossiness of her silvery-whitish fur-she was a damn 'smokin' hot' knockout. "Don't give me that look, Barnes..." Felicia rasped in gruntier breaths, snarkily. "This extra packaging is a lot for a girl to handle..."

The enraptured Rocker hog was torn between his tumult of emotions, remorse and fury over what had become of his girlfriend. But at the same time, he felt an awakening in his body, primal and inflaming-a burning desire. His mind remained focused despite his fixation on Felicia's new-shapelier body. The quartet of engaged hogs that used to be his buddies raised in volume, their squeals and grunts were ones of distress; he had to wonder how much of them were still in there and recognized him. Without thinking, he began edging towards Felicia's cage, as if being pulled in by an invisible force. "I know you probably won't want to hear it, but that extra packaging looks good on ya, Babe…Really looks good on ya." He said, trying hard not to laugh and cry over the absurdity of it all. "Its gonna be all right. You'll see..."

Before he could get close, a choking gasp tore from him as the sorceress reached out with her magic, preventing him from taking another step towards her.

"Arghh..."

Dragging his stubbier hooves over the cement with strenuous traction, gutturally, with a reaction of his bestial fervency, Bucky thrashed his pudgier head on defensive strain against the choke-holding pressure of reddish energy that psionically merged into tentacles over the overlapping flabbiness of his jowelly neck in vising sync; Clea's manic assault of her paralytic-immobilizing conjury suffocatingly intensified as he rampantly belched out full-throated squeals as purplish geometric racemes of burningly veined into the floor, telestically snaring him into the prismatic warpage of a mirror-dome. Grunting out strained heaves of pent-up aggression, Bucky shoulder-rammed the chubbier resiliency of his porcine form bodily against the vitreous barrier that stingily pulsed over the fleshier hump of his shaggier back with tasering fruition.

"Did you think it would be that easy, you insolent Rocker boy..." she jeered out, ravingly, fisting her gauntleted hand in commanding tenor as the metal hinges of his thievish sow's cage had ghostily unlatched, the ophidian intensity of her virescent irises nastily gleamed alight with rabider thirst."If you desire for your fattening vixen to become released from my craven thrall, you will offer your wretched voice to me, James..."

"No..." A white-hot onrush of denotive voltage alarmingly pulsed through her veins like rapid-fire, stompingly, Felicia roved her beadier dark irises onto her beasty hunkish chubb-ball as he became mercilessly entombed within the glass-like barrier. The celestial-quantum gateway of the Dark Verse was on the fringe to acceleratedly converge over the panoramic boroughs of Manhatten as kaleidoscopic reefs nightmarishly jutted out of astroid-planetic crossways within Clea's sling-ring portal. It was chimeral-grotesque 'Wonderland' that housed the behemothic soul-gorging destructor. In that heart-plummeting moment, Felicia propelled herself out of the cage, gnashingly, she yanked the chain with a breakneck variance of heftier momentum; saltier wetness blearily robbed her vision as Bucky gurglingly, emitted choke-off squeals against the incendiary heat that agonizingly scored him with every conscious shift of his unbridled defiance. "Don't you even about selling yourself out, Barnes..." she grunted, breathily, watching his pudgier head droopingly lower into throes of gravitic-heartsick defeat. "You don't owe anything to her..."

"D-Don't! S-Stop!" Bucky squealed out, amidst the agonizing pain ravaging his senses, his fear only climbed to an all-time high the moment Felicia had broken from her confines only to charge head-first into Clea's path. She moved fast-but Clea's reflexes were sharp as a knife the moment the evil sorceress twisted her wrist and paralyzed the sow with a blast of dark matter. The squeal of pain erupting from her was a knife to Bucky's heart, a noise so horrible he would do anything for it to stop. "Leave her alone you evil witch!" Bucky cried out, trying and failing to pull himself onto his hooves. The smug and expectant look on Clea's face was a telling indicator that she knew he was trapped.

He knew it too. He knew what was at stake. Through all the pain and mental anguish he could somehow hear the screams of the dying outside on the streets. Innocent people exposed to the horrors of the Dark Dimension, their souls in danger of being harvested should he pick up a microphone and chime out the final incantation needed for the witch to complete her spell. If he refused, Felicia would die-they would all die.

There were no good options. None he could live with. He was once a soldier that knew the mission was important, but he wasn't a hero-he was just a man now. A man at risk of losing the one thing-the one person in the world he loved with all his being. With tears of anguish in his eyes, Bucky gritted his teeth, "I-I'll do it! JUST STOP!"

The hitching grunts of his throatier cadence pleadingly staked his votive -pitiful choice to damningly surrender his voice to dregs of her macabre witchery. Nefariously, Clea glowered at the roundish boar who defeatedly eased his jowelly snout on submissive accord as she twistily gestured her lithe fingers, melding reddish skeins of kinetic energy that became akin to vapourous hellish magma with her defensive incantation- Crimson Bands of Cyttorak in possessive unison, that whippingly snaked over his pudgier-cloven hooves-Eldritch restraints that arrested his warred mobility. "You will choke on your voice until the midnight hour of this final October night beckons for the dimensional convergence that will consumingly gorge the worthless scourge of mortality into a new reign of power..." she railed out, maniacally, arcing her starlight blade with murderous precision over Felicia's globous underbelly. "If you uphold my demands, James, I will bestow you a chance to make this little vixen disgustingly bulge with new porcine drudges..."

"No!" He grunted. That wasn't good enough for him. Not by a longshot. Felicia didn't deserve to live her life trapped in the body of a sow whose only expectancy was to squeeze out piglets. "You give her back her life, damn you!" He was near to the end of his rope, the blank passiveness of Clea's expression infuriated him to the point he wanted nothing more than to crush with a head-first charge. The witch, sensing his growing defiance, began to show her waning patience as she reached out and grasped him by the throat with her bare-hand, her sharpened nails digging into his furry flab causing him to choke.

"You will sing for her...Rocker Boy!" The razored scrape of her polished nails bleedingly dragged over his blobbish folds akin to viper-bite as she listened to him gaspingly thrash against the skull-pounding onslaught, skeins of purplish aster runically pulsed over the bristly grunginess of his shaggier chestnut fur; bracing on his restrained fore-legs, sobbingly Bucky heaved out pukish grunts as his rubberized bones morphically thickened into bulkier solidity -the droopier blubber of his jutted-out girth deflated into as he registered every layer of his globbier deformity meltingly slough in a sorcerous fusion that electrifying manifested within his immobilized form. Spasmodically, Bucky convulsed against the jackknifing momentum of his outstretching limbs as obsidian bones of his cloven hooves splittingly formed into vein-threaded hands, gripping onto cement, while the elonged length of his jowelly snout had disturbingly vanished into the masculine contours of a sculpted nose. In those heart-lurching moments the hoggish visage of a massively gross pot-bellied slug would infinitely dissolve into the hunkier bulkiness of naked-virile flesh. "Nothing will deter my reckoning..."

What happened next, Bucky hadn't anticipated. The heaviness of his burden, the weight of his cursed porcine visage had begun to fade away. The prickly fur vanished into his increasing mass, blobs of fat hardened into sculpted hard muscles. It happened so quick, he barely had time to register the breathtaking pain that came as he felt his body twist and transform in the span of seconds. A violet light consumed his mind and he was squealing one moment and gasping for breath the next. The violet vanished and his world sharpened into perfect clarity. Everything seemed smaller as he felt larger-taller. Laying sprawled out onto his side, his wide-blue eyes stared in morbid fascination at the two human hands held in front of him. His own hands. Calloused, lengthy and thin with his wolf-head signet ring on his right hand. A brush of his digits against the prickly stubble of his angular jaw confirmed his anxious suspicion. He was back-he was human again. "I'm...what..."

He peered up at the sorceress above him with disbelieving eyes, her contempt was clear as she stepped away from him, beckoning him to stand. By magic, with another flourish of her wrist, a microphone stand appeared in front of him. It all made sense now. He couldn't complete her spell as a pig. The pit of dread in his stomach only widened further as he laid eyes on the silver-furred sow laying whimpering on her side across from him. "Felicia...baby..." He felt shame, he remorse-all manner of ill-feelings towards himself that came with the thought he was selling out. Even if what he was forcing himself to do was to protect her, it was a selfish feeling-not one she would want him to make. Rising up on wobbly-feet that had lost their memory-balance, Bucky felt a weight on his back. Sure enough, his guitar was already waiting for him.

As he staggered to the microphone stand, inwardly, Bucky felt as if he were standing on the precipice. The cries of the city increasing outside the windows as civilians ran in mass panic from the calamitous portals opening up. Bucky shot a glare at Clea, her piercing green eyes boring into his soul, promising swift and utter destruction should he think about straying from his perch. The sow to the side shuffled in an attempt to rise up. Guitar in hand, lips moistened with a brush of his tongue, he felt the pit in his stomach threaten to pull in his heart-his soul. No words came out, only dead silence. His shapely-wide lips quivered, his fingertips tremble over the strings of his bewitched instrument.

Against the vertiginous bleariness of her vision that didn't recede, moaningly, Felicia gazed at the graven-edged rigidity of bracketed V-cut thews of his washboard abdomen that flexed bulkily underneath the black material of his tight-fitted undershirt; greenish sconces eerily haloed over his dishevelled raven tresses that sweatily feathered over his temples, roguishly evident to the 'bad-ass' sleekness of his leather pants that had metallic biker chains gothically looped against his belt as he reluctantly clutched onto the curved fretboard of his jet-matted Gibson.

Throbbingly his roughened fingers grazed the nickel cords with a strumming caress as he became unmovingly captive onto the rivalrous fringe of bone-liquefying ecstasy with the vibrating riffs that alarmingly blasted whitish salvos of astral energy over the imprisoned hogs-the oinkish dissonance of throat-draining terror cacophonously amplified into a demonic tempo. "D-Don't let her win..." A raspier threadiness hitched against her gruntier breaths, as she mirrored the sweltery intensity of his grayish-aquamarine irises that mesmerically gleamed like voltaic lazurite—his own mortal vitality was been torturously razed out in possessive succession, while the whiskey-roughen velvetiness of his murmurous drawl trancedly ghosted the hypnotic-stuporous lyrics of a heart-starving ballad against the microphone.

'W-When I feel your heart beating in shadows of night...It brings me to a place that feels like home...I wanna believe it's a dream...I wanna hold onto you...Though I'm afraid that nothing can be real...Until I look into your eyes that shine like a light in the darkness...I know you're everything I will fight for...When you listen to my heart beating... "

He sang with a level of heartache he had never before carried in his performances. Every word, every syllable resonated from within. All the pain and sorrow he'd harbored and the guilt-the guilt most of all-it poured off the tip of his tongue and sent soundwaves throughout the city. All of New York could hear him, somehow he knew it. The grandest stage he had ever envisioned himself on was ground-zero for interdimensional chaos ready to sweep through and consume everyone in its path. He willed himself to stop-Felicia's urgent oinks and grunts were needles piercing his flesh. Tears in his eyes, his vocals became harsher-aggressive. Filled with anger and poise.

Clea's piercing gaze, once satisfied, now turned to edging suspicion. Bucky was nearing the bridge of his track, the spell was nearly at its completion. "To hell with this!" With one final act of defiance, knowing its consequence, he lifted the guitar over his head and destructively smashed it to the floor. Clea's roaring scream of dismay echoed as the instrument shattered, causing a shockwave of magic to burst and send everyone in the room reeling. The foot-soldiers fell violently to the floor and Clea herself was brought to her knees by the blowback. Bucky stood tall, shaking and disoriented for a moment. Everything seemed deathly silent for a moment, but the screams out in the city had yet to subside.

The gravity of what he'd done set in and Bucky was quick to spring into action, rushing to Felicia's side. "We gotta go, Babe. I need you to get up." They only had a seconds to spare as Clea groggily recollected her senses!

"You fool...!" A banshee-like resonance screechingly railed out of her in demonic tenor, wrathfully, Clea dragged the ashen litheness of her -leather sheathed fingers over the cement, a seismic pulse earthshakingly tremored from the portals as she harnessed the eldritch unity of her destroyer runes that reddishly wheeled into hexagonal Mandalas that cuttingly whip-saw over the metal cages. Raising her gauntleted arm, she viciously readied to deliver a soul-reaping assault onto his repulsively obese -porky-Commandos, only to irately register a deterrence of spider webbing that gummily wrenched her arm onto the floor. "So the little spider has crawled back..."

"Hope we're not late to the party!" The chipper voice of the wall-crawling hero rang through the room. His agile form sprang through just in time to deliver another brand of webbing to the sorceress' arms before she could retaliate. "Oh no you don't, Wickedly Witch! Gotya!" Spider-Man came into view from the ceiling. Bucky never thought he would feel so glad to hear those annoying quips. A smile broke across his lips as he inwardly cheered the teen on. Spider-Man moved like a rampant shadow by way of shifting light. A small shape was perched on his shoulder, cawing and squeaking aloud.

"M-Matthew..." Groaningly, against the bone-numbing sludginess that wormed through blubbery plumpness of her girthier mass, hazily, Felicia steered her beadier darkish irises onto the dwarfish winged rodent squeakily latched onto Peter's lankier shoulder; the reverent contrast of Bucky's splaying palm that amorously blazoned over the furrier suppleness of her underbelly addictively stoked an ignitable tempo of hope-driven fervency with every invested caress that graced a tracery of his unbreakable promise as his fingers brushingly kneaded her whitish tresses. Answering his tremulous desperation that intensified with the riotous grunting of the porky Commandos, Felicia braced onto her fore-hooves with laden strain, nudging her pudgier snout dampishly against his leather-clad shoulder. "G-Get them out, Barnes..."

Once he had Felicia up on her hooves, Bucky worked on attempting to open the cage holding his friends. "Hold on, guys. I'm gettin' ya outta here." He assured the distressed hogs who shoved against the bars in their attempt to assist him in opening the door. "Damn it. Where's the key-" His eyes fell to one of Clea's puppets who staggered to his feet, reaching for his side-arm. "S***!" Bucky cursed, "Felish, get down!" With swiftness of thought and action, Bucky lunged towards the guard before he could take aim and caught his arm just as a round went off. The ghoulish puppet looked at him with deadened eyes, features cracked and decayed with pulses of dark energy emanating from his veins.

Bucky pitited the poor b***. Delivering a frontal kick, he dropped him and recovered both his gun and the keys from his belt. "Hey, Mister Barnes. Might want to hurry, I think I'm running out of web-shooters!" Peter said in his strenuous attempt to keep Clea restrained as she fought and clawed through his webbing like a feral beast.

"Keep her down, kid..." A whispery pitch chirpily squeaked out of Matthew's tinier-fanged mouth as he clung to a spandex-clad shoulder with his clawed-wing hooks, fluttering his wings to rapidly generate sonar pulses over his prey-Clea-he detachedly wriggled his verminous form off Spiderman and blindingly nosedived with an octane-breakneck rush. In seconds of detecting the rhythmic palpitations of elevated heartbeats and the savourous potency of blood, the wing-defender was paragliding on featherlight graces of his leathery outstretched wings over the gooier webbing-net that viscidly snared the dimensional hag. Screechingly, he jutted out his vampiric fangs, dive-bombing into her platinum-blondish whorls, fumingly, Clea seethed against his unrelenting-distractive assault. "T-This is for my city..."

The bat latched onto the sorceress' mane of platinum locks and wrapped the thick strangs in the jowls of his fangs then began to pull. "NGRAAH!" Clea let loose a vicious shriek both in pain and in rage as the winged rodent and annoying spider kept her pinned in a tumultuous assault of annoying puns, piercing bites and hardened restraints.

Bucky worked determinedly until the padlock on the cage door finally released. "Let's go, guys!" The hogs all but stampeded out of the cage in a mad-attempt at freedom, their charge only increasing the chaos as more of Clea's servants entered only to be caught in the storm of hooves trampling them to the ground. "Guys wait!" Bucky couldn't stop his transformed bandmates who searched for their own way out. The Rocker was tempted to go after them but was stopped as one of Clea's henchmen came at him.

His combat training returned to him as smooth as the feeling of riding a bike. Bucky drew the side-arm he'd acquired and fired on a trio of gunmen ready to take aim at them. The gunfire made it difficult for Spider-Man and Matt to pin-down Clea who finally managed to free one of her hands then tore the webbing from her mouth. "I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!" She screamed, her power erupting like a volcano, causing the webbing trapping her to incinerate.

"Oh…darn!" Spider-Man said, his lenses widening to the size of saucers, both he and Matt were now the subject of Clea's full murderous gaze. They were really in trouble now. "I-uh-I'm sorry. You know for what its worth, the web-strings looked like nice goth-strings on all that black you're wearing. It is Halloween after-all-"

"Hey, Peter. Not helping," Matt chirped into his ear, though inwardly he was just as anxious as the teen knowing that they were cornered. They had to do something-fast.

"What's that?" Bucky shouted over the chaos as he took down another zealot, Felicia behind him stomping her hooves onto one who attempted to get up. A spiral ring of sparks opened behind them revealing a gate-way onto an empty street. Peter's heart leapt up into his chest as hope entered it.

"Our way out, quick run!" He shouted.

Twitching her droopier ear, Felicia became attuned to an encroaching presence that hulkingly obstructed their exit point, involuntarily, she reeled back wobbily on her stubbier hooves, angling her furred snout against the vetiver-coriander smokiness of Bvlgari cologne effusively raided through her scrunching nostrils. The electrified hostility of his knifepoint betrayal ragingly suffused her-she needed to foster retractions of her combative-honed restraint against the porcine dregs."It won't be that easy, boys..." she grunted in an edgier pitch, fixing the tigerish fieriness of her brandy irises on the hulkish-quarterback silhouette that brutishly advanced out of the sling-ring portal with a controlled guise of predatorial--bearish rabidity of a tyrannical paragon-the Kingpin. "He'll cage us just for Halloween kicks..."

"We'll have to try, babe. C'mon!" Bucky followed the youth's advice and rushed through the portal with Felicia at his side. Spider-Man and Matt subdued a trio of zealots as Peter webbed one into a cocoon and used him as a bowling ball knocking down pins. Peter and Matt rushed through the portal just before Clea could attack. The portal lingered open behind them just as thumping footfalls entered the room. Wilson Fisk stood beside the portal-an expectant look upon his face as Clea glared at him and then the portal. Realization sunk as she recognized the magical signature behind the sling-ring gateway.

"You betray me, Wilson? You have made a poor choice," she said, eye twitching, her composure faltering in the face of the object he held in his hand. His walking cane affixed with a special talisman used to dispel Dark Dimension energy. How had he come by that? The Kingpin had passively watched the destruction of New York from his loft, realizing that he had made a poor business decision aligning with the interdimensional demoness who didn't just seek to prey upon the filth of his city but also those were of substantial worth to him-personally and professionally. He had always intended to sever ties with her, only he had not anticipated it unfolding in such a chaotic and desperate measure.

"Did you really think I would allow you to plant your feet in my backyard to allow you a fraction of the satisfaction to play the winning hand..." Hearing his thunderous cadence gutturally deafened against her floppy ears, Felicia veered her beadier irises at the repressive 'heavyweight' who titanically crossed through without a reined semblance of his tolerant decorum, his fleshier hand tensely clutched onto his obsidian 'sceptre' cane that was pharaonically bedecked with a golden cobra-head as he stompingly advanced closer to his transcendental -vulturous associate with a baleful measure of his shark-like prowess. "I have been in control of this necessary gambit and just gave you the opportunity to prove to me how unfortunate our coalition has become..." he professed in a huskier undertone, gruffly. "Unlike you, Clea, I see the variations of ambition when looking beyond reflection..."

The sorceress' eyes peered at the menacing businessman emptily, her once vicious cadence becoming stone cold which sent a chill of anticipation throughout the area. "I see only a speck of dust believing itself to be a force of nature," she said, rising to her full-statue and to Fisk's unease, began to stalk towards him, powering through the energy-field meant to counteract dark matter. "For that is all you are to me. All of you!" Her pitch raised, regaining some of its malice as she followed through the portal until they all found themselves upon an empty street in Manhattan. civilians had fled in the face of what they believed to be another threat to the city. Halloween decor floated in the breeze, and crumpled pumpkins and foam-strings were plastered across the hood of parked cars.

Spider-Man, Bat-Matt, Bucky and Felicia contemplated their next move as Clea reached out and ensnared Fisk in a grip of magic, causing the older man to clutch his chest as agony swept through him. "I am done playing games. If I will be denied harvesting this world-I will settle for your lives!"

"You guys gotta run. NOW!" Bucky screamed at his friends.

But it was too late. With a thunderous clap of her hands, Clea unleashed a shockwave of dark magic throughout the area that struck anyone caught in its vicinity. "Take cover!" Bucky had dived behind a car while Peter swing himself and Matt up into the skies. Everyone save Bucky was hit by the sorcerous onslaught. What followed was a deathly silence, but the effects were immediate and devastating.

"B-Bucky..." A heart-stopping onrush of white-hot contractions of paralytic energy had stealingly atrophied her mobility against the puffier cottony expanse that horrifically plugged her veins into deadened fruition. Gaspingly, Felicia watched a plastic-rubbery bat motionlessly drop onto the curb gridlock; vestigial shunts of unwarranted panic imploded as the globbier furriness of her curvier porcine form became cushiony sheathed into velvetaine satin. Inflatingly thickness of cotton-stuffing horrifically materialized her bones-stretching her chubbier limbs akin to blood infusions. Chokingly Felicia railed out a voiceless squeal while vaporous skeins of blackish thread maliciously hemmed over her jowelly snout as ragged gasps became stuffily layered with moldable cotton. In a flatlining heartbeat of being catatonically grappled on the inanimate fringe of a dormant eternity, she nightmarishly morphed into a pillow-soft -floppy piggy.

"No..." He was grippingly pulled into a shell-shocked onslaught of crescendoing- insurmountable panic-every stampeding pulse of his warred heartbeat jackhammered excruciatingly against his chest, as throat-racking sobs chokingly heaved out of him. Nakedly, his bleared aquamarine irises feverishly glanced onto the enchantingly beautiful pot-bellied stuffie-his Felicia. A white-hot voltage scythed through his veins, gapingly, his shapely-bow lips stretched against breathless anguish. "Felicia? Felicia!" Throwing all caution to the wind, Bucky rushed from his cover and immediately fell to his knees, hovering over the shape that was once the stuffie piggy representing the woman he loved. Disbelief took him to the point he was speechless. This couldn't be real? "Oh no…" A quick scan of the area revealed to him the transformed shapes of Peter and Matthew-also turned into miniature plastic figures. Fisk wasn't spared from Clea's magical outburst, the former Kingpin's body all but vanished and deformly twisted into an enormous pumpkin where he had collapsed.

A choked sob rattled his voice, as he held the stuffed pig-doll to him with tears in his eyes, rocking slowly. That grief led to brimming rage as his blue eyes focused on the dark entity coming towards him.

"Lament their fates all your wish to, Rocker Boy. Know that you are the cause of their suffering!" Clea taunted, stalking towards Bucky with quick strides aiming to finish him off personally.

"You're the one that's gonna suffer! Damn you!" Bucky charged at her with berserker-like intensity, swinging his fists like war-hammers aiming to knock a block off its perch. Clea blocked his attacks with astonishing reflexes, her forearms catching his with an eerie finesse that revealed the depth of her skills not just in sorcery but in combat.

"Nraggh..." A viperous smirk errantly played over her ashen lips, whooshingly, in a reactive earshot Clea sidestepped as Bucky retaliated with an upsurge of his aggressive-volcanic ferocity, propelling his straight-arm haymaker crushingly into a parked vehicle's rear window, slivers of glass bleedingly pierced his fisting knuckles, in a half-spin, the Rocker Boy rammed his elbow into her throat. Owlishly, his wide-blown aquamarine irises gleamed with murderous lividness as ebony-chestnut tresses sweatily clung to his flushed brow. Against chest-racking pants, blindingly, he gripped onto a glass shard, and with practiced swiftness of his tactical calibre, he readily angled his muscled forearm into a defensive stance, flipping the shard as his right-hook fist cannoned, in that adrenalized second, Bucky impressively caught it with his bloodied hand to deliver a knifepoint throat-slash.

In a deadlier succession of her cobra-strike viciousness, Clea unremittingly clawed her polished nails scrapingly over the corded ridges of his bulkier mid-drift, grimacingly he wavered back against the bludgeoned assault that robbed his seething breaths. "As much as I crave to watch you fall into the drudgery of your hoggish squalor..."Wrenching her gauntleted arm back with deceptive precision, telekinetically, she conjured up her starlight blade -without a variance of tempered mercy, she cuttingly slashed into the muscled resiliency of his bicep with flesh-hacking pressure- the severed humerus bone gruellingly jutted underneath rived leather. "Now you'll never hold your wretched guitar again...!

"Argh..." Bucky let loose a chilling cry of anguish that transitioned into a deathly gasp. The pain was all-consuming and blinding as he collapsed onto his side, groaning and whimpering as blood spurted from the stump on his left shoulder. His vision blurred, and everything appeared like a vignette as darkness threatened to consume him. Clea stood over him, grim satisfaction etched across her features. She would watch him bleed out and savor the consolation despite her plans having been foiled by the Rocker.

"I thought killing you would feel as insignificant to me as flicking dust from my shoulder. But as you humans like to say, "vengeance is sweet."" Using her heel, she kicked Bucky onto his back so that he was face up at her, his handsome features appearing pale and clammy as he began shivering. She would look into his eyes as she drove her blade through his heart. Bucky listlessly stared up at her, defiance still bright in his blue-orbs.

"Not as sweet as going out on a high-note," he taunted. Clea's eyes narrowed at him angrily.

"Make no mistake, I am just getting started-" As she brandished the mirror-dimension shard in her palm, she raised her arm high only to feel a piercing lash to seize her wrist in a scalding grip of eldritch sorcery. A whip. A familiar one.

"Well, I guess you'll be having seven years of bad luck..." A gruffer timbre sardonically jabbed out of Doctor Steven Strange's half-quirking lips, the bushier scruffiness that bedraggledly swatched over the hawkish angularity of his serrated- austere features that grizzily revealed the span of his captivity of being isolated within the prismatic labyrinth of the mirror dimension. The quicksilver intentness of his grayish-azure irises assessingly roved over a 12-inch action figure unmovingly discarded near a rubbery Halloween bat; that had strikingly agile litheness with inky webbing etched over hot-rod scarlet and electric blue-the heroic assemble of Spider-Man.

"Parker..." Forcibly, he gripped onto Crimson Bands, yanking at Clea's gauntleted wrist. Near a stuffed whitish-furred pig, with teeth-gnashing pants, erratically, Bucky shuddered on his knees, his tremorous palm smearily bracketed over jutted halves of mangled bone-Clea had amputated his rotator cuff as viscid welts of blood dampened his leather pants-he was alarmingly on the blackout fringe of hypovolemic shock. "Let's end this Hocus Pocus crap, shall we..."With a concentrative rapt over his tensing brow, Strange tutted his scarred-pin fingers, weaving skeins of astral energy to infuse a counterspell against Clea's tenebrous valance of magery that irrevocably razed out the souls of the moral defenders into plastic-toy vessels.

The seismic blowback tectonically erupted through the area scattered numerous parked cars on top of one another as the two masters of the mystic arts began their battle. To a now unmasked Peter Parker, it was like the proverbial ringbell had gone off and now the two heavyweights were about to duke it out. It was like watching Gandalf and Voldemort duke it out, only the problem was the dark lord-or dark lady-rather, had opened up a portal and let her pack of ghoulish nazgul looking monsters sweep through the streets with the single-minded goal of ripping them all apart. Matthew beside him, once again in his Daredevil outfit winced as he covered his ears, his senses bombarded by the unnatural stimuli that swept through the vicinity. "Hey, Mr. Murdoch, are you okay? I know you can't exactly see it, but things are getting ugly really quick." Peter said worriedly, concern for his former lawyer and new friend evident to the blind hero who smiled grimly.

"Don't tell me you haven't gotten used to this yet, Peter. You fought aliens in space!" Matt said, twisted and leaping into action over a maurading brute before climbing up its back and wrapping his billy-clubs around its neck.

"Yeah, now I'm fighting demons from another dimension! I'm freaking out! Why aren't you freaking out?!" Peter shouted, dodging an attack from the very sharp-end of a talon and using his web-string to catapult himself into a drop-kick, toppling the ghoul.

"Let's just say it comes with with the territory," the catholic hero replied. The two crime-fighters played off one another as Felicia, once again in her Black Cat attire, wielded a black whip and a pistol to hold off any of Clea's monsters that might come and try to prey upon her injured Bucky.

"Hang in there, Bucky. I need you to hang on," she entreated him. Doctor Strange had cauterized the wound with his magic before engaging Clea in direct battle. Her Rocker Boy wasn't bleeding but he was still weak and could slip into shock at any moment.

"Hangin' in there, kitty. W-Wouldn..mmph..wouldn't miss you kickin a** for anythin," Bucky quipped as he sat back against the wheel of a car, wishing more than anything for a gun in his hand to lend some amount of support. "M-Maybe…maybe when this is over, I can-we can do this more often?" He offered. Maybe it was the bloodloss talking, maybe he was just getting a tad too sentimental in the face of perpetual death, but nothing seemed as exciting to him as being by Felicia's side out here where the real action was. He might not be able to pick up a guitar again in his life, but he could sure as hell still wield a gun.

"Hold onto that thought," Felicia said, kissing his cheek and brushing his stubbled jaw lovingly. "We still got a wicked witch to put down."

Their focus was on the whirlwind of magical energies lighting up the city at the center of the street. Stephen Strange's mind was focused like a laser-point, as he countered Clea's dark spells with ones he'd carefully learned from the Book of Vashanti. His analytical mind had played out this encounter for what felt like hundreds of times during his captivity before he'd been freed and used the subsequent time to steal Clea's prize out from under her.

She relied on combinations of attacks to try and overwhelm his reflexes, but Strange was more than capable of keeping up. Combating the Scarlet Witch had taught him that when facing more powerful foes, cunning and deception were useful tools as well as thinking outside the box.

"You could have joined me, Stephen!" Clea ranted, summoning a black-hole to engulf the sorcerer who calmly dispelled it into a flurry of butterflies. That one felt familiar. "We could have been unstoppable-our union solidified with matrimony! But you spurned me and what I offered just so you could serve an undeserving, unimaginative fool who holds the title of Sorcerer Supreme?!" She raised her palms skywards and brought them low, a storm of mirror shards to come raining down over him.

"Didn't stop you from taking my last name, now did it?" Stephen shot back dryly, his own indignation over his months of captivity that felt like centuries made him feel drained and remorseless. "You wanted me as your trophy, Clea." He said, hard emotion in his eyes. "A battery you could siphon until you had enough power to deliver this world to your master."

Clea humphed at his deduction. "Dormammu will have this world, and as for trophies-I will mount your head upon the wall of my new fortress," she raved, conjuring a flurry of magical bolts and torpedoing them at Strange. The sorcerer remained motionless, Clea was filled with the anticipation of victory only for the bolts to phase right through him. A projection!

"Not gonna happen," Whipping around, she raised her forearms instinctively casting an energy shield just as Stephen struck with his whip. Clea hissed, dispeling her shield as they became locked in a tug-of-war only to reach out towards a burning wreckage.

Realization set in for Stephen as he watched her command the small flames causing them to expand into a spiraling inferno. Her nature as a Faltine gave her extreme control over the element and the devilish grin on her face was full of malice as she sent the flames towards Stephen. "Perish!" She snarled.

Strange braced himself and felt a familiar weight settle upon his shoulders, hoisting him high up into the air, levitating him out of view. "Thatta girl," he commended his cloak with a fond smile. The flames narrowly missed him, licking against the tip of his boots. Clea grunted, commanding the flames to go higher. Stephen in turn conjured a whirlwind and trapped the flames, coming into another tug-of-war with the interdimensional sorceress who pushed and struggled against his newfound might.

An aura of power and tranquility surrounded Strange as he hovered over the flames, his visage dark and foreboding, like a demon arisen from the netherworld. His piercing gaze focused on Clea, firm and unyielding. "You and your master have threatened my world one too many times, Clea. This time I am in no mood for bargaining!"

The insidious allure that esthetically contrasted with the fierceness of her vampish beauty had once enticingly induced him into a wanton thrall; she was a venomous weaver-spider who bitingly tangled him into her deceitful webbing-she was a vampiric harbinger of the Dark Verse's genocidal conquest-warpath. Ushering the zombified cavalcade of skeletal-ghoulish occultists of the quantum gateway was only a macabre curtain-raiser of the insufferable-caliginous reign of Dormammu. Evading twined fiery mandalas that geometrically rotated into barrier energy- Seraphim shields-with lightning-quick footing, whirlingly, Clea blasted a hailstorm of purplish salvos at him while he unerringly braced his forearm to kinetically absorb the psionic bursts. "You were banished..." she hissed, snarlingly, arcing her celestial blade for a defensive parry-Strange had the deadbolted audacity to impede her dimensional convergence. "The uncontainable power of Agamotto that has spawned within you, Stephen, can devastatingly birth a new cataclysmic incursion of the Multiverse...One tremor of your virtuous intractability will rupture into a calamity of mortal ruination... "

As white-noise volumes of demonic cacophony screechingly throttled out of the horde of skeletonized zealots, Matthew reactively tilted his Kelvar cowled head as he intimidatingly poised his combative stance against a brick wall, the carious rancidity of wilted flesh biliously wafted off the zombiesque invaders-he couldn't detect pulses-heartbeats-just blackish vapours that fleetingly swooped over him. Detaching his Billy-Stick into eskrima batons, he pivoted into a mid-crouch and flurringly pitched a baton against a backlight with dead-straight precision, the bulb shatteringly exploded into a scaly-desiccated face of a raven-like wraith. The viscid resin had smearily glazed the brick in the wake of his blinded assault. "Heads up, kid..." he murmured in a scratchier undertone, as Spider-man rampantly fired a connective web-line over the streetlight that stickily whisked onto a fire escape-clotheslining a zealot apparition. "Not a bad move, Parker..." His shapely lips half-quirked into a devilish smirk, while he involuntarily listened to a homespun whipcrack against the pavement. "Keep them grounded..."

"G-Gonna be a little hard, these portal zombies won't stay down, Mister Murdock..." Peter yelled in exhaustive pitch as he acrobatically swan-dived onto the cement pole, and lithely braced his gloved hand onto the streetlight bulb; like a knee-down skateboard rider, arcing his lankier fore-arm back as he poised into a three-point-landing crouch. "W-We need a proton pack to catch these freaky wraiths.." he stammered, chirpily, his brownish-hazel irises flitted over the inky smudge on the wall. "C'mon who doesn't like Ghostbusters..." Keeping himself balanced, Peter angled his gauntleted web-shooter as his middle fingers flexed against his spadexed palm, a gooier steamer blasted out, clinging onto a crow-like pterodactyl that vulturously wheeled over Bucky's slumped-one-armed form. "Woah, gotta stop this chow time..."

A rapid-fire hailstorm of 9mm bullets piercingly deafened into concussive staccatos, Felicia desperately emptied the cartridge of her reloaded Glock; her smokier-whitish tresses lashed against the cool suppleness of her cheeks as she blindingly aimed the carbon-black nozzle for a point-blank kill shot at the demonic raven, in a quick-handed succession of punching back the hammer-lock, tarry heaps of exsiccated flesh had meltingly oozed out of a bullet-gored feathery body, sludgily garnishing the pavement like spilled ink. "Just keep her creep horde away from Bucky..." she rasped, grittily, flitting the steeled intensity of her brandy irises at her Rocker Wolf's motionless-blood-damp form. The malodorous fumes that sulfurously emanated out of the Dark Verse atmospherically became a paralytic valance over them-a hellish smog. "We need to clear out of here, Spider..."

The two sorcerers continued their battle, devastation wreaking havoc upon the desolate street. In the distance the wailing of sirens could be heard as the Dark Dimension entities continued to come through the numerous portals seeking to prey upon the innocents of New York while a small platoon of Avengers did all they could to repel their advance.

Stephen grunted as he was struck by a vicious tiger-claw palm to his chest by Clea, her proficiency in hand-to-hand combat far exceeded his own skill that he struggled for a moment to counter her direct assault. The sorcerer caught another attack meant to force out his astal-projection, a pained grimace formed across his face as he fought against her own superhuman strength-her expression never changing as she glared at him like a with a domineering smirk.

"You will not stop me, Stephen. You and your friends will perish together!" The sorceress called forth more legions. Daredevil and Spider-Man fight back-to-back, the two crime-fighters fighting desperately against the seemingly endless wave of ghoulish fiends coming at them like a flood intending to drown them. Felicia continued to use her whip now enriched in flames, using it to lethal effect to hold off the storm sweeping towards her and the downed Bucky. "I will have m-" A whooshing on the wind was the last thing Clea registered. Her sight was obscured by a very tight and determined cloak wrapping around her head.

"GRAAAUGH!" She screamed with fury, attempting to use her own strength to rip the accursed garment from her head rather than risk harming it and herself with her own magic.

An expectant hush permeated the battle-ground, the air seemed colder despite the bed of flames careening nearby. Clea felt the cloak leave her and she hissed with confusion once she saw Strange no longer present. "Cowardice does not suit you, Stephen! Where are you?!"

She braced herself as she conjured a salvo of energy enwrapped about a mirror-dimension shard that would deliver the fatal blow to her rival. "What is this?" Clea shuddered, her breath visibly wafting in the air. Her limbs felt as brittle as glass and she was at risk of shattering to pieces. She attempted to maneuver herself but realized only too late that in her moment of blind-obscurity, Strange had created a binding circle of ice in the shape of a pentagram with the Eye of Agamotto at its center. The interdimensional sorceress screamed knowing she was bound-trapped!

"Your icy prison awaits," Strange said with a dangerous voice that were it not for the breezy wind, sent a chill down everyone's spines. Icy tendrils latched onto her from a puddle of rainwater, their volume increasing to the point a small pool seeped into the street. Clea struggled against the magic, but the tendrils unleashed a plume of icy-cold mist that covered her completely from head-to-toe. "STRAAAAAANGGGE!" Was her final cry before her voice was sealed away in the icy confines of a glass shell that encompassed her body. Her mind faded into slumber and the sorceress' influence over the Dark Dimension horde was severed.

The ghoulish legions and zealots screeched in defeat, their putrid forms plucked away from reality and back through the portals from which they came. Daredevil and Spider-Man listened and looked on, hopeful of what was happening. Doctor Strange hovered in a meditative pose, conjuring every containment spell known to him and casting them upon the icy-sculpture that held the captured sorceress imprisoned. The noise of chaos faded and an eerie calm fell upon the streets.

Felicia helped Bucky to his feet, the couple limping in exhaustion towards the middle of the street where the trio of heroes stood before the icy sculpture.

"She won't be coming back to harm our reality again. Not anytime soon anyway," Doctor Strange answered their unasked question. It sent a surge of relief through all of them-they had won!

"YES!" Peter cheered, arms raised high only to then brush away the exhaustion in his temples as he took in a deep breath. "I'm totally gonna be having nightmares about all this for a long time. But we did it, guys. By the way, Mr. Strange, its so good to have you back. Thank you for not letting me stay an action figure. I mean, I know I make a cool action figure but I never want-"

"Parker?" Strange cut him off with an exasperated look. "You can thank me by helping Scooby-Doo some of this crap before Damage Control gets here."

"Right! You got it!"

Emptying out the last cartiages of his web-shooter reserves, speedily, Peter rounded-up the lingering emaciated denizens, cocooning their zombified forms into a tacky mass of his webbing-stunting their hellstorm mayhem as their erupted screeches dauntingly amplified into an ear-splitting frequency of white-noise mania. Against his fleeting periphery, he glimpsed at Strange impassively weaving his marred fingers into a clockwise gesture as viridescent circlets bracketed his threadbare-sleeved wrist like a remote controller while geometric sigils telestically formed into tao mandalas shields. Giving him a brusque nod, harnessing every surge of his enhanced momentum, Peter yanked on the web-nests with an arm-jerking flexion of his spidey resiliency and catapulted the enmeshed zealots into fiery portals. "Oh yeah...That was so high-fivin' cool..."

Aware of the obstructive webbing that canopied above the street, grimacingly, Matthew staggered his advances toward his unconscious hulking nemesis-Fisk-who stinkily reeked of pumpkin fluid as he tellingly shifted out of his comatose thrall. Gnashing his teeth, Matthew bridled down his aggressive impulse of unhinged destruction to crushingly boot-stomp on hammering force into the flabbier trachea of King-Pin-to end the perpetual cycle of their rivalrous crusade over Hells Kitchen; he couldn't play down the cards of being a judge, jury and executioner- weigh down the scales of his legist morality. He was being roped into a warring stalemate of resistance-conviction. The cowled guise of his 'street-fighter' vigilance made him a brooding sentinel of martyrized retribution; Wilson Fisk was a homicidal- dreadnought-bully- who deserved punishment in spades.

Crouching low on his armour-padded haunches at the heavy-weight mogul's immense side with adamant reservations, Matthew tensely gripped the customized suit's white-collar, and sneerily whispered in raspier timbre as he measuringly detected a rush of euphoric hope caroming in unison from the Black Rose clubhouse-the freed captives that were piggishly morphed into blimpish-dormant hogs. "S-Still think there are no happy endings, Fisk..."

Fisk stared up at the Devil of Hells Kitchen, too drained and exhausted to fight, but his defiance still burned bright as he sneered. "Don't think your victory is solely earned and you alone have triumphed. I will one day save-" A harsh punishing fist connected with the Kingpin's temple, knocking him out swiftly.

"This city doesn't need you to save anyone. It never did," Daredevil released a weary sigh as he stood to his full height, feeling his joints crack and his aching muscles protest. He would make sure Fisk's next trip to prison wouldn't be at Riker's but to the Raft where he wouldn't be buying his way out. He knew another good lawyer who could help him with that.

"Ambulance is on its way," Felicia said as Bucky attempted to stand under his own power. His gaze was listless, forcibly avoiding the severed arm that laid sprawled out on the street in a gory puddle amidst the other debris from the battle. Bucky said nothing but it was clear the toll of everything he'd endured had begun to catch up to him. He wouldn't be able to pick up a guitar again, he probably wouldn't even be able to load a gun. What use was he after all of this? Those dark thoughts threatened to overwhelm his composure but he stowed them away, focusing only on the positives.

Felicia was safe, she was back to her normal-self and so was he. New York would thrive on as it always did. "Take it easy," she said as if sensing his thoughts. "Hey…We're okay. it's gonna be okay."

Against the heavy-lidded bleariness, the cool steeliness of his aquamarine irises mesmerically gleamed diamondlike radiance under his flitting lashes, staving down insuppressible heartache, bracingly, Felicia bracketed her daintier palm over the pricky stubbled -broader contours underside his knife-edged jaw, gliding her thumb with reverent pressure against his dimpled-cleft as his teeth shudderingly dragged over his poutier underlip -unbidden anguish rode through him as she kept him bodily anchored."You're not slipping away that easy, Barnes..." Catching her breathy pants, she gripped onto the dampish material of his black undershirt with a fisting scrunch, gazing at the bloodied smears that achingly contrasted over his bruised temple-a valorous -undeniable revelation that he daringly went on the ropes for her. "T-This girl isn't letting you go..."

A soft chuckle escaped Bucky, his bloodied lips pulling into a half-smile. "That's good to hear, because there's nowhere else I want to be." He sniffed, fighting through the pain long enough to keep himself together as the wailing of police sirens and first responders closed in on the chaotic scene they stood in. Wordlessly the couple drifted closer, their brows touching as they took solace in each other's embrace. A closeness and understanding that they'd been long missing. As their eyes met with deep longing, they were entranced in a familiar pull, a spark that ignited a fire of loving passion and they closed the gap-their lips claiming each other.

Their breathless deliverance tempoed into a headier rush, moaningly, Bucky gripped his roughened fingers over her delicate nape in passion-blank succession; capturing her pulse, his thumb caressingly dragged reverent ministrations over the sleekier contours of her jaw; the velvety pressure of his sensuous-bow lips feverously intensified with hungrier-sweeter demand -every bruising thrust of his open-mouth kiss gapingly against the plushier lushness of her kiss-swollen lips became incendiary-volcanic decadence that starvingly careened them into gloried ecstasy.

"Kitten..." he murmured in the whiskey-smooth gravelliness of his breathier drawl, that meltingly resonated soul-deep within like an dosage of ambrosian chocolate. Swelteringly, dishevelled tresses of chestnut-raven and whitish-silver messily clung to their fevered brows while he angled her head back with the cradling steadiness of his palm, arrowing the scrunch of his Romaniansque nose into the suppleness of her flushed cheek against the rampant surge of his tongue. Every commanding groan ardently paced within her as he fiercely tugged onto the voluminous swell of her underlip, not breaking their kiss.

Answering his throatier demand, blindly, Felicia twined her neoprene-clad arms over his bulkier shoulders, as the delectable swells of her voluptuous breasts cushily melded against the banded ridges of heavier muscle delineated underneath his torn shirt-a reality that had been detachedly untouchable when they were ensorcelled to fatten into globbier rotundity of pot-bellied hogs. Nothing would separate them again-no blighted contracts to slake a Brooklyn rocker's stardom for underhanded-witchy- gain. They were reaching deeper into the aphrodisiacal drift of mirrored intimacy-holding nothing back as the duelling cadence of their hottish-savorous fusion intoxicatingly strummed through his veins into a rapturous communion- a hard rockin' promise that no guitarist could addictively echo on the power cords. "D-Damn...I love you..."

Everything felt right, as Halloween reached its last minute. The renewed couple would only look forward to what lay ahead for them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 month later…

Autumn was nearing its conclusion as the first signs of winter cascaded down over the streets of Midtown. Bucky watched the snowfall from the kitchen window with a relaxed smile, enjoying how peaceful everything looked from up here. A buzzing in his pocket prompted him to pull out his phone. A text from Jack, one from Andre and another from Roofus and Ben. His boys had surprisingly bounced back well from the ordeal of being transformed into portly hogs a month ago, though he knew at least a few of them needed a therapy session or two just to cope with things. The Howling Commandos weren't broken up-they were just taking a long deserved break and vowed to take on only part-time gigs, especially with the holidays in full-swing.

Bucky wasn't sure if going back was as easy as it might seem. The weight on his left side. His new limb would take time for him to grow used to. A fully prosthetic cybernetic limb Peter Parker had helped shape from him using Stark Industries equipment he'd had stashed away somewhere-a memento from an old life only he remembered, he said. Bucky didn't question it, he was just too thankful for the kid who gave him a second chance at being something more than what he was.

Speaking of second chances, his stomach growled as the wafting scent of mouth-watering turkey brushed his nostrils. He could hear his name being called to the dining room. Felicia and Peter had gone all out and made a full-spread Thanksgiving feast. A celebration for new beginnings-new friendships and second chances.

A man couldn't be more thankful for anything than that.

The End.

October 21, 2022.

1 note · View note