bad things | P. PARKER

1. when delaney met bugsy

FEW WOMEN THAT HAD THE LUXURY of traipsing the gum and rodent riddled pavements of New York City, rarely did so alone if it could be helped. Those that did, walked with an anxious nip in their chest, their phones clutched tightly in their palms and eyes darting nervously around to every squeak or creak that sounded out too close to them. Thus was the world these women lived in, until the amazing Spider-Man had begun to swing through their streets.

Of course the ever constant fear of an attack lingered in the minds of all women, their world not yet advanced enough to be considered truly safe. Although the idea of a protector, a real hero, keeping a watchful eye over the city to protect the neighbourhood from those that would threaten it, was as much of a comfort to many as religion was.

Delaney Knight, however, had never strolled the streets of her hometown with said anxiety. She wasn't silly enough to think she would be somehow immune if she happened across the wrong guy in the wrong alleyway, but being the daughter of a crime lord had left her with a casual confidence, bordering on cockiness. Her father had trained her for this, pitted her against her brother in fist fight after fist fight until she could hold her own (albeit he still won to this very day).

And if her fists were to fail her, or the handgun she kept secured inside her pea coat were to be unattainable, Delaney was at least confident that the vengeance her father would enact upon anyone who hurt his only daughter would be ten times worse than anything anyone would do to her.

That fact alone assured her that Wilson Fisk, better known by his truly ridiculous pseudonym of 'Kingpin', had a world of hell on his way.

It had been exactly one month since their family's biggest rival had managed to have her mother assassinated. One month since he tore the Knight family apart. One month since he put the final nail in his own coffin.

Delaney's father, John, would not take such an act likely. The sheer fact he had yet to retaliate proved that he was not going to act out of anger when he got his revenge. No, his plans were going to tear Fisk's syndicate out, root and stem. The blonde was sure that for every hair harmed on her mother's head, someone would die for each one of them.

She shuddered at the thought, drawing her coat tighter around her body. As a child, Delaney would like to imagine that her family were different from the others like hers in the city. They didn't butcher or murder people for their own gain. They dabbled in the black market, stole from the rich to give to the poor. If anything they were anti-heroes, not villains.

When Delaney had once told her brother this he had laughed in her face, only stopping when he realised she had been serious. Clearly he knew more than she had, being their father's right hand man.