Big Wheel

[Third Person POV]

Jonathan Storms, often called Johnny by friends or the Human Torch by his adoring fans, had jumped at the chance to go take out the new inexperienced villain who looked like an over-glorified car tire on his own. His three teammates could easily handle their old enemy, Vulture, and his new sidekick, on their own, just like they had done many times before, so why not go have some fun and perhaps get the phone number of some girl he saves along the way?

Johnny shakes his head to get those thoughts out of him while flying toward the bank the action is happening. While that phone number would be a good bonus, the objective is to take down the villain without any casualties and minimal injuries. Wouldn't want another PR disaster on their hands, the last one was already a pain in the ass.

Reaching the front of the bank, Johnny briefly stops in midair to look down at the dozens of cop cars that have arrived and surrounded the front entrance of the bank that now holds a large cylindrical hole roughly 4 to 5 meters tall in place of the front door that used to be there. Without hesitation, he zooms right through the hole and enters the bank, only to find things way out of his expectations.

"Black Cat, I would have thought you smarter than to work together with first-timers like this." He says, looking down at both the well-known thief Black Cat and the newcomer Big Wheel having a stare down with each other. "Or could it be you both were planning to pull off a heist today and, by happenstance, ended up in the same place?"

Being completely alone against two villains would be a much tougher fight than what Johnny had come here for, which is why he was now trying to start up a conversation as a way to buy time while he cooked up a plan in his head, but the words he heard from the cat were much different from the usual jokey flirting he would usually get.

"Well, look who showed up late. Had it not been for me, this guy could have walked… uh, rolled out of here with bags full of money already. For your information, flame head, I'm here to stop the crime this time, not to commit it."

This information confused Johnny for five seconds before he decided that the cat was leading him on. "Don't be playing me for a fool. A legendary thief such as yourself just so happens to be in a bank in the middle of a robbery to what, stop it? I may seem dumb, but-"

Johnny's rambling was cut short by an audible clicking of a tongue by Big Wheel who spoke through the speakers installed in the vehicle he controlled. "See what you've done. I could have given you a percentage of my takings for letting me go, but you dumb bimbo just had to go and delay me. Now I have to kill you both!"

'Huh? Am I missing something?' Johnny silently thought. Was Black Cat telling the truth to him, or were they both playing some theatrics to confuse him? It's absurd to think she would suddenly start fighting crime out of the blue.

Had Johnny been reading the news more than once a month, he might have known of Black Cat helping stop crime together with Spiderman the past several days already but too bad he didn't really care that much. To be honest, he barely even knew who Spiderman was. Had he not heard Richards and Susan talking about the new hero in town one morning during breakfast, he might have even taken the costumed hero for a villain if he stumbled upon him randomly.

It was clear that the two villains were just trying to confuse Johnny and make him think they weren't working together. Sizing both of them up, Johnny decides that Black Cat is the more significant threat here and launches forwards. "Flame on!"

Seeing the hero suddenly flying toward her, Felicia shoots a web to pull herself out of the way of his flight trajectory, quietly muttering, "Oh, come to the fuck on…"

Despite his target moving at high speeds, Johnny has no problem changing his flight path mid-air and going after her. Even the occasional webs that get shot at his face don't faze him as they burn up from the heat of his flames before ever touching his skin.

"You can't escape from me- Whoah there!" Having wholly ignored Big Wheel while chasing after Black Cat, Johnny didn't even realize when the guy had deployed machine guns and started opening fire on him.

"See, I knew you two were working together," Johnny says, ignoring the fact that Felicia was also getting shot at.

The machine gun bullets he was under fire from were a much bigger threat than the harmless webs Black Cat shot at him earlier. Johnny opted to temporarily stop chasing the woman and instead deal with the problem at hand by shooting out long streams of flames from his hands to melt the connecting parts that held the machine guns to the wheel. This worked as he had hoped, but as soon as the machine guns fell to the floor, big wheel deployed new weapons to replace them. Several rocket launches emerged from the top of the wheel and aimed not at the Human Torch or Black Cat but instead at the hinges of the giant vault door that held the riches of the bank.

Why was the vault door that held everything just visible from the main room of the bank, you may ask? Well, who the fuck knows, but that probably wasn't the smartest design choice in a city inhabited by dozens of supervillains.

The explosions created a massive amount of smoke that obscured everyone's vision for a bit, but when it finally subsided enough to see again, Big Wheel had availed two massive hands that came out from the sides of his wheel. Both Felicia and Johnny were left to wonder who even came up with these absurd weapons.

The hands grabbed onto the vault door that probably weighed a few tons and tossed like a frisbee right at Johnny.

Reacting quickly, Johnny was able to dodge by flying underneath it, leaving the door to lodge itself into the bank's wall. Without realizing it, though, he had flown right into Big Wheel's trap. He was now close enough to him that one of the hands grabbed him and brought him close to the window from which the man inside was operating the machine.

"I've got you now. There is no escape for you." The man grinned and cranked a switch to make the hands squeeze Johnny harder and harder. In almost no time, his captive was screaming from pain, and soon, he would be known as the person to kill one of the members of the Fantastic Four!

In his glee, he had completely forgotten about Black Cat, who, after getting into position, aimed her web shooters at the connection junctions of the arm and pulled with all her strength. She was unable to pull them off or break them entirely, but enough damage had been done to the hand to ease some of the pressure on Johnny.

"Agh…Flame…On!" He burst into flames much hotter than what he usually used. Even Felicia, who was standing far away from him, could feel the heat. The hand could never have survived and completely melted in mere seconds letting the hero free.

"You nuisance…" The man inside the wheel, Jackson Weele, gritted his teeth and once again deployed the rocket launcher, pointing them at Black Cat in anger. "You will pay for ruining my plans."

He raised his fist high in the air in anger and then over dramatically let it fall onto the button that would shoot the rockets.

Massive explosions were audible in the following seconds, but none were even close to Black Cat. No, all of the rockets exploded inside their launchers, breaking the vehicle completely and filling the driver's cabin with smoke. Felicia had shot webs in all the tubes the rockets previously shot out of when Weele wasn't paying attention leading to him self-destructing.

As the Big Wheel falls over and lays on its side, Johnny, still feeling a little pain from the squeezing, descends next to it and, focusing his flames, cuts an opening to pull out Weele, who miraculously is still alive.

"Wait!" Weele yells, breaking out into a coughing fit. "I surrender! It was just a prank." He manages to say while coughing up smoke.

"You're gonna be getting a nice and long prison sentence. As for your accomplice, though…" Johnny says, turning around to look at Black Cat but instead finding just an empty space. "Damn, she escaped."

Johnny rises into the air to fly out and hand over Weele to the police waiting outside. However, several cops run inside before he can. "Is it over? Black Cat just came out and told us to come take in the bad guy."

Johnny nods, handing over Weele. "Ah yeah, it's ove- wait, did you say Black Cat was outside? And you didn't arrest her?" It's true that just a few cops probably wouldn't be able to handle her, but he has never seen cops just conversing with a villain and letting them go free without even attempting to put up a resistance…

"Hm? Yeah, why would we try to arrest her?" The cop asks, sounding equally as confused as he looks.

"I mean… she is a thief and all. Don't you usually put people like that behind bars?" Johnny asks but slowly starts to wonder why the police are staring at him like he is the weird one here.

"Oh, that? Yeah, I guess the Fantastic Four have been away for a while, so you might not have heard, but she already returned what she stole and started doing hero stuff." One cop says, and another quickly follows.

"Yeah, just yesterday, she saved my life when I was pinned down in a gunfight with some mobsters."

Another cop follows. "I can confirm I was there! Also, two days ago, she saved my mother from our apartment when the building started burning down."

Johnny was thoroughly confused while listening to the cops tell their stories. Black Cat was a villain… right? Whatever, best to just go home and tell the others about this. Then they can all try to figure out what happened while they were in Europe together.

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

Note: More of a side chapter, but yeah. Another chapter maybe tomorrow, but I'm not promising anything.

Some people recommended switching between first and third person POV so I might try a bit of that in the future depending on the situation.