Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel, or its characters. I do own my own, as well as this story.
Chapter 2: The Wall-Crawler Recruits Help From the FF
New York, midday. Daily Bugle building, J. Jonah Jamison's office. Peter Parker walked into the office, to see J.J.'s face riddled with anger. He didn't look forward to his next outburst.
"Parker, what the hell did I tell you?" Jonah's cigar fell out of his mouth, and onto his desk. But when he pounded the desk, the cigar flew back up into the air, and he caught it in his mouth.
"To get pictures of Spider-Man..." Peter wasn't able to finish his sentence.
"And to make sure that you catch him in the act of criminality! You keep catching him when it looks like he isn't the bad guy, and he frames someone else!" Jonah's face was red with burst blood vessels under his skin.
Peter mumbled under his breath, "Someone's getting framed alright."
"What was that?" Jonah drilled his sight into Peter's eyes.
"Nothing, look, do I get paid for these or not? I can take them to the tabloids down the street if you won't give me anything for them." Peter was fed up with all the bad rap Spider-Man was getting just because of Jonah.
"I'll give you $500. Final."
"A piece?"
"No, what are you crazy? For all of them, now either take it, or get out of my office."
Peter rolled his eyes, and walked out of Jonah's office. "I'd have been better off taking them down to the tabloids." He stopped at Jonah's secretary's desk, and look down to her. "I'm here to get my payment from J.J."
"Here ya go Peter, $500, just like he said." He reached down for the money, but she put her hand on his, stopping him from taking it off her desk. "And here's another hundred from me, if you can give me that one of Spidey's ass when he kicked the Lizard into the river."
Peter gave her an odd look, but smiled. "Sure, you're lucky I happen to keep a few backup pictures in my bag." He reached into his bag, and shuffled through the photos within. Finding the photo requested, he pulled it out, and handed it to her. With a quick flick of his wrist, he was able to get some webbing on it before she took it. "Oops, looks like Spidey got some of his webbing on that one, I'll get it off for..."
"Oh, don't worry 'bout it Peter, in fact, since it does, I'll give you an extra $50." She smiled sexily at him, and reached into her purse. Withdrawing the crisp fifty, she set it down on the stack of bills Peter was fingering.
"Thanks, but you don't have to," He started.
"No, you take it, it's yours." She smiled at him again, and he took the money off her desk. "Have a nice day cutie."
Peter blushed slightly, but shook it off as he left. "Doesn't she know what I'm married? I'll never be able to keep women off me with my body." Peter stopped in front of the elevator, and looked down as though he was thinking hard. "Maybe I should stop crime fighting, so that M.J. Won't have to fend off any crazy female attackers. And then we could live a happy life... Nah, I'd just get pulled back into it somehow." He hit the button for the first floor, and stepped into the elevator.
About three floors down, the elevator music suddenly stopped, and was torn with static. Within a few seconds, the static stopped, and a broadcast could be heard through the elevator's speakers. In crystal clarity too. "Greetings good citizens of Earth. I broadcast this to your planet with our best technology, to insure that everyone gets this message."
Peter's face jumbled into a look of confusion, and began to listen intently. "We are currently in orbit around your planet, and will be here for some time to come. For all of you who are asking, 'we' are an alien race that has saw some potential in your planet, and wish to put that potential to use. We are known widely in our terms and locale as the 'Black Dimension Council' or in acronymic terms, the BDC."
"Oh no, this can't be good. With a name like that, they have to be evil, stupid, or stupidly evil." Peter thought for a second, and then a light bulb flashed in his mind. "I've got to get to the Baxter Building asap, Richards has to know how to find these guys, and see what they mean by 'potential'." He quickly changed into his Spider-Man costume, and climbed through the fire hatch on the elevator. When the elevator stopped, only his civilian clothes were inside.
Spidey leaped from the top of the Daily Bugle, and reached his arm out. Shooting a line of webbing that hit a billboard, he swung past the next few buildings. Once past them, and out of reach of the line holding him to the billboard, he released the webbing, and hung in the air for a few seconds. Once he started to fall, he shot out another line of webbing, and continued on his path towards the Baxter Building. In a few moments, he was there. "Sure beats lunch rush traffic," Spidey said as he landed on the top of the giant "4" atop the Fantastic Four's headquarters.
Peter crawled down the windows, til he found someone he was looking for. Seeing Susan Storm working on some chemicals, he tapped the window gingerly. Susan looked to the window, and sighed when she saw him hanging out. Spidey waved, and smiled, though he doubted if she could see that through his mask. She walked over to the window, and opened it so he could crawl through.
"What brings you to the Baxter Building today Spider-Man?" Susan asked Peter as he stood up. Just then, Reed walked in to the room, looking panicked about something.
"Susan, you're not gonna believe this, but there's this alien race that is making contact with Earth, and they are broadcasting a message on every frequency known to us! It's amazing, you've got to hear this." Mr. Richards then looked at Spider-Man. "Oh, sorry, didn't see you there." He nodded to the wall crawler, and turned back to his wife. "Anyway, just turn on any listening device, and you'll be able to hear the broadcast."
"Ahem," Peter cleared his throat, "That is actually what I am here to talk about. Those 'aliens' that are broadcasting their message all over Earth, as you say."
Reed looked on with interest. "Go on."
"Well, think about it, their name. The BDC? Black Dimension Council?"
Susan tilted her head, "And your point?"
"Well, they're obviously evil, stupid, or stupidly evil. Probably a combination of the three if we're lucky." Were this an anime, a sweat drop would have appeared over Spidey's head.
"And if we aren't lucky?" Reed and Susan said almost simultaneously.
"They're ingeniously evil."
"Had a feeling you were gonna say something like that." The voice came from the door way, and when they all looked to see who it was, (not like it wasn't obvious with his signature voice) it was the baby blue eyed, ever lovable, Thing.
"Well, if it isn't my favorite blue and orange lug nut!"
"Can it web head. What do you know about this BDC anyway, besides your spider sense telling you they're bad news?" Ben tried his best to look serious, which wasn't that hard since his face was always the same.
"Nothing really, but I do want to see what they want with our 'potential'. Scares me when evil sounding people say those evil things like that."
"Hmm, you may have a point." Reed looked over a few notes.
"What's in your rubber skull there Reed?" Spidey asked.
"Well, I had already thought of a way to communicate back with them, and it would be nice to use it to test out your theory."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Ben said, "An invasion?"
"Yeah, what the rock said, lets go." So Spider-Man, Susan, Reed, and Ben all headed out of Susan's lab, and up a few floors to Reed's lab. On the way, they ran into the flame ball himself, Johnny.
"Hey Johnny, how's the fever?" Peter asked as he saw him in the hall.
"What? What fever?" Johnny looked at him confused, then he realized what he was talking about. "Oh, yeah, that fever. It's okay, still haven't been able to keep my temp down."
"Sorry to hear."
"Yeah, well, I'm calling this my normal temp now, so watch out. Don't want to catch what I have. Then again, you catch a lot of things, only to have them escape on you."
"I seem to remember that Dr. Doom seems to slip out of your grasp every time you run into him, so don't think you're all high and mighty yourself." The rips were going on for quite a while, until Susan interrupted.
"Excuse me, don't we have an alien race to communicate with?"
"Oh, right, sorry. Lead on miss 'I can't see you'." Spider-Man chuckled slightly.
"Keep it up, and you'll be stuck in your suit for a few weeks. Let's see how happy Mary Jane gets when you can't look normal. Not to mention your paychecks go out the window."
"Fine, fine, let's just get this over with."
They all reached Reed's lab, and Reed walked over to his radio. He turned it on, and was met with the same broadcast from the BDC. Everyone groaned, but Reed fiddled with a few settings, and the transmission subsided.
"How did you do that? The broadcast was interfering with any sound projecting device." Spidey asked Reed, confused that he had been able to stop the annoying speech.
"Easy, I..."
Ben stopped him from going into a lecture. "He did some fancy techno stuff, and it stopped, that's all you need to know."
"Right, thanks."
"Anyway, all I have to do is redirect the frequency, and send it out, and we should be able to make this a two way communication."
"Then let's see you do it," Johnny was getting a bit impatient, and wanted to go do something else. Something with a bit more flare.
"Alright, just one more touch, and, there. Finished. Care to try it Parker?" Reed pushed the device over to him, and held out the microphone.
"Sure, why not, I'll be the first one to communicate with this evil alien race. Probably get them to do an invasion." He tapped the microphone, and a bit of feedback rang out. He poked his finger in his ear, trying to shake loose any cobwebs in his head. (Hehe, sorry)
A voice suddenly rang back through the receiver speaker. "Hello, who is this? Identify yourself."
"Wow, he sound friendly." Spider-Man then spoke into the mic. "This is a representative of Earth, I wish to talk with someone of importance."
A bit of muffled chatter was heard on the other end, then the voice returned. "Spider-Man, how did you contact us?"
"Easy, through some of our ingenious technology, and a bit of scientific knowhow." Spidey replied.
A new voice suddenly came from the speaker. "Spider-Man, where are you at on the planet at the moment?"
"Whoa, wait, who are you?"
"Not important at the moment, where are you?" The voice sounded heavy, and resonated through the room with an auspicious aura.
"I'm in the northeastern hemisphere. That's all the info you are going to get."
The same voice suddenly came from behind them, just after the "pop". "That's all the information I needed."
Behind everyone stood a gold skinned alien, standing a good six and a half feet tall. He was wearing a gold and black suit, that resembled a ninja's uniform. A contrasting belt stood out from his appearance, with a green buckle, and "BDC" printed in red on the buckle.
The silence was only broken by Johnny, who said, "Who let the Midas ninja in here?"
