"With Great Power: Sins Wrath-The Price We Pay"
Part Two written by Jeff's writrzblok
Last time on "With Great Power"…
Gabriel Stacy, the genetically altered child of a one night stand between Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn, has assembled a team of villains consisting of Rhino, Chameleon, Electro, Carolyn Trainer (the second Doctor Octopus), Roderick Kingsley (the Hobgoblin) and the Vulture to gain revenge upon the wall-crawler. After a puzzling, yet brutal attack at the Daily Bugle, Spider-Man contemplates what his former love's offspring is planning.
What was Gabriel waiting for? That question plagued the mind of the ever amazing Spider-Man as he sat there on a bench in Macy's shoe department in his "European platinum blond" disguise. He watched Mary Jane prance around in a pair of red Vera Wang high heels. Pushing the blonde hair from her wig away from her face, she said, "These are just absolutely gorgeous! I can't believe they have them in my size."
Peter thought to himself, Hey, Mephisto, about that deal… but from his mouth came, "Sweetheart, you have the average foot size for a woman of your height, weight age and build. I'm fairly certain they would've had your size."
MJ let out a huffed sigh and said, "You're determined to ruin this for me, aren't you?"
"I'm sorry, MJ. I'm just not feeling too well," Peter said, sitting up. As he moved, he winced from the pain of being driven through a floor by Rhino a few hours ago during that bizarre attack.
From all the years of seeing her husband come home bruised and battered, she gained a healthy knowledge of what was wrong. "It's about the fight at the bugle, isn't it?" she asked, sitting next to him on the bench.
"It's just crazy. They had me dead to rights and they leave? And there was something oddly familiar about that gas that Gabriel used."
"Gabriel? As in, Gabriel Stacy?" she said, taken aback.
"Yeah, he was behind it," he replied, "It seems like the standard issue 'I'll get you, Spider-Man' type of team-up."
"Wait. Did you say 'team'?"
"Yeah, Chameleon, Lady Ock, Rhino, Hobgoblin, Vulture, and Electro, to be exact. He shot Delilah when she tried to finish me off. After that, they hit me with some kind of gas. Finally, big, gray and ugly pounds me through the floor. Instead of collecting their spider-trophy, they made like Daniel Day Lewis and vanished. Not that I'm complaining, mind you."
"Well, we need to be extra careful from now on."
"Yeah, I agree. Now put the shoes back."
"But Tigerrrrrr…"
Watching her walk away with a pout, he said, "Don't tiger me--OW!!" Peter yelped as a red rubber ball collided with his head.
A little boy ran up to him and picked up the ball. With a giggle and smile that you couldn't stay mad at, he said, "Sorry, mister. It slipped."
"Don't worry about it, kid," he replied, "just watch--" he paused. Why didn't his Spider-Sense go off? Any other time he would've caught that ball and handed it back to the boy with a kind word and a smile. Within that moment, he remembered where he smelled that gas before. Norman Osborn used it numerous times in the past to nullify his near-precognitive ability.
Bolting from the bench, he grabbed MJ and said, "We have to go NOW!" before she could protest, he said, "It's too dangerous to be out."
Seconds later, an explosion from the ceiling shook the building and dimmed the lights in the store. As debris flew around, Gabriel floated down on Hobgoblin's glider, with Kingsley himself standing behind him.
"I couldn't agree more," Gabriel said.
Ripping off his wig and fake mustache, Peter heard the clanking of metallic arms behind him as they coiled around Mary Jane's waist, seizing her in their unforgiving grip. "Peter!" she shouted. He turned to see Carolyn Trainer in a shredded fur coat, her punk-style pink hair and a smug smirk of self-satisfaction across her face. His thoughts shifted immediately to the baby Mary Jane is pregnant with; HIS baby.
He fired a web ball directly into Trainer's face, blinding her. MJ then drove a punch directly into her face, staggering her. Electro and Chameleon appeared to Peter's left while Rhino and Vulture stood to his right. He fired a web-line at Hobgoblin's glider, specifically hitting the acceleration pedal. It jerked Gabriel and Kingsley off their feet, sending him crashing onto a display. Peter flipped over the glider and shouted, "DUCK!" to MJ.
As the superhero's wife complied, the glider drove itself deep into Trainer's stomach and arced upward, plowing her into the ceiling and out of the fight for now. Rhino charged full force toward his enemy. Peter grabbed the large gray thug by his horn and, using his momentum, hurled him off his feet toward Chameleon and Electro. Both men scattered as Rhino plowed through the wall, taking himself out.
Seeing a display pair of rubber rain boots, the wall-crawler shot a pair of web-lines and pulled them to him. They flew onto his hands and he twirled through the air, dodging a bolt of electricity from the green and yellow-clad villain. With a sharp uppercut, he used the boot to insulate his bare hands from touching Electro. The force of the punch sent him from the shoe department and into a nearby water fountain where he fizzled and shorted out, becoming unconscious.
As Vulture swooped towards him, Peter tossed a boot at him, nailing Adrian Toomes in his bird-like nose. He spiraled into a tailspin and crashed against a shoe rack, spilling sneakers all over the floor.
MJ tried to run for help, but Chameleon grabbed her by her arms. "I remember the time you hit me with a bat," he said, "I'm going to pay you back for that, you…" A sharp back-kick to the groin ended his rant. Another sharp right cross put him on the floor. Thank you Captain America she thought, remember the brief self-defense training he gave her and Peter.
Suddenly, she felt Gabriel's hand close around her throat. Lifting her off her feet, he says, "PARKER!!" Peter had Roderick Kingsley in his clutches when he turned around. Seeing the young woman struggle to breathe, he said, "Surrender now. Or I break her neck."
"Let her go," Peter said, shoving Hobgoblin aside, "She's not the one you want."
"I don't know. Maybe I'm going about this all wrong," Gabriel said, bringing her closer to his face. He continued saying, "Maybe I should focus all of my rage and efforts upon her. After all, she is the one who replaced my mother in your heart. And as we both know…everyone around you has this nasty habit of not living."
"Look, Gabriel, your problem is with me. Not with MJ. I'm the one who waged a selfish petty war with Norman, remember? Take me. Do whatever you want with me, but she has done nothing wrong except love me. Please."
MJ, feeling her eyelids getting heavy from lack of air, whispered, "Peter…"
Gabriel looked over at Peter and then toward MJ. Tossing her aside, he walked over to Peter and stared him directly in the eyes. "You're right, Peter. She's not the one I want. I can see why you like her, though. Tough, loyal, and a looker; no accounting for taste, I'm guessing."
"Would you just get on with it?" Peter said, gritting his teeth and waiting for the inevitable to come.
"As you wish," said the Gray Goblin, who motioned to Rhino. The big gray monstrosity pulled himself out of the rubble and head-butted Peter square in the face, knocking him out. As MJ gasped for breath, Gabriel turned his gaze toward her. A smirk crawled across his face while Rhino slung Peter over his shoulder. Electro pulled himself out of the fountain while Chameleon, Vulture and Carolyn Trainer rejoined their boss. With a slight chuckle, Gabriel said, "Sorry for your loss."
With that, the villains made their escape, disappearing into the city with their prize. All she could do was lay there in the wake of the destruction and weep for what they would do to him.
But then again, she thought, there was something else she could do. Getting to her feet, she hurried to the one place she knew there would be help.
Running a hand over his bald scalp and down through his bushy goatee, Jonas Harrow paced back and forth through the infirmary. He'd been assigned this detail due to his good behavior as well as medical expertise as a surgeon. Most of the maladies he'd looked after were mostly coughs, colds, aches. He would've expected something more alien and interesting. After all, he was imprisoned in the superhuman prison smack in the middle of the Negative Zone. Who knows what kind of viruses and germs and bacteria could be out there.
A guard walked into the infirmary. Wearing a large, full face helmet, dark blue flak jacket with a gas gun, stun baton and a heavy Kevlar vest, he began to take off the equipment and said, "Evening, Doc."
"How can you tell?" Harrow replied. It was a fair question, though not completely devoid of sarcasm. Time flowed differently in The Negative Zone than it did on Earth. Two weeks in the alien dimension was akin to an hour in Earth time, and that was a conservative estimate.
"Shut your yap and let's get this over with, you know I need my shot." Jonas did indeed know. The guard happened to be diabetic and it was time for him to get his insulin injection. "You know," the officer said while he sat down in a chair, "I always thought I'd get to travel; see the world. This is not what I had in mind."
As the maniacal scientist administered the alcohol on the guard's arm, he said, "I think I can say with a comfortable degree of certainty that spending time in a government detention center in a hostile alien dimension is not exactly high on people's to-do lists." The guard looked away, having always been uncomfortable with needles. After a split second wince when the doctor put in the syringe, Harrow said, "But like the old saying goes, all good things..."
"What do you mean by--" the guard paused. His throat began closing up. Gripping his neck and reaching for the skinnier Jonas Harrow, he tried to send pleas for help, but with his throat completely closed, he simply fell to the floor. After convulsing for thirty seconds, the guard's eyes rolled back in his head.
Jonas Harrow smiled wickedly throwing away a syringe full of penicillin. Reading the medical file on the guard, Jonas had learned of a violent allergy to the anti-bacteria that existed since childhood. Phase one was complete. Phase two, however, would be decidedly more difficult. He grabbed the com-link and put it to his ear. The passwords changed every ten minutes, so as not to give any escapees an advantage.
Removing a watch from the dead guard's wrist, he slid it on his own. The GPS chips inside let the central command know where the guards were at all times. There was still the matter of cameras along the corridors. Grabbing pillows and stuffing them under his shirt, he put on the Kevlar vest and the rest of the guard's clothing.
He wasn't entirely sure this plan was going to work. After all, it wasn't as if no one tried to escape the superhuman prison before. However, to cause the kind of trouble his employer was asking him to do would require every ounce of intelligence he had, brilliant though it may be. After stuffing the guard's body in a medical supply closet, Jonas put on the helmet and walked out of the infirmary.
Mary Jane had entered the secret entrance into Doctor Strange's new Sanctum Sanctorum. Bursting through the door into a hallway, she saw Luke Cage sitting on a couch watching a DVD, Iron Fist and Wolverine discussing the merits of writing a book called "K'un Lun for Dummies" Ronin and Echo were at the far end of the room training in close-quarters hand-to-hand.
"We've got a situation!" MJ shouted. All but Echo (who is deaf) paused since she was not looking directly at Mary Jane when she entered. Ronin tapped her on the shoulder and pointed her toward the distraught redhead.
After explaining the events of the past few hours as well as the complicated and tragic story of Gabriel and Sarah Stacy, MJ said, "We have to find him. There's no telling what he'll do to Peter."
"If he wanted the bug dead, he'd be dead," Wolverine blurted out curtly. A sharp glare from MJ made him pause and hold up in hands apologetically.
Ronin, otherwise known as Clint Barton the former Hawkeye, put in his two cents, saying, "He's right. Gabriel had the chance to kill you both right then and there but he settled for kidnapping Peter. Why?"
"Asking ourselves that question will not produce answers," said Iron Fist, "Are you sure you've told us everything you know about this young man, Mary Jane?"
She nodded her head and said, "That's all I know."
Echo spoke up and said, "With the villains you had said were with him, it must've taken him a considerable amount of time to bring them together. Plus, most of them were held or in custody of the government, meaning he has insider information or knows how to get it. And if he is an Osborn, he'll have a hideout complete with technological masking devices."
Mary Jane looked around and said, "Where's Doctor Strange?"
Luke Cage shut his phone and said, "He's in Tibet; said something about going to 'pay his respects.' He said he'd be here as soon as he could, but until then, we're on our own as to how to find Peter."
Holding a spider-tracer in her hand, MJ looked at it intently and wondered about how many times he told her not to leave the house without it. He claimed it was attuned to his spider-sense and it was the only way in which to find her as quickly as possible. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and she said, "Wait a minute." She bolted into the bedroom she and Peter share, leaving the rest to follow her.
As she knelt down and rummaged through their belongings, MJ pulled out a small receiver and said, "This is how we're going to find Peter,"
Clint's eyes narrowed and he said, "But that works on Spider-Tracers which you've got in your hand."
"I know," she replied, "But it's attuned to his Spider-Sense. Maybe if we somehow rig this thing to cause his Spider-Sense to go haywire, we could probably track that signal to wherever he's been hiding. By now, the gas that Gabriel hit Peter with to shut down his sense must have worn off."
"One problem," Wolverine said with his arms crossed, "Anyone know how to rewire a spider-tracer?"
Standing up in the Canadian claw-wielder's face, she stared him down. With the sternest of looks, MJ said, "Logan, if you have a better idea that doesn't involve Doctor Strange cutting his trip short, let's have it."
Holding out his palm, Wolverine said, "Hand it here. I know a thing or two about electronics. I'm no Peter Parker, but I'll do what I can."
"That's all I'm asking."
"But I'm going to need some time to figure this stuff out for myself."
"We don't have a lot of it to go around, but I get it."
"You know, Peter'd be proud of you right now," said Wolverine as he went to work. That one comment brought the first smile to Mary Jane's face since before Gabriel kidnapped her husband.
Peter's eyes opened slowly. Surrounding him was Rhino, Hobgoblin, and Lady Ock. Electro and Vulture seemed to be near the door, guarding it from any chance of escape. Peter noticed that he stood bolted to a wall by his waist, wrists and shins. He looked down to see he was still wearing his civilian clothes. Glancing around, he muttered, "This place definitely has that 'yes, I'm totally sane and a functioning member of society' vibe to it."
"You know how I can tell you're awake?" Gabriel's voice came from behind the wall of villainous flesh, "You're telling pathetic jokes."
"And you've inherited poppa goblin's sense of humor," quipped the captured wall crawler, "That's the thing with you Osborns. It's just not fun and games until someone gets disemboweled."
"Well, you have to admit," Gabriel said, coming into full view of Peter's sight with a smirk of self-satisfaction, "I come from good stock."
The hero's eyes narrowed sharply as he replied, "Ooh, ouch, that stings. Your father knocked up my girlfriend. Boo-hoo, woe is me, I get it."
"Do you?" Gabriel said, walking close to Peter's face. It was the villain's turn to narrow his eyes and stare upward, tilting his head at Peter. He continued by saying, "Do you really get it? I mean, your only source of knowledge for this is, who, your wife? You must work for CBS News."
"Boss, the machine is almost ready, no word from him yet," Chameleon spoke up while sitting by a large silver machine standing next to a wide arcing oval device standing at over twenty feet.
Peter's eyebrows perked up as he said, "'Him?' Who is he talking about?"
Gabriel flipped his hand in a nonchalant manner and replied, "We'll come back to that. But right now, I'd like for you to brush up on some reading materials. Carolyn, would you be so kind to retrieve folder 'Gabriel Alpha' please?"
"You got it, boss man," said the pink haired protégé' of Doctor Octopus as she looked him over with a gleam of attraction in her eye. A mechanical arm shot out to the filing cabinet next to the machine, pulling out a folder. She handed it to him with a wink, saying, "You're welcome."
Gabriel returned the look with a stoic yet not uninterested glance and said, "Thank you."
"Careful, Gabe," Peter said with a wry smile, "She looks like the type who'd give you the gift that keeps on giving." His comment was met with a backhanded punch to the face.
As Peter spat out a crimson loogie, Gabriel opened the vanilla folder and showed him a medical document dating back several years ago. "Look under pre-existing condition." As he did so, Peter found the word Endometriosis in bold letters. His jaw would've dropped through the floor if it wasn't attached by flesh and cartilage.
He recognized the word and what it meant. Gwen would always have difficulty conceiving. "She never exhibited pain, she never told me…but…how is this…" Peter struggled to ask questions that suddenly swarmed his brain.
Gabriel nodded and sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. He said, "As it turns out, mommy dearest was pumping too much estrogen and developed the disease once she got to her child-bearing years. Take a look at the name of the Doctor."
"Miles Warren?"
"Yeah," said the smirking villain, "He helped perform the laparoscopy to improve her chances of getting pregsies. Poor old fool probably hoped it meant she'd have his little jackals running around in play-pens, cloning the cat. In any case, I traced this information to Miles Warren himself. Apparently, he recognized me right off the bat. He told me everything, Peter; the clones, the DNA altering, the messed up parts that made absolutely no sense, EVERYTHING.
"But do you want to know what I found particularly interesting? It was my conception. The story that you have been told, about the passionate one-night stand between the crazed but charismatic old villain and the hero's dainty, saintly angel of a girlfriend, is just that. A story, a lie, a simple ruse to fool the feeble minded; no offense."
"What do you mean?" Peter said, feeling like he couldn't handle any more surprises.
"Norman didn't have sex with Gwen. He artificially inseminated her. But that's even the most messed up part. The kicker, what really floored me, was that Norman had Miles Warren implant replicated DNA into Gwen from both him and…your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."
Peter would've almost begged Rhino to punch him in the gut to see if he could have the wind knocked out of him any harder. "No…" he said, "that's not true…THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!"
"Truth is stranger than fiction, Parker! Daddy Norman came to mom, knowing that she wanted to have a family with you, Poppa Pete. It was the early stages of the cloning process, so the best incubator he could ask for was a woman's womb. Irony of ironies, Gwen just happened to be the prime candidate.
"The deal was, Norman would help Gwen become pregnant if she'd help him monitor her progress. Unfortunately, in those days, Daddy Norm's craziness was beginning to show and, well…the rest is history."
"But why," Peter whispered shakily, "why would she lie about sleeping with Norman?"
"My guess?" Gabriel replied, "It was the first thing to come to her mind. I mean, really, who'd believe such a wild and fantastic story based on word of mouth alone? Oh wait, that's right. You would!"
"I…I have a child…" Peter whispered, causing Gabriel to lean in closer. He continued by saying, "but you're not it. You're not my responsibility. Norman using his and my blood to make clones with my girlfriend is just one more way for him to screw with my head. And you kidnapping me and telling me this in order to break my spirit is a page right out of the Osborn playbook. You're as much my son as Norman is!" Peter spit in Gabriel's face, leaving a piece of spittle with a light shade of red in it.
Wiping his face and flashing a facial portrait of rage and indignation, the Gray Goblin spit back in Peter's face. "Have it your way, Peter. Let me show you why you're still alive," Gabriel said, clutching Peter's face. Forcing him to look at the machine Chameleon was sitting at, he said, "This machine is a trans-dimensional portal. It's kind of crude compared to what Tony Stark or Reed Richards might be capable of, but it gets the job done.
"Does the name Jonas Harrow ring a bell? It should. I've been contacting him with this machine while he's been locked up in the Negative Zone prison. Apparently he's made a nice little niche for himself as the resident sawbones. I approached him with a deal, help me and my colleagues onto the base…and we'll set him free. But we're not only going to be letting Dr. Harrow out to play. We're going to be having every single supervillain and metahuman criminal flooding out of that place like rats on a sinking ship.
Peter interrupted by saying, "So, what, you're going to unleash all those criminals on the Negative Zone? Annihilus will be thrilled."
Gabriel chuckled and said, "Oh no. Not the Negative Zone. Contrary to what you might believe, this isn't only about you. My two dads...locked in a constant, selfish battle for supremacy. And who was the biggest casualty of this? My mother. Her life was just fine until you came along. You tainted her. You and Norman! YOU RUINED HER!!"
Taking in a deep breath, the villainous young man calmed himself down and said, "Once we let out every prisoner of the 42, I will lead them en masse to Daddy Norman's doorstep on Thunderbolt Mountain. It'll be a massacre the likes of which no one will ever forget." "But don't worry, Poppa Pete, I'll kill you afterwards." Grabbing a syringe, he shoves it into Peter's neck, causing him to freeze up. "It's just a little something to make sure you can't cause any mischief while we're taking care of business."
As Peter felt his body go limp and numb, he heard his Spider-Sense screaming loudly to him. The drug coursing through his system rendered him unable to physically react; therefore, no one in the room had any idea the cacophony going on in his mind.
After thirty minutes of tinkering, Wolverine managed to come out of the Parker bedroom holding the receiver. "Using the tracer as a base point, I think I got it working. It's showing that Parker's somewhere northeast of here. Not sure how far, but that's the best guess we've got.
MJ smiled and said, "Well let's get moving, then…Avengers assemble and all that stuff."
Putting on his Ronin helmet, Clint said, "Who died and made her leader?"
Echo, while not hearing what he had said, apparently had an identical thought by saying, "Who died and made her leader?" Ronin simply shook his head and motioned for her to follow Luke, Iron Fist, Wolverine and MJ out the door and toward their backup mode of transportation, a flock of black Kawasaki motorcycles. As they sped off into the night, Mary Jane clung tightly to Wolverine, praying that they would make it to the hideout in time.
"Got a message from Harrow, he says he's shut down the prison's systems except for the portal. Expect opening within the next two minutes," said the Chameleon while sitting at the computer system next to the oval-shaped apparatus.
"Excellent," remarked Gabriel. Looking to Lady Ock, he said, "Carolyn, I think it's safe to assume that we can bring Mr. Parker along with us. He'll be a good boy." With that command, she tore off the manacles and coiled two of her steel arms around the hero, pulling him towards her.
An alarm began to ring out, startling the villains. Running to a monitor, Hobgoblin looked and said, "It's Parker's wife! And she brought backup!"
"The Avengers," Gabriel said, "Tell Harrow to hurry with that portal!" He thought he had prepared for the possibility that Mary Jane would bring in the Secret Avengers to help her bring Peter back. He had technologically shielded the lair from any detection. How could this have gone so wrong?
None of it mattered as an explosion of purple energy filled the emptiness of the oval portal. "Chameleon, set the machine for self-destruct! Everyone else, into the portal, now!" Lady Ock went through first, carrying a paralyzed Peter Parker with her. Next was Rhino, who was carrying a large container on his back as he stepped through. Kingsley flew through the portal on his Goblin Glider. Electro and Vulture followed the rest through.
"Self destruct in thirty seconds, boss!" shouted Chameleon right before he dove through the gateway. Gabriel let out a sharp laugh of triumph right before entering the portal himself.
Gabriel let out a sharp laugh before entering the portal himself.
Mary Jane and the rest of the Avengers filed into the abandoned Oscorp bunker which led to an underground tunnel. As they moved forward, prepared for anything, they're stopped by Wolverine, who took point. MJ whispered, "Why are we stopping?"
"Quiet! I hear something," said the claw-bearing hero. Sniffing the air to get a better read, he said, "FALL BACK!" The Avengers did as he said, rushing back to the outside in a frantic hurry. Wolverine pressed forward, hoping to get a glimpse of what was in the room before it went kablooey. Luke Cage was the last to exit right before the bunker exploded into a gigantic fireball
"NO!!" shouted Mary Jane, thinking that Peter was still in there and knowing that Wolverine was in there.
After several minutes, a smoldering golem of charred flesh and metallic bone walked from the rubble. "He wasn't there, MJ," Wolverine said, "He might've been but I heard a humming noise as well as smelled explosives coming from the room at the end of the hall. Before everything went white, I saw an oval full of purple energy fade out. It might've been some kind of portal or something. I did get a whiff of what might've been on the other side. I've only ever smelled something like that once before: the Negative Zone."
Mary Jane let out a sob, cursing herself for being too late.
To be concluded…
Next Issue: Gabriel's master plan comes to fruition culminating in an exciting showdown!
