Liz didn't know what she would do without I Love Lucy. A show where all problems, no matter how big or how small, could be solved in a mere 22 minutes. It gave her hope. Not to mention that making her laugh helped distracted her from her own problems. And boy did she have problems.
It all started with her brother. Mark Allan. He was wonderful. Supportive, loving, fun, maybe a little protective, all around the best brother she could ask for. But there was a problem. Mark was an addict. He loved to gamble, and losing wouldn't discourage him. He always was an optimist. It was one of the things she loved about him. But when every single horse was, as he put it, "a lock," it didn't really help matters. His debts became too much, and he was desperate. So desperate that his solution was to steal a car. The result? Six months in juvenile hall. And with Mom and Dad working all the time, she was pretty much alone.
The only thing Liz had left was cheerleading. It's how she met Sally, her best friend. She was a bit rude, but Sally understood her better than anyone. It's how she met Flash, her first...well, she wouldn't say love, but her first boyfriend at least. He was arrogant, yes, but she knew the gentler Flash. He listened when she told him about Mark, and he cared.
But Flash was a spoiled brat at heart, and another boy had gotten her attention anyway. Petey. He was different. He was smart, shy, sensitive, sweet...he was a lot of s-words. She tried to brush him off, after all, he wasn't her boyfriend. He was just some geek. But she was smitten. And she and Flash broke up. So, she and Petey hooked up. They dated for a while. It was great!
But there were two problems with Petey. First there was his job. It was constantly pulling him away from her. He even had to run off during Valentine's Day! Alone, that wouldn't have been a dealbreaker. He needed the money to help his aunt pay the bills. She understood that. On the other hand, there was Gwen. Gwen was a nice girl, a friend that Petey introduced her to. A girl that Petey was hopelessly in love with. That Valentine's Day, when he left to take photos of a gang war, he apologized to Gwen, not her! Petey dumped her shortly after that.
Around the same time, Mark was released from juvie. Liz was ecstatic! Mark was free, he was happy, he was dating Mary Jane. But it didn't last. Mark slid back into gambling, and he was losing again. Something happened to give him superpowers and turn him into Molten Man, and he was told that killing Spider-man would free him from his debts forever. He thought it was a lock. But the whole thing ended with him locked up in prison. Without Mark or Petey, Liz was truly alone. Sally tried to help, but she didn't understand. She never liked Petey, and she couldn't hide how happy she was that they had split up. Well, at least Lucy and Ethel never left her.
Liz heard a knock. She turned off the television and stood up from the couch. "Coming," she yawned. She glanced at her watch. It was nearly midnight. It couldn't have been Mom or Dad, they wouldn't have knocked. Who could that be at this hour? she thought.
She froze at the door. This could be dangerous. She'd been attacked by supervillains before, and it wasn't fun. She looked through the peephole. It was that new kid that was at school earlier today. She didn't remember his name. But she was pretty sure that he wasn't a supervillain. At least, not one she had heard of. He knocked again. She sighed, and opened the door and stood in the doorway.
"Hey," the new kid said. "Is Mark home?"
"Mark?" Liz asked, confused.
"Mark Allan," the kid said. "This was the address he gave me last time I saw him. He does live here, right?" he added, scratching his head sheepishly. "I don't have the wrong place?"
Liz gaped at him. "Who are you?" she whispered in shock. "How do you know Mark?"
"Robert Farrell," the kid said, holding out his hand. "I met Mark in juvie. He's a friend of mine. Told me to look him up when I got out."
Liz took a step backward into the apartment. "Well, Robert Farrell, I don't know if you heard, but Mark's in jail," she spat. "Now stay away from me, or I will call the police!" She slammed the door.
The safehouse was small. It was a four room building in Long Island with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. It was cramped and it barely held our stuff. Not to mention I had a sneaking suspicion that the cops had the place bugged. I hated it, but it was a safe place for Aunt May until Eddie was taken care of.
Eddie...Once upon a time, he was my friend. Close enough to be my brother, even. We both lost our parents in the same plane crash, and he took it upon himself to look after me in school. But he was jealous of me having Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and a few misadventures as Spider-man led him to blame me and Spider-man for everything going wrong in his life. Then he found the symbiote and learned I was Spidey and bam! Instant supervillain. I need to help him.
Best way to help him was to get him back to Ravencroft. The doctors there can help him.
I think. But for now, I gotta play along with the whole police protection thing. Which has been swell, just...just swell.
My police escort introduced himself as Officer Carter. I've seen him a few times before. Turns out being Spider-man means seeing the same cops over and over when fighting bad guys. He was nice enough, if a bit overzealous. No matter how much I protested, he insisted on roaming the halls with me and sitting in on my classes. Flash thought it was hilarious, I'm sure. He kept trying to get my attention in the hall between classes, but I ignored him. I had had enough of his torment for a lifetime. Everybody else left me alone though. I heard them whispering, but nobody talked to me, nobody even wanted to sit with me and Carter at lunch. Even Harry kept his distance, not that I blamed him. I wouldn't want to be near someone that needed a police escort either.
Gwen wasn't in school for three days. I wanted to ask Harry if he knew why, but he was looking just as confused and worried as I felt. When I went to the Empire State University Lab for our internship, she wasn't there either. Dr. Warren told me that she had called ahead of time and said she would be unavailable for a while, but refused to explain why. So, I worked by myself while Carter stood in the corner glaring at the test tubes and Dr. Warren and his assistant Debra Whitman worked on whatever it is their nanomachines were supposed to do. They had explained it to me and Gwen, but I was only half listening at the time. It was the day after Mr. Osborn's funeral, and I was still shaken up pretty badly.
"Parker," Debra said, snapping her fingers in front of my face.
"Uh, what's up, Debra?" I asked sheepishly, looking up from my clipboard. Oh, great. How long had she been trying to get my attention? She was angry again. She was always angry at me.
"Keep an eye on your guest," she said, jerking her head in Carter's direction. "I just had to stop him from touching the chemicals. He nearly blew up the lab!"
I looked over my shoulder at Carter. He was looking apologetic and somewhat worried. He had walked several steps away from the table with the test tubes he was looking at earlier. What an idiot. "Maybe if you put a warning label on this stuff, you wouldn't have to worry about it!" he snapped at her.
Debra whirled around, and I swear I saw smoke leaving her nostrils. I took a few steps back to maintain a safe distance. It wasn't wise to be near a powder keg when it exploded. "Here's a tip for you, Officer," she snarled, striding toward him. "If you don't know what something is or what it's capable of, don't touch it!"
"Oh yeah?" Carter stepped up to meet her. "You said that these chemicals were dangerous if they were mixed, right? Maybe you shouldn't store them right next to each other!"
"You have no business being here," Debra retorted. "You are a danger to everyone here, and I think you should leave!"
"Listen, Deb-"
"Uh, don't call her Deb," I said nervously. "She hates that."
"-I am here on official police business, and nothing you can say can change that, so you'd better get used to it!" he finished. Either he didn't hear me or he didn't care.
"Oh, no," I muttered, putting my face in my hand. Debra seemed to swell with anger, but Dr. Warren cleared his throat. He was a soft spoken man, but he always commanded attention, and he was the only one who could keep Debra in check when she went on a rampage. "Debra," he said calmly. "Can you look at this simulation please? I think these results are something that you'd want to see." He looked at his watch, then said to me. "Peter, it's getting late, perhaps you and Officer Carter had better be going."
"Sounds like a plan, Dr. Warren," I said, silently thanking him as hard as I can. He gave me a wink as I gave Carter a little push and we exited the lab.
"I don't know how you can stand working in that place," Carter said to me as we walked to his car. That car was probably the only upside to this whole situation. I hated taking the bus everywhere.
"I like working there," I said quietly. "It's interesting work."
"I'm not trying to badmouth science, kid," Carter said, slapping me on the back. "I'm sure it's a thrill, and anyone who understands that sort of stuff impresses the hell out of me. But I hate working with certain kinds of people, and Deb is one of them."
"She's not too bad," I said, not even believing what I was saying. "She and Dr. Warren have taught me a lot." That part was true. If it weren't for her temper, Debra would've made a good teacher. "Besides, Gwen's usually there to help everything run smoothly and keep everybody happy." I stopped walking and glanced down at my feet. "I hope she's okay."
"I'm sure she's fine, kid," Carter said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "She's probably just got the flu or something." I didn't believe that for a second. If she were just sick, Harry wouldn't have looked so concerned at school, and Dr. Warren wouldn't have been so evasive as to why she wasn't at the lab. Carter glanced around. "Now, do you remember where we parked?"
I looked around the parking lot. I saw tons of cars, but I didn't see Carter's police car anywhere. I looked at Carter and shrugged. He swore. "That's just perfect," he grumbled. "Come on." He started jogging down a row of cars, searching. I started to follow, when my spider sense started blaring. I started to shout to Carter, but it was too late, as a large cat-like creature lunged out from behind a car and pounced on me, pinning me face down on the ground.
"Little boy," a voice growled in my ear. "You have his scent. You know Spider-man. You will be bait for Kraven's trap."
"Kraven," I gasped, struggling to breathe. "Let...me...go!" I thrashed about, but Kraven was strong and I didn't want to give myself away so easily.
"I think not, boy," Kraven said. God he smelled even worse than I remembered. "Kraven is meant to hunt, and Kraven does not sacrifice hunt for anything."
Before he could say anything else, I heard a crash and some grunts, and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I pushed myself up off the ground and saw Officer Carter wrestling with Kraven the Hunter, and holding his own at that. Carter was on top of Kraven, with an arm hooked around his neck. "Kid!" he shouted to me. "Get to the car and call for backup! I'll hold off Fluffy here!"
You don't have to tell me twice. "Got it!" I shouted back, scrambling to my feet and running. It would have been easy to follow Carter's instructions if I knew where the car was, but I had other plans. If Carter wanted backup, Spider-man would certainly qualify.
I sprinted down the parking lot toward a nearby campus gymnasium to change. I ducked behind the building to change, but I skidded to a halt when I saw someone already there. It was a familiar face, with blond hair and a black T-shirt.
"What's up, bro?" Eddie Brock said, grinning and leaning against the wall.
"Eddie?" I said in horror.
"I thought you'd come here to change if I arranged for a little crisis in the ESU parking lot," he said. He walked toward me and pulled out a knife.
"I?" I asked, taking a step back. "Not we?"
"I haven't found the symbiote yet," Eddie admitted. "But I did find Kraven and I pointed him in the right direction. And now I can kill you and it will know and it will never leave me again!"
"You didn't tell Kraven who I was," I said, bending my knees. I had to be ready to move at any second. Ready to fight, ready to run. I wasn't sure which yet. I needed to know what Eddie was planning. I needed to keep him talking.
"I told him that Peter Parker was a close friend of Spider-man's, and that that was the only reason Parker was able to get such great pictures for the Bugle," Eddie explained. "Though I guess you don't get all the best shots anymore, do you?"
"You took the pictures of me fighting the guy with the skull shirt?" I asked.
"You got it," Eddie said, grinning. "I don't know who that guy was or why he was after you, but I'm glad he gave me a new opportunity to mess with your life. After all, you always cared about that job more than you cared about me, so it was only fair that I took a paycheck away from you!"
His eyes flashed. He was going to attack. He ran at me, holding the knife up high. I dove to the right and rolled back to my feet. "You took everything away from me!" he yelled slashing at me again as I dodged. "My job, my education, my future! My freedom! My LOVE!"
I danced away from the knife's blade. "Your "love" was a crazy alien that turned you into a psycho!" I shot back. "You're sick, Eddie! You need help!"
"No!" Eddie roared, charging at me. I jumped left and found myself against the wall of the gym. Awesome. "I need you dead!" Eddie lifted the knife up and advanced on me menacingly. I wasn't getting through. I had to knock him out.
There was a gunshot. Eddie swore as he fell to one knee. His leg was bleeding. "Oh my God!" I shouted as I started to run toward him.
"Hold still, Parker," I heard a voice say. I looked up from Eddie and saw the shooter. She was a cop, with dark eyes and shoulder-length black hair. She was pointing her gun at Eddie. "He could still be dangerous," she said as she walked toward Eddie.
"You're gonna regret that," Eddie spat as he lunged toward her clumsily with the knife. The cop stepped to the side and kicked the knife out of his hand nonchalantly. She holstered the gun and pinned him to the floor, handcuffing him.
"You have the right to remain silent," she said over his screams of pain, "though I understand if you don't want to."
"Do you think this is a joke?" I asked as she helped him to his feet. "You shot him!"
"I didn't want to," she grunted as she started dragging him away. "But I was too far away to stop him from getting to you. Now if you feel like helping, I need to get this poor guy to the hospital."
I held back my anger as I grabbed Eddie's arm and heaved. I didn't care about holding back my strength for the sake of maintaining my identity, my friend had been shot and his safety was more important. We dragged him to a police car that was still running at the side of the road. The cop opened the door and we placed Eddie inside. That's when I gasped and remembered.
"Wait," I called out as she got into the driver's seat. "Officer Carter is in trouble. He was protecting me from Kraven and-"
"I already called for backup," she said, opening the passenger-side door from the inside. "Right now, my priority is getting Brock to the hospital and getting you to the safe house."
"You know?" I asked as I climbed into the car.
"My name's DeWolff," she said over the siren as we started moving. "I'm Carter's partner, and I've been shadowing you for the last three days. When Carter sent you to the car to call for help, he was actually giving me a signal to call for help and keep an eye on you. But it looks like you panicked, since you ran away from the parking lot."
"Y-yeah," I said, trying to look ashamed. "I panicked."
"No big deal," DeWolff said gently. "You were in a scary situation, so that's natural. Besides, you led me to Brock, so all's well that ends well."
"Except for Officer Carter fighting a mutant cat-man," I replied.
"Officer Carter is one of the best hand-to-hand fighters in the force," DeWolff answered, clearly hoping to reassure me. "Even if this guy is superhuman, Carter's gonna give him a hard time. And Captain Stacy answered my call for backup, so he won't be alone. And," she added, grimacing, "I hate to admit it, but we can probably count on Spider-man making an appearance, too. This sort of freak is right up his alley."
I looked out the window, not saying anything. Carter might be tough and have all the backup in the world, but Kraven wasn't a normal crook. He was a supervillain, and I have yet to see the cops win a fight with one without Spider-man's help. And as long as Peter Parker was under police protection, then the cops couldn't count on Spider-man to help them.
Author's Note: It's been a while, hasn't it? Between job hunting and my just now discovering the awesomeness that is Shovel Knight and Game of Thrones (I know, I'm behind the times), I've been distracted and busy. But I had fun writing this, especially the scenes with Kraven and Eddie. I like putting Peter in situations where his life and his identity are simultaneously at risk. I do not like all the recaps I have to write, but I'm hoping that I can get through them painlessly without them stopping the action too much. Bah, I'm rambling, I hope you enjoyed reading and I hope you review! See you next time!
