((There are no words to describe how sorry I am that this took so long. Really. I would have been much happier writing Spider-man FanFiction than writing essays about the narratives inherent in our national identity, but I didn't have any choice in the matter. Luckily, this is the last week of school and my mind, body and soul have suffered no irreparable damage, so I should be able to publish new chapters on a fairly regular basis once again! Thanks to all of the readers that have stuck with me thus far, especially to those of you who reviewed, and Happy Holidays!

Oh, and I changed the title of chapter three and fixed some details in chapter two. Just FYI.))

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Chapter 4: The Mystery Girl

With one hand and both feet pressed against a wall and his mask pushed up to just above his nose, the Amazing Spider-man took a slow sip of rapidly cooling coffee and shivered. Even with his thermal costume on, he was freezing. "And to think, I could be eating leftover chicken and dumplings while watching Gossip Girl reruns," he muttered to himself, then smirked. The expression was a little half hearted, mostly because it rang a little too true, CW brain candy aside. The city had been quiet ever since the Thunderbolts' bizarre antics that morning; not even a police chase or bank robbery to keep him busy.

Except…

His spider-sense had been acting up at random intervals all day, and for no apparent reason.

Except…

His police scanner indicated that despite the lack of crime, the rate of unexplained disappearances had doubled in the past 12 hours. Unofficially, of course, since the police didn't consider someone missing until 24 hours had passed, period.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He'd been running around, trying to get some clue as to what was going on, but hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of anything out of the ordinary.

Even without those disturbing little issues, he would have been jumpy. In his experience, whenever things got unusually quiet and calm, they got really, really bad shortly afterward. Something was going to happen, and he didn't want to be all the way in Queens when it did. Eating a nice, hot dinner… with a slice of pie afterward… and then a warm shower… Oh, no. He didn't want that.

A sudden streak of bright orange light in the sky a few blocks away caught his eye, and he grinned. Challenging Ol' Flame for Brains to a race would warm him up a little, at least. After finishing off his coffee with one enormous gulp, he pulled his mask back down, flipped gracefully forward off the building, and shot a web-line to the top of the next building. As he reached the low point in his swing, he neatly tossed his empty cup into a dumpster. The surprised old man who'd been about to deposit his trash stared incuriously, so, naturally, Spider-man gave him a salute as he let go of the web-line and flipped up onto the next building… just in time to see the bright figure land on a roof across the street and go dark.

He shot a line up, then curled into a tight, spinning ball as he released it and began to fall silently toward the roof. He came uncurled just in time to land in a fluid crouch just behind a man staring pensively down at the traffic below, his blond hair almost white in the moonlight. "Hiya," Spider-man said brightly. The man started violently and spun to face him, absolute panic written clearly on his handsome face. Spider-man stood. "Jeez, Johnny, coffee with Logan must have been even worse than I thought it would be."

There was a too-long pause. "Yeah," Johnny said finally. The panic had left his face, but a guarded expression had replaced it, the sort of wary look someone might have around a large, unfamiliar dog. Goose bumps that had nothing to do with cold broke out on Spider-man's arms. That expression didn't belong on Johnny Storm's face.

"Are you okay, man?" he asked, taking a concerned step forward. Johnny took a simultaneous step back, and Spider-man froze. There was another long, very uncomfortable pause. Finally, the Web-head stepped back and crossed his arms. "Okay, what did I do?" he asked flatly.

Johnny blinked. "I- You didn't—"

"Did I not thank you enough times for getting rid of Venom this morning, or what?"

"That's not—"

"Or has Richards talked you into seeing the pros of locking me up? I mean, maybe I really am a sick, twisted person who likes dressing up innocent businessmen as the Green Goblin, right? Who knows?"

"You know, I sure don't," Johnny retorted loudly, "Actually, none of us knows much about you at all! Everyone else doing what we do has let something slip about who they really are. You? I don't know anything about you. Period. You could be a serial killer under that mask."

"Wow, Einstein, I never thought of that," Spider-man said sarcastically, "And, hey, maybe Elvis is still alive, and maybe the sheer awesomeness of the Dark Knight really will initiate Jesus' second coming."

"Jokes!" Johnny exploded, his fists clenching, "Always with the jokes! Even when the situation is as serious as it could possibly—"

"Hold on," Spider-man interrupted, holding up his hands, "You've never had a problem with my jokes before, and besides, you're at least as guilty of that as I am." He paused, looking hard at the other man's face. "What the hell happened?"

Johnny took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair, and then opened his mouth, only to close it again and shake his head wordlessly. Before he could make another attempt, the sudden, jarring scream of ripping metal split the air, quickly followed by human screams and several car alarms. The street below went dark. Spider-man sighed. "Probably a car wreck. Just hold that thought for a—" A roar, too enraged to be machinery and too loud to be a Bengal tiger, echoed through the night, followed by more tearing metal and terrified screaming. "Second," he finished bleakly. He only knew one thing that could make a sound like that, and judging by the sick, frightened look on Johnny's face, he wasn't the only one thinking along those lines.

"Well," Johnny said, with a pale imitation of his usual grin, "What'd'ya think?"

"I think our public awaits," Spider-man said, his voice resigned. Without waiting for Johnny's reply, he ran forward and somersaulted down onto the street below.

He briefly scanned the chaos for the source of the trouble, and found it fairly quickly; that wasn't much of a feat, considering it was over 12 feet tall. On the bright side, it wasn't green, which meant that things were already probably not as bad as he'd thought. It was difficult to get a good look at it, as it had taken out most of the nearby streetlights, but it was covered in what looked like hair and had two horn-like things sticking out of its gigantic head.

Before he could more, Johnny shot overhead like a flaming bullet. "Oh, good. You have no idea how glad I am that you're not who I thought you were," he yelled. "You are even uglier than he is, though. In fact, you sort of look like one, gigantic—" Johnny stopped talking as the creature turned around with surprising speed and sent him flying into a building with one hit of its enormous, hairy hand.

Spider-man didn't wait to see if he was all right. He shot a web-line up to one of its horns and pushed off at an angle, so that he swung neatly around the thing's head to plant both feet squarely in its face. It grunted, somehow managing to sound surprised, and stumbled back, simultaneously reaching up to knock the annoyance away from it. The annoyance, however, had already pushed off, shot another web-line at the thing's chest, and was currently speeding back towards it, feet first once again. They connected with a loud thud, and the already off-balance creature fell backward onto the ground with earthshaking results.

Spider-man stood up on the creature's chest and shook his finger patronizingly at its face. "That will teach you to pull me out of important conversations with your antics. The grownups were talking." The creature lifted its giant head and regarded him with surprisingly bright eyes. Spider-man fought the urge to take a step back; those eyes were just too intense. "Just calm down, okay?" he said, more quietly.

The creature blinked. "Grrrghhh?" it growled, sounding almost questioning.

"That's good," he said encouragingly. "Just take deep breaths…" He wasn't why this was working, or how long it would continue to work, but the longer he could stall the better. Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D would actually show up and do their goddamn jobs.

The thing blinked again, more slowly. "Rrrrrg." Its eyes closed. His eyes widened, and he flipped away from it just as it began to collapse in on itself. Hair flew everywhere. As the flurry of red began to settle, it became clear that the monster was gone. In its place was… a person.

Johnny landed next to him and turned off his flame. "What the hell…" he muttered.

"And yet another Hulk moment brought to you by Cannon!" Spider-man said, a little too cheerfully, "Life as Cannon sees it." They both cautiously moved closer, and then quickly averted their eyes. The person was an unconscious girl with red hair, and she was completely naked. "Hold on," he said awkwardly. He moved to her, gently pulled her up into a standing position with one arm, and wrapped her up in webbing with the other. Now she couldn't get away, and she wouldn't freeze. Plus, he wouldn't feel like some kind of sicko; close up, it was obvious that the girl wasn't more than 16.

"Who do you think she is?" Johnny asked, looking at the girl's face.

She actually kind of reminded Spidey of one of his ex-girlfriends, but he wasn't about to say that, so he just shrugged.

Johnny let out a slow breath. "Okay. So do you want to let S.H.I.E.L.D. take care of her?"

"No!"

Johnny smiled. "Why did I even ask?" He paused briefly, "Okay. If you bring her to the Baxter Building, I'll have our people check her out."

Spider-man felt his eyebrows go up under his mask. "What about Reed?"

Johnny rolled his eyes. "Well I'm not going to tell him about you, now am I?"

There was another slight pause. "Thank you," Spider-man said quietly.

The other shifted uncomfortably. "Sorry for freaking out on you."

"No biggie. I was just worried about you, man."

Johnny smiled. "Get out of here before the police start showing up, idiot."

"What about the hurt—"

"Fireman," Johnny said, his voice growing bored.

Spider-man took the hint. "Okay, okay." He shot a web-line up and sped off into the chill air. He refrained from doing his usual aerial tricks, trying to hold the girl as steady as possible against him. As he swung, he couldn't help but wonder what had freaked Johnny out so much. After all, he tangled with the likes of Doctor Doom on a fairly regular basis. And won. What could mess with someone's head after they'd dealt with horrors of that magnitude?

Suddenly, his spider-sense shot through his head, and he had to fight against instinct to drop the girl. She was dangerous, somehow much more dangerous than she'd been while 12 feet tall and sporting horns… The next second, there was a strange pull, like all of the air around him was being sucked in towards him. He gasped for air, but there wasn't any, and now he was being pulled into his own center. No, he realized vaguely, not my center, in toward her—Every cell of his body screamed—

And he was standing in the middle of a street in what looked suspiciously like Queens, clutching the unconscious girl in his arms like she was the only thing keeping him from flying apart into a million pieces.

As soon as he remembered that breathing was an option, he began to look around. It looked as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to one of the nearby houses, and a few feet away there was a large, broken patch in the pavement that was in the rough shape of a human torso. He thought he could see a bit of dark liquid where the head would have gone. "You know," he said conversationally to the girl, "I know people who go clubbing on Friday nights." She didn't answer, but his spider-sense tingled unpleasantly. "Oh, for crying out—"

"Turn around, " said a coldly furious voice from behind him, "And then slowly put the girl down."

"Oh, no," Spider-man said haughtily, "I know how this game works, and you so did not say 'Simon says'."

Another voice spoke. There was something metallic about it. "Are you sure that's not him? It sounds just like—"

"I believe he is some two feet shorter than this villain," came a third, ridiculously deep voice. Righteous anger shot through it in almost visible crackles.

"Hold on," said Spider-man slowly, "There is something very familiar about you guys…"

"Oh, no," said the second voice good naturedly, "It's not like we're famous or anything. And you shouldn't change the subject. It's rude."

"If you do not turn to face us at once, I shall smite thee into oblivion!" rumbled the third voice.

"Turn around, NOW," said the first voice.

"Okay, okay, okay." Spider-man turned around slowly, and squinted into the bright light shining into his eyes.

"Now…"

"Put the girl down, I know. Who are you people?"

"We're not answering your questions," said the first voice grimly, "You are answering ours. Put the girl—"

"No," Spider-man said flatly, "Not when I have no idea who you are."

"Okay," said the almost-robotic voice a little too calmly, "Then could you answer a question for us?"

"Shoot."

"What exactly have you done with Spider-man?"

There was a long pause. "Oh, wait," Spidey said brightly, "I know this one! I know this one! I have made absolutely sure that he will never have a decent date ever again!"

"He was just a kid." The first voice shook with anger. "What the hell have you done?"

"Calm it down, Cap," said the second voice tiredly.

"Wait, Cap?" Spider-man asked, blinking and shaking his head. "What? You're dead!"

"Is that a threat?" roared the third voice.

"What? No! This is stupid!"

"PUT THE GIRL DOWN!" bellowed the first voice.

"FINE!" He carefully lowered the girl to the ground, trying very hard not to jar her. The moment he pulled his hand away from the back of her neck, there was a sudden jolt, and… he was falling through the air in the middle of Manhattan.

What?

He snapped out of his shock induced stupor and shot a web-line up just in time to avoid a sticky end on the pavement, and then dropped back to the ground right in front of a bemused hotdog vendor. "What…" he took a deep breath. "What the hell was that?"

"How the hell should I know?" the vendor grumbled.

Spider-man looked at him for a long moment, his head still spinning, and then sighed. "That's it. Hot shower and pie it is." Without further ado, he jumped 15 feet into the air and started swinging home.