Chapter Twenty-Nine:


Donald Menken, or rather someone who wore his face, was making his way inside a dimly lit, but spacious obvious around the time of sunset. It was quite obvious that the power was on in this office, but they were high enough to see the area that was suffering from the back out currently.

Regardless of that fact, the imposter made his way through the rather spacious office. It was a bit of a trek, it seemed like everything in this building was much larger. In fact, at the end of the room, there was an extremely large desk and a really larger chair. That should have went without saying because the man who had been parked behind the desk was rather large. Due to the nature of the lightning, it was difficult to pick out any of his features with absolute clarity.

"Was it done?" the man behind the desk asked in response. "Menken" looked towards the large man. "Please, take a seat."

"Menken" took a seat and it was obvious that the man who was seated behind the desk wanted answers and he wouldn't wait for them at all. "The task that you hired me for was done."

"Of course it was," the man behind the desk said. His question was to ensure that he was not behind lied to and he knew the answer to it the moment before the faux Menken made his way into the office. "The maniac you hired does leave quite an impression, as an attack from Deadpool of all people would not go unnoticed by anyone. A running battle through the streets between said maniac, Spider-Girl, and the Enforcers is hard to miss."

"He didn't get killed," "Menken" replied.

The large man chuckled in response to what the man said.

"That wasn't the intention, at least not yet," the man in the shadows responded. He folded his arms and stared the imposter down. "Drink?"

"Menken" accepted the offer with a nod. The man gestured towards a nearby side bar, telling "Menken" more or less to help himself. It was obvious that the man had been doing paperwork during the time that they had been working with each other.

As he was preparing his drink, the man in the shadows made an interesting comment. "It is unfortunate that the Rhino failed at his most recent task."

That caused "Menken" to tense up in the middle of pouring his drink. Thankfully he managed to catch himself in time before this much was obvious. "Spider-Girl has proven herself to be a nuisance to myself in a couple of times in recent past."

He turned to face the man behind the desk.

"I've taken advantage of her recent popularity to cash in on her likeness," the imposter commented. That caused the individual behind the desk to offer a grimace.

"Yes, I have tried to do the exact same think, only to be beaten to the punch," the man behind the desk commented. That caused the imposter to give one obvious smirk at him.

The imposter had just finished his drink and sat back in the chair in front of the desk. He lifted up the drink and prepared to savor each last drop of it.

After sipping on the drink for a moment, he asked an extremely obvious question. "So what happens next, my friend?"

That caused the individual behind the desk to consider the question. One could almost hear the wheels grinding in his head when he considered each angle. The scene in New York had changed and that much was obvious. It wasn't just Spider-Girl showing up that rocked the boat, there were other considerations.

"Now, my friend?" the man behind the desk asked. There was a slight amount of smugness that was on his face, even if it can't be seen properly from within the shadows. "Everything is lining up pretty much as it should be. Now that we have the Big Man focused on Norman Osborn, and his forces are distracted by the Russian Mafia, we'll…"

That statement was cut completely off. The lights around them brightened, then they flickered. Then the lights around them dimmed, before the entire office plunged into darkness all around them. That was a bit of an inconvenience, as even the backup generator was not kicking on as it should.


Gwen was fuming just a little bit. It was difficult to argue against the fact she was a little bit upset. Her dinner plans was ruined by a black out. They could have all of these great technological advances, but they couldn't invent a way to keep the fucking power from going out.

'I bet it was squirrels again,' Gwen thought. She hoped that no one ever got the power to control squirrels, and turned evil, because they could bring entire cities to their knees by sacrificing their friends in an attempt to bring the power out.

Harry and Gwen were going for a walk and needless to say, Gwen was seething just a little bit. She could be a bit vengeful when she wanted to, although she was really staying as calm as can be on the outside.

The fact that she was in the presence of her boyfriend, who she loved dearly, so she was calming down a little bit. She just hoped that nothing bad happened tonight. She dare not speak that thought out loud, she dare not think such a thought out loud. The forces of Murphy already struck hard tonight and she was not up for an encore.

She was making the best of the fact that she and Harry were together and the two of them were going for a walk.

"So, what are you going to do, other than the obvious thing I know that you're planning on doing," Gwen said, with a smile.

"Well, that's a pretty good question," Harry said. He pondered for a second. "I wouldn't mind being a teacher. In fact, Emma wants to do the same."

"Despite the fact that you're both major heirs to major businesses," Gwen commented lightly and Harry nodded.

"Yes, and there are a lot that I hope to accomplish in the fields of science and technology," Harry told her.

"Emma wanted to bring you in to be the head of Frost International," Gwen commented. "Exactly…?"

"Well, the relationship that I have with Emma and Felicia might not be the most conventional," Harry informed her. Gwen raised her eyebrow. "Let's just leave it at that."

"Oookay," Gwen said, shaking her head.

"She thinks that she's doing me a favor by bringing me on to the company," Harry answered her. Gwen nodded in response. "So, you know I'm prepared to take the company that Rose manages for me. But that won't happen until around the time of my twenty-first idea. Although, you never really did tell me your plans, at least not completely."

"Yeah, we got sidetracked for that," Gwen said. "Well, I do I honestly want to help you, and also it would be nice to follow your career path, as I'm going to major in Biochemistry. But instead of electrical engineering, I'm going to plan to minor in computer science instead."

"Hmm," Harry said. The two of them came across the sight of a rather spacious Jumbotron that was up above their heads.

"Just hmm?" Gwen asked teasingly. Harry gripped her hand and pulled her in tight towards them. She blinked, and she saw the smiling voice of one J. Jonah Jameson, who was in the middle of a press conference. She grimaced. "Well, there's a bit of a mood killer."

"My son, Colonel John Jonah Jameson, the Third, will be making history!" Jameson boomed over the Jumbotron. It was obvious that he was at a press conference of some sort and judging by how his voice had some kind of delayed echo, it wasn't really far from here.

"Look," Harry said, pointing out something.

"Oh, that's nice, we'll be able to see him be a blowhard in person," Gwen commented with a smile. Granted, it was back a little ways, but you could get nearly the full Jameson experience from back there.

"My son, the youngest applicant to ever be accepted by NASA, will be heading up to the first trip to the moon since Nineteen Seventy-Two," Jameson said. He pulled said son inwards, a rather nice looking young man in his early twenties. Needless to say, said son seemed to not be happy that his father was making a spectacle out of what was an already grand event.

Harry leaned against the wall as he watched and Gwen leaned against Harry. He wrapped his arms around her waist.

"I sense a bit of awkwardness in the making," Gwen replied. She blinked and smiled. "Then again, I didn't need my spider sense to sense that."

Harry kissed her on the top of her head and smiled. No, she didn't need her spider sense for something like that.


Maxwell Dillon was shaking all over. He felt good, he felt really good. His hands pressed against an electrical generator when he was draining the juice out of it. It was times like this where he felt his entire mind returning to him, and clarity, clarity was returning to him.

They thought that he was some nobody, but now he had true power, true power to do whatever he wanted to.

He gripped the power cable tightly in his hands, draining every last bit of power from the surrounding area. He had been doing this for most of the day, making his way to the area around Time Square.

That's where the true power lied. He could feel it. He could sense it. He could almost taste it. He would have the power and would have the power soon.

He licked his lips with a smile on his face. Power would be his, no doubt about it.

He was being told to suck up all of the energy around the area. That was exactly what he was going to do. The power was going to be his.

The man was so ravenous at this point that he needed to suck up all of the energy of the power. Every drop of that delicious power would be his. There was nothing that can get in his way, nothing that could stop him from acquiring the power that inspired him.

As a result of this, the transit officer that he had run into had not been his only victim. He had been accosted once or twice by other Law Enforcement officials.

"Hey, what the hell is going on here?"

An electrical lineman made his way out, with a security guard. Both of them were shocked to see what appeared to be some kind of creature draining power.

"Just step back and….."

"No, you're the one who is going to step back!" Dillon howled. He lifted his hand and sent a blast of electricity towards them. That shocked both of the men, killing than in an instant.

It was getting much easier to take them out. If everyone had stayed out of his way, then no one would get hurt.

Dillon stepped past the fried individuals that he passed. He stopped and noticed it. It was hard not to noticed it, the large concentration of energy that was drawing him in. He sensed it and needed it. He was like an addict who had gone too long without his fix.

He made his way in that direction and came across the spectacle that was John Jonah Jameson, the Second, who was in full swing of singing the praises of his Astronaut Son. Despite it being hard to missing that booming and boisterous voice that was not what Dillon was looking for, far from it.

He sensed power and lots of it. Dillon could see a rather large generator that was powering the lights, electrical, and recording equipment. It was what the media and the press conference was making use of it.

He ambled past them, his hands outstretched, waiting for it. He must have it.

Gwen was lazily relaxing against Harry, enjoying the evening. Sure Jameson's voice could make you want to slam her head into the wall.

There was a jolt in the back of her head that caused her to bolt upright. Suddenly, she shook her head.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked her.

"It was, well my spider sense went off, I think," Gwen commented to him. She was blinking. She placed her hand on the back of her head.

It went off and then it wasn't any more.

"It must have been a glitch or I was imagining something," Gwen answered. She closed her eyes, with Harry running his hand across the back of the neck.

He frowned and saw what appeared to be a homeless drifter passing them. Surely, he wasn't the one that set off Gwen's spider sense. Was he?

It wasn't that Dillon was paying any attention to them. He had a one way fixation and he was making his way over towards the generator, ready to feed and feed really well on it.


Mary Jane Watson found herself having to cover the press conference, because her boss wanted photos….photos of himself, along with his son. She was pretty much in a bored state right now, just snapping photos of the press conference.

The pay was good, so she was doing a good job to compensate for that pain. She did take a lot of pride in her work, even if that might not have been work that interested her all that much. She looked over her shoulder and heard a slight disturbance.

At first, she paid it no mind. At second glance though, she could tell that something was going down. She saw some man fiddling with a power cable, that connects the Generator to the Jumbotron, one of them at least, that the press conference was being broadcasted all over. It was so everyone could see Jonah and his boy in all of his glory.

Mary Jane turned her attention to the man in question, turning her camera on him. She zoomed in on the sight of him and let out a gasp when he ripped the active cable out.

That took a lot of strength, she had to admit. The next thing shocked and alarmed her even more. He pushed the cable against his chest, which caused the lights around them to shine super brightly.

That happened seconds before everything around them just exploded due to a sudden unexpected discharge.

"ANOTHER ONE, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!" Jameson bellowed. His voice was almost drowned out because of the screams and panicking of the crowd.

Mary Jane could see the lights exploding and she dodged them, running for cover. She wasn't the only one that ran for cover; the rest of the crowd was running for cover as well. It made an extremely dangerous situation even more so.

She just barely dodged a piece of the light rigging that fell on top of her. Another inch and she would have been crushed. The grimace behind her indicated that someone had been crushed in the distance and that was a really bad thing to hear, she had to admit that.

A fairly heavy police and security presence was moving in. They moved in to see the man with the cable. He was shaking like he experienced orgasmic pleasure when the energy fed into his body.

"Okay, drop the cable and back away," one of the police officers said. He couldn't believe his eyes, and his hands held his gun shakily.

The man seemed to be too fixated on draining the power from the table, every last drop of it. His eyes glowed with malice and the sparks of energy made it way too dangerous for anyone to get a close fix on him.

Elsewhere, Gwen figured that where there was smoke, there was fire. And when there was spider sense, there was a lot of trouble. And this was a lot of trouble.

The first time her spider sense went off, it was a minor problem. The moment that he started feeding off of the generator, her spider sense went absolutely nuts and completely crazy.

Gwen and Harry tried to make their way through the panicked crowd, but that was tougher to see. In the chaos, Harry couldn't teleport them in, without teleporting themselves directly onto someone or even worse, into someone.

Harry did get her calmed down a little bit, which allowed Gwen to focus. Then all of the lights around them brightened and then exploded, which pretty much threw them back to square one.

The electronics started to explode and shower glass around them. Harry put a shield around them. While he could not teleport them further into the press conference area, he could get them onto the roof and out of harm's way.

That gave them a pretty good view of what was happening. The view might not have been good, but it was pretty comprehensive.

"Mary Jane," Gwen whispered, noticing her down in the park, along with the rest of the crowd. She cringed when she viewed a very obvious near miss.

Things had gone from bad to worse, when bullets and electricity were flying in every direction, putting more person in danger.

Gwen knew the person who messed up her date, twice tonight; she got a clear view of him. And not only did he screw up her date twice tonight, but his presence is actively threatening her girlfriend.

"Gwen, calm down, so we can figure out how to do this," Harry told her.

Gwen turned towards him, gritting her teeth. "I am calm."

Harry shook his head, she really didn't look it to be honest, but he was going to tell her anyway. "I'm going to get MJ out of the area, while you go and deal with Dillon."

"Wait, Dillon?" Gwen asked. "As in the electrician that was injured at OsCorp?"

"I heard his voice, I recognized it," Harry said.

"How did he…?" Gwen asked, shaking her head. Harry grabbed her by the hand and squeezed it firmly. "Right, deal with him."

"Or at least get him out of the immediate area, and I'll get MJ out of there," Harry said. He could see the ruckus going on and he came to the unfortunate conclusion that neither of their jobs were going to be all that easy.


A young woman stood along the darkened streets affected by the black out. She was dressed fairly nicely and she was the type of woman that might turn a few heads. But she wasn't really important in the grand scheme of things.

The way she was dressed, she was either on her way to the club or had just left a club, at least before the power went out.

The girl was skipping around in a crazed manner and singing a merry tune under her breath, being a little bit giggly in the process. She rocked her head backward. It was obvious that she had a bit too much to drink or she was strung out on something or other.

Regardless, she was skipping down the street, merrily whistling, and carrying on a conversation with herself, although it didn't make much sense to anyone who happened to be an outside observer.

She looked like she was trapped in her own little world. She made her way down the darkened streets and it was pretty obvious by how that she was acting that she was barely able to make out the fact that they were darkening.

"Maybe I show go to the club, and see if I can score," she giggled. "It's such a beautiful evening."

She passed by the alleyway and she could hear a hissing. That caused her to stop in her tracks. For a moment, it might have been apparent that she had some form of clarity when she stepped into the alleyway.

"Hello?" she asked. She walked five more feet into the alleyway, and there was nothing. The woman looked around a little bit and said in a much louder voice. "Hello?"

She listened for an immediate reaction, and didn't get one. The woman folded her arms over her chest and stuck out her lip in a pout.

"Fine, be that way!" she snapped. Her tone turned from anger to bliss when she turned around and started to giggle madly like she was strung out, likely because she was.

The giggling ceased with a loud growl that echoed in the distance. She could feel a pair of clawed hands and reach out to grab her.

That was enough to sober her up and the woman started screaming bloody murder. Through the chaos that was happening all around the city, no one could hear her, no matter how hard and how frantic she was screamed.

She was slowly dragged into the darkness. The yelling did not cease and she was having a full blow panic attack.

Then there was a strangled gasp and a crunching sound that could be heard, if anyone was around to bother to hear it.

After that, there was nothing but the sweet sound of silence that followed.


To Be Continued on April 26th, 2015.