Chapter 35
Once in the Midtown suburb, Tarantula locates the Parker household, a quaint one story identical to all of the ones around it, with the exception of the number on the front door. She lands on the roof, her feet balancing on the thatch. The minute she arrives there's a crashing sound from the house. On the second floor, a single light is visible, and Tarantula recognizes it as the source of the sound. Crawling from the roof to the wall in a spider-like fashion, she pushes the window open and ducks in, landing silently on her feet.
Thomas, in his animal form, flies in front of me, slamming into the wall and collapsing into the messy bed in the corner of the room. Peter, completely out of costume, leaps onto Thomas, straddling him with his weight,
"Oh, hey! Thanks for showing up on such short notice...I seem to be having a pet problem." he explains.
Thomas grabs Peter's leg and throws him across the room, knocking him into the desk. His room is in shambles from their fighting, papers and books strewn everywhere, as well as a broken table and scattered mechanical parts.
Tarantula jumps in, diving toward Thomas. He swipes at her, and she shoots down, dodging his hand and sliding under his arm. Landing on the wall, she attacks him from behind, grabbing him by the shoulders and slamming him into the nightstand, knocking over a the mess on top of it.
Just then, the sound of a garage door creaking open rings throughout the house. Peter jumps up, "My Aunt May's home!" he looks around his room, "Man...she's gonna kill me."
Tarantula blasts several webs to tie up Thomas, "Here, I have an idea-" but before she can finish, Thomas rips out of his restraints, punching Tarantula in the face and knocking her across the room, crashing into a collapsed bookshelf. Peter launches himself back into the action, coming in sideways like a torpedo, pushing Thomas back before kicking off of him and landing on his feet. He shoots webs out of his web blasters, pulling back to restrain him,
"Tarantula, help me!"
She gets up and contributes her webs, and their combined webs bring Thomas down. Peter, panting, glances around the room as Tarantula picks up Thomas,
"What're we gonna do about him?" she asks him, lifting his body up.
Aunt May opens the door to Peter's room, "Peter? Are you still awake?"
She sees Peter sitting in the middle of the room with Valerie, playing a board game, "Oh...Peter...who's this?"
Valerie, wearing a large sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants, gets up to firmly shake her hand, "You must be Mrs. Parker, Peter's told me all about you. Dr. Valerie Polina ma'am."
"Doctor?" Aunt May asks, "You don't look much younger than Peter."
"It's true Aunt May, didn't you see her on the Betty Brant show?" he asks.
She presses her chin, "I...I think I remember seeing something like that-" her eyes widen with realization, "oh yes! You're the new girl at school Peter's been telling me about, I remember now! I'm sorry I didn't realize sooner."
Valerie chuckles, "It's fine Mrs. Parker."
"Oh no, please call me Aunt May. Should I get you two some snacks or something…?"
She shakes her head, "Oh no, it's getting late, I should probably be getting home soon," she glances over to Peter, "I'm just waiting on a call from my parents."
"Oh, alright then," Aunt May smiles, but before she closes the door, "and Peter, please clean up your room, it's a mess."
Valerie throws off the sweatshirt and sweatpants to reveal her costume. She hands the clothes to Peter, "Thanks for letting me use these."
"No problem," he throws them on his broken bed, which has been obscured by several articles of clothing, "now to check on our friend."
They look down at the cocoon of string dangling from Peter's window where they'd stored Thomas. Peter peers inside, "...gone."
Valerie slams her foot down, "Dammit!"
"It's cool, we'll catch him eventually. A guy like shouldn't be too hard to track down." he reasons.
She looks up at the time, "I...should probably be getting home. It's reallylate."
Peter shrugs, "I'm use to staying up late. Comes with the whole superhero thing."
"Before I go, you want any help," she glances at the many shirts and pants strewn around the room, "...cleaning up your room?"
He looks around, scratching his head, "Uhm...yeah...that would actually be kind of nice. I'm gonna have to replace the bed and desk, but that'll have to wait till morning. How about just picking up some of the mess?"
She nods and they proceed to pick up the articles of clothes hiding broken pieces of wood, glass, and metal. In the clutter, Valerie picks up several pictures, some of them the ones she took of him as Spider-Man,
"You use real film?" she asks.
He puts down the spare parts for his web shooters, "Yeah. I've been submitting pictures to the Daily Bugle and they require the pictures be real film. Kind of stupid in my opinion, they have to scan the pictures to transpose them onto the papers anyway."
"Well, these are really good." she compliments.
He smiles, "Thanks."
She spots a final picture, crumpled up in the corner, under the bed. She picks it up and straightens it out, revealing a picture of him and Gwen,
"Hey...is something going on between you and Gwen?" she asks out of the blue.
"...we broke up."
She nods, before pushing the picture back into the corner, "Ah, I see," she pauses for a moment, "may I ask what happened?"
He shrugs, "Nothing really happened...it's just...you do know her father died during the Lizard attack?"
What? "No, I had no idea."
"Yeah, I was there. And...and I promised him I wouldn't get Gwen involved in...all this. And that's hard...because you know Gwen, she wants to help, and that's great, but it might get her in serious trouble. Because she was almost hurt during the Lizard thing too and also the fact that I kept having to skip out on dates to do Spider-Man stuff...it got to be too much, you know what I mean?"
She nods, "Yeah, I do."
They continue to clean up his room, and Peter gets out a large trash bag in which they dump all of the garbage and objects destroyed during the fight.
"So...how goes your love life?"
Valerie blushes, "I kissed Harry."
Peter gets a wide grin going across his face, "No way, so does this mean you two are official?"
"I don't know."
He rolls his eyes, "C'mon, first of all, I totally called it, and secondly, you two were totally a thing already, a kiss just makes it official."
"Well, the thing is, at the dance, Eddie told me he liked me." she explains.
"Hmm…" he ties of the garbage bag as Valerie places the last of the junk into it, "but did he kiss you?"
She shakes her head, "Eddie's a lot shyer than Harry."
"Well, call me biased, but you would be better with Harry. I mean, Eddie's cool and all, but Harry really trusts you. He's told me he confided in you about his...illness."
"Yeah."
"Yeah, that's starting to worry me. Last time we talked about it, he went on about how Spider-Man might be the key to curing it. And...well, I mean, what could I say?"
"We don't know if you can help. I could look into it if you want to…" she offers.
"Could you?" he asks, slapping his head on his forehead, "Oh, that would be great. Thanks Val."
He opens the door to take out the garbage, while Valerie opens the window and jumps up, perching her feet on the edge. She pulls up her mask, looks back at Peter, and smiles, "See you around, Spidey." before jumping out the window.
Author's Note:
WinterRain36: Hmm...true, personally, I prefer how she's portrayed in Spectacular Spider-Man to her movie portrayal. And Electro is slated to show either in the next chapter, so look forward to that!
Thanks! :)