Lesson 6: Family Studies 101


After much deliberation, Liz had decided that regular visits with her brother were worth stomaching any redheaded relationship wreckers those visits might entail. She couldn't blame Mark for dating Mary Jane, really – Liz had been starting to feel the dull ache of singleness, herself.

"Well, it's been great hanging out," Liz said as she strolled across the carpet of an only-somewhat-ritzy living room. She smiled at her brother and his girlfriend, who were together on the couch, practically fused at the hip, "but I gotta get back to Dad's."

The three of them said their goodbyes, and then Mark went off to the bathroom, leaving Liz and MJ alone in the living room.

Liz paused by the exit. "So you guys aren't… struggling with rent or anything? I mean, this is a really nice place."

MJ held out a hand, starting towards her. "Nah, don't sweat it. Mark's pulling in more than enough from his job."

"And what job was that, again?"

Silence. "Y-Y'know, some warehouse thing. It's boring. He doesn't like to talk about it."

"Uh huh."

"But I'm actually doing this modeling gig now, so it's not like I'm not pulling my weight."

"Okay." Liz continued towards the door.

MJ blocked her path. "Why? What are you getting at?"

"I didn't say anything," said Liz.

"What, you think he's gambling again? You think he can't make a living without-?"

"I didn't say anything."

"He wouldn't do that to me!" MJ snapped. "Come on, if turning molten didn't teach him his lesson, then-"

"Okay, MJ, no one's arguing any different. I really gotta go." Liz slammed the door behind herself.

MJ remained there a while, standing on the carpet.

At least until Mark reentered the living room. "Liz left?"

"Yep." Silence. "Hey, babe? Random question, but, uh… how much an hour are you getting again?"

"Twelve," said Mark. "Why?"


"You got a problem with me?" The motion of O'Hirn's arms remained unbroken as the weights on his exercise bench traveled up and down, up and down along the cord.

"Not really," said Gargan, the grinning bald guy who always seemed to get picked as O'Hirn's spotter. Ugh, at least when he'd been a freakish scorpion-person, he'd been kept in an isolated cell. "Just thought you'd like to know there's a spider on your neck."

"Agh! Get it off, get it off!" There was the sound of weights slamming onto the bench, followed by the sound of snickers from across the prison yard. Seemed the Enforcers, Beck, and Toomes had all gathered to watch that display. Even Menken pointed and laughed, though that was short-lived once his dumbbell fell on his toe.

O'Hirn scowled, scratching his neck. He'd swear there really had been a spider. His skin had felt awfully itchy lately.


"What, you think I'm gambling again? You think I can't make a living without-?"

"I didn't say anything."

"I can't escape friggin' Molten Man, can I?" spat Mark. "What's it gonna take for you to forgive me already?"

"I forgave you forever ago." The space between their heads shrank by a foot. "I'm living with you, aren't I? But then maybe I shouldn't be if you're gonna act like a child."

"God, you're all the same. First it's 'oh, I just wanna have a little fun, nothing serious,' then suddenly you're begging me to get a place with you so you can nag me twenty-four seven. I shoulda seen through you sooner-"

"Oh no, where will I ever find another guy who's into me?" Mary Jane made a show of rolling her eyes.

"#*$% you."

"#*$% you harder." She started for the door.

But Mark's voice halted her. "You want to leave? Really? And go where, exactly? You said there's no more room at your aunt's place now that she's remarried, so…"

To this, MJ gave no response. At first.


The inmates had lined up at the front of the cafeteria, waiting for the serving lady to plop tasteless mush on their trays like pigs awaiting slop. It gave O'Hirn some serious flashbacks to high school.

Right at it was finally O'Hirn's turn to receive his slop, a voice from behind said, "Don't serve him that brown sugar."

O'Hirn spun around. "Gargan? What's the problem with the brown sugar?"

"Nothin'," said Gargan with a grin. "Just worried it'd remind you o' sand. Wouldn't want to trigger any traumatic memories o' your lost Lenore, would we?"

"That's it." Even faster than he'd spun around, O'Hirn sent a fist into Gargan's torso. At first, O'Hirn felt the wonderful sensation of Gargan crumpling like paper, but by the time of punches four, five, and six, O'Hirn's knuckles were hitting something rigid. "What the-?"

"Heh… Good going, O'Hirn. Couldn't have asked ya to do better." From within his crater on the floor, Gargan peeled off his orange jumpsuit, followed by his white undershirt.

O'Hirn stepped back. "What're you…?"

"You haven't figured it out yet?" Gargan cackled. "You haven't felt the itch? The little prickle under your skin?" He rose to his feet, showing off his bare, bruise-covered torso. "Fighting's what does it. Gets your pulse pumping. Makes it regrow faster."

With a pang, O'Hirn realized those blue splotches weren't bruises. They were… metallic. And spreading.

"You mean-?" On impulse, O'Hirn touched the back of his neck. It felt thick, rough, and numb, like someone had wrapped it in leather.

Gargan's grin only widened. "Now you're gettin' it."

O'Hirn had gotten it, but the guards hadn't. Within seconds, they'd descended upon the two, pushing away the jeering onlookers. "Don't move."

"Die, pigs!" Gargan ignored the order, earning him and O'Hirn some tasers to the back.

"Raaagh-!" For a moment, O'Hirn's body was rocked with crackling pain. But in seconds, that body of his went from feeling agonizing to feeling… numb. And heavy.

O'Hirn's torso gave a sudden lurch forward, prompting him to look down at his hands. They were covered in gray. In fact, his right one was covered in so much gray that it was ballooning off O'Hirn's body like a tumor. It was all he could do to keep his balance.

His shirt had ripped right open, and beside him, a similar fate had befallen the butt of Gargan's pants, which now had a writhing tail poking out of them, curved like a shrimp and with a stinger at the end. The thing was the length of O'Hirn's arm and growing.

"Reinforcements!" One of the guards stumbled back, clutching a walkie-talkie in his trembling hand. "We need reinforcem-" The sentence proved difficult to finish once the guy had been struck by a giant scorpion tail. Left and right, Gargan was tossing guards around like rag dolls.

Suddenly, O'Hirn's forehead felt considerably heavier, and he brought a hand to it. At this point, he wasn't too surprised by what he found there.

It didn't take long for the rest of the inmates to flood out the cafeteria, whooping and screaming and throwing slop as they went.

As a pair of them scurried past him, O'Hirn caught one mutter, "If I had a boomerang right now, I could totally kick both their asses."

"Sure, Fred," muttered the second. "Sure."


"No, baby, no." Their lips swept in for another meeting. "It's okay. It's okay…" Somehow, MJ had ended up pinned to the sofa, trailing one hand through Mark's hair and the other down his back.

"You know I didn't mean it, Mary Jane," a voice murmured in her ear. "I didn't mean any it."

"Me neither, babe. I love you."

"You, too."

Next thing MJ knew, Mark's shirt was on the carpet, and then she was experiencing those perks she'd told Gwen about.


Gwen's hand was still in that cast. It was all Peter could do to keep his eyes from traveling to it every five seconds. But he forced his attention towards his aunt in the hospital bed. She was the purpose of their daily visits, after all.

"I'm trusting the both of you to be responsible while I'm gone," a stern May was telling them.

"Yes, Mrs. Parker." Gwen gave an obedient nod from her bedside chair.

"C'mon, Aunt May." And Peter gave a nod from his own. "You know I took care of the house last time you were in the hospital, and this time I've got Gwen helping me out, so…"

"Actually," Aunt May replied with a smirk, "Gwen's presence this time around is what worries me."

The next couple minutes were spent on Peter's and Gwen's customary promises of no hanky-panky. But what Peter actually wanted to do was ask about the exact reason why his aunt had so abruptly ended things with Otto. Had the reason really been… what Otto had said it was?

Of course, the promises of no hanky-panky were considerably easier to articulate aloud than that particular question. Peter might've come close, though… if he didn't happen to spot the helicopters swopping past outside the window. Those were from the NYPD's metahuman response squad. And if there was that many of them, that could only mean…

"I gotta go take pictures!" Peter blurted out, springing to his feet.

Gwen looked like she was fixing to offer some additional justification, but before she had the chance, Aunt May sat up in her bed, looked Peter in the eye, and stammered, "I… I understand, Peter."

That was the last time Peter's eyes met hers before he scurried out the room.


Wham. The combined force of Rhino and Scorpion left twin craters in the pavement. By now, their subdermal armors looked as complete as they had before either crook had ever encountered any one-armed scientists.

Rhino flexed his massive fingers. He'd gotten so used to having his regular hands free again, he'd forgotten how trippy this was. O'Hirn's naked body was fully encased, save for his face, and moving his regular limbs caused the big old Rhino limbs around them to move in turn. It was like the robots from those all weird Chinese cartoons all the kids were into now.

Man, though, being the Rhino was definitely better than being plain old O'Hirn, but… he was gonna miss seeing his hair again.

Rhino's eyes traveled to the series of holes behind the two – leading from the building to the fence to the Ryker's Island shoreline, mere feet away from them. The East River looked awfully deep. "So what's the plan?"

"Plan?" Scorpion blinked, his tail swishing in the wind. "Well, uh…"

Rhino's snort would impress even a real rhinoceros. "You just realized our armor was regrowin' and got all excited, didn't you?"

"Shut up! All we gotta do is find that special reinforced barge they sailed us in on-"

"-and then what? You know how to pilot that thing? Or would ya rather me do it with my dainty little hands?" Rhino held out his palms, each of which were bigger than Scorpion's head.

Scorpion looked to his own hands. They were normal-sized… but also clawed. The claws had been intended to aid him with wall-crawling, but not so much with sailing.

"When Ock busts me out, he's always got a boat ready!" Rhino spat. "That's why you wait for the signal. Now the guards are just gonna tranq gas us, and then that scientist's gonna take away our armor again, only permanent this time-"

"There's not gonna be a signal, genius!" Scorpion spat back. "The Vault's holdin' Tombstone in your old cell, Kingsley's got the feds breathin' down his neck, and word is Ock's gone soft again. There's no more Big Man – There's the Kingpin, and I'm sure he's scramblin' to hire us after our impressive string o' victories. The super-mercenary market's flooded, and we've gotta increase our value. We've gotta prove that we're the strongest. Or at least that we're not the dumbest-"

"I ain't stupid," Rhino said through gritted teeth. "Least not compared to you."

At this, Scorpion simply huffed, then turned to the docks. "There's gotta be some way off the island…"

"Ooh, why don't you try shooting a web-line to a passing helicopter?" said a voice. "No, wait, my bad, that only works for getting on the island."

"You?" The supervillains spun to find a certain spandex-clad hero overlooking them from his perch on a fence.

"Perfect." Rhino let out a groan. "Cuz one arachnid ain't annoying enough."


No matter how many conversation topics Gwen halfheartedly raised, May's gaze remained firmly on the window.

Until a voice said, "H-Hello, May."

The ladies turned to discover a warm, balding, gray-haired man standing in the doorway, a pair of Starbucks cups in his hands..

"Dr. Bromwell?" May gave a start, hurriedly plastering a smile on her weathered face.

"Please, call me Nick," he said hurriedly. "You're not my patient anymore, after all…" A moment passed. "Would- Would you like a coffee?"


Wham. Spider-Man tumbled off the fence mere seconds before a flail of a tail reduced it to rubble. "Aw, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you're not happy to see me."

"Sorry, visitation's ended." Scorpion pounced after him, whipping his tail over and over in a vain attempt to strike the moving target. "I'm gonna have to ask you to leave."

"Leave?" Spidey slid across the pavement between Scorpion's legs. "But I haven't gotten to ask how you've been or what they're feeding you or how the heck you two turned back into crazy super-people!" While there, he went for the cheap shot, but the punch didn't seem to particularly phase Scorpion.

"Guess now the mystery'll haunt you the rest o' your life." Scorpion swiped his claws, missing Spider-Man's head by centimeters. "Though if it's any consolation, that won't last too much longer."

"I'll be honest-" Spidey sprayed webbing at Scorpion's face, but he blocked it with his tail. "-I was kinda hoping I'd seen the last of O'Hirn and… uh… Actually, I don't think I ever caught your name."

"It's Gargan."

"Hmm. Garg-an, Scorpi-an… Eh, not the most on-the-nose-" Spidey managed to blunt the stinger with some webbing, but that didn't stop Scorpion was using it as a bludgeon. "Wait, oh my god, I just realized! 'O'Hirn' is an anagram for… 'horni.'" He was forced to duck another tail-swipe. "Okay, I feel like I was onto something there, but I lost it."

"Yeah, well, speakin' of O'Hirn…" In the head of combat, Scorpion turned back to scowl at his partner. "…what are you doin'? This is our chance to finally squash the Spider!"

"Why?" While the arachnids bounced around the edge of the island, Rhino simply sat by the collapsed fence beneath the setting sun, his massive arms folded. "So we can get harsher sentences?"

"Unbelievable." Scorpion returned his attention to the Web-Head, rolling his eyes. "For once in your life, will you leave the thinkin' to the smart people and just do somethin' already?"

Behind him, Rhino raised an eyebrow. "You want me to do somethin'?"

"Yes! Anything! Anything's better than sitting there like an-" Wham, wham, wham, wham, wham. Naturally, Scorpion spent the next several seconds being swung through the air and rammed into the ground. For once, his tail was the tether and his body was the flail. "Ugh…" He twitched from within his pavement-crater.

Rhino snorted, released his tail, and spat on him. "Puny Gargan."

"Wow." Spider-Man stood, hands on his hips, overlooking the mess that'd once been Mac Gargan. "Thanks for the assist. Seriously, we make a good team. What is this, the second time now-?"

"Don't get used to it." Rhino snorted, then gave Scorpion's head a kick for good measure. "I ain't gone as soft as Marko. It's just that, even if I could get off this island, a guy like me can't exactly lay low. Why even bother? I know when I'm beat."

"Huh. Y'know something, O'Hirn?" Spidey offered a handshake. "You really aren't stupid."

Rhino declined, which was… probably for the best.

"Or at least, you're not that stupid-"

"There it is," said Rhino. "I knew the quip was comin'."


Remember that scene in Tangled where they go to the bar and all the guys there seem scary, but then they burst into song and it turns out they're actually all friendly? Well, Mary Jane had a feeling that if Rapunzel had tried that crap at this bar, her body would've ended up in a Corona back alley dumpster.

Making things all the more unnerving was that this cramped, grungy place was packed to the brim with dudes in brightly-colored costumes. There was a crowbar-wielding guy with a dark green jacket and dark violet mask, a guy in a silver robo-suit who kept bumping the ceiling thanks to his telescopic, Inspector Gadget-style legs, a guy in yellow-and-purple spandex complete with a French-style mustache, and even a dude dressed as a frog. Yeah, green seemed to be la couleur du jour in this joint, with purple being a close second.

But Mary Jane wasn't here for the super-criminals. Just a regular one.

"Oh, there you are, Blackie!" She slid herself onto the stool beside him. He was an older, dark-haired guy sporting a thick black mustache – as if his body didn't radiate enough skeeviness already.

At her approach, Gaxton went from drinking with his mouth to drinking with his eyes. MJ might have shuddered if she wasn't so used to that kinda thing by now. Instead, she fixed her attention on the opposite side of the room, where a dude in blue spandex was nailing the center of a dartboard every time.

"You're a hard man to find," said Mary Jane. Apparently, this bar didn't have a name, and it was always moving around. The only reason MJ had managed to track it down was because she happened to have a, err, gift for coaxing info out of people. It was this same gift that'd prevented the bouncer from noticing MJ was underage – the gift in question being, of course, the low-cut top she'd gotten last birthday.

"Am I? I'll have to make sure it was worth the effort, then, won't I, love?" Gaxton held MJ's chin a moment, then turned to the bar tender. "How's about we get the lady a drink?" Then back to MJ. "Whadya like?"

"Ooh, I've always been a fan of sangria- I mean-" MJ cleared her throat. "No thanks. I'm n-not looking for a drink, actually." In seconds, her trusty old foxiness was back, and she was leaning in to touch Gaxton's arm. "Just a bookie. I was hoping you could fill me in on something…" She gave her eyelashes a nice, good flutter.

Okay, Mary Jane knew she was a gifted actress and all, but this routine was coming a little too naturally to her.


As luck would have it, just so Dr. Connors happened to be in town this week for a conference.

"Thank you, Spider-Man." He stood before his spandex-clad savior, watching the unconscious Scorpion get hauled through the front gates of Ryker's Island Penitentiary. "Looks like I owe you yet again."

"Actually, Rhino did all the real work today."

"Yes, well, I'm very proud of you, Alexander." Curt turned to pat the shoulder of the animal-themed villain across from them.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever…" With that, Rhino allowed the guards to lead him away.

But the moment Rhino was gone, Curt bowed his head. "I can't believe I put people in danger again with some stupid oversight. Sometimes it feels like I ruin everything I touch…"

"Hey, man, it's okay." Spider-Man brought a palm to his shoulder. "Not like I haven't made my share of mistakes."

After a feeble nod of his head, the Doc started to leave.

"Wait, hold up, Doc." But Spidey blocked his path. "Sorry, the little science geek in me's dying here – How'd those guys' armor grow back like that?"

"Oh, well, I haven't had time yet to study it in any kind of detail," Dr. Connors said, "but my working theory is that their subdermal particles are self-repairing. See, in the same way that Sandman was able to 'eat' raw silicates to regenerate his mass, I believe the Rhino and Scorpion armors draw nutrients from their hosts' bodies for their own regeneration processes, and so if even one particle survived the removal surgery, it would eventually be able to regenerate the entirety of the armor, even remembering the proper shape. And I imagine the process would be sped along considerably by the introduction of adrenaline… The point is, though, that I'll have to be far more thorough and keep them under observation for considerably longer following their surgeries this time arou-"

"Wait, wait, wait," cut in Spidey. "You're saying Sandman could regenerate?"

"Well, yes, we've known that for a while now. In fact, Marko won a vicious legal battle to ensure his jailers fed him raw silicates. It was a huge step forward for superhuman rights-"

"What if he could regenerate from that- that Mud-Thing he and Hydro-Man turned into?" Peter could practically hear his brain whirring under his mask. "Oh yeah, and Hydro-Man probably had the same kinda subdermal particles, so we might be seeing him again, too." He paused. "I'm not forgetting anyone, am I?"


A pair of high-end designer boots trudged up a muddy staircase and through a doorway. There was the slam of a door, followed by the slam of a purse on a table.

"MJ?" At her entrance, Mark came out from the apartment's back room. There was concern on his face, but it seemed off in some imperceptible way, as it always did. The plastic surgery had been a valiant effort to restore him to pre-Molten Man settings, but it'd been far from perfect. "Something wrong?"

"I don't know, Mark." Mary Jane kept her back to him as she dug through her purse. "Is something wrong?" In one smooth motion, she spun around, flashing a slip of paper in his face. A ticket stub, to be precise, that pledged a hundred dollars to "Beta Ray Bill."

Mark stared at it. "Where did you get that?"

"Oh, just from Blackie Gaxton," MJ said tightly. "Turns out all you've gotta do is get a few drinks in the guy, and suddenly he's real talkative about 'good old Markie, always crawlin' back for more.'" She'd adopted an accent for a second.

"You promised you'd drop this." Mark's cheeks were beet red.

"Yeah, I lied to your face." MJ folded her arms. "Guess that makes two of us, huh? I can't believe you. It's one thing when you wanna throw your own life away, but… D-Do you even have a job, or have you just been on a hot streak lately?"

"It was only a hundred bucks, Mary Jane! If that horse had won, I'd have got back ten times th-"

"I swear to god!" The next instant, MJ was headed back for the door, purse in her hands. "I am so done with you-"

"Don't you walk away from me."

There was something about Mark's voice. Not just its volume, but its force. It was something that rattled MJ's bones. Something that made her spin back around, cowering, purely out of muscle memory.

And that was before his eyes turned burning gold.